Editorial Note
Cherwell’s two memoranda, printed below, constitute the principal source on this meeting. On September 19, in a meeting with officials of the Treasury Department in Washington, Morgenthau recounted Churchill’s violent opposition on the evening of September 13 to the “Morgenthau Plan” for the postwar treatment of Germany (see ante, p. 325) and then described the German discussion on the morning of September 14 as follows: “And then to my amazement, on presenting it the next morning through … Lord Cherwell—it was presented the next morning very much softened down. Mr. Churchill interrupted [Page 343] him and said, ‘I will take it.’ And then we tried to set it down and we couldn’t because it wasn’t strong enough.” (Morgenthau Diary, vol. 772) White, in recording a meeting between Morgenthau and Cherwell on the morning of September 15 (see post, p. 359), quoted Morgenthau as saying, with reference to the Roosevelt–Churchill meeting on September 14, that Churchill “seemed to accept the program designed to weaken German economy.… Churchill had already spoken of diverting Germany to an agricultural state as she was in the last quarter of the 19th Century.” (Treasury Files)
See Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 156–157, for a summary of a “number of conversations” which Churchill had with Roosevelt and his advisers on the German question.