Received a “Patriotic” letter demanding an end to attacks on Stalin is the brilliant leader, great commander and an efficient Manager, created a powerful economy and saved the country from inevitable defeat Hitler.
My dear, let me give you another way to explain. Let’s forget for a moment that killing millions of people wrong that have a famine and to Rob the whole country is wrong. Forget that Stalin helped Hitler come to power, banning the Communists to present a United front with the social Democrats against the Nazis.
I can tell you better about what is real brilliant leader and an effective Manager. That was with what to compare.
So. The head of the country there are three main factors – people, resources and time. The problem with Stalin was that he did not understand: in this triad the main thing – people. For him they were cogs. We have no one is indispensable (the current government in Russia in General has relied only on the resources foolishly wasting time and doing a negative selection, but that’s another topic)
Let’s look at West Germany after the war. To say that the country has experienced a disaster, to say nothing. Germany lay in ruins. Its industry was destroyed. Millions of dead and wounded, millions of hungry refugees. A huge problem with human resources for guidance at any level of the economy. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the ideology of Nazism in principle excludes woman from public life, charging her area of the household and upbringing of children
The volume of industrial production in 1946 was about 33% of the pre-war level and agriculture was lower than 30 years ago, steel production decreased 7 times, coal production fell by more than 2 times. Germany lost 25 % of its territory, about 12 million were evicted, every second German was unemployed, 20 % of the housing was completely destroyed, and another 25% damaged. About the hunger at the time joked: “eating too much to die but too little to live.”
Distribution system led to a complete collapse of the economy. German money meant nothing, the country was dominated by “black” market, in which the population was calculated currency, cigarettes or coffee. One of the journalists, describing the Germany of that time wrote: “Germany is a pile of garbage, in which the swarming of the 40 million hungry Germans.”
One of the 4 floating cranes in the shipyard in Hamburg at the time of destruction / the destruction of the Krupp factory in Essen. 1948.
The Soviet Union took from Germany the trains of equipment as reparations (2885 factories, power plants 96, 340 thousand machines, 200 thousand electric motors, etc.). The allies also didn’t waste any time. The equipment was removed, and merchant ships from the Western zones of Germany in favor of the United States, Britain and other States is estimated at nearly 5 billion dollars (at 1938), which is equivalent to 4249,5 tons of gold. It was decided on the complete destruction of the military industry of Germany.
Let me also remind you that all of Germany was occupied.
In this situation, in 1949, the German Chancellor, becoming the 73-year-old Konrad Adenauer. A few words about what it was for. At the time, he made a brilliant career — he was Chairman of the Prussian State Council. He was a member of the Supervisory boards of joint-stock companies of energy and coal industry and the German Bank.
But after the Nazis came to power in 1933, he resigned from all his posts due to an uncompromising rejection of Hitler and the philosophy of national socialism. When Hitler visited Cologne, Adenauer demonstrably sent to meet him at the airport his Deputy, forbidden to hang on the streets, Nazi flags. This attack would throw him off the balcony of the Cologne town hall. Twice, in 1934 and 1944, was arrested by the Gestapo as an irreconcilable opponent of the regime.
Its activity on the post of Chancellor Adenauer began with attempts to mitigate the restrictions imposed by the allies against Germany, and in 1949 was almost subjected to forced displacement from the post. He insisted on the recognition by the Germans of their historical guilt – more than half of all subsidies ($1.3 billion), which West Germany won on the “Marshall plan” he sent to Israel as compensation for the Holocaust.
And Adenauer was able to find and appreciate talented people. The Minister of economy of Germany, he appointed Ludwig Erhard
“No economic situation may not be so hopeless that a strong will and honest work of all people could not cope”
Ludwig Erhard
Adenauer and Erhard began with a very bold and risky monetary reform. Erhard went on the radio and abolished state price controls on most goods, and also removed most of the previous administrative requirements, giving the market a long-awaited taste of freedom. The administration announced the introduction of new currency — the Deutschmark. Every citizen received 40 new marks, then they added another 20, pensions, wages, housing payments translated at the exchange rate of 1:1. Half cash and savings, and all obligations of the enterprises were exchanged at the rate of 1:10, the second temporarily frozen, followed by exchange at the rate of 1:20. All enterprises got funds to pay the first wages, but in the future they had to work with due to its revenue
These measures helped to immediately return the long lost the value of money and drastically reduce the amount of money. Typing free prices, the state was not asleep — as opposed to a law was passed against the arbitrary increase of prices published catalogues of so-called relevant costs. Prices rose, but only slightly.
The success of the reforms most vividly described by the French economists Jacques Zueff and Andre Pietro : “the Black market suddenly disappeared. Showcases to capacity was filled with the goods of factory chimneys began to smoke, and the streets started the truck. Everywhere dead silence of the ruins gave way to the noise of construction sites. The day before the Germans aimlessly through cities so hard to get meagre food. The next day I was thinking about how to produce. In the evening their faces expressed hopelessness, and the next morning the whole nation looked hopefully into the future.”
In 1951, a turning point, dramatically decreased the unemployment rate. By 1952 the increase in prices has virtually stopped. In addition to the industry, and actively develop agriculture, exceeding the prewar level in 1953 To a large extent this is facilitated in 1947-1949 land reform, in which the bulk of the land Junker farms passed into the hands of small and medium owners.
Already since 1950 the country had a stable active balance of trade, reached in 1955 1.2 billion. Since the mid-1950s years began in the country’s continued economic growth. By 1956, the 1950 level was doubled, and 1962 tripled. In the mid-50s, Germany was ranked the second largest foreign exchange reserves, the third place after USA and England in terms of industrial production.
Crucial in the development of industry in Germany was played by the rapid technological progress, the creation of new technologies. Over a period of 60 years the total expenditure on science and development increased in 5.2 times. To prevent brain drain, measures were taken to increase the remuneration of scientists. As a result of scientific-technical progress during this same period, labor productivity increased by 60 %
In September 1955, the USSR recognized the Federal Republic of Germany, and Adenauer in Moscow and have agreed to the release of 38 thousand German prisoners of war (although Khrushchev told him in the first conversation that the Soviet Union no longer any prisoners of war). When Molotov tried to scare Adenauer the Nazi past of Germany, Adenauer said, “And who signed the Treaty with Hitler, me or you?”
That’s what is an effective Manager. Germany was in a difficult situation. But all reforms passed without repression, executions and the Gulag. It is not true that Germany has saved the Marshall plan. In its framework, let me remind you, Germany was allocated credits in the amount of $ 1.3 billion. And she has paid on reparations from 1953 to 1971 to $ 2.4 billion. Annually.
Such real and effective managers had a lot. For example, in 1949 the remnants of the defeated Kuomintang fled to Taiwan. On this island there was practically no resources, even the sand there was had to bring. Today the foreign exchange reserves of Taiwan is higher than that of Russia.
But that is another story.
Dmitry Chernyshov
