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“Clearing Trade and German interests in Romania in the years from 1932-1939

With the final refusal of the Danube-confederation plans and the rejection of all attempts for the realisation of an agrarian block of east European and southeast European states in the year 1932 the most dangerous projects for the German goal to secure a supplement economic zone had failed.

Now the German government started to solve the countries of Southeast Europe from the influence of France by means of her strategy of bilateral preference contracts, to bind them economically (and in the end, also politically) to itself and to lay the bases for a German great economic area under inclusion of East Europe and Southeast Europe.

From the Foreign Office came in August, 1932 the announcement , that it is the most important task for the next decades to open up the markets from Yugoslavia and Romania for Germany. Now there are big chances for a successful German engagement, after the credits from France came to an end during the world economic crisis. In spite of the shrinking of the German foreign trade in the course of the world economic crisis and the small possibilities for imports of agricultural products narrowed because of the increased agrarian protectionism the receptiveness of the German market turned to get the determining vehicle to push back the French supremacy at the capital market of southeast Europe. From 1932 board members of the German group of the Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftstag and the chemical trust IG Farben in cooperation with the German government undertook intensive investigation and negotiations travels to Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria, The findings from these travels were used for the concepts of the economic contracts which were signed with the southeast European government in the coming years.

The takeover of this concept by the NSDAP verify a strictly confidentially stated recording of the department of southeast of the foreign-policy office (APA) of the NSDAP from 27th of October, 1934. Here were listed points which can guarantee a successful fight of Germany in the south-east space. The document should be understood as an emergency programme as well as as a “programme for very long view”. In the centre stood the demand that Southeast Europe should be a German sphere of influence and that the so called “unnatural pact system of France and Italy” should be destroyed by an active German foreign affairs politics. Southeast Europe should be valid for the German empire above all as an economic occupation area. For every single southeast-European country the authors outlined a German plan of operation.

In Romania the German foreign affairs should work towards a strengthening of the position of the king and a cooperation with the military circles. The country must be extracted in isolation, from all other alliances. A promising point of departure would lie in the intensification of the German trading, because Romania are looking for a market for his abundance in agricultural products. The German empire should secure not only the Roumanian grain, but also that raw material which it can receive, otherwise, only on the “unsafe oversea way”: Oil. Romania will be ready to deliver, for suitable assurances from Germany for the purchase of agricultural products also this raw material on the exchange way without money. A cashless oil purchase was from great importance for the German empire because it was hardly capable of acting on the foreign exchange market in the 1930s. To the whole perspective of the German Southeast Europe’s politics the advice was given, the German empire may not try to realise his aims in a frontal attack. The perspective of the concept would be good in a long view, because “the time works for Germany”. As essential aid of this Southeast Europe’s politics the authors of the text mentioned the foreign trade policy and “a purposeful cultural politics”. Their Résumé:

If these methods will be used properly, and if the will prevails to orientate the German foreign politics in the southeast after this directives, then not France or Italy will be the political master of the south-east space, but solely Germany. (Ibid.).

In July, 1934 the German reserves of gold and foreign exchange reserves fell on a low level of 78 million imperial marks. The German government reacted with the so called New Plan reacted to this development. The New Plan was announced on 24th of September, 1934 by the minister of economic affairs, Hjalmar Schacht. The plan implies a comprehensive and direct state control and a steering system of the foreign trade.

The new plan was thought not only as a short-term reaction to the shortage of foreign exchange, but also as an instrument for a ‘systematic shifting’ of the German import. He straightened the German foreign trade in favour to armament and war priorities. In practice the new plan was aimed to short in wide range the import of finished and consumer goods and to replace them with a controlled and long-term import from foodstuffs and raw materials which a not available in sufficient quantities in the German empire. The new plan was a component of a big programme of economic war preparation. Only the government decided over the needs and demands. The state regulated the import by a priority list for raw materials, food and feeds and disposed of their use.

The new plan moved the foreign trade on bilateral agreements and cashless exchange contracts. The essential principle of the new foreign trade policy consisted in the fact that the German empire should shop so much as possible in states which could deliver raw materials and agricultural products, and accepted as a payment instead of foreign currency German products. Clearing contracts should be concluded with such countries. The southeast European states accessible about the country road were for the German empire and the German war plans very interesting and important on account of her geographic location and her resources in raw materials and agricultural products. Within the scope of the new plan trading partners should be searched, where they lay in case of war involvements in the area of the own weapons”.

Although the politics of the new plan was initiated before the background of the foreign currency problem to which also other governments reacted with a foreign currency exchange control and the signing of clearing contracts, the national-socialist government succeeded by means of the applied rigid, totalitarian and planned economic methods and under exploitation of the export needs of the southeast-European states in using the cashless clearing contracts without for the penetration of the big economic area concept.

