I've been on a Wilfred Burchett kick for the last couple of days. His work in Vietnam, particularly his stunning portrayal of Diem's rotteness and the amazingly duplicitous US military, state department, and political elite was awe inspiring. Then I read his work from Berlin 1945-49,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/burchett/1950/cold-war/index.htm
It out performed the Vietnam work. In fact the reader gets to see the in-depth continuity of US imperialism through its military-industrial complex that has flowed from Berlin to Baghdad.
Of particular interest are the sections and chapters dealing with arguments over breaking up German corporations, or more generally `concerns' or conglomerats, especially in the Ruhr. The Brits wanted to break these down to smaller units and socialize them. They had two goals to keep Germany from becoming what it is today, the dominant economy of Europe. And, to stop Germany from reconstructing is vast military industrial complex. The Russians wanted similar arrangements for similar reasons.
The US engineered the failure of the socialization arrangement for multiple reasons, not the least of which were the linkages to US corporate interests, including the losses that would follow from US corporate linkages like Standard Oil, US Steel, and chemical giants like DuPont. The more rightwing of the US contingent of military, state department, and political figures were looking forward to WWIII against Russia with the German military industrial complex as the forward launch point.
Since Burchett had just arrived in Berlin after being among the first journalists to enter Hiroshima, he was appalled. His reports of a mystery plague (radiation) among the Hiroshima survivers was subject to heavy US denial. One look at photos of Madame Curie with aplastic anemia in the early 1930s should have been enough.
I had to simply ignore Burchett's sins of omission on Russia, China, North Korea. I pretty much believed him on both sides of Vietnam.
Below is a link to a John Pilger interview with Wilfred Burchett:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcKxqOQhv-0