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.Dr.Barten will never forget his meeting with these Americantechnical experts.They were the first Americans he had met, andhe was overwhelmed; not only by the contrast between the waythey received him and the manner in which he was accustomed tobe treated by the British, but also by the difference betweenAmerican and German officials.Beaming with joy as we left the I.G.Farben building after theinterview, he said: Really, we Germans have something to learn from America.It s almost incredible! Those American gentlemen didn t evenkeep me waiting a half hour or so to show their importance, as aGerman bureaucrat would certainly have done.And they talked tome so kindly, as if I were a friend, without any pompousness orformality.Perhaps this American democracy really means some-thing.Ach, its unbelievable how I was treated.I want to get backhome to tell everyone about it.Dr.Barten wanted to take me off to have dinner at a Germanrestaurant with him and Zezulak, who had accompanied him fromSiegen as interpreter, but whose services had hardly been neces-sary since Hartlaub spoke German fluently, and both Pumphreyand Yule were sufficiently conversant with the language.I insistedthat they should both, instead, come with me to Schuman Hall,the Post Exchange cafeteria where there are no race or class dis-tinctions, and GI s and officers can both bring their GermanTRAGEDY IN SIEGERLAND 125guests.Here again Dr.Barten waxed enthusiastic over Americanways. How sensible it was to take a tray and wait on yourself. How extraordinary to see American officers standing in line be-hind GI s.  How friendly everyone seemed.  How unexpectedto see Germans and Americans sitting down together.One couldnot imagine such a thing happening in the British zone where noGermans are admitted to British restaurants and clubs. Wirklich, wir könnten von den Amerikanern viel gutes lernen,he repeated again, too busy observing the noisy crowded cafeteria,to eat his sandwiches.He had received a practical lesson in democ-racy worth more than a thousand lectures, or any amount of radioand newspaper propaganda.He had seen the reality of Americandemocracy, usually obscured by Military Government, and hadmet Americans who behaved as if they were at home, instead ofas conquerors ruling over a beaten people.I was not, of course, satisfied by the prospect that Achenbach swould in all probability be saved.Dr.Barten s plant was only oneof the most obviously indefensible examples of dismantlement inSiegerland, but the United States railways experts whom I hadfound to be so keen on their reconstruction job, could not help theWebers, or Hensch, or others, the destruction of whose factoriesconstituted sabotage of the Marshall Plan, but was not of directconcern to the railways.My next appeal, accordingly, was to the ECA authorities.Thanksto Mr.Haroldson, the State Department representative in Frank-furt and one of the real liberals I met in Germany, I met Mr.Collisson, the ECA representative in Germany, and CommanderPaul F.Griffin, USNR, who had just arrived from Washingtonwith the experts of the Humphrey Committee charged by Congressto find out which plants on the dismantlement list could bettercontribute to European reconstruction by being left in Germany.I first asked the ECA representatives whether they intended toget information direct from the Germans, or would deal with themonly through Military Government.I was assured that  the dooris open here to anyone who has information to give us which bearsupon the European Recovery Program.I welcomed this statement and subsequently passed it on to theGermans in the Ruhr and the French zone, with the result thatthe ECA offices in Frankfurt received quite a stream of letters andvisits from the German industrialists and labor leaders I met inmy travels.I made it quite clear, of course, that Mr.Collisson and126 THE HIGH COST OF VENGEANCEhis colleagues could not be approached by just anyone who had agrievance; that their competence extended only to such cases wherethe question of European recovery was involved.For the moment, however, I was still concerned mainly with en-listing ECA s interest in the Siegerland tragedy.After hearing mystory with great patience and interest, Mr.Collisson agreed to re-ceive a deputation from Siegen.A week or two later, after I had left Frankfurt for the Ruhr, fiverepresentatives of Siegerland industries were received by Mr.Col-lisson, who, after hearing them state their case, promised that Sie-gen would soon be visited by the ECA technical experts.Actually the ECA experts visited Siegen twice.The first time, theBritish refused to allow the Siegen people to have their own inter-preter and the factory owners who could speak no English were ata serious disadvantage.Those, like Erhardt Weber, who under-stands English moderately well, heard the British interpreter givingfalse information to the delegation, but did not know whether hisprotest, in halting English, was understood or not.However, Mr.Lewis, the ECA expert, made a great impression in Siegen, for hearrived early in the morning and worked without let-up all day,noting everything and refusing British offers of hospitality.He was,it seemed, a man with a big and difficult job to do, working ten totwelve hours a day, showing favor to none, an impartial highlyqualified expert making the detailed survey assigned to him andcaring nothing for anything but his job [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]