Clearing contracts charge the mutual demands on the paper, so that only the surplus of the demands about the obligations (or vice versa) had to be paid by payment or credit. Hence, a compulsive clearing, for collecting the debts, could be covered only by such states with view of success which had a passive balance in the exchange with the German empire, because only from the profits of the German demands to the foreign countries the old demands of the respective states could be satisfied.

Briefly after 1934 the first clearing arrangements were met, Minister for Economic Affairs Schacht ordered the associations of the German Industry in confidential circulars to raise the imports from the clearing countries and to reduce exports to them. If the clearing countries had wanted to withhold German profits, they faced now to unpaid German deficits, so that the clearing trade had the effect of concealed loans for the German economy. Already at the end of December, 1934 the German debts within the scope of all clearing contracts reached a sum from 450 million imperial marks, the biggest part with countries of Central Europe and Southeast Europe. In March, 1935 this sum rose on 567 million imperial marks. Regardless of these debts the German empire reached in trade with the clearing states as a bulk buyer from agricultural products a higher valuation of the imperial marks than justified by the local purchasing power. This implied a relative devaluation of the other currencies and lower German import prices.

The overestimation of the imperial marks influenced not only the trade of the clearing countries with the German empire, but also their internal prices and their foreign trade generally. The high prices of which the German side assured on the paper in the clearing contracts for agricultural products and raw materials influenced the internal prize level of the southeast-European countries and raised the price of her export goods so much that other states were deterred from the purchase. Also the devaluation of the southeast-European currencies towards of the imperial marks complicated the trade of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania with other states. Their possibilities to be able to pay for non-German imports decreased

The foreign trade policy of the new plan turned out successful concerning the short-term emergency measures as well as the long-term basic objectives. At short term one succeeded in guaranteeing the most necessary import in spite of the restricted foreign currency situation. In the long term the new plan and the clearing contracts initiated the aimed structural change and the geographic concentration of the German foreign trade on Southeast Europe. The import of finished goods and semi manufactured products was considerably limited just as the exportation by raw materials and the weight of the German foreign trade shifted in the direction of East Europe and Southeast Europe. The German import of processed products decreased between 1934 and 1937 about 63%, while the import of ores rose about 132%, from oil about 116% and from grain about 102%.

The countries of Southeast Europe became by means of the new plan the most important base of raw materials and agricultural products of the German economy. At the same time every possibility was taken from them to buy and sell without restrictions in the German empire. Their foreign trade was controlled and regulated by the German empire in every respect.

They had to adapt and subordinate their production increasingly to the supply of the German economy. Within the rationed and fixed clearing system the German side could threaten as ultima ratio always with a partial or complete import stop for single products or with a ‘examination’ of the whole economic relations. By artificial forcing up of the prices within the scope of the cashless trade the southeast-European states were extracted increasingly from the world market system, with the result that the German side could dictate exchange rates to them. Thus they were degraded more and more on the status of informal German colonies.

In March, 1935 the Romanian government committed itself to the delivery of 150,000 t of meat and 500,000 t of feed grain. Another agreed portion of the Roumanian deliveries within the scope of the clearing was fixed to oil. The formal basis for these deliveries formed a place of business contract, commercial contract and shipment contract concluded in spring, 1935. This contained the mutual grant of the most-favoured treatment for trade, shipment and business as well as detailed duty arrangements for numerous goods. In addition, it came to the foundation of the German Romanian government committees which met for the first time in September, 1935. On the common meetings taking place yearly from then on the annual extent and the composition of trade were fixed. Private companies or state offices could only take over contingents of delivery in this frame. A German Romanian offset agreement concluded in May, 1935 determined to carry out the whole exchange of commodities of both countries in the clearing procedure.

The aimed relocation of the food and raw material imports from overseas to Southeast Europe was increasingly realised by the clearing contracts. While in the comparison of the 1st quarter in 1934 with the 1st quarter in 1935 the German imports decreased from overseas about 28 percent, the German imports from Southeast Europe rose in the comparative time by 43 percent.

At the same time all southeast-European states accumulated clearing credits. In case of Yugoslavia the demands not redeemed by the German empire amounted in 1936 to 35 million imperial marks, in Romania 18 million and in Bulgaria 10 million imperial marks. While the German empire no longer received loans from the USA, France and Great Britain the underdeveloped held states of southeast Europe get lenders for Germany in the frame of Clearing Trade.

