Morgenthau Plan
The Morgenthau Plan was a proposal to weaken Germany following World War II by eliminating its arms industry and removing or destroying other key industries basic to military strength. This included the removal or destruction of all industrial plants and equipment in the Ruhr. It was first proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. in a 1944 memorandum entitled Suggested Post-Surrender Program for Germany.[1]
While the Morgenthau Plan had some influence until July 10, 1947 (adoption of JCS 1779) on Allied planning for the occupation of Germany, it was not adopted. US occupation policies aimed at "industrial disarmament",[2] but contained a number of deliberate loopholes, limiting any action to short-term military measures and preventing large-scale destruction of mines and industrial plants, giving wide-ranging discretion to the military governor and Morgenthau's opponents at the War Department.[3][4] An investigation by Herbert Hoover concluded the plan was unworkable, and would result in up to 25 million Germans dying from starvation.[5] From 1947, US policies aimed at restoring a "stable and productive Germany" and were soon followed by the Marshall Plan.[3][6]
When the Morgenthau Plan was published by the US press in September 1944, it was immediately seized upon by the German government and used as part of propaganda efforts in the final seven months of the war in Europe that aimed to convince Germans to fight on.[7]
The Second Quebec Conference (September 1944)[edit]
At the Second Quebec Conference, a high-level military conference held in Quebec City, September 12–16, 1944, the British and United States governments, represented by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt respectively, reached agreement on a number of matters, including a plan for Germany, based on Morgenthau's original proposal. The memorandum drafted by Churchill provided for "eliminating the warmaking industries in the Ruhr and the Saar... looking forward to converting Germany into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in its character." However, it no longer included a plan to partition the country into several independent states.[9]
This memorandum is also referred to as the Morgenthau Plan.[10]
Rejection of the plan[edit]
Anthony Eden expressed his strong opposition to the plan and, with the support of some others, was able to get the Morgenthau Plan set aside in Britain. In the United States, Hull argued that nothing would be left to Germany but land, and only 60% of the Germans could live off the land, meaning 40% of the population would die.[29] Stimson expressed his opposition even more forcefully to Roosevelt. According to Stimson, the President said that he just wanted to help Britain get a share of the Ruhr and denied that he intended to fully deindustrialize Germany. Stimson replied, "Mr. President, I don't like you to dissemble to me" and read back to Roosevelt what he had signed. Struck by this, Roosevelt said he had "no idea how he could have initialed this".[30] The theory that Roosevelt was not truly rejecting the plan is supported by later remarks by Eleanor Roosevelt, who stated that she never heard him disagree with the basics of the plan, and who believed that "the repercussions brought about by the press stories made him feel that it was wise to abandon any final solution at that time", but other sources suggest that Roosevelt "had not realized the devastating nature of the program he had initialed".[31]
On May 10, 1945, President Truman approved JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff policy) 1067 which directed the US forces of occupation in Germany to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany [nor steps] designed to maintain or strengthen the German economy".[32][33][34][35][36]
Influence on policy[edit]
Following the negative public reaction to the publishing of the Morgenthau plan, President Roosevelt disowned it, saying "About this pastoral, agricultural Germany, that is just nonsense. I have not approved anything like that. I am sure I have not. ... I have no recollection of this at all."[43] The president died before the end of the war, and the plan never took effect.
In January 1946 the Allied Control Council set the foundation of the future German economy by putting a cap on German steel production; the maximum allowed was set at about 25% of the prewar production level.[44] Steel plants thus made redundant were dismantled.
Also as a consequence of the Potsdam Conference, the occupation forces of all nations were obliged to ensure that German standards of living could not exceed the average level of European neighbors with which it had been at war, France in particular. Germany was to be reduced to the standard of life it had known in 1932.[45] The first "level of industry" plan, signed in 1946, stated that German heavy industry was to be lowered to 50% of its 1938 levels by the closing of 1,500 manufacturing plants.[46]
The problems brought on by the execution of these types of policies were eventually apparent to most US officials in Germany. Germany had long been the industrial giant of Europe, and its poverty held back the general European recovery.[47][48] The continued scarcity in Germany also led to considerable expenses for the occupying powers, which were obligated to try to make up the most important shortfalls through the GARIOA (Government and Relief in Occupied Areas) program. In view of the continued poverty and famine in Europe, and with the onset of the Cold War which made it important not to lose all of Germany to the communists, it was apparent by 1947 that a change of policy was required.
