자료 2

[tumbledown]

Did the Allies Starve Millions of Germans?
by James Bacque


As soon as the Second World War ended in 1945, Canada and the United States began shipping food to the hundreds of millions of people who were facing starvation as a result of the war. Unprecedented in world history, this massive program fulfilled the highest ideals for which the Western Allies had fought. Their generosity seemed to have no limit. They fed former enemies — Italy and Japan — as well as a new enemy, the Soviet Union.

Only Germany was left out.

It is well-known in the West that the Allies hanged Nazis for crimes — the murder of Jews, the brutal mass expulsions, the deadly forced-labour camps, the starvation of entire nations. What is not generally known is that these occupying Allied armies carved off 25 per cent of Germany's most fertile land and placed it under Russian and Polish control, forcibly expelling about 16 millions people into what remained. It has also been forgotten — or hidden — that the Allies forbade emigration and kept millions of prisoners in forced-labour camps. International charitable aid to Germany was banned for another year, then restricted for more than a year. When it was permitted, it came too late for millions of people.

In a plan devised by U.S. secretary of the treasury Henry C. Morgenthau Jr., the Allies "pastoralized" Germany. They slashed production of oil, tractors, steel and other products that had been essential to the war effort. They cut fertilizer production by 82 per cent. They undervalued German exports (which they controlled), depriving Germans of cash needed to buy food. And a large percentage of young male workers were kept in forced-labour camps for years. During the six months following the end of the war, Germany's industrial production fell by 75 per cent.

The loss of so much fertile land and the drop in fertilizer supplies caused agricultural production to fall by 65 per cent. Sixty million people began to starve in their huge prison.

The mass explusions from one part of Germany to another, approved at the Allied victory conference in Potsdam in July and August, 1945, were enforced "with the very maximum of brutality," wrote British writer and philantropist Victor Gollancz in his book, Our Threatened Values (1946). Canadian writer and TV producer Robert Allen, in an article titled "Letter From Berlin", in Reading magazine (February, 1946), described the scene in a Berlin railway station as refugees arrived in late 1945: "They were all exhausted and starved and miserable.... A child only half alive... A woman in the most terrible picture of despair I've seen... Even when you see it, it's impossible to believe....God, it was terrible."

In the West, the plan to dismantle German industrial capacity began at the British headquarters of General Dwight Eisenhower in August, 1944. Meeting with Mr. Morgenthau, Gen. Eisenhower prescribed a treatment for Germany that would be "good and hard," giving as his reason that "the whole German population is a synthetic paranoid."

Mr. Morgenthau took a written version of their discussion to U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill when the two met in Quebec City in September, 1944. British foreign secretary Anthony Eden, U.S. secretary of Cordell Hull and the U.S. secretary for war Henry L. Stimson all protested vigorously against the Morgenthau Plan because a pastoralized Germany could not feed itself. Mr. Hull and Mr. Stimson told Roosevelt that about 20 million Germans would die if the plan were implemented.

Most historians say the Morgenthau Plan was abandoned after the protests, but Mr. Morgenthau himself said it was implemented.

In the New York Post for Nov. 24, 1947, he wrote, "The Morgenthau Plan for Germany [...] became part of the Potsdam Agreement, a solemn declaration of policy and undertaking for action... signed by the United States of America, Great Britain and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."

I first happened on the outlines of this story while researching my 1989 book Other Losses, about the mass deaths of German prisoners of war in Allied camps. For 45 years, historians have never disputed a massive survey conducted over four years by the government of chancellor Konrad Adenauer, which stated that some 1.4 million German prisoners had died in captivity. What is still disputed by the two sides is how many died in each side's camps. Each has blamed the other for nearly all the deaths.

The fall of the Soviet empire in 1989 provided a spectacular test of the truth: If the KGB archives recorded how many Germans died in Soviet camps, the world would know how many died in the West.

In 1992, I went to the KGB archives in Moscow, where I was permitted to troll the long, gloomy aisles, free to read and photocopy anything I wanted. And there I found the reports from KGB Colonel I. Bulanov and others showing that 450,600 Germans had died in Soviet camps. Given the figure of 1.4 million deaths, this meant that close to one million had died in Western camps.

In addition, the KGB records show that the Soviets had also imprisoned hundreds of thousands of civilians, of whom many thousands died.

This was the shadow of a greater tragedy, the fate of German civilians.

The recent declassification of the Robert Murphy Papers at the Hoover Institute in Stanford, California, and the Robert Patterson manuscript papers in Washington focused the picture. Mr. Murphy had been chief U.S. diplomatic adviser in Germany, and Mr. Patterson the secretary for war after 1945.

Some of Mr. Murphy's papers show a catastrophic death rate in Germany, highlighted by a surprising comment by Mr. Murphy in discussing German demographics. He said in a State Department position paper in 1947 that the U.S. statistical projection of births, immigration and officially reported deaths showed that over the next three years the German population should be 71 million, but that "to be conservative and in view of the present high death rate in Germany, a figure of 69 million will be used." In other words, Mr. Murphy was basing high-level U.S. policy on the knowledge that the actual German death rate was approximately double the rate officially reported to Washington by the U.S. military governor.

In the National Archives in Ottawa, I found a document seized by Canadians in 1946, showing a death rate in the city of Brilon in north-central Germany almost triple the total reported by the Allies for their zones of Germany in 1945-46. The U.S. Army medical officer in Germany secretly reported that the actual death rate in the U.S. zone in May, 1946, was 21.4 per 1,000 per year, or 83 per cent higher than the military governor was reporting to Washington.

These documents in Ottawa, Moscow, Washington and Stanford, recently revealed or long neglected, show that the Allies not only destroyed most major German industry, they also reduced German food production to the point that Germans received less food for long periods during several years than the starving Dutch had received under German occupation.

"From 1945 to the middle of 1948, one saw the probable collapse, disintegration and destruction of a whole nation," These are not the words of a revisionist historian of the 1990s, but the sober judgment of a U.S. Navy medical officer on the scene. Captain Albert Behnke compared German and Dutch starvation: For months in parts of Germany, the ration set by the occupying Allies was 400 calories per day; in much of Germany it was often around 1,000, and officially for more than two years it was never more than 1,550. The Dutch always got more than 1,394.

And for his part in starving people in the Netherlands, Nazi commander Arthur Seyss-Inquart was hanged by the Allies.

A comparison of the German censuses of 1946 and 1950 show the effect of the food shortages. The 1950 census showed 5.7 million people fewer than there should have been according to the number of people recorded in the 1946 census, minus officially reported deaths, plus births and "immigrants" (people expelled from the east and returning prisoners) in the period from 1946 to 1950.

Mr. Murphy had, indeed, been conservative, partly because he underestimated the number of prisoners due to return to Germany from Russia. The total tally of unacknowledged deaths among the prisoners, refugees and non-expelled civilians comes to around nine million people between 1945 and 1950, far more than the number who died during the war itself. All of these deaths were surplus to those actually reported.

While Germans starved, the Canadian-U.S. relief program swung into action in other parts of the world. Former U.S. president Herbert Hoover, then chief food adviser to president Harry Truman, flew around the world assessing need and supply. He found big regions of food poverty, as there has always been and still are, but not insurmountable world food shortage. In fact, world food production in 1945, according to the U.S. government statistics, was 90 per cent of the average of the years from 1936 to 1938. By the end of 1946, it was virtually normal.

Mr. Hoover begged, borrowed and bought enough food from the few other surplus countries — Australia and Argentina — to feed nearly all the world's starving. He congratulated Canadians warmly for their co-operation in a CBC speech in Ottawa in 1946: "To Canada flows the gratitude of hundreds of millions of human beings who have been saved from starvation through the efforts of this great Commonwealth."

As Mr. Hoover pronounced victory over the greatest famine threat in world history, Germans were entering their worst year ever. In early 1946, reports of conditions in Germany led U.S. senators, among them Kenneth Wherry and William Langer, to protest against "this addlepated... brutal and vicious Morgenthau Plan."

Belatedly, Mr. Truman asked Mr. Hoover to intervene. Mr. Hoover spoke to all North Americans: "Millions of mothers are today watching their children wilt before their eyes." Infant mortality rates in some German cities were 20 per cent per year, catastrophically higher than the average in Germany before the war or in contemporary Europe.

Cases of tuberculosis among children in Kiel, in the British zone, increased by 70 per cent over the prewar period.

Mr. Hoover called for mercy to Germany.

"I can only appeal to your pity and your mercy...Will you not take to your table an invisible guest?"

Canadians and Americans set the table for the invisible guest.

According to prime minister Mackenzie King's chief foreign-affairs adviser, Norman Robertson, Canada was the only country that had kept its food commitments to help the starving. Only in Canada did rationing and price controls continue long after the war so that others could be fed.

This unique campaign saved 800 million lives, according to Mr. Hoover.

Some older Germans treasure the memory of the "Hoover Speise" (meal) that warmed their bodies at school in 1947. Many millions — including hundreds of thousands of Canadians born in Germany — also remember their homes in parts of Germany now under Polish or Russian rule. None dreams of reparations; all yearn for us to know their story.


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This article first appeared in the Toronto Globe & Mail, 20 September 1997.


Eisenhower's German POW Death Camps
— A US Guard's Story
By Martin Brech


In October, 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the U.S. army. Largely because of the "Battle of the Bulge," my training was cut short. My furlough was halved, and I was sent overseas immediately. Upon arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into box cars and shipped to the front. When we got there, I was suffering increasingly severe symptoms of mononucleosis, and was sent to a hospital in Belgium. Since mononucleosis was then known as the "kissing disease," I mailed a letter of thanks to my girlfriend.

