Governed or Exploited? The British Acquisition of German Technology, 1945-48
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10076424 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Farquharson (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1997 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 23-42 |
| Publication date | 1997-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/002200949703200103 |
| OpenAlex | W2136138215 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
The initial phrase in the above title has been appropriated from the recent pioneering study by John Gimbel of how the USA took 'hidden reparations' in the form of technological and scientific information from its own zone of occupied Germany after the second world war.' It is a fairly well-known fact that for various reasons the western Allies failed to extract very much in the way of tangible gains in their reparations programme an issue which cannot be dealt with here in detail.2 But nevertheless, as Gimbel has shown, the occupation did not prove entirely fruitless, as the Americans were able to obtain a great deal of compensation in another way, by acquiring German technical ideas in some form or another. Indeed, the magnitude of their acquisitions is impressive, since by mid-1947 five million pages were available on microfilm in the USA to business and academic institutions, comprised entirely of documents, patents, etc., found by the occupying powers in Germany (not necessarily in the US zone alone). Not all of this held any great value, but the designation of the programme as 'the greatest transfer of mass intelligence ever made from one country to another' sounds convincing.3 As this kind of appropriation is virtually impossible to quantify in financial terms, the claim made in the (German) Harmssen Report that such knowledge, acquired by all four occupying powers, amounted to $5 billion has to be taken with more than the customary grain of salt.4 But that the Americans seized the opportunity to enrich their own technology and industry in this fashion and on a very considerable scale is beyond all doubt. Hence the concept of 'exploitation and plunder' as in the sub-title of
Appropriation · Archaeology · Economic history · German · Linguistics · Microform · Political science · Value (mathematics · Computer Science · European history and politics · History · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,28 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2023 (16) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |