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3. The Ruhr Area.
(The Ruhr, surrounding industrial areas, as shown on the attached map,
including the Rhineland, the Keil Canal, and all German territory north
of the Keil Canal.
Here lies the heart of German industrial power, the cauldron of wars.
This area should not only be stripped of all presently existing
industries but so weakened and controlled that it can not in the
foreseeable future become an industrial area. The following steps will
accomplish this:
(a) Within a short period, if possible
not longer than 6 months after the cessation of hostilities, all
industrial plants and equipment not destroyed by military action
shall either be completely dismantled and removed from the area or
completely destroyed. All equipment shall be removed from the mines
and the mines shall be thoroughly wrecked.
It is anticipated that the stripping of this area would be
accomplished in three stages:
(i) The military forces immediately upon entry into the area
shall destroy all plants and equipment which cannot be removed.
(ii) Removal of plants and
equipment by members of the United Nations as restitution and
reparation (Paragraph 4).
(iii) All plants and equipment not
removed within a stated period of time, say 6 months, will be
completely destroyed or reduced to scrap and allocated to the
United Nations.
(b) All people within the area should
be made to understand that this area will not again be allowed to
become an industrial area. Accordingly, all people and their
families within the area having special skills or technical training
should be encouraged to migrate permanently from the area and should
be as widely dispersed as possible.
(c) The area should be made an international zone to be governed by
an international security organization to be established by the
United Nations. In governing the area the international organization
should be guided by policies designed to further the above stated
objectives.
Industrial Areas in the United
States
The United States is a very large
country, rich in natural resources. Because of that, it had many
regions of industrial production that one by one has been shut
down and/or exported. Virtually all heavy industry in the
United States has been shut down - put out of business by cheap imports.
Most recently, the biggest remaining of U.S. heavy industry - the
automobile manufacturers are on their way out.
The Deindustrialization of
America, Basic Books, Inc. Barry Bluestone & Bennett Harrison,
1982, ISBN 0-465-01592-1
On June 30, 1980, Business Week
finally sounded the alarm. The decline of the American economy
had become so serious that the nation's leading business journal
decided to devote an entire special issue to detailing a
comprehensive plan for revitalizing the U.S. economy. In a
tone of uncharacteristic dismay, the editors concluded:
The U.S. economy must
undergo a fundamental change if it is to retain a measure of
economic vitality let alone leadership in the remaining 20 years
of this century. The goal must be nothing less than the
reindustrialization of America. A conscious effort to
rebuild America's productive capacity is the only real
alternative to the precipitous loss of competitiveness of the
last 15 years, of which this year's wave of plant closings
across the continent is only the most vivid manifestation.
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