By the time I left the hospital, the outfit I had trained with in Spartanburg, South Carolina was deep inside Germany, so, despite my protests, I was placed in a "repo depot" (replacement depot). I lost interest in the units to which I was assigned and don't recall all of them: non-combat units were ridiculed at that time. My separation qualification record states I was mostly with Company C, 14th Infantry Regiment, during my seventeen-month stay in Germany, but I remember being transferred to other outfits also.

In late March or early April, 1945, I was sent to guard a POW camp near Andernach along the Rhine. I had four years of high school German, so I was able to talk to the prisoners, although this was forbidden. Gradually, however, I was used as an interpreter and asked to ferret out members of the S.S. (I found none.)

In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets; many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring and their misery from exposure alone was evident.

Even more shocking was to see the prisoners throwing grass and weeds into a tin can containing a thin soup. They told me they did this to help ease their hunger pains. Quickly, they grew emaciated. Dysentery raged, and soon they were sleeping in their own excrement, too weak and crowded to reach the slit trenches. Many were begging for food, sickening and dying before our eyes. We had ample food and supplies, but did nothing to help them, including no medical assistance.

Outraged, I protested to my officers and was met with hostility or bland indifference. When pressed, they explained they were under strict orders from "higher up." No officer would dare do this to 50,000 men if he felt that it was "out of line," leaving him open to charges. Realizing my protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too said they were under strict orders to severely ration the prisoners' food and that these orders came from "higher up." But he said they had more food than they knew what to do with and would sneak me some.

When I threw this food over the barbed wire to the prisoners, I was caught and threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the "offense," and one officer angrily threatened to shoot me. I assumed this was a bluff until I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, Why?, he mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty. I saw the women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any had been hit.

This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded killers filled with moralistic hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination; another expression‎ of the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars and Stripes, played up the German concentration camps, complete with photos of emaciated bodies; this amplified our self-righteous cruelty and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians.

These prisoners, I found out, were mostly farmers and workingmen, as simple and ignorant as many of our own troops. As time went on, more of them lapsed into a zombie-like state of listlessness, while others tried to escape in a demented or suicidal fashion, running through open fields in broad daylight towards the Rhine to quench their thirst. They were mowed down. Some prisoners were as eager for cigarettes as for food, saying they took the edge off their hunger. Accordingly, enterprising G.I. "Yankee traders" were acquiring hordes of watches and rings in exchange for handfuls of cigarettes or less. When I began throwing cartons of cigarettes to the prisoners to ruin this trade, I was threatened by rank-and-file G.I.s too.

The only bright spot in this gloomy picture came one night when I was put on the "graveyard shift," from two to four A.M. Actually, there was a graveyard on the uphill side of this enclosure, not many yards away. My superiors had forgotten to give me a flashlight and I hadn't bothered to ask for one, disgusted as I was with the whole situation by that time. It was a fairly bright night and I soon became aware of a prisoner crawling under the wires towards the graveyard. We were supposed to shoot escapees on sight, so I started to get up from the ground to warn him to get back. Suddenly I noticed another prisoner crawling from the graveyard back to the enclosure. They were risking their lives to get to the graveyard for something; I had to investigate.

When I entered the gloom of this shrubby, tree-shaded cemetery, I felt completely vulnerable, but somehow curiosity kept me moving. Despite my caution, I tripped over the legs of someone in a prone position. Whipping my rifle around while stumbling and trying to regain composure of mind and body, I soon was relieved I hadn't reflexively fired. The figure sat up. Gradually, I could see the beautiful but terror-stricken face of a woman with a picnic basket nearby. German civilians were not allowed to feed, nor even come near the prisoners, so I quickly assured her I approved of what she was doing, not to be afraid, and that I would leave the graveyard to get out of the way.

I did so immediately and sat down, leaning against a tree at the edge of the cemetery to be inconspicuous and not frighten the prisoners. I imagined then, and still do now, what it would be like to meet a beautiful woman with a picnic basket, under those conditions as a prisoner. I have never forgotten her face.

Eventually, more prisoners crawled back to the enclosure. I saw they were dragging food to their comrades and could only admire their courage and devotion.

On May 8, V.E. Day, I decided to celebrate with some prisoners I was guarding who were baking bread the other prisoners occasionally received. This group had all the bread they could eat, and shared the jovial mood generated by the end of the war. We all thought we were going home soon, a pathetic hope on their part. We were in what was to become the French zone, where I soon would witness the brutality of the French soldiers when we transferred our prisoners to them for their slave labor camps.

On this day, however, we were happy.

As a gesture of friendliness, I emptied my rifle and stood it in the corner, even allowing them to play with it at their request! This thoroughly "broke the ice," and soon we were singing songs we taught each other or I had learned in high school German ("Du, du liegst mir im Herzen"). Out of gratitude, they baked me a special small loaf of sweet bread, the only possible present they had left to offer. I stuffed it in my "Eisenhower jacket" and snuck it back to my barracks, eating it when I had privacy. I have never tasted more delicious bread, nor felt a deeper sense of communion while eating it. I believe a cosmic sense of Christ (the Oneness of all Being) revealed its normally hidden presence to me on that occasion, influencing my later decision to major in philosophy and religion.

Shortly afterwards, some of our weak and sickly prisoners were marched off by French soldiers to their camp. We were riding on a truck behind this column. Temporarily, it slowed down and dropped back, perhaps because the driver was as shocked as I was. Whenever a German prisoner staggered or dropped back, he was hit on the head with a club until he died. The bodies were rolled to the side of the road to be picked up by another truck. For many, this quick death might have been preferable to slow starvation in our "killing fields."

When I finally saw the German women in a separate enclosure, I asked why we were holding them prisoner. I was told they were "camp followers," selected as breeding stock for the S.S. to create a super-race. I spoke to some and must say I never met a more spirited or attractive group of women. I certainly didn't think they deserved imprisonment.

I was used increasingly as an interpreter, and was able to prevent some particularly unfortunate arrests. One rather amusing incident involved an old farmer who was being dragged away by several M.P.s. I was told he had a "fancy Nazi medal," which they showed me. Fortunately, I had a chart identifying such medals. He'd been awarded it for having five children! Perhaps his wife was somewhat relieved to get him "off her back," but I didn't think one of our death camps was a fair punishment for his contribution to Germany. The M.P.s agreed and released him to continue his "dirty work."

Famine began to spread among the German civilians also. It was a common sight to see German women up to their elbows in our garbage cans looking for something edible — that is, if they weren't chased away.

When I interviewed mayors of small towns and villages, I was told their supply of food had been taken away by "displaced persons" (foreigners who had worked in Germany), who packed the food on trucks and drove away. When I reported this, the response was a shrug. I never saw any Red Cross at the camp or helping civilians, although their coffee and doughnut stands were available everywhere else for us. In the meantime, the Germans had to rely on the sharing of hidden stores until the next harvest.

Hunger made German women more "available," but despite this, rape was preval‎ent and often accompanied by additional violence. In particular I remember an eighteen-year old woman who had the side of her faced smashed with a rifle butt and was then raped by two G.I.s. Even the French complained that the rapes, looting and drunken destructiveness on the part of our troops was excessive. In Le Havre, we'd been given booklets warning us that the German soldiers had maintained a high standard of behavior with French civilians who were peaceful, and that we should do the same. In this we failed miserably.

"So what?" some would say. "The enemy's atrocities were worse than ours." It is true that I experienced only the end of the war, when we were already the victors. The German opportunity for atrocities had faded; ours was at hand. But two wrongs don't make a right. Rather than copying our enemy's crimes, we should aim once and for all to break the cycle of hatred and vengeance that has plagued and distorted human history. This is why I am speaking out now, forty-five years after the crime. We can never prevent individual war crimes, but we can, if enough of us speak out, influence government policy. We can reject government propaganda that depicts our enemies as subhuman and encourages the kind of outrages I witnessed. We can protest the bombing of civilian targets, which still goes on today. And we can refuse ever to condone our government's murder of unarmed and defeated prisoners of war.

I realize it is difficult for the average citizen to admit witnessing a crime of this magnitude, especially if implicated himself. Even G.I.s sympathetic to the victims were afraid to complain and get into trouble, they told me. And the danger has not ceased. Since I spoke out a few weeks ago, I have received threatening calls and had my mailbox smashed. But its been worth it. Writing about these atrocities has been a catharsis of feeling suppressed too long, a liberation, and perhaps will remind other witnesses that "the truth will make us free, have no fear." We may even learn a supreme lesson from all this: only love can conquer all.


The Morgenthau Plan

David Irving's Introduction to the Morgenthau Plan

[In 1986 David Irving published in the German language a file of Allied documents on the origins and history of the Morgenthau Plan. This was his introduction to the documentation].
[THE SMALL PRINT: This is a copyright work. The manuscript is reproduced as part of the Focal Point Publications Website. While it can be downloaded for personal use, the manuscript may not be marketed or commercially traded. ©1986 David Irving.]

THIS VOLUME reproduces in full the 22-page Morgenthau Plan for the first time. [Not yet reproduced on this site. This is just the editor's Introduction].

It also prints a selection of key British and American documents relating to the plan, although the story is still incomplete: many parts of the British foreign office files relating to it are still closed to public inspection, an exception to the general thirty-year rule.

