Bevin, the Ruhr and the Division of Germany: August 1945 – December 1946

Abstract

Initially it was Ernest Bevin's intention to use the Ruhr as an internationally controlled dynamo for the rehabilitation of Europe. However, within months of taking office he was compelled to accept that, shackled by Allied policy over the permitted level of German industry, the Ruhr would not, in the immediate future, be able to provide the spark necessary to ignite European recuperation. Moreover, Bevin's deepening suspicions of Soviet policy, that it was geared towards using the depressed situation in the British zone to win the area for communism, reinforced his original determination to exclude the Russians from any responsibility for governing the Ruhr industries. Consolidation of British control took precedence over schemes for international co-operation. By the end of I 946 Bevin's stance on the Ruhr had undergone an important transformation. Rather than using British control of the region as an impetus towards European collaboration it had become a justification for the division of Germany along the boundaries between the western zones of occupation and the Soviet zone.