All together the German contract politics with the southeast-European states was aimed on a slogan written in a circular of the Foreign Office from the 30th of April, 1937, which said, the more one succeeds “in tying up each of the southeast countries individually economically to us”, even heavier it will be possible “even in case of a change of the current political constellation” to bring together an economic combination directed against Germany in the Danube space “” (circular of AA, Ritter, 30. 4.1937, zit. n. Seckendorf 1980: 215)

After the aim of the German politics to cut off completely Southeast Europe of the world market and to bind them definitely in the so-called great German economic sphere became clear in the middle of the 1930s, and the southeast-European governments saw through the German strategy, the bilateral commercial policy of the German empire bumped into growing opposition. Above all Yugoslavia and Romania strove for a reduction of her blocked credits from the clearing contracts and refused to deliver products in larger quantities in the German empire which they hoped to sell on the world market for foreign currency. Romania limited in 1937 his export of oil and oil products in the German empire within the scope of the clearing contracts on 20 percent. The Yugoslav government refused to deliver copper in the clearing exchange in the German empire, and required the payment in foreign currency.

The Romanian government tried in December, 1937 during negotiations with the German government to stop an expansion of the German Romanian trade. She wanted to freeze the commercial volume on the state of 1937. Nevertheless, the German influence on the Romanian foreign trade had already become so big at this time that the Romanian government could not prevail against the German interests. Thus the German negotiations leader Helmut Wohlthat could inform, finally, his boss Göring that “after long and difficult negotiations” a new commercial extent could be fixed which lay around one third about that of the year before.

The German government reacted to the uprising attempts of the southeast-European states with an increase of the prices and another lowering of the customs rates for agricultural products. Meanwhile the governments of Great Britain and France made no important efforts to raise her imports from Southeast Europe substantially. They also refrained from pushing the German empire to a return to the multilateral commercial system.

In Romania the chemical trust IG Farben and the benzol association started since middle of the 1930s together with the Dresdner Bank the capital fight for the oil springs, “one of the most important Desiderata of the general staff” (Sohn-Rethel 1992: 105). While still in 1934 only 16% of the whole German oil imports came from Romania, this portion rose on the basis of the clearing agreement in 1935 on 37%.

The bureau for economic construction of the German government presented at the beginning of August, 1938 an installation about the war mobilization needs and the necessary basis on the mineral oil area. In it the meaning of vital importance of the southeast-European economic area for a leading a war was stressed. The authors wrote: “The only way for the immediate cover of the mobilization gaps in the time in 1938/39 which permits at the same time an essential freedom of movement in production amounts and production qualities is in case of mobilization: Keep open the southeast-European economic area for Germany under claim of about 50% Romanian to other countries delivered whole mineral oil-exportation profit for Germany.” (RWA-Aufzeichnung: Mobilization need and supply situation on the mineral oil area, August 8^th 1938, zit. n. Kube, 1986: 263f)

After the Munich agreement the kings of Romania and Bulgaria and the Yugoslav head of government travelled to London. They pointed out there to the fact that her states are strangled by the German empire economically, and asked the British government for support for the freeing from these chains. Nevertheless, the government in London was not ready to guarantee a purchase of southeast-European products in a magnitude comparable to the German imports. Meanwhile the French foreign minister George Bonnet ordered his government to avoid every movement which can wake the impression of a restriction of the German commercial activities in Southeast Europe.

After of the Romanian king Carol II had been compensated in London and Paris with delaying statements, he immediately got in touch with the German government, because he saw yet no more alternative to a firm connection of Romania with the German empire. At the end of November, 1938 he met in Leipzig Hermann Göring, who pronounced the wish for an intensification of the German Romanian trade. In this trade “Romanian oil deliveries of the biggest extent” and the “development of Romanian ore deposits” would be very important. Carol volunteered basically to the fulfilment of the German demands In return for this he demanded the ending of the German support for the fascistic group iron guard(1) and reinforced war material deliveries. Latter to fulfil was not difficult for the German government, because Romania was planned as a southeast-European outside post during the war against the Soviet Union.

At the beginning of February, 1939 Görings most important special emissary in south European economic questions, Helmut Wohlthat, travelled to contract negotiations to Bucharest. The Romanian government refused to accept first the central point of a bilateral agreement for the German government called “industrial cooperation in a mixed industrial committee”, because she feared correctly, the German empire would deny Romania “the self- determination in his industrialisation” (Report Wohlthats to Göring about his negotiations in Bucharest, 10. – 3/23/1939, 3/27/1939). Only to massive German pressures and under the impression of the German intervention in Czechoslovakia the Romanian government agreed to the signing of a comprehensive economic agreement. The German Romanian economic contract signed on the 23rd of March, 1939 became the model of a lasting integration of Southeast Europe in the German great economic area. On the basis of the contract the whole Romanian economy should be transformed and fitted in the long term into the German area. Romania had to deliver raw materials and agricultural products and to renounce the development of a worth mentioning own finished goods industry. The contract meant the largest constitutional conversion till then of the German supplement economy concept propagated for a long time. The contract fixed for a period of five years planned to expand the German portion in the Romanian foreign trade to 45 per cent. For it the Romanian agrarian and raw material production should be aimed on the inquiry of the German economy. This implied a forced output and processing of oil, manganese, copper, bauxite, chrome ore and other raw materials. The contract included among other things these points: 1. Extension and steering of Rumanian agrarian production with look at a reinforced cultivation of feeds, oil fruits and fibre plants, 2.