The Morgenthau Plan, more formally known as the Treasury Plan for the Treatment of Germany, was devised by Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White and Secretary Henry R. Morgenthau Jr. in the summer of 1944. Morgenthau had just visited the battlefields of Normandy and spoken with General Dwight D Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, then arrived in Britain for talks with Mr Winston Churchill, the British prime minister and his advisers.

While important elements of the Plan, including the subtle re-education of the Germans by their own refugees and the dismantling of German heavy

industry to aid British exports, were indeed put into effect, in the directive 1067 which the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff finally issued to Eisenhower, the main parts of the Morgenthau Plan, including orders to liquidate entire classes of suspected Nazi war criminals upon simple identification, and to leave the German nation to 'stew in its own juice,' were not formally implemented.

The Morgenthau Plan would have led to the death by starvation and pestilence of ten million Germans in the first two years after the war, in addition to the one million who had been killed in the saturation bombing and the three million killed in the enforced expulsion from Germany's eastern territories.

The Plan, enthusiastically adopted by German-born Lord Cherwell (Professor Friedrich A. Lindemann, Churchill's close friend, economic, strategic and scientific adviser), was pushed through at the Quebec summit conference between Roosevelt and Churchill on September 15, 1944.

It was part of the price that Churchill and Cherwell were willing to pay for a broad package of American concessions over which Morgenthau had political control including further Lend-lease aid (Phase II) to the British Empire after the war; moreover Mr Churchill needed his support on military issues including joint British strategic control of the atomic bomb (the Hyde Park agreement which was signed on September 18, 1944) and Britain's participation in the war in the Pacific. We can only speculate about Harry Dexter White's purpose in canvassing a plan which would have ruined the largest country in Central Europe, the last bastion that would protect Western Europe from the Red Army in post-war years.

The memorandum endorsing the plan's objectives was initialled (Okayed) by F.D.R. and W.C. on September 15, 1944.

The Plan caused immediate controversy. Hearing that it had been initialled at Quebec, Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War (Kriegsminister), made bitter comments about the Semites in his unpublished private diary. Anthony Eden, British foreign secretary (1940-1945).and later prime minister, dismissed Morgenthau's and Lord Cherwell's lobbying, in a hitherto unpublished document, as a piece of gratuitous impertinence: 'These ex-Germans,' wrote Eden, 'seem to wish to wash away their ancestry in a bath of hate. A.E. Nov 19.'

When details of the Morgenthau Plan leaked to the press in America, angry British politicians demanded to know if Churchill had indeed signed such a document.

In 1953, after the F.B.I. levelled Soviet spy charges against the plan's co-author, Herry Dexter White, Sir Winston Churchill sent to Lord Cherwell a letter behind which was all the anxiety and guilt of a great man who realizes he has been duped.



* * * * *


Much still remains to be revealed about the Morgenthau Plan. Dr Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister, made enough capital from it to inflict tens of thousands of extra casualties on British and American troops in the battles that followed its publication, and in the autumn 1944 U.S. presidential election campaign Roosevelt's opponent Thomas Dewey lost no time in pointing this out. 'The publishing of this Plan,' claimed Dewey, 'was as good as ten fresh German divisions.'

Coming under increasing fire, Morgenthau wrote around his fellow ministers, appealing for support. Telephoning Henry Stimson on November 4, 1944, to 'urge him to do something,' he found the Kriegsminister too busy cooking the official records to cleanse Roosevelt of any implication in quite another scandal. 'He sounded more tired than ever. Said he was tired out from working the last two weeks on Pearl Harbor report to keep out anything that might hurt the Pres.'

Clever forgeries, prettying-up of official files after the event: this is why historians who rely only on printed volumes are likely to be misled. For this reason, it is important that my full dossier on the infamous Morgenthau Plan should be published in facsimile, to enable future generations of Germans to distinguish between the fantasies of Nazi propagan- dists and the total truth of 1944-1945. David Irving, London, June 1985





THE PEOPLE INVOLVED


CHERWELL,(1886-1957)faddish, teetotal personal adviser to Churchill from 1940; Paymaster General 1943-45, 1951-53. Had a knack of putting complicated matters in terms intelligible to Winston. When Cherwell became Paymaster General on December 31, 1942 Oliver Harvey aptly summed him up: 'He is a somewhat sinister figure who under the guise of scientific adviser puts up a lot of reactionary stuff.' Henry Stimson, asked if he knew the Prof, acidly replied: 'I'm not sure whether that means the Professor or the Prophet. We in the War Department know him only as an old fool who loudly proclaimed that we could never cross the Channel and also that when the robots [V-weapons] came they could never do any damage!'

In Admiral Leahy's personal file on 'White, Harry D.' is a document entitled, 'Publicity in regard to Harry D. White, one time Assistant Secretary of the Treasury,' November 1953. According to this the Attorney General had announced that on February 20, 1946 the F.B.I. gave to White House officials including Leahy a report of White's association with Soviet agents.

Leahy noted, 'I have no recollection of having seen or heard of such a report at any time.' His only contact with White, in connection with Britain's request for Lend Lease, had been at a meeting on November 18, 1944.



THE BITTER ATMOSPHERE


In June and July 1944, Roosevelt and other leading Americans had begun dropping remarks about their plans for Germany and the Germans. On June 7, entertaining the Polish prime minister Mikolajczyk at the White House, Roosevelt had related with round eyes remarks made by Stalin about his plans to 'liquidate 50,000 German officers.' In fact when Churchill tried to persuade Stalin to adopt such a plan, to his annoyance Stalin insisted on fair and proper trials in every case.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower had similar views. He told British ambassador Lord Halifax on July 10, 1944, that he felt the enemy leaders should be 'shot while trying to escape.' Imprisonment was not enough for the 3,500 officers of the German general staff. Lieutenant-Commander Harry C. Butcher, Eisenhower's naval aide, noted in a secret diary: 'There was agreement that extermination could be left to nature if the Russians had a free hand.' Why just the Russians?, inquired Eisenhowerthey could temporarily assign zones in Germany to the smaller nations with old scores to settle.

Stimson felt that it would be wise to allow the British to occupy Northern Germany, because that was where much liquidation would be effected. 'I felt,' recorded the Republican Kriegsminister obliquely in his diary, 'that repercussions would be sure to arise which would mar the page of our history if we, whether rightly or wrongly, seemed to be responsible.' If the Americans occupied southern Germany, it would keep them away from Russia during the occupation period: 'Let her do the dirty work,' he suggested to the President, 'but don't father it.'

After a discussion with General George C Marshall on the punishment of Hitler, the Gestapo and the S.S., Stimson wrote in his diary, 'I found around me, particularly Morgenthau, a very bitter atmosphere of personal resentment against the entire German people without regard to individual guilt. of the Nazis.'




MORGENTHAU VISITS EUROPE


In July 1944 General George C. Marshall had informed Eisenhower that Henry R. Morgenthau Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, and a party of experts were planning a trip to investigate currency problems in France. Eisenhower replied that there was nothing to be learned in the little strip of land which his armies then controlled'which is divided about equally between fighting fronts and a solid line of depots, with two main lateral roads completely filled with double columns of motor transport.'

Privately he added that these VIP trips were a pain in the neck. There just was not the space for visitors: Bradley's only accommodation consisted of one trailer and a couple of Jeeps, while Montgomery 'usually simply refuses to see unwelcome visitors.' He could hardly have made himself plainer. But Morgenthau had Roosevelt's ear, so Eisenhower had no choice but to humor him.

On the transatlantic flight Morgenthau's chief assistant Harry Dexter White slipped to him a copy of the report by the Washington interdepartmental Foreign Economic Policy Committee on postwar policy toward Germany. It shocked Morgenthau. As drafted, it would leave Germany more powerful in five or ten years than she had been before the war. Colonel Bernard Bernstein, financial adviser (G-5) at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF), took Eisenhower's special train to meet Morgenthau's party in Scotland.

Morgenthau's son was also there when Morgenthau stepped off the C-54 at Prestwick, Scotland, on August 6 -- Eisenhower's chief of staff Bedell Smith had secured a comfortable army appointment for him. (There was to be 'no mention whatsoever, at any time, about his son nor photographs including his son,' Morgenthau's aide had stipulated.

On the long train journey down to London, Bernstein expressed concern to White and Morgenthau about SHAEF's proposed handbook for American officers in the future military government of Germany: it was too soft, he said; little was being done to make Germany suffer. On the contrary, SHAEF's experts seemed to be preparing for Germany's smooth return to the family of nations. Army directives were being prepared to occupy, 'take over and control' Civil Affairs in Germany. Evidently, said Bernstein, the Allies were to assume responsibility for Germany's welfare, and 'even [sic] ensure that the Germans received medical care and treatment.'



MORGENTHAU MEETS EISENHOWER


They could not have picked a worse day for their visitHitler's counterattack against Patton and Bradley began during the night. They lunched on August 7 at Ike's Portsmouth command post. According to Morgenthau's version, General Eisenhower also strongly opposed any soft line on Germany: 'The whole German population is a synthetic paranoid,' he told the Treasury Secretary. 'And there is no reason for treating a paranoid gently. The best cure is to let the Germans stew in their own juice.'


Ike's female assistant Kay Summersby eavesdropped and wrote in her diary afterwards: 'Secretary Morgenthau and party for lunch. Quite concerned about post war policies in Germany and particularly anxious that we do not establish rates of exchange that might favour Germany.' (Morgenthau was proposing to inflict a punitive rate of exchange on Germany, which would bankrupt her for all time, rendering her unable to rise again and make another war.)

