4 FEBRUARY 1944, Page 8

DISARMING GERMANY

By V. S. SWAMINATHAN

IT is a matter of history that measures prescribed for disarming Germany after the First World War, and keeping her disarmed, failed dismally. That must not happen again. Disarmament is the first step towards security and stability. The advent of " total " war has made total disarmament more imperative than ever. There is general agreement on this fundamental point, both in Great Britain and the United States. The British Past-War Policy Group, comprising several M.P.s and Peers under the chairmanship of Sir John Wardlaw-Milne, for example, insists that the enemy's defeat must be followed by the effective occupation of the Reich, and the setting up of an Inter-Allied Council of Control charged with preserving order and carrying out immediate demilitarianisation. Among the first duties of the Council would be the dismantling of the enemy's aircraft industry, and the closing down of his war potential, including heavy and chemical industries to the extent that they are the basis for the output of war weapons. Also, Mr. Hoover, ex-President of the United States, and Mr. Hugh Gibson, former American Ambassador to Belgium, advocate the destruction of the military caste in Germany, Italy and Japan by complete disarmament after the war. Finally, Sir Halford Mackinder, the eminent British geographer, assumes that for two years from the time the cease fire order is given the Allies will occupy Berlin, try the criminals, fix frontiers on the spot, and complete other forms of surgical treatment.

What practical steps should the United Nations take to bring about the disarmament of Germany? The rope of security is manystranded, and the Allies cannot rely on one method as sufficient in Itself. It behoves them to study the implications of technical disarmament in all its details, and in advance, so that they will be ready when the time comes to set the machinery in motion. To be effective there must be genuine co-operation among the Allied nations great and small.

One obvious step is to place an embargo on the import of certain raw materials vital for the prosecution of war. This proposal was formulated by Sir Thomas Holland with reference to " key " minerals and metals before the South African meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science as far back as 1929, and again at the Conference on Mineral Resources and the Atlantic Charter sponsored by the same organisation in July, 1942. This war is being waged with metallic weapons made by metallic machine-tools. Its transport agencies and precision instruments are also made of metals and alloys, while they are largely lubricated and propelled by petroleum products. The mineral-sanctions policy rests on the unassailable fact that no country, and even no continent, possesses all the minerals, metals, and fuels for waging a mechanised war, or for that matter, for industrial activity in peace-time.

Now, Central Europe in general, and Germany in particular, lacks several steel-hardening elements vital for the manufacture of machine tools, chentical and metallurgical equipment, including those needed for making ersatz products and finished armaments. The ferroalloying elements concerned are manganese, chromium, nickel, cobalt,

tungsten and molybdenum. Germany is deficient, too, in base metals like copper and lead, and in semi-ferrous tin. She a furthermore, short of such strategic commodities as native sulphur, phosphates, asbestos, mica and industrial diamonds. These products cannot, in the present state of knowledge, be produced syntheticallv, and the Third Reich has no suitable substitutes to take their place, and must therefore import them. Such a ban as proposed by Sir Thomas Holland would therefore do much to deprive a potential aggressor of the means of continuing a long war provided there is an international authority to rigidly control the ingress of supplies by land, sea or air.

Professor C. K. Leith, "who knows his minerals," in Brookings Institution's new studies arrives at the same conclusion. He has considered the problem of mineral control in relation to peace, and the steps necessary to make it effective. He concludes that ant group of nations undertaking to preserve the peace of the world must not only hold unitedly to this purpose, but must be in possession of most of the world's mineral resources. They must set up a machinery of control which should be in operation before any future outbreak of aggression, and should provide for the continuous allocation of minerals in the light of peace-time needs for the superv;sion of the mineral-consuming industries in suspect countries, for patrols to prevent smuggling and measures to enforce compliance.

Another method of technical disarmament was put forward by Sir Robert Robinson at the annual luncheon of the British Parliamentary and Scientific Committee early in x943. His thesis in a nutshell was "no explosives, no war." He proposed that Germany should be prevented from manufacturing military explosives by abolishing (razing to the ground) all large plants making synthetic ammonia, and those producing methanol, as these can be utilised for making ammonia. Thus large-scale manufacture of nitric acid—the basis ol virtually all explosives used in war—could be effectively stopped During the last war Germany by elaborating and setting up the Haber-Bosch process of manufacturing ammonia by fixation of atmospheric nitrogen and oxidising ammonia into nitric acid by the Ostwald process, made herself entirely independent of imported Chilean nitrate for making explosives, and for use as fertiliser.

Germany's synthetic ammonia oxidation plants, not the ammonia oxidation works, are concentrated in a few centres. Also, substantial tonnages of ammonium compounds are derived as by-products in the manufacture of coke and of town gas. Germany could without difficulty enlarge these establishments, and her plants manufacturing town gas are widely scattered. Professor Robinson thinks that an International Nitrogen Commission would have little difficulty in enforcing the sanction, but, as Nature recently pointed out. the supervision of Germany's widely dispersed ammonia-producing centres would entail a vast amount of police wcrk. The same scientific journal suggests that the ban be extended to the manufacture of sulphuric acid. This vital heavy chemical is employed not only in the production of explosives and fertilisers, but in a host of other key-enterprises either as a starting material or for purifying or refining purposes. The bulk of Germany's sulphuric acid is made from sulphur imported normally from the United States and Italy or pyrites obtained from Spain and Norway. It would he easier to prohibit imports of these materials by the Reich rather than to police Germany to prevent their use by sulphuric acid plants. Here again it is well to bear in mind that Germany is already meeting virtually one-half of her sulphur needs by extracting it as byproduct from smelter gases, town gas, and coal-oil plants.

To sum up, the Third Reich is now in a position to manufacture a wide range of essential products,including key chemicals of wartime value from indigenous sources. Examples are synthetic liquid fuels, Buna rubber, textile fibres, synthetic fat and camphor. Also, phosphorus is to be derived from bones and low-grade phosphatic nodules ; glycerine is manufactured synthetically ; calcium carbide, ethyl and methyl alcohol, ether, acetic acid, acetone, urea, phenols and formaldehyde needed for plastics, are made from such common and abundant materials as coal, limestone and air. In the matter of Germany's technical disarmament strategic minerals. metals, fuels and key chemicals must assuredly hold the foremos: place.