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From economics Morgenthau plunged wholeheartedly into U.S. foreign policy —sometimes with rather unfortunate consequences. His private luncheons with the President each Monday gave him closer access to Roosevelt than either Secretary of State Cordell Hull or Secretary of War Henry Stimson enjoyed. Of the three, only Morgenthau accompanied the President to the 1944 Quebec meeting with Churchill. There, despite Churchill's appalled opposition, the Big Two initialed a memorandum based on the Morgenthau Plan, which proposed that a shrunken, occupied Germany be stripped of all heavy industry and be reduced to a permanent potato patch. His vision of a Carthaginian peace was greeted by near-universal condemnation. Hull wrote later that the publicity "furnished Nazi propaganda agencies with wonderful ammunition to spur the Germans on to fight to the end." Roosevelt quickly abandoned the heart of the plan.
Chops & Chap. After Roosevelt's death in 1945, Truman would not tolerate Morgenthau's dabbling in foreign policy, and quickly accepted his offer to resign after eleven years as Treasury Secretary. For Morgenthau that was a hard but appropriate decision. He could have served no other President as he had served Roosevelt. Their friendship went back 30 years to the time when Morgenthau, son of a wealthy New York City real estate man, decided on a farming career after dropping out of Cornell University and settled in New York's Dutchess County, near the Roosevelt estate. Morgenthau became a valued companion, grilling the lamb chops on intimate picnics and serving as an all-purpose political aide.
It was not always fun. Roosevelt leaned heavily on Morgenthau's willingness to serve as whipping boy, a position Morgenthau himself acknowledged: "He favored me with that role."
But for Henry the Morgue, it was worth it. Not only was Franklin his friend; he was the chap who had enabled a wealthy gentleman-farmer from upstate New York to take part in that extraordinary upheaval in American history that was the New Deal.