This prompted the Supreme Commander to enlarge on his own views about the enemy, which he himself later quoted as follows: 'The German people must not be allowed to escape a personal sense of guilt.. Germany's war-making power should be eliminated.. Certain groups should be specifically punished.. The German General Staff should be utterly eliminated. All records destroyed and individuals scattered and rendered powerless to operate as body.'

It was, claimed Morgenthau, Eisenhower who instilled in him the idea of a harsh treatment of the Germans. Eisenhower would later deny this, or plead loss of memory, but reporting this to his own staff on August 12, Morgenthau said: 'General Eisenhower had stated, and given the Secretary permission to repeat to others, that in his view we must take a tough line with Germany as we must see to it that Germany was never again in a position to unleash war upon the world.' He added, 'The Prime Minister had indicated his general concurrence with General Eisenhower's viewpoint.' And on August 19 he would tell President Roosevelt that Eisenhower 'is perfectly prepared to be tough with the Germans when he first goes in.' Morgenthau said that he had told the general, 'All the plans in G-5 are contrary to that view.'

THE MEETING WITH CHURCHILL
On August 10, Churchill's diary showed a lunch appointment with Henry Morgenthau.

Churchill had longer-term worries than the future of Germany. He had at last woken up to the long term cost of the war to the Empire. Britain's indebtedness would soon be $3,000m; her exports were less than one-third of their 1938 level; to maintain full employment she must increase exports fivefold. So she must start rebuilding her export trade now which Americans might not understand. But Britain must release labor to rebuild her export industries. So Lend-Lease must continue even after Hitler's defeat, though a reduction of about twenty-seven percent would appear reasonable to the British. (, discussion FDR/WSC, September 14, in Morgenthau diary and copy in General Hap H. Arnold diary; and. W. D. Taylor, memo on meeting of Sir John Anderson and Sir David Waley with Morgenthau, Harry Dexter White, August 11.)


Over lunch on August 10, they sized each other up. Churchill knew that Morgenthau was no friend of Britain. Morgenthau flattered Roosevelt a few days later that it was interesting 'how popular he [Roosevelt] was with the soldiers and how unpopular Churchill was.' He described one instance to Roosevelt: 'I told him [Roosevelt],' he wrote in his diary, 'about the difficulty of finding someone to take me through the shelters [in the East End of London] because both Churchill and Sir Robert Morris [?Home Secretary Mr Herbert Morrison] had been jeered when they went through them recently, and that finally they decided on Mrs Churchill and Lady Mountbatten.' Morgenthau amused Roosevelt's Cabinet a week later with a description of how the prime minister 'kept referring to his age during conversations.'

At the meeting between Churchill and Morgenthau the small-talk was as frigid as only an interview between a penniless debtor and his banker can be. 'Churchill,' described Morgenthau to Roosevelt, '.. started the conversation by saying that England was broke.. Churchill's attitude was that he was broke but not depressed about England's future.. He is going to tell Parliament about their financial condition at the right time after the Armistice, and that when he does that he is through.'

Churchill said that he had heard that Morgenthau was unfriendly towards Britain.

Morgenthau denied this, was brutally frank. Churchill must put his cards on the table. He must appoint a committee to consider financial questions, and then tell Parliament the facts.

When told of this, Churchill quailed at the idea. Roosevelt retorted, 'Oh, he is taking those tactics now. More recently his attitude was that he wanted to see England through the peace.'

Still, the revelation that Churchill had bankrupted Britain startled him. 'I had no idea,' he told Morgenthau. 'This is very interesting,' he sneered. 'I had no idea that England was broke. I will go over there and make a couple of talks and take over the British Empire.'

Morgenthau gave a similar version of their conversation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 'The Prime Minister stated,' he told Anderson on August 11, 'that he did not wish to bring this matter into the open while our combined war effort in Europe was at its height.' Churchill was prepared to speak to Parliament about the straitened financial outlook, but not just yet. Morgenthau's view was that, under the circumstances, Churchill ought to take it up directly with the President.

Reporting to Roosevelt a few days later Morgenthau said, 'In England you can see the thing much clearer. There are two kinds of people there: One like Eden who believes we must cooperate with Russia, and that we must trust Russia for the peace of the world,'at which point FDR said he belonged to the same school as Eden' -- and there is the other school which is illustrated by the remark of Mr Churchill who said, "What are we going to have between the white snows of Russia and the white cliffs of Dover?"'

Churchill was beginning to hint at the need for a strong postwar Germany, and Morgenthau did not like the sound of that at all. Roosevelt replied that he hoped to see Churchill soon, even though the Prime Minister was 'not his own master in some important matters, being overridden frequently by the Foreign Office.' (Memo Robert A. Lovett to Stimson, Aug 18, 1944: Stimson papers.)



One other topic was discussed at No.10 Downing Street. Morgenthau shortly told Zionist leaders that the Prime Minister had assured him that, as was well known, his sympathy was still for Zionism and Zionist aspirations: that 'it was simply a matter of timing as to when he would give the Jews their State in Palestine.'*





MORGENTHAU'S OTHER MEETINGS IN ENGLAND


Turning his back on the unpleasant truth of Britain's bankruptcy, Mr Churchill had literally flowntaking off late on August 10 to tour British headquarters in the Mediterranean.

Remaining in England, on August 12 and 13 Morgenthau tried to analyse Churchill's political attitude with U.S. Ambassador John G. Winant and Anthony Eden. In England, he again said, he saw several groups: a pro-Soviet group around Eden, favoring harsh treatment of Germany, including dismemberment. A second, dangerous group favoured Germany's economic restoration as a bulwark against the Soviet Union; and a third group, mid-way, preferring a strong Europe as a whole, aligned with Britain. Morgenthau inquired where Churchill lay, and Edenhesitatinglyadmitted that Churchill was probably in that third group. Winant agreed: Churchill now had 'certain reservations' against the Soviet Union, but he could still be persuaded that it was desirable to continue the grisly Three Power agreement reached at Teheran on the future of Germany. Anyway, Winant was confident that Churchill would go along with Roosevelt in any program. Morgenthau expressed to Eden his personal concern that there were Allied officials aiming to restore Germany's economy as quickly as possible. Eden expressed surprise as it ran counter to the Teheran agreements. Stalin, he claimed, was determined to smash Germanyto dismember herso that she could never again disrupt Europe.

* U.S. Dept of State record of visit by Dr Nahum Goldmann, September 13, 1944: US embassy files, London, 710 Arab-Jewish relations.)

'Eden,' noted Harry Dexter White, 'said Roosevelt had agreed with Stalin, but Churchill was at first reluctant to accede. He (Churchill) was willing to make Austria independent and to take East Prussia away, but was doubtful about going beyond that.' Eden added that after talking it over with him Churchill decided to go along with Roosevelt and Stalin on this. Eden felt it important to pursue a tough policy on Germany, 'as nearly in accord with Russian policy toward Germany as possible,' if only to reassure Stalin of Britain's good intentions. It was an interesting statement, and Morgenthau asked him to repeat it. Eden obliged. 'He [Morgenthau] said [to Eden] that in his conversation with Churchill the question of the program to be followed upon occupation of Germany had come up and that he had gathered from the Prime Minister's comments that he was in agreement with the view expressed by Morgenthau, to the effect that during the early months Germany's economy ought to be let pretty much alone and permitted to seek its own level.'

This was the origin of what Morgenthau later called leaving the Germans to 'stew in their own juice.'

Morgenthau now talked with Anderson alone. Until now the Chancellor had lifted the veil on Britain's bankrupt future only slightly in Parliament, he admitted, in opening the talks with the U.S. Treasury officials on August 11: so his coming budget message about Britain's bleak post-war future was going to shock Parliament and people. 'Financially,' summarized one Treasury official, 'England has thrown everything into the war effort regardless of consequences. It is well known throughout the country that England has gone into the war on the basis of "unlimited liability"; the consequences of such financial action, however, have not been weighed nor understood by the country. He stated that England would emerge from the war with high international and national prestige, but in a deplorable financial position. The period of the war would have seen England's transition from a position of the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation.'

When Morgenthau visited him on August 15 Eden read out to him selected extracts of the Teheran conference between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. namely those extracts dealing with Germany. Roosevelt said that he wanted to discuss the partition of GermanyGermany could be divided into three or fifteen parts, he said. Roosevelt suggested they instruct the European Advisory Commission to report on the problem. Stalin agreed, and since they both evidently felt strongly on it, Churchill agreed.



However, as Ambassador John G Winant explained, the European Advisory Commission (EAC) had not taken up the question of partition, because the Russian representative had always stalled. Morgenthau pointed out that the Teheran directive to the EAC was evidently not known to the State Department. 'Eden said,' according to Harry Dexter White's memo, 'there are some groups in both the United States and in England who feared that Communism would grow in Germany if a tough policy were pursued by the Allies. This group believed that it was important to have a strong Germany as protection against possible aggression by Russia. He said it was a question whether there was a greater danger from a strong Germany or from a strong Russia. For his part, he believed there was greater danger from a strong Germany.'

