After a couple of days of cloudy rumors, the news broke over the weekend. The Roosevelt Cabinet was violently split, over the gravest problem now before all Allied Governments: what to do with postwar Germany?
Again there had been no real advance planning on a huge problem that had been visibly approaching for a long time. Again there had been some hasty last-minute improvisation, and the plan that was handiest and most attractive at the moment had been seized on.
The plan that had been put forward, by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, had roused the violent objections of Secretaries Cordell Hull and Henry Stimson. The President was said to be leaning toward the Morgenthau side.
The Morgenthau plan was the first reported by the Wall Street Journal's Alfred ("Mike") Flynn, and expanded by Associated Pressman John M. Hightower. Far & away the most drastic yet proposed for the future of Germany, it was just barely above the level of "sterilize all Germans." It would reduce Germany from a prewar industrial giant to a fourth-rate nation of small farms. Its points called for:
¶ Removal from Germany of all industrial machinery which any liberated country wants; obliteration of the rest of German industry.
¶ Permanent closing of all German mines—if any are left after territorial changes.
¶ Cession of the Saar and other Rhineland industrial areas to France; cession of East Prussia to Poland.
¶ Breakup of all large land holdings into small farms.
¶ Withholding of any economic aid whatsoever to Germany; no food, clothing or other relief supplies to be furnished to the German people; no reconstruction of railroads or factories within Germany to be permitted.
¶ Prolonged occupation by Russian, British and American troops, perhaps for a generation.
¶ No reparations—since Germany would have nothing to pay them with, and would be allowed no way to earn payments in the future.
This was indeed a Carthaginian peace. But Henry Morgenthau believes that Germany must be destroyed, as Carthage was. When he visited the battlefields last October, General Eisenhower showed him a booklet outlining Allied Military Government directives to soldiers for the occupation of Germany. This was strictly a military document drafted by the War Department. Henry Morgenthau, fanatical Naziphobe, was much exercised over several passages which to his mind were indications of a too lenient attitude. He lifted these passages and put them in a memorandum to the President.
All sources in Washington agreed that the President was equally exercised. The meeting with Prime Minister Churchill in Quebec was imminent, and he had no real plan for the management of occupied Germany. The Allies have mainly agreed only on which zones of Germany each will occupy (see FOREIGN NEWS).