Intensification of the Romanian wooden and forest industry 3 a forced development of the Romanian mineral resources by common German Romanian societies, 4.

Realisation of a generous oil programme, also by a German Romanian society, 5.

German participation in Romanian banks, 6. Removal of the Romanian traffic network and the traffic system, not least for the purpose of a quick and free from problems evacuation of the goods destined for the German empire,

7. Equipment of the Romanian armed forces with German weapons in cashless exchange to Romanian oil.

In agricultural products 700,000 t of wheat, 200,000 t of maize, 300,000 t of animal feed and 200,000 t of living and killed pigs should be delivered only in 1939 from Romania to the German empire. A special agreement signed on the 20th of July, 1939 also for the duration of five years implies the Romanian assurance to export to least 75 per cent of the annual Romanian whole grain exportation in the German empire. For 1939/40 a contingent of at least 1.5 million t of grain was assured. German offices determined the choice of the grain.

Especially important for the German wartime economy was the Romanian obligation contained in the contract from March, 1939 to increase the oil export in the German empire of from 20 to 25 per cent of the whole volume of the clearing agreement. The contract intended not least the equipment of free trade zones for German production enterprises and transportation companies in Romania. In these zones should be established industrial enterprises and trading ventures as well as storehouses and places of transhipment should be established for the German shipment. In the free trade zones exemption from duty should be guaranteed for the production, trade and the processing of goods. To guarantee the binding to the shipment, the foreign trade zones were installed in the Danube and Black Sea harbours because German companies hoped there to disclose new outlets in the Middle East. The third article of the contract obliged the Romanian government to remove or to change laws which were against a German capital expansion to Romania. This was above all the case in the areas of Oil industry and mining. A Romanian law from the 1920s complicated the development and exploitation of new oil springs and raw materials by foreign capital.

Immediately after completion of the contract expert’s teams were sent to Romania for the technical development of the agrarian, forest and fish economy and the raw material exploitation. Before the background of the steep rising trade with grain started from April, 1939 to October, 1943 a total of fifteen German Romanian trade companies which dealt exclusively with the export of grain in the German empire. In the same period eight other German Romanian enterprises were founded which organized the buying and the processing of fruit, vegetables and oilseeds. These new establishments and the controlled trade with agricultural products were only possible by the regulations of the economic contract which admitted direct capital exports to Romania. On the basis of the contract it came furthermore to the foundation of three German Romanian enterprises which should force the cultivation fibres for textiles.

German economic planners noticed contented that the German Romanian agreement exceeds wide all economic contracts which have been concluded up to now between independent states, because it contains a coordination of big parts of the good production and the traffic. “The special and in the modern economic history absolutely new moment of the contract” lies in the “adjustment of nearly all production powers of one country to production power of another country.” The binding and restructuring of the Romanian economy only through a contract and without direct military occupation of the country was taken up by the German professional world with big interest. The German government hoped for a signal effect over Romania. Negotiations leader Helmut Wohlthat noticed in addition:

“All southeast-European countries should see who holds the true supremacy supported with economic facts on the shores of the Danube river; Germany by modern contract forms or England and France with old claims and propaganda.” (Report from Wohlthats, March 27^th 1939)

By means of his main weapon of the 1930s, the bilateral preference and clearing contracts the German empire had for the first time won a dominating position before the beginning of the Second World War in Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria. The nearly monopoly-like and without foreign currency realized import of the raw materials and agrarian products of these states formed an essential component of the German war preparation. The export widely uncovered by missing German deliveries to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania degraded the three southeast-European Danube states to involuntary credit lenders for the German wartime economy. Already in 1936 passed one fifth of the whole freezed debts of the German empire with the five southeast-European states Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Greece. The ‘supplement space’ Southeast Europe should become as safe raw material and food reservoir for the German economy the base of the German world war for ‘living space’.

(1) The iron guard was formed as a result of the worldwide economic crisis in the context of a radicalization of the Romanian right. With German support she developed in spite of multiple bans in the 1930s to a paramilitary mass organisation. In the end of the 1930s she became an important domestic strength and was involved in several putsch attempts and in pogroms against the Jewish population.”

Klaus Thorner

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