MORGENTHAU RETURNS TO WASHINGTON


Morgenthau had been shocked by the confusion he found in London as to the treatment of postwar Germany. He made no secret of this upon his return to Washington. When he visited Cordell Hull in Washington on August 18, the Secretary of State had to admit he had never been told what was in the minutes of Teheran. On August 19, Roosevelt confidently assured Morgenthau, 'Give me thirty minutes with Churchill and I can correct this.' He added, 'We have got to be tough with Germany and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. You either have to castrate the German people or you have got to treat them in such a manner so they can't go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past.'

Morgenthau now outlined in response what later became his infamous Plan'In his opinion serious consideration should be given to the desirability and feasability of reducing Germany to an agrarian economy wherein Germany would be a land of small farms, without large-scale industrial enterprises.' . Morgenthau complained, 'Well, Mr President, nobody is considering the question along those lines in Europe. In England they want to build up Germany so that she can pay reparations.'

On August 21, the Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson dictated in his own diary (now in Yale University archives) a note that he had talked with Roosevelt's special adviser Harry L. Hopkins on the telephone: 'He wants me to talk with Morgenthau on the subject of Germany.' At noon on August 23, Stimson went to the White House to see the president: 'It is the first time I have seen him since June. I succeeded in getting through to him my views of the importance of having a decision on what we are going to do to Germany. I came back to the Department and Secretary Morgenthau came to lunch with me in my room. I had [John] McCloy in too. Morgenthau told me of how he had learned in London that the division of Germany had been agreed upon at Teheran between the three chiefs. Although the discovery of this thing has been a most tremendous surprise to all of us, I am not sure that the three chiefs regard it as a fait accompli and in this talk with Morgenthau it developed that the so-called decision was of a more informal character than I had understood from McCloy's first report to me of Morgenthau's news a day or two ago. In the afternoon I settled down and tried to dictate my ideas in regard to the postwar settlement with Germany.'

In this document, 'Brief for Conference with the President on August 25,' Stimson listed 'a number of urgent matters of American policy' including the zones of occupation, the partition of Germany, and in particular the 'policy vs. liquidation of Hitler and his gang". His wording was very explicit.

'Present instructions seem inadequate beyond imprison-ment. Our officers must have the protection of definite instructions if shooting required. If shooting required it must be immediate; not postwar.' He also asked the question, 'How far do U.S. officers go towards preventing lynching in advance of Law and Order?'

Meanwhile Morgenthau got at Roosevelt first. Lunching at the White House on August 23, he sketched out details of his plan for punishing and emasculating postwar Germany regardless of the effect which this running sore would have on the rest of Europe. He visited Roosevelt again early on August 25 and handed him a memorandum on the German problem.

Later that day, Stimson and Morgenthau both lunched with the president. The Kriegsminister took up the question of the British and American zones of Germany and urged Roosevelt to allow the British to occupy Northern Germany. 'I further urged the point,' he recorded in his diary, 'that by taking south-western Germany we were in a more congenial part of Germany and further away from the dirty work that the Russians might be doing with the Prussians in Eastern Germany. I was inclined to think that I had made an impression on him, but it was impossible to say. I either then or in my former meeting pressed on him the importance of not partitioning Germany other than the allotment of East Prussia to Russia or Poland, and Alsace Lorraine to France and a possible allotment to Silesia to Poland, namely trimming the outer edges of Germany. Other than those allotments I feared that a division of Germany and a policy which would prevent her from being industrialized would starve her excess population of 30 million people, giving again my description of how she had grown during the period between 1870 and 1914 by virtue of her industralization..'



ROOSEVELT APPOINTS A CABINET COMMITTEE ON GERMANY


Stimson, worried that Allied troops would shortly enter Germany without policy directives, suggested that Roosevelt appoint a Cabinet committee. The president accepted the point, and then they went together into Cabinet. Navy secretary Forrestal wrote a diary on this date.

So did the Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard.

Both were struck by Roosevelt's insistance that the Germans in future live off soup-kitchens as a punishment. Henry Stimson's diary is also explicit: 'At the very beginning of Cabinet he brought up this last point and said that he would appoint Secretaries Hull, Morgenthau and myself as the members of that committee..' Later Stimson joined Morgenthau at the airport. 'I had the opportunity of a satisfactory talk with him on matters on which we were inclined to disagree, namely the use of over-punitive measures on Germany principally economic. I have been trying to guard against that.'

In a subsequent 'Memorandum of Conversation with the President,' August 25, Stimson felt that he had made his point that the penalties should be against individuals and 'not by destruction of the economic structure of Germany which might have serious results in the future.' 'As to partition, the Secretary [Stimson] argued for a lopping off of sections rather than a general partition and thought the President was inclined to agree that Germany should be left as a self supporting state. The President showed some interest in radical treatment of the Gestapo.'

For the last days in August Stimson remained on his farm, maintaining scrambler telephone contact with McCloy in Washington. 'In particular,' wrote Stimson in his diary, 'I was working up and pressing for the point I had initiated, namely that we should intern the entire Gestapo and perhaps the S.S. leaders and then vigorously investigate and try them as the main instruments of Hitler's system of terrorism in Europe. By so doing I thought we would begin at the right end, namely the Hitler machine, and punish the people who were directly responsible for that, carrying the line of investigation and punishment as far as possible. I found around me, particularly Morgenthau, a very bitter atmosphere of personal resentment against the entire German people without regard to individual guilt and I am very much afraid that it will result in our taking mass vengeance on the part of our people in the shape of clumsy economic action.'



HARRY DEXTER WHITE DRAFTS THE PLAN


Harry Dexter White completed the first draft of the Plan on September 1. Almost immediately the British embassy learned what Morgenthau was up to.

On September 2, Morgenthau retired to his country home for the Labor Day weekend, an American public holiday. White sent the completed draft out to him there. President Roosevelt and his wife motored over from Hyde Park to take tea with Morgenthau under the trees of his estate at nearby Fishkill and Morgenthau showed the draft to him.

Roosevelt's thinking on Germany was rather simplistic: no aircraft, uniforms or marching. Morgenthau had said: 'That's very interesting, Mr President, but I don't think it goes nearly far enough.' He wanted the Ruhr dismantled and its machinery given to the needy neighbors; 'I realize this would put 18 or 20 million people out of work,' he conceded airily. But it ought to guarantee the prosperity of Britain and Belgium for twenty years. Able bodied Germans could be transported to Central Africa as slave labor on 'some big TVA project.' TVA was the Tennessee Valley Authority hydroelectric project which Roosevelt's new Deal had used to generate employment. He went off at a tangent: he was thinking of re-education of the Germans. 'You will have to create entirely new textbooks,' he said.

That Monday, September 4, Stimson flew back to Washington and had a conference with General Marshall that afternoon: 'Discussed with him my troubles in regard to the treatment of Germany and the method in which we should investigate and punish the Gestapo.. It was very interesting to find that army officers have a better respect for the law in those matters than civilians who talk about them and are anxious to go ahead and chop everybody's head off without trial of hearing.'

Invited to dine with Morgenthau that evening, Stimson found there McCloy and Harry White of the Treasury. 'We were all aware of the feeling that a sharp issue is sure to arise over the question of the treatment of Germany. Morgenthau is, not unnaturally, very bitter, and as he is not thoroughly trained in history or even economics it became very apparent that he would plunge out for a treatment of Germany which I feel sure would be unwise. But we talked the matter over with temperateness and goodwill during the evening and that was as much as could be hoped from the situation. We did succeed in settling with perfect agreement the question of the currency which should be issued in Germany namely that we should issue Allied military marks at a 10 cent value of the mark. Morgenthau had first struck for only 5 cents, wishing to use a low rate of the mark to punish Germany.'

The Cabinet Committee on Germany met for the first time on September 5 in Hull's office. Hull was cautious. 'We must not lay plans for partition of Germany,' he pointed out, 'until British and Russian views are known.' Stimson found himself in a minority. 'This proposal,' he said of Morgenthau's plan, 'will cause enormous evils. The Germans will be permanent paupers, and the hatreds and tensions that will develop will obscure the guilt of the Nazis, and poison the springs of future peace.' 'My plan,' retorted Morgenthau, unabashed, 'will stop the Germans from every trying to extend their domination by force again. Don't worry. The rest of Europe can survive without them!'

Stimson was unconvinced. 'This plan will breed war, not prevent it!'

'It's very singular,' he wrote to Marshall. 'I'm the man in charge of the Department which does the killing in this way, and yet I am the only one who seems to have any mercy for the other side.' Hull's ideas were no less extreme than Morgenthau's.

Stimson returned to his office and dictated this note for his diary:

'As soon as I got into the meeting it became very evident that Morgenthau had been rooting around behind the scenes and had greased the way for his own views by conference with the president and others. We did get through the question of the currency alright on the lines which we had decided upon last evening. Then Hull brought up a draft of agenda.. and as soon as we got into a discussion of these, I, to my tremendous surprise, found that Hull was as bitter as Morgenthau against the Germans and was ready to jump all the principles that he had been laboring for in regard to trade for the past twelve years. He and Morgenthau wished to wreck completely the immense Ruhr-Saar area of Germany into a second rate agricultural land regardless of all that that area meant.. Hopkins went with them so far as to wish to prevent the manufacture of steel.. which would pretty well sabotage everything else. I found myself a minority of one and I labored vigorously but entirely ineffectively against my colleagues. In all the four years that I have been here I have not had such a difficult and unpleasant meeting although of course there were no personalities. We all knew eachother too well for that. But we were irreconcilably divided. At the end it was decided that Hull would send in his memorandum to the President while we should each of us send a memorandum of views in respect to it.'


