There is attached a memorandum which I am sending to the President,
relating to the problem of what to do with Germany after her defeat.
I am looking forward to discussing the German problem with you next
Wednesday.43
[Annex]
Memorandum by the Secretary of the Treasury
(Morgenthau) to President
Roosevelt
[Washington,] January 10,
1945.
During the last few months we have been giving further study to the
problem of what to do with Germany after her defeat.
We are more convinced than ever that if we really mean to deprive
Germany of the ability to make war again within a few years it is
absolutely essential that she be deprived of her chemical,
metallurgical and electrical industries. We don’t think that this
alone will guarantee peace, but that it is one of the steps we must
take now.
We base this conclusion on the following premises, which seem to us
unassailable:
- (1)
- The German people have the will to try it again.
- (2)
- Programs for democracy, re-education and kindness cannot
destroy this will within any brief time.
- (3)
- Heavy industry is the core of Germany’s warmaking
potential.
Nearly all Americans grant the first point. A few, such as Dorothy
Thompson,44 appear to disagree with the second;
but all that we know and have learned recently—our experience with
war prisoners, for
[Page 377]
instance—seems to argue against them. As to the third, America’s own
accomplishments in four years seem to us a shining lesson of what an
equally versatile people can do. Our industry was converted from the
world’s greatest peacetime producer in 1940 to the world’s greatest
producer of military weapons in 1944. The Germans are versatile.
Leave them the necessary heavy industry to build on and they can
work as fast and as effectively as we.
The more I think of this problem, and the more I hear and read
discussions of it, the clearer it seems to me that the real motive
of most of those who oppose a weak Germany is not any actual
disagreement on these three points. On the contrary, it is simply an
expression of fear of Russia and communism. It is the
twenty-year-old idea of a “bulwark against Bolshevism”—which was one
of the factors that brought this present war down on us.
Because the people who hold this view are unwilling (for reasons
which, no doubt, they regard as statesmanlike) to come out in the
open and lay the real issue on the table, all sorts of smoke screens
are thrown up to support the proposition that Germany must be
rebuilt. Examples are:
- (a)
- The fallacy that Europe needs a strong industrial
Germany.
- (b)
- The contention that recurring reparations (which would
require immediate reconstruction of the German economy) are
necessary so that Germany may be made to pay for the
destruction she has caused.
- (c)
- The naive belief that the removal or destruction of all
German war materials and the German armament industry would
in itself prevent Germany from waging another war.
- (d)
- The illogical assumption that a “soft” peace would
facilitate the growth of democracy in Germany.
- (e)
- The fallacy that making Germany a predominantly
agricultural country, with light industries but no heavy
industries, would mean starving Germans.
We can submit to you studies which in our opinion will demonstrate
that these propositions and others leading to the same conclusions
are false.
This thing needs to be dragged out into the open. I feel so deeply
about it that I speak strongly. If we don’t face it I am just as
sure as I can be that we are going to let a lot of hollow and
hypocritical propaganda lead us into recreating a strong Germany and
making a foe of Russia. I shudder for the sake of our children to
think of what will follow.
There is nothing that I can think of that can do more at this moment
to engender trust or distrust between the United States and Russia
than the position this Government takes on the German problem.
P.S.: I have given a copy of this to Ed Stettinius.
