BLOOD AND STEEL

[Stanley]

BLOOD AND STEEL

26 July 2002

The older I get, the more I realise that whilst in some ways I am aware of how unfair and devious the world can be, in others I am still very naïve. I’ve had a good example of this recently as I whiled away the time here in Minnesota reading about the history of the Krupps armaments works in Essen, Germany. As many of you will know, I have a deep and abiding interest in the two World Wars and the effects it had on the victims. Anyone who doubts the significance of this should take a few minutes to read the names on the war memorial which now stands opposite the Post Office since it was moved from Letcliffe Park.
Any event as big as a World War is bound to throw up surprising facts. I’ve known for years that due to the lead the German chemical firm of I G Farben had in aniline dyes the British Army marched off to war in 1914 in khaki uniforms finished using German technology. Something like this is an accident of history and can be readily understood. However, I’ve now learned that there were other overlapping fields of Anglo-German cooperation that were definitely not accidents and were not brought to an end by the war.
In 1904 Krupps at Essen held the patent to the most sophisticated artillery fuses in the world. The fuse is the essential part of a high explosive shell that ensures that it explodes when it has hit the target and not before. These fuses were so good that Armstrong, the major British arms firm, negotiated with Krupp and agreed that in return for the rights to use the design they would pay one shilling and threepence (six new pence) for every shell fired. They were still using these fuses when we went to war with Germany in 1914 and in answer to a question in Parliament assured the government that since the outbreak of the war, no royalties had been paid. What they didn’t say was that they were keeping count and setting aside the royalties in a special account (the ‘K’ Account).
Imagine the scene, you are a German soldier in the mud of Flanders and a British shell lands next to you. Luckily it's a dud and doesn’t go off, there were many of these. If you’d taken the trouble to clean the mud off the shell you would have found it was stamped ‘Kp 2’ and if you were really clued up you would realise that this meant it was fitted with Krupp’s patent fuse. How curious, German soldiers being killed with their own country’s fuses. It got even more curious after the war because Krupps put in a claim to Armstrong’s for £260,000, they had been counting as well! In the end after a long legal battle Armstrong’s paid Krupps £40,000 in full settlement of the claim.
Now I know that this was probably legally correct but this is where my naivety comes in. I would have thought that if we were at war all contracts would have been void. Say we had gained knowledge of the design by espionage, I doubt we would have paid anything. I just can’t get my head round the fact that we were paying the enemy for every shell we fired at him! Even more suspect was an organisation called ‘The Harvey United Steel Company’ which didn’t actually exist except on paper. It was a cartel run by the German, British, French and American steel companies to artificially increase the price of raw steel used for armour plate. I don’t know what the effect was in this country but during the war the German government found they were paying twice the going price for armour plate.
The bottom line is that profits came before patriotism. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, after all it was a French Excocet missile that destroyed HMS Sheffield in the Falklands. It’s a big problem and I don’t have the answer to it, an armaments company can’t see into the future, our allies today may be enemies tomorrow but I can’t help feeling that there is something shameful in profit from innocent deaths especially when you are killing your own people. Looked at from this point of view, the old cotton manufacturers in Barlick look positively saintly. They may have been hard on their workers in pursuit of profit but at least they weren’t strangling them with the cloth!
I was made aware of all this while reading William Manchester’s book, 'The Arms of Krupp' and I have to confess I never finished it. I got to the accounts of the use of slave labour and the way these poor people were treated and it depressed me so much I had to stop. My mind went back to 2000 when I stood in Room 600 at the Nuremberg Courts of Justice where the Nazis were tried for war crimes, I thought of my time in 1955 and 1956 when as part of my army service in Berlin I stood guard at Spandau Gaol where Donitz, Funk, Hess and Speer were imprisoned and it all got too personal. We must never forget these things but too much dwelling on them can be bad for you.
On a brighter note, but actually no less worrying, my picture this week is of Renee, the cleaning lady who ‘does’ for me as I house-sit. She is stood by her pickup truck, a Dodge Laramie Magnum. So what I hear you say, just this, it has a ten cylinder, eight-litre petrol engine that delivers 450 horse power and does five miles to the gallon! Imagine calling in at New Road Garage and filling that one up, if you didn’t stop the engine it’s doubtful whether the pumps could keep up. The thing that worries me is that in a world that has reluctantly decided that global warming is a direct result of our profligate burning of fossil fuel nobody in America sees anything wrong in driving a monster like this around as personal transport. Come to think, in the long run, this might be just as dangerous as manufacturing armaments.

26 July 2002