Hull had submitted a paper with the title, 'Suggested Recommendations on Treatment of Germany from the Cabinet Committee for the President.' In his reply dated September 5, Stimson utterly rejected it. 'I cannot treat as realistic the suggestion that such an area in the present economic condition of the world can be turned into a non-productive 'ghost territory' when it has become the center of one of the most industrialized continents in the world, populated by peoples of energy, vigor and progressiveness.' As for destroying the coalmines, etc, he added: 'I cannot conceive of turning such a gift of nature into a dustheap.'



LISTS OF MEN TO LIQUIDATE


The British ambassador Lord Halifax notified the Foreign Office on September 6, 1944, about all this, and asked the poignant question: 'Whom do we shoot or hang? The feeling is that we should not have great state trials, but proceed quickly and with despatch. The English idea, once preferred but then withdrawn, was to give the Army lists to liquidate on mere identification. What has happened to this idea? Besides individuals, what categories should be shot?'.

On the same day, September 6, Roosevelt called the Committee to a sudden conference at the White House.

Stimson wrote,

'After what had happened yester- day I.. expected to be steam-rollered by the whole bunch. But the meeting went off better than I had expected. The President.. then took up the question of German economy, looking at me and reverting to his proposition made at Cabinet a week or two ago that Germany could live happily and peacefully on soup from soup kitchens if she couldn't make money for herself. He said that our ancestors had lived successfully and happily in the absence of many luxuries that we would now deem necessities.. As he addressed his remarks to me, I took the chance and tried to drive in the fact that the one point that had been at issue in our yesterday's preparatory meeting of the Committee had been the proposition that the Ruhr and the Saar a plot of non-industrial agricultural land.. I said I was utterly opposed to the destruction of such a great gift of nature and that it should be used for the reconsturction of the world which sorely needed it now.. Morgenthau had submitted through Hull a memorandum giving his program towards Germany and it had reiterated what he had put forth verbally, namely a complete obliteration of the industrial powers of the Ruhr.. I pointed this out and said that this was what I was opposed to. The President apparently took my side on this but he mentioned the fact that Great Britain was going to be in sore straits after the war and he thought that the products of the Ruhr might be used to furnish raw material for British steel industry. I said that I had no objection certainly to assisting Britain every way that we could, but that this was very different from obliterating the Ruhr as had been proposed.. I wound up by using the analogy of Charles Lamb's dissertation on roast pig. I begged the President to remember that this was a most complicated economic question and all that I was urging upon him was that he should not burn down his house of the world for the purpose of getting a meal of roast pig. He apparently caught the point.'


On September 7, Stimson showed to General Marshall the memorandum he had written about Germany. '[Marshall] thoroughly approved the position I have taken of temperate treatment economically of the Saar-Ruhr area as being the only possible thing for us to do. I also showed them the memorandum which I received from Morgenthau demanding that the leaders of the Nazi party be shot without trial and on the basis of the general world appreciation of their guilt, and it met with the reception that I expectedabsolute rejection of the notion that we should not give these men a fair trial.. But at 11:45 I heard from McCloy that Morgenthau still sticks to his guns and has been to the president again and has demanded a re-hearing.'

Stimson began looking for allies too. 'Dinner with Mabel [Stimson] and [Felix] Frankfurter. Frankfurter was helpful as I knew he would be. Although a Jew like Morgenthau, he approached this subject with perfect detachment and great helpfulness. I went over the whole matter with him from the beginning with him, reading him Morgenthau's views on the subject of the Ruhr and also on the subject of the trial of the Nazis, at both of which he snorted with astonishment and disdain. He fully backed up my views and those of my fellows in the Army,.. these men the substance of a fair trial and that they cannot be railroaded to their death without trial.'

Now, by September 9, the full Morgenthau Plan was ready. At a meeting that day with FDR, Henry Stimson laid into it. 'Instead of having a two hour conference with the President,' wrote Stimson, 'as Secretary Morgenthau had asked for, our conference boiled down to about forty-five minutes and that was taken up mainly by the President's own discursive questions and remarks.. Morgenthau appeared with a new diatribe on the subject of the Nazis and an enlargement of his previous papers as to how to deal with them. Hull took no leading part as chairman but sat silent with very little to say. The President addressed most of his remarks to me and about the only things that I can remember were (1) that he asserted his predilection for feeding the Germans from soup kitchens instead of anything heavier, and (2) he wanted to be protected from the expected revolution in France. Those are the two obsessions that he has had on his mind on this whole subject as far as I could see.'

Morgenthau's record shows that Roosevelt said he wanted Germany partitioned into three parts. He flipped through the pages of Morgenthau's memorandum, and kept prodding Morgenthau: 'Where is the ban on uniforms and marching?' Morgenthau reassured him it was all there.

At one point FDR exclaimed, 'Furthermore I believe in an agricultural Germany,' he said. This conference behind him, Roosevelt, as Stimson later put it, 'pranced up to the meeting at Quebec,' leaving Hull and Stimson behind. On September 12 he cabled to Morgenthau, 'Please be in Quebec by Thursday September 14th noon.' In a looseleaf folder Morgenthau took his Plan up to Quebec with him.



'BIASSED BY SEMITIC GRIEVANCES'


Stimson was astonished to hear that Roosevelt had asked Morgenthau up to Quebec. 'While he has the papers we have written on the subject with him,' Stimson recorded on September 13, 'he has not invited any further discussion on the matter with us. Instead apparently today he has invited Morgenthau up, or Morgenthau has got himself invited. I cannot believe that he will follow Morgenthau's views. If he does, it will certainly be a disaster.' And on September 14, the Kriegsminister wrote, 'It is an outrageous thing. Here the President appoints a Committee with Hull as its Chairman for the purpose of advising him in regard to these questions in order that it may be done with full deliberation and, when he goes off to Quebec, he takes the man who really represents the minority and is so biassed by his Semitic grievances that he is really a very dangerous adviser to the President at this time. Hull.. is left behind.'



THE CONFERENCE AT QUEBEC, SEPTEMBER 1944


At Quebec both Churchill and Roosevelt were ill men. Churchill was kept going only with M&B sulphona- mide-type drugs. Roosevelt's great brain had already deteriorated so far that at one banquet in August he had proposed a toast to the same the Icelandic prime minister twice in twenty minutes.

Both were putty in the hands of evil men. Roosevelt camouflaged his withering brain with carefree bonhomie. On September 13, he would turn to his loathsome dog Falla and command, pointing at Morgenthau, 'say hello to your Uncle Henry.'

The two leaders reached Quebec early on September 11. In fact Roosevelt's train had pulled into the railroad station fifteen minutes before Churchill's train (10:15 AM), by design rather than accident, as he confessed to the Canadian prime minister with a candour that left Mackenzie King gasping in his diary, 'It seemed to me that the President was rather assuming that he was in his own country.' Roosevelt was much thinner in his body and face, had lost around thirty pounds in weight, his eyes were drawn, his haggard face had sunless pallor, and to his shocked host Mackenzie King he looked distinctly older and worn. The electioneering abuse on him as 'a senile old man' had etched deeply into him.* Churchill told Mackenzie King that it was wonderful what Canada was doing in the war, and he particularly praised the latest financial aid given by Canada to Britain, and that he recognized that Canada had had to cover up in a way in order to give what she had. (Mackenzie Kiary, Sept 11, 1944).

As he told Mackenzie King at the end of his stay, Britain would never forget how Canada had helped: 'Really,' he said, 'we are the one debtor nation that will come out of the war.' Now Britain had to expand her export trade and build up her industries. 'I understand that it has to be kept secret for the present,' Churchill said, referring to Canada's financial aid to Britain. They lunched in the Citadel and talked about the war's personalities, about de Gaulle and Chiang-Kai-shek; Churchill flattered F.D.R. that he was head of the strongest military power on earth, both in the air, at sea and on the land.

Churchill looked better, and was getting to grips with some Scotch as well as a couple of brandies. It was hard for even the Canadian hosts to find out about Churchill's and Roosevelt's intentions. Mackenzie King himself was tired and his eyes and body were aching with old age. After luncheon, Mrs Roosevelt wheeled the president over in his wheelchair to see the models Churchill had brought from England of the D-day invasion equipmenta gift for the Hyde Park library. As Roosevelt leaned forward to see them there were beads of perspiration on his forehead. Then he was wheeled away for an afternoon rest. Sir John Dill took Mackenzie King aside and told him he believed that Churchill 'enjoyed' this war. 'It is clear,' agreed Mackenzie King, 'that it is the very breath of life to him.'

On the following day, September 13, it began raining around noon. Morgenthau arrived at Quebec. The problem looming over the conference was of financing the war effort. Canada was now being asked to commit her forces for the South Pacific, but Mackenzie King saw immense political difficulties in further Imperial wars Canadians would never agree that their taxes should be spent fighting to protect India or recover Burma and Singapore. Roosevelt sneered to Morgenthau that he 'knew now' why the British wanted to join in the war in the Pacific. 'All they want is Singapore back.'

* Diaries of Mackenzie King, H.H. Arnold; Leahy, etc.


That evening, September 13, FDR and Churchill stayed at the dinner table at the Citadel. At 8 pm on September 13, Churchill dined with FDR, Morgenthau, Cherwell, and other members of their staff. Mackenzie King left at 9 pm and he found them still sitting there, talking at 11:30 pm. 'Churchill was immediately opposite the President,' Mackenzie King described in his diary, 'and both of them seemed to be speaking to the numbers assembled which included Morgenthau, Lord Cherwell, Lord Leathers, Lord Moran and two or three others. Morgenthau arrived this afternoon. Anthony Eden is to arrive in the morning.'

