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[–] TheEmpress [S] 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago  (edited ago)

"Mr. Morgenthau prefers Germans as peasants because as a class the German peasant “took the Nazi virus later and in a somewhat milder form” than the rest of the population. Actually, it was the other way around: the overwhelming majority of the industrial working class provided the most stubborn and consistent opposition to the Nazis, while most of the peasants did in fact vote for Hitler. This is demonstrated by the 1932-33 election results."

Morgenthau thought of Germans as an evil monolith. The Nazis never even got 50% of the vote. Amusing thing is, the US and UK firebombed those industrial working class communities as part of the plan to break the industrial base and local resistance.

The common view is that the Morgenthau Plan was never put into effect, but according to the book I'm reading, it was actually policy for 2 years, until July 11, 1947.

A very interesting aspect of this is that 9 months before the Morgenthau Plan was drawn up, the issue of deindustrializing Germany was raised by Stalin, and Harry Dexter White - a known Soviet espionage agent even at the time to the FBI - was a main architect behind the Morgenthau Plan. The FBI had warned FDR multiple times in writing about White, FDR laughed it off and after several of those warnings, appointed White to be executive director of the IMF, which is an international agency which was immune from FBI investigations.

According to Morgenthau's son, "Morgenthau himself had a long harbored an admiration for the Soviets. Like many liberals in the post-World War I era, he had a rather romantic view of the Soviets as liberators of the Russian people from czarist tyranny. Furthermore, many Russian Jews had supported the revolution and held top positions in the Lenin regime, although these Jews, along with Christians, had renounced their religion in favor of the new secular faith. My father had taken the lead in negotiating the resumption of US-USSR diplomatic relations."

-- The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy p 23