The change was heralded by Restatement of Policy on Germany, a famous speech by James F. Byrnes, then United States Secretary of State, held in Stuttgart on September 6, 1946. Also known as the "Speech of hope" it set the tone of future US policy as it repudiated the Morgenthau Plan economic policies and with its message of change to a policy of economic reconstruction gave the Germans hope for the future. Herbert Hoover's situation reports from 1947, and "A Report on Germany" also served to help change occupation policy. The Western powers' worst fear by now was that the poverty and hunger would drive the Germans to Communism. General Lucius Clay stated "There is no choice between being a communist on 1,500 calories a day and a believer in democracy on a thousand."
After lobbying by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Generals Clay and Marshall, the Truman administration realized that economic recovery in Europe could not go forward without the reconstruction of the German industrial base on which it had previously been dependent.[49] In July 1947, President Truman rescinded on "national security grounds"[49] the punitive JCS 1067, which had directed the US forces of occupation in Germany to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany". It was replaced by JCS 1779, which instead stressed that "[a]n orderly, prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany".[50]
The most notable example of this change of policy was a plan established by US Secretary of State George Marshall, the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan, which, in the form of loans instead of the free aid granted to other countries, was extended to West Germany.
Implementation[edit]
The Morgenthau Plan, in the sense of the plan drafted by Morgenthau or the plan initialed by Roosevelt, was never implemented.[62] Germany was not made "primarily agricultural and pastoral in its character".[31] However, some commentators, such as Gareau, extend the term to mean "any postwar program designed to effect and preserve German disarmament by significantly reducing German industrial might".[10] JCS-1067, the April 1945 "Directive to Commander-in-Chief of United States Forces of Occupation Regarding the Military Government of Germany" specified the Allied objective as being "to prevent Germany from ever again becoming a threat to the peace of the world", including, as an essential step, "the industrial disarmament and demilitarization of Germany".[63]
Assessment and contemporary relevance[edit]
Historical assessments differ with regard to the nature, duration and effects of Morgenthau's plan and JCS 1067 on American and Allied policies.
US diplomat James Dobbins writes that an early draft of JCS 1067 had been written while the plan was still understood to be US policy, and "[b]ecause nothing replaced the Morgenthau plan once it had been disavowed, the final version of JCS 1067 contained many of the harsh measures and all the intent of a hard peace toward Germany".[92] However, according to Dobbins, in May 1945 – shortly after its approval in April 1945 – the newly appointed deputy military governor, General Clay, implied that the directive was unworkable and initially wanted it to be revised; after the deliberate loopholes were pointed out to him, General Clay did not press further for a revision but "took great liberties in interpreting and implementing JCS 1067". Clay's well-intentioned effort did meet obstacles, like General Marshall forbidding him from relaxing the strict non-fraternization policy to a more reasonable level. Dobbins remarks that the harsh punitive measures shifted toward reform over time as the US faced the problem of feeding millions of Germans and the Soviet expansion.[93]
Gerhard Schulz mentions that the American military government was, until 1947, operating under JCS 1067, which he describes as "a framework that had its origin in the Morgenthau Plan".[94][95]
Georg Kotowski also mentions that "As far as I know the results [of the revisionist debate], it seems to me that, although plans for a policy concerning post-war Germany had been developed as early as 1941, no plan had been adopted by the president that could have served as a basis for a purposeful policy. This resulted in the German question being postponed to after the final victory over the Axis Powers and Japan. At most, the short-lived approval of the Morgenthau Plan by Roosevelt might possibly be seen as a guiding principle of his policy toward Germany, especially since important elements of this plan found their way into [JCS 1067]."[96] Michael Zürn talks of the policy of "Never again a strong Germany!" that found its expression in the infamous JCS 1067 (which was influenced by the Morgenthau Plan), but this principle was abandoned by the USA soon after the Potsdam Conference, though it was not until 1947 that JCS 1067 was replaced by JCS 1779 and its related "European Recovery Program".[97]