Morgenthau's papers show that they talked about Germany. Churchill irritably said, 'What are my Cabinet members doing discussing plans for Germany without first discussing them with me?' FDR explained that this was why Morgenthau had come up from Washington. Tomorrow Morgenthau would talk privately with Cherwell about it. Churchill challenged FDR: 'Why don't we discuss Germany now?' so Roosevelt asked Morgenthau to outline his plan. Remarkably, Churchill's first reaction was hostile. When the Treasury Secretary embarked on the details of dismantling the Ruhr, Churchill was shocked and interrupted him. He was flatly opposedall that was necessary was to eliminate German arms production. Doing what Morgenthau proposed, Churchill waspishly told Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary, who was a Jew, would 'unnatural, un-Christian and unnecessary.' He doubted it would help even if all Germany's former steel markets went to Britain. 'I regard the Morgenthau Plan,' he said with heavy sarcasm, 'with as much enthusiasm as I would handcuffing myself to a dead German.' He was truculent, even offensive, rasping at one point to Roosevelt in particular, 'Is this what you asked me to come all the way over here to discuss?' And at another, to the American representatives in general: 'If you do not do something for Britain then the British simply will have to destroy gold and do business largely within the Empire.' The Prof glowered at his prime minister, but Admiral Leahy, the president's chief of staff, sided with Churchill. F.D.R. kept quiet. That was his way. He had done his footwork behind the scenes. Once, the conversation switched to India and stayed there for an hour. Churchill was angry at FDR's refusal to understand the administration problems faced by the British in a subcontinent where the birth and death rates were high, and the people were careless of poverty and ignorant of disease. 'I'll give the United States half of India to admi- nister,' Churchill flung at F.D.R., 'and we will take the other half. And then we'll see who does better.'

Surprised at Churchill's hostility to the Plan, Lord Cherwell suspected that WSC had not wholly grasped what Morgenthau was driving at. In a private tête-à-tête the next morning (September 14) he apologized profusely for Winston's behaviour over dinner, promised Morgenthau that he would try to dress up the Plan in a way more attractive to the Prime Minister.



Churchill got the message, wrote later: 'We had much to ask from Mr Morgenthau.' When FDR and Churchill discussed policy toward Germany later that day Churchill now declared himself in favour of the Plan, as outlined to him by Lord Cherwell. Cherwell was instructed to draft a memorandum for signature and give it to Churchill.

At one point Mackenzie King asked how long the war was going to last. Churchill said he feared that it might drag on -- the Germans might hold out in the Alps or elsewhere. 'Hitler and his crowd know that their lives are at stake,' he said, 'so they will fight to the bitter end. This may mean that at some time we have to take the position that the war is really won, and that what is still going on anew is just mopping up groups here and there.' On the question of what to do with Germany, Churchill said that there would not be any attempt to control the country immediately by Allied forces. The Germans would have to police their own people. 'They are a race that loves that sort of thing,' he said. 'To be given any little authority, once they are beaten, and to wield it over others.' He envisaged something like centralized stations (FLAKTURME?) on towers around the different cities. If there was any difficulty from the Germans they could be threatened with a local bombardment. If the difficulty kept up they could be given a very effective bombardment from the skies. 'He did not contemplate continued active fighting,' recorded Mackenzie King after this discussion.

Churchill took a nap at the Citadel, dreaming deeply, and arrived late for dinner. 'I have been thousands of miles away,' he apologized. He sat opposite Roosevelt and Morgenthau. A few hours earlier Anthony Eden, summoned by Churchill from London, had arrived at Quebec. He sat to Roosevelt's left, worn out by the eighteen-hour flight in a Liberator bomber. Churchill was in good spirit, the Canadian premier was pleased to see how well he was looking, and surmised it was because of the scarcity of alcohol.

Out of earshot of Churchill and Eden, at 11:00 a.m. on September 15, Morgenthau invited Lord Cherwell and Harry Dexter White to his room, read the Prof's draft and disliked it. It represented 'two steps backwards,' he said. Since the last discussion, he said, Churchill had seemed to accept the Plan, and had himself spoken promisingly of turning Germany into an agricultural state as she had been in the last quarter of the 19th century. Morgenthau urged them to scrap this draft, and return to the two leaders for fresh instructions.

When Churchill met Roosevelt, in the presence of Henry Morgenthau and Harry Dexter White, an hour later at noon September 15, Britain's financial problems were clearly uppermost in his own mind, rather than the future of Germany. Roosevelt read through the draft Lend-Lease Agreement for Phase II, and approved it with a minor change.

But each time he seemed about to sign it, he kept interrupting with a fresh anecdote -- he was in one of his talky moods, as Morgenthau described them. Churchill was unable to contain himself. 'What do you want me to do,' he exclaimed nervously. 'Get on my hind legs and beg like Falla?'.

FDR enjoyed every moment of Churchill's -- Britain's -- humiliating plight. But eventually he signed: OK, FDR. Churchill added: WC, 15.9. (A copy of the document is also in the Forrestal papers; and cf Leahy diary, October 19, 1944.)

It was a load off Churchill's mind. He became quite emotional and Morgenthau saw tears in the old man's eyes. After the signing he thanked Roosevelt effusively, and said that it was something they were doing for both countries.



CHURCHILL, ROOSEVELT INITIAL THE MORGENTHAU PLAN


Still at this noon conference on September 15, 1944, and feeling in generous mood, Churchill turned to Lord Cherwell. 'Where are the minutes on this matter of the Ruhr?' he asked the Prof. The Prof and Morgenthau had agreed to say they did not have them -- because the American, on reading Cherwell's draft, had felt the text was too milk-and-water. ('I thought we could get Churchill to go much further,' he noted afterwards.)

Churchill was annoyed at this lapse. Roosevelt humorously observed that the document was not ready because Morgenthau had 'interspersed the previous discussion with too many dirty stories.'

'Well,' Churchill interrupted impatiently, 'I'll restate it.' He did so forcefully. Then he invited the Prof and Morgenthau to leave the room and dictate the memorandum anew.

When the two men walked back in, the new draft still did not suit Churchill's new temperament. 'No,' he said, 'that won't do at all.' Morgenthau's heart sank, but then he heard Churchill add, 'It's not drastic enough. Let me show you what I want.' He asked for his stenographer, then himself dictatedrather well, as Morgenthau thought.

'At a conference between the President and the Prime Minister upon the best measures to prevent renewed rearmament by Germany, it was felt that an essential feature was the future disposition of the Ruhr and the Saar.'

Among those listening was Eden. Eden was going white about the gills. He was hearing this for the first time.

'The ease,' continued Churchill, 'with which the metallurgical, chemical and electric industries..'



'In Germany,' interposed Roosevelt, because he had in mind the whole of Germany, and not just the Ruhr and Saar industries.

'The ease with which the metallurgical, chemical and electric industries in Germany can be converted from peace to war has already been impressed upon us by bitter experience. It must also be remembered that the Germans have devastated a large portion of the industries of Russia and of other neighbouring Allies, and it is only in accordance with justice that these injured countries should be entitled to remove the machinery they require in order to repair the losses they have suffered. The industries referred to in the Ruhr and in the Saar would therefore be necessarily put out of action and closed down. It was felt that the two districts should be put under somebody under the World Organization which would supervise the dismantling of these industries and make sure that they were not started up again by some subterfuge.

'This programme for eliminating the war-making industries in the Ruhr and in the Saar is looking forward to converting Germany into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in its character.

'The Prime Minister and the President were in agreement upon this programme.'

Eden was horrified. He exclaimed to Churchill, 'You can't do this. After all, you and I publicly have said quite the opposite.'

A row broke out between the two men. It got quite nasty. But Churchill kept arguing that this was the only way to steal Germany's export market. 'How do you know what it is or where it is,' snapped Eden, and Churchill testily retorted: 'Well, we will get it wherever it is.' He took a pen and initialled the document. Roosevelt had already done the same. 'O.K. FDR' and 'WC, 15.9.'



'SEMITISM GONE WILD'


Copies went to London immediately for the War Cabinet. There is no doubt about it. Typed on long green telegram sheets, it is to be found among Eden's private papers at Birmingham University, and Lord Cherwell's papers at Oxford university.

Copies were circulated to the ministries in Washington as well.* On September 15 Roosevelt sent it to Hull, prefaced by the explanation: 'After many long conversations with the Prime Minister and Lord Cherwell, the

general matter of post-war plans regarding industries has been worked out as per the following memoranda. This seems eminently satisfactory and I think you will approve the general idea of not rehabilitating the Ruhr, Saar, etc.'

Knowing that Eden would return to London before him, Churchill turned to his foreign secretary: 'Now I hope, Anthony,' he said, you're not going to do anything about this with the War Cabinet if you see a chance to present it. After all, the future of my people is at stake and when I have to choose between my people and the German people, I am going to choose my people.'

For the rest of the day Eden sulked and brooded. Morgenthau was delighted, particularly by the unexpected bonus that Churchill had himself dictated the infamous memorandum. He could hardly later disavow it. Afterwards Morgenthau lunched with Lord Cherwell. That afternoon -- it was still September 15, 1944 -- Roosevelt looked at the Combined Chiefs of Staff map of postwar Germany and found it 'terrible,' as he told Morgenthau. He took three colored pencils and sketched where he wanted the British and American armies to go in Germany. He waited until the PM was in a good humor and everything else settled, then showed the map to him. Churchill approved it.

