Have you heard of the Morgenthau Plan?
It was policy formulated during WWII by America’s government towards Germany for when the war ended.
There is a general sentiment that it was not-a-big-deal. Its Wikipedia entry starts off explaining that it was merely “a proposal to eliminate Germany’s ability to wage war by eliminating its arm industry, and the removal or destruction of other key industries basic to military strength.”
But that is court history. A mischaracterization to such an extent that it’s a lie. In fact, the Morgenthau Plan was sinister, dark, subversive. The idea, both in effect and intention, was to destroy Germany and punish Germans, after Germany surrendered.
This case is forcefully laid out in the book, The Morgenthau Plan, by John Dietrich, who worked in the Defense Intelligence Agency and holds a Masters in International Relations.
Simply put, Germans did not get enough food while under American occupation after Germany surrendered. This lasted for months and years. Germans became weak, ill, and died, in large numbers.
For a point of comparison, the United Nations was recommending a diet with an average of 2,650 calories a day, or a minimum of 2,000 calories.
America fixed rations at 1,550 calories per day. But 1,550 was just an official number, perhaps a goal, or more accurately described as an upper limit. Germans were actually getting closer to 1000 calories. This number would fluctuate, sometimes going significantly lower.
The situation was so bad that unfavorable comparisons were made to German concentration camps such as Dachau and Belsen.
Americans talked about turning Germany into a pastoral state. Herbert Hoover estimated that such a switch would lead to 25,000,000 dead Germans. This was almost the Khmer Rouge before the Khmer Rouge.
What is the relevance of this history to today? Well, one point that sticks out to me is the fact that this happened under Democrat control. It was the result of a plan advanced and implemented by FDR and Truman. These aren’t marginal Democrat figures either. FDR is the Democrat hero.
I study this history, the history that isn’t taught in Democrat controlled schools, and look on with amazement as Democrats hector about allegedly inhumanitarian Republican foreign policy.
The starvation of Germans wasn’t an unfortunate and inevitable result of the aftermath of war. It was the result of a considered plan to destroy Germany and make Germans suffer.
A Quaker organization, American Friends Service Committee tried to help German civilians. General Eisenhower declined the offer and stopped them.
The Red Cross sent food to Germans. General Clay refused the food.
Occupying forces were even in the habit of destroying their own surplus food to make sure Germans didn’t get it. This seems to have been as a result of orders from the American government to do so. One man reported that, “Germans noted Americans threw food away and were bitter that leftovers from army kitchens were frequently forbidden to hungry children, and sometimes even burned in front of them.”
Here’s the other point. Look at the subtitle to this book: “Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy.” The Democrat’s Morgenthau Plan didn’t advance America’s interests so much as it did Kremlin interests. It was pushed by Stalin, his moles in DC, and FDR. This was collusion between the American Establishment, Democrats, and the Kremlin, on a scale that dwarves the alleged Trump-Russia stuff to nanoscale.
The history of collusion between America and the Kremlin goes back far and deep. It has zero to do with an outsider like Trump and everything to do with Democrats and often even Establishment Republicans (see Eisenhower’s shameful role here). For details on this history see here, here, and my own short book, Russian Agents: The Clintons’ Attack Against America. The list could go on for quite some time.
The Morgenthau plan seems to have originated with, among others, FDR and Harry Dexter White. Morgenthau recorded FDR as having said the following, “We have got to be tough with Germany and I mean the German people not just the Nazis. We either have to castrate the German people or you have got to treat them in such a manner so they can’t go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past.”
FDR set and accepted this general tone where the goal of American policy was to castrate German civilians after they surrendered.
Specifics of the plan seem to have often come from White. Fun fact about White: he was a Communist and a Kremlin agent of influence. Attorney General Brownell said this: “White was a Russian spy. He smuggled secret documents to Russian agents for transmission to Moscow. Harry Dexter White was known to be a Communist spy by the very people who appointed him to the most sensitive and most important position he ever held in government service.”
Democrats want to talk about collusion with Russia? Really?
Before the Morgenthau Plan was explicitly formulated, it was Stalin himself first pushing the idea of deindustralization of Germany at the Tehran Conference in 1943.
While the Morgenthau Plan did nothing to serve American interests, and often undermined our interests, it did quite a bit for the Kremlin.
It weakened the bulwark of Europe, opening the path of conquest to Russia. It let Russia pillage Germany. News of the Morgenthau Plan also stiffened German resistance before they surrendered, which bled America and Germany dry, again opening the path for Russian conquest and giving them time to roll across Europe.
This is why I’ll often time skip reading the daily news. It’s meaningless without the historical context. Democrats as saviors of humanity? Democrats going to warn us to stop colluding with Russia? No thanks, sell it to someone else.