The originally U.S. reparation
plan of July 23-25, which formed the basis ot
the Potsdam Agreement, specifically authorized
removals of capital equipment and deliveries from
"current production."
When the Soviets accepted
the principle of the Byrnes plan, they agreed
that both forms of reparation, annual deliveries
as well as one-time-only removals, would be organized
on a zonal basis. When their draft was discussed
on July 31, neither Byrnes nor Bevin raised the
slightest objection to the idea of deliveries
from current production.
This attitude was,
of course, perfectly consistent with Byrnes's
basic idea that the "Soviet Union would take what
it wished from its zone."
Since there had been
no dispute about what the Soviets could take from
eastern Germany, the issue was dealt with elliptically
in the final Protocol, which stated simply that
Soviet claims would be met by "removals" from
the Soviet zone.
But given the drafting history, this phrasing
cannot be interpreted as a surrender of the principle
that the Soviets had the right to extract reparation
from their zone in any form they chose. It is
sometimes argued that paragraph 19 of Part II
of the Potsdam Agreement ruled out reparation
from current production, at any rate until Germany
was able to earn enough from exports to finance
necessary imports. But as the drafting history
of this article shows, the first charge principle
was to be applied to Germany as a whole only if
the Control Council could agree on an import program
for the country as a unit. If, as was expected,
there was no agreement, the assumption was that
the zonal authorities would be free to do whatever
they wanted. If the Soviets took reparations from
current production from their zone and that aggravated
that zone's deficit, financing it would be their
problem and their problem alone, so the western
allies felt no need to try to prevent them from
doing so.
The American government was thus mistaken when
it later claimed that the USSR had no right under
the Potsdam Agreement to take current output reparations
from the eastern zone.
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