Kindleberger states that "With the termination of hostilities, the mood of suppression gave way to ambivalence – in the West. Germany needed to be punished for wrongdoing, but it was also essential to revive the German economy for its necessary contribution to European recovery. The stern pronouncement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive (JCS 1067) that the United States commander should do nothing to restore the German economy above the minimum level necessary to prevent such disease and unrest as might endanger the occupation forces gave way in July 1945 to an order to stimulate coal production for export delivery to Belgium, the Netherlands, and France" (which did not materialize). In May 1946, General Clay's stop-order on the dismantling of plants (for reparations) marked the first open recognition of the failure of Potsdam. After 1947, when conflicting policies began to be reconciled, economic and social conditions began to be improved.[98]
Henry Burke Wend refers to JCS 1067, as approved on 14 May 1945, as a compromise document which, "together with Truman's ascension to the presidency [on 12 April 1945], spelled the demise of the Morgenthau Plan".[99] Despite this, "denazification, deconcentration and dismantling had a profound, if varied, impact on German industrial recovery."[100] Even with the introduction of the Marshall Plan, self-defeating policies that simultaneously industrialized Germany (by investing billions of dollars) and deindustrialized it (through heavy dismantling of its industry) continued until 1948–1949.[101] Walter M. Hudson describes JCS 1067 as less harsh than Morgenthau's plan: while core elements of the Morgenthau Plan were incorporated in JCS 1067, it was deliberately diluted, and permitted the military government to be more flexible than envisaged by the Morgenthau Plan.[102]
The German Federal Agency for Civic Education (BPD) asserts that the Morgenthau Plan was never implemented and was only briefly supported by Roosevelt,[103] and that JCS 1067, while treating Germany as a defeated enemy state instead of a liberated nation and aiming at the dismantling of German industries, also left loopholes that allowed a military governor to later implement more lenient policies. The agency states that the purpose of JCS 1779, which replaced JCS 1067, was to increase German self-government at the regional level, limit dismantling of war industries, raise living standards, and remove dependence on subsidies.[104][105]
German historian Bernd Greiner talks of the failure of Morgenthau and the backward-looking political minority that supported him, stating that by the end of 1945 Morgenthau's staff had returned to the USA despondent, and those then in charge were not interested in "industrial disarmament".[106] However, according to Greiner, the "Morgenthau myth" (German: die Morgenthau-Legende) was perpetuated in West Germany by right-wing extremist historians echoing Nazi propaganda and railing against an "extermination plan" for Germany by Jews and the left-wing intelligentsia in America, while in Communist East Germany the Morgenthau Plan was presented as a western imperialist plot to destroy Germany.[107]
Wolfgang Benz, director of the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin, states that the plan had no significance for the later occupation and Germany policy, though Nazi propaganda on the subject had a lasting effect and is still used for propaganda purposes by extreme right-wing organizations.[62][108][109] Benz also states that Morgenthau had romantic agrarianist ideals which might mean that the intentions of his plan could have been beyond preventing conflicts.[110] German historian Rainer Gömmel criticizes the common claim by historians, including Benz, that the Morgenthau Plan was never implemented, arguing that core elements of the plan, namely the proposals for deindustrialization, were adopted in August 1945 and became part of Allied policy.[111]
A number of historians considered the possibility that Morgenthau may have been influenced by Harry Dexter White, an alleged Soviet agent based on Venona evidence, to develop the Morgenthau Plan – as the weakening of industry in Western Allied occupied territory would be beneficial to the Soviet Union's campaign for influence in postwar Germany. The hypothesis is based on White's previous pro-Soviet actions such as advocating virtually unlimited Soviet printing of AM-Marks which transferred wealth to East Germany.[112][113] Critics of the hypothesis, such as historian James C. Van Hook, state that the Morgenthau Plan rejected reparations that were part of official Soviet demands, and Harry Dexter White's other economic initiatives at Bretton Woods were so in favor of postwar capitalism that it is difficult to see him as entirely a Soviet agent.[113]
The relevant volume of the British official history of the Second World War states that the Morgenthau Plan "exercised little influence upon Allied policy after the Potsdam Conference ... where more realistic views were adopted". The history argues, though, that prior to the conference the plan "disastrously bedevilled much military government planning" and led to an ill-judged hardening of Allied plans for occupied Germany as well as disagreements between the US and British governments.[114]