The Soviet note accuses the Western powers of failing to make the reparations deliveries under point 2 above but fails to relate that the Western powers suspended such deliveries only after the Soviet Union had violated points 3 and 4 and its obligations under point 2(a). Furthermore, it was made clear that the suspension was intended to be temporary in nature, until such time as the U.S.S.R. was willing to implement the Potsdam Protocol as a whole. Because the U.S.S.R. never has been willing to do this, the suspended deliveries were never resumed.
The U.S.S.R. wanted to collect $10 billion in reparations from Germany. It had proposed this figure at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. This proposal was not accepted by the United States and the United Kingdom at Yalta, nor was it accepted afterwards. Nevertheless the U.S.S.R. went about collecting reparations as if this amount had been agreed to, despite the clear statement in the Potsdam Protocol that “common policies” should be established in regard to reparations.
Germany at the time of the Potsdam Conference was economically a deficit area, requiring sizable imports to establish its economy even at a minimum level. This is why the Western powers insisted that the Potsdam Protocol provide that payment of reparations “should leave enough resources to enable the German people to subsist without external assistance,” that the necessary means must be provided to pay for necessary imports, and that the “proceeds from current production and stocks” should be “available in the first place for payment for such imports.” In other words, the proceeds from current production were not to be used for reparations if they were needed to pay for necessary imports. In violation of this agreement the Soviet authorities exacted reparations in large quantities from current production in the Soviet zone of occupation and refused to account for their removals from Eastern Germany.
The result of the Soviet violations of the Potsdam Protocol recounted above, and of the Soviet refusal to treat Germany as an economic unit (with the resources of its zone available for use elsewhere in Germany), was that the United States and the United Kingdom had to give financial support to their zones in Germany to maintain a minimum economy. A year after the Potsdam Conference the U.S. Military Governor in Germany reported:
The U.S. Zone depends historically on coal and steel from the British Zone, on food and seeds from the Soviet Zone, on fertilizer and tin plate from the French Zone. Today the United States is spending perhaps 200 million dollars a year—over a half million dollars a day—to prevent starvation, disease, and unrest in the U.S. Zone. Without free trade with other parts of Germany, and without a common export program, the U.S. Zone can not pay its own way.
In effect, the United States, in shipping reparations to the Soviet Union while supporting its own zone to make up deficiencies caused by Soviet violations of the Potsdam Protocol, was permitting the U.S.S.R. to collect reparations from the United States itself, rather than from Germany. It was against this background that the United States suspended reparations shipments from the U.S. Zone to the U.S.S.R. until such time as the Soviet Union was willing to implement the Potsdam Protocol as a whole.
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