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The Morgenthau Plan was a plan for the reconstruction of Germany
after the Second World War that advocated implementing harsh
measures that would prevent the nation from ever being rebuilt as a major power. It was named after American Treasury Secretary Henry
Morgenthau, Jr..
The plan (originally proposed in late 1944) was a proposal for the management of
defeated Germany after World War
II. Morgenthau proposed the splitting of Germany into two separate states: a northern and a southern state. The whole of
western Germany, except the south, would be made into a international zone which would have included areas on the coast of the
Baltic Sea and the financially important regions along the Rhein and Ruhr rivers.
Enormous reparations were to be collected, also through forced labor. Factories and mines were to be dismantled. Germany was
to be fully disarmed and turned into a agrarian state for the following 20 years. In short, Germany's industrial power was to be
fully destroyed in order to make any aggressive action from Germany impossible in the near future.
Morgenthau's plan included many of the measures already proposed for dealing with Germany after the war, and some argue
Morgenthau made his plan only as a basis for discussions. At a British-American conference of May 15, 1944, Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt accepted a not so drastic version of the Morgenthau plan. The American
and British foreign ministers were against the whole idea. The American Secretary of War said that the plan was a "crime against civilization".
Once the plan went public in September, 1944, much protest and disagreement arose. As of the end of September, the plan was
set aside without any official discussion by the advisory boards. However, it was not unnoticed by Hitler's propaganda machine, and probably only inspired more desperate resistance by German
forces against the Allied onslaught until the very end of the war.
External Links
- Reviews of
Dietrich The Morgenthau Plan
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