To: libertylover
FDR signed off on the Morgenthau Plan which resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent people and Europe almost going Communist by 1947.
23 posted on 8/24/2017, 9:38:35 AM by Vehmgericht
To: Vehmgericht
Vehmgericht: " FDR signed off on the Morgenthau Plan which resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent people and Europe almost going Communist by 1947. "
Sorry, but the Morgenthau plan was never implemented, so you'll have to blame those deaths on the real perpetrators: national & international socialists.
Most people still remember the American plan which did get carried out.
It was called the Marshall Plan and it sent, in our dollars, many billions to help feed & economic recovery for post-war Europeans.
To: BroJoeK
BroJoeK, You have been reading conventional history by plagerists like Steven Ambrose. JCS 1067, directing US policy, was essentially the Morghenthau Plan. Like any complex plan it was not 100% like the original. If you demand 100% conformity, the Marshal PLan was never implemented. The Communist inspired (Harry Dexter White) plan was almost successful in driving all of Europe into the Soviet sphere. That is what made the Marshal Plan necessary. I agree that international socialist were to blame. The FDR administration was full of them
32 posted on 8/24/2017, 2:42:07 PM by Vehmgericht ( stop)
To: BroJoeK
I forget where I first read about the Morgenthau Plan. I was appropriately appalled.
To: Vehmgericht
Vermgerricht: "You have been reading conventional history by plagerists like Steven Ambrose.
JCS 1067, directing US policy, was essentially the Morghenthau Plan"
Here is what history says about it:
- "While the Morgenthau Plan had some influence on Allied planning for the occupation of Germany, it was not adopted.
- U.S. 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] From 1947 the US policies aimed at restoring a "stable and productive Germany" and were soon followed by the Marshall Plan.[3][5]
The Morgenthau Plan was seized upon by the Nazi German government, and used as part of propaganda efforts in the final months of the war which aimed to convince Germans to fight on."
And on JCS 1067:
- "Walter M. Hudson describes JSC 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.[92] The German Federal Agency for Civic Education (BPD) asserts that the Morgenthau Plan was never implemented and was only briefly supported by Roosevelt,[93] and that JSC 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.[94][95]"
And regarding Nazi propaganda:
- "German historian Bernd Greiner (de) 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 diarmament".[96]
- 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 intelligensia in America, while in Communist East Germany the Morgenthau Plan was presented as a western imperialist plot to destroy Germany.[97] 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.[53][98][99]
German historian Rainer Gömmel criticises 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 deindustrialisation, were adopted in August 1945 and became part of Allied policy.[101]
The Norwegian economist Erik S. Reinert, states that "The Morgenthau Plan was abruptly stopped in Germany in 1947"..."
On the subject of mass starvation:
- "During the war, Germans seized food supplies from occupied countries and forced millions of foreigners to work on German farms, in addition to food shipped from farms in eastern Germany.
- When this ended in 1945, the German rationing system (which stayed in place) had much lower supplies of food.[30]:342–54
- The U.S. Army sent in large shipments of food to feed some 7.7 million prisoners of war—far more than they had expected[30]:200—as well as the general population.[31]
- For several years following the surrender, German nutritional levels were low... In early October 1945 the UK government privately acknowledged in a cabinet meeting that German civilian adult death rates had risen to 4 times the pre-war levels and death rates amongst the German children had risen by 10 times the pre-war levels.[32]:280"
Finally, on Bacque's Other Losses:
- "Maj. Ruediger Overmans of the German Office of Military History in Freiburg who wrote the final volume of the official German history of the war estimated that the total death by all causes of German prisoners in American hands could not have been greater than 56,000 approximately 1% of the over 5,000,000 German POWs in Allied hands exclusive of the Soviets."
But there are no numbers for Germans supposedly killed by the Morgenthau Plan.
Nazi propaganda tells us nine million Germans died post-war, but the historical number is about a million Germans who died while being expelled from Eastern Europe.
Total German deaths for the war, including military, were about 7 million, or 8% of the population.
For comparison: Greece lost 10%, Latvia 13%, Soviets 14%, Lithuania 15%, Poles 17%.
Indeed, you may remember, after the war there were four occupying powers -- Soviets, French, Brits & US.
Of the four, I could easily argue that Americans -- Morgenthau Plan or not -- treated Germans better than any others.
You disagree?
To: Lysandru; Vehmgericht
Lysandru: "I forget where I first read about the Morgenthau Plan.
I was appropriately appalled."
Note my post #35 above.
You should not have been appalled, for several reasons:
- Morgenthau's was similar to plans by other allies -- Soviets, French & Brits -- but unlike those other powers, Morganthau's plan was never carried out.
- Morganthau's plan was soon replaced by JCS 1067, which did incorporate some Morgenthau ideas, but gave US commanders flexibility to relieve suffering.
- All such plans were intended to prevent Germans from doing after 1945 what they had done after 1919: re-militarize, rearm and reconquer what they lost in the previous war.
- And the plans worked, of course, but it soon became obvious that Germans would serve much better as western allies against the Soviet Communist menace, and that became the reason for dropping economic restrictions on Germans after 1947.
- In the end, the post-war removal of German industrial equipment meant they needed to build an all-new industrial base, which gave Germans a huge technological advantage from the late 1950s until, well, even today.
Of course, Nazi propaganda exaggerates and blames the Morgenthau Plan for everything evil in Germany.
But none of it is true.
RESPONSE
People naturally minimize their involvement in
crimes. After the war everyone was
a member of the resistance. No one
was a collaborator during the German occupation. Likewise, progressive historians minimize or ignore crimes
committed by progressive politicians.
You claim, “Here is what history says about it:
‘While the Morgenthau Plan had some influence on Allied planning for the
occupation of Germany, it was not adopted.’” “History” is actually Wikipedia. They have banned my book for being
“unreliable.” They are
frequently “unreliable.” You
might check http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/126705 for information on Steven Ambrose’s
credibility. Many German sources
can be sited denying the MP was carried out. I don’t know if this is Stockholm Syndrome or what.
Perhaps the person with the most reliable
opinion on whether the MP was carried out was Henry Morgenthau: President
Truman signed JCS 1067 on May 10, 1945.
Morgenthau considered this "a big day for the Treasury." He also hoped "somebody doesn't
recognize it as the Morgenthau Plan." (Blum, Years of War 1941-1945 From
the Morgenthau Diaries, p. 460.)
A lie must be plausible. Ruediger Overmans’ 1% estimate of POW
fatalities is not realistic. If
these POWs were sent to health spas there fatality rate would have been higher
than 1%. Also in Ambrose’s Eisenhower and the German POWs, Professor
James F. Tent claimed, “By the spring of 1947, and thereafter to the end of the
military occupation, the number and variety of supplemental programs expanded
to the point that some observers asked with only slight irony if there were any
normal consumers – that is, those consuming 1,550 calories per day – left in
the British and American zones.”
Tent appears to be saying that the food crisis was over by 1947. Yet, the same text includes a photo of
seven German infants “picked at random” from a Catholic hospital in Berlin in
various stages of malnutrition dated October 1947.
It is unfortunate that the more accurate
historical account is used by the extreme right to justify anti-Semitism or
other nefarious causes. This
encourages people to support the false narrative. People are still repeating the lampshade myth.
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