Admiral Leahy was also pleased with it, explaining to Morgenthau that since the British were going to occupy the Ruhr and the Saar, they would have the odium of carrying the Morgenthau plan out. Henry Stimson, isolated on his estate by a hurricane that weekend, now learned of Morgenthau's triumph at Quebec. He wrote in his diary, 'On Saturday or Sunday [September 16-17] I learned from McCloy over the long distance telephone that the President has sent a decision flatly against us in regard to the treatment of Germany. Apparently he has gone over completely to the Morgenthau proposition and has gotten Churchill and Lord Cherwell with them. But the situation is a serious one and the cloud of it has hung over me pretty heavily over the weekend. It is a terrible thing to think that the total power of the United States and the United Kingdom in such a critical matter as this is in the hands of two men, both of whom are similar in their impulsiveness and their lack of systematic study.I have yet to meet a man who is not horrified with the "Carthaginian" attitude of the Treasury. It is Semitism gone wild for vengeance and, if it is ultimately carried out (I can't believe that it will be) it as sure as fate will lay the seeds for another war in the next generation. And yet these two men in a brief conference at Quebec with nobody to advise them except "yes-men," with no Cabinet officer with the President except Morgenthau, have taken this step and given directions for it to be carried out.'

* Copies of this are in, inter alia, (Dwight D Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower files, Box 152, Morgenthau Plan.; ibid., Box 76, Morgenthau; Henry Morgenthau's book, 'Germany is Our Problem,' New York, 1945; Cherwell papers; Foreign office, files, London; Forrestal diary, October 20 ("Morgenthau.. handed me a copy"); Morgenthau papers, diary, pp.1454-5, September 15, 1944.


THE END OF THE CONFERENCE


At noon on the sixteenth, calling at the Citadel for a final joint meeting with Roosevelt and Churchill, airforce commander General Arnold thought that the President looked 'very badly.' 'He did not have the pep, power of concentration, could not make his usual wisecracks, seemed to be thinking of something else. Closed his eyes to rest more than usual.' (Arnold diary).

Roosevelt left that evening for his Hyde Park estate, joined there by Churchill early on the eighteenth. On September 18, Churchill and Roosevelt signed their secret agreement on the atomic bomb: 'It might perhaps, after mature consideration, be used against the Japanese;' and there was to be 'full collaboration between the United States and the British Government' in its postwar development and commerical exploitation. (Since neither Churchill's nor Roosevelt's successors knew of this secret agreement, it would remain unhonoured.)

After dinner on September 19 Churchill left for Staten Island by train and boarded the Queen Mary off New York the next morning for the return journey to England. Lord Cherwell, his eminence grise, remained in Washington. Roosevelt was still under Morgenthau's influence. On September 20, John McCloy told Stimson, who wrote it in his diary, that he had heard from Halifax and Sir Alec Cadogan that the president was 'very firm for shooting the Nazi leaders without trial.' After Quebec, the Washington campaign against the Morgenthau Plan stepped up. McCloy showed it to Forrestal, the Navy Secretary.

Both Stimson and Hull carried protests to the President against it. On September 20, Morgenthau proudly related to Secretaries Stimson and Hull how he had obtained the initials of Roosevelt and Churchill on his Declaration. Stimson and Hull both gained the impression that the president had not read what he had so easily initialled. On September 22 there was a discussion between Roosevelt, Bush, Leahy and Lord Cherwell. The last-named wrote a handwritten note. After discussion of the atomic bomb project ("Tube Alloys") the conversation passed to more general topics.


'P[resident] said that the British Empire, in its struggle against fascism, had got into terrible economic trouble. It was a U.S. interest to help Britain over that trouble and see that she became once more completely solvent and able to pay her way. In fact to put it bluntly the U.S. could not afford to see the British Empire go bankrupt. For this reason it was essential to increase Great Britain's exports. It had been decided at Q[uebec]though he did not know when this would be announced or whether it would simply be allowed to leak out later that in the interests of world security German war-making potential in the Ruhr and the Saar would be extinguished and those regions put under international control. In fact Germany should revert definitely to a more agricultural habit. This would leave a gap in the export markets which the U.K. might well fill to general advantage. It might be that some high minded people would disapprove, but he found it hard to be high minded vis-à-vis the Germans when he thought of all they had done.'
Almost overnight, Roosevelt changed his mind. What changed it for him, was probably the leakage of the Morgenthau Plan to the newspapers, published in great detail on September 23 by the Wall Street Journal. Roosevelt covered his tracks as best he could. Pulling out all the stops, Morgenthau sent a copy of the full-length Plan round to Lord Cherwell at his Washington hotel on September 26, asking him to show it to Churchill.

But the opposition was stiffening. To Stimson's surprise, on the 27th Roosevelt himself telephoned on the scrambler telephone. 'He.. was evidently under the influence of the impact of criticism which has followed his decision to follow Morgenthau's advice. The papers have taken it up violently and almost unanimously against Morgenthau and the President himself, and the impact has been such that he had already reached a conclusion that he had made a false step and was trying to work out of it. He told me that he didn't really intend to try to make Germany a purely agricultural country but said that his underlying motive was the very confidential one that England was broke; that something must be done to give her more business to pull out after the war, and he evidently hoped that by something like the Morgenthau Plan Britain might inherit Germany's Ruhr business.'

The five biggest American engineering unions issued a declaration on September 29 dismissing the Plan as economically unsound and warning that it 'contained the seeds of a new war.' Politically, the Morgenthau Plan was a disaster. Roosevelt was coming up to a new presidential election in a few weeks' time. On October 3, lunching with Stimson, he remarked: 'You know, Morgenthau pulled a boner. Don't let's be apart on that. I have no intention of turning Germany into an agrarian state.' Stimson thereupon produced a copy of the Declaration and read the appropriate lines from it. Roosevelt listened in horror. He had no idea how he could have agreed to such proposals. At a meeting the same day with Lord Cherwell, Harry Hopkins said to the Prof: 'Be careful with Cordell Hull. He is very annoyed at Henry Morgenthau's intervention in the plans for the treatment of Germany. He has no doubt at all that you supported Morgenthau because you were anxious to get the Lend-Lease negotiations through.'

In London, Eden angrily rebuked Churchill for having initialled the agreement. On September 29 a Labour Member of Parliament, Richard Stokes, challenged Eden to tell the truth about the Morgenthau Plan.

Lord Keynes, British economist, in Washington on Churchill's orders to ask for $6,757m to be allocated to Lend-Lease for Britain in 1945, wrote to London with the inside story of the leak to the newspapers. He thought the Plan might still be implemented. But Roosevelt had already turned his back on the document. Writing to the State Department on October 20, he made clear that he approved the Department's economic plans. Morgenthau continued to campaign for his Plan's acceptance. On October 20th., he lunched with Marineminister James Forrestal and revealed the plan to him.



THE U.S. POLICY DIRECTIVE ISSUED


Regardless of the Quebec document initialling the Morgenthau Plan, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had issued to General Eisenhower a wide interim directive on policy towards Germany, on September 17, 1944. The Supreme Commander was to ensure that the Germans realized they would never again be allowed to threaten world peace. 'Your occupation and administration,' the document read, 'will be just but firm and distant. You will strongly discourage fraternization between Allied troops and the German officials and population.' But then more directives were issued as appendices. A Political Directive issued on October 14 stressed the elimination of the German officer corps. 'General Staff officers not taken into custody as prisoners are to be arrested and held, pending receipt of further instructions as to their disposal.'

That sounded ominous. The appended Economic Directive circulated in October 1944 was very similar to Morgenthau's plan. 'You shall assume such control of existing German industrial, agricultural, utility, communication and transportation facilities, supplies and services as are necessary for the following purposes..' and then continued, 'except for the purposes specified above, you will take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany or designed to maintain or strengthen the German economy except to the extent necessary to accomplish the purposes set out above, the responsibility for such economic problems as price controls, rationing, unemployment, production, reconstruction, distribution, consumption, housing or transportation, will remain with the German people and the German authorities.'

The proposed Relief Directive was even more stark: 'You will invite the German authorities to maintain or re-establish such health services and facilities as may be available to them under the circumstances. In the event that disease and epidemics should threaten the safety of allied troops or endanger or impede military occupation, you shall take such steps as you deem necessary to protect the health of Allied troops and to eradicate the source of the problem.'

As the barrage began against him and his Plan, Morgenthau was bitterly critical of the British policy draft, and sent to England a 'Memorandum on the British Draft of Policy Directive on Germany,' dated November 1, 1944. He asked his crony Lord Cherwell to send it to Churchill, who did so, complaining that the British War Office had evidently prepared their very elaborate draft without any guiding principle, whereas the American draft appeared to have been prepared since, and in the light of, the discussions at Quebec. 'Broadly speaking our draft tells the troops to encourage and help the Germans to restore their industry unless this interferes with the war. The U.S. draft says that they should only be helped to restore the industry if this assists us in prosecuting the war.' Cherwell sent this summary to Churchill on November 5.

Churchill approved, sent a minute to Anthony Eden on November 6: 'I do not remember ever having seen the War Office draft and certainly Mr Morgenthau's criticisms of it seem very cogent. This matter requires immediate reconsideration first by you and then by the War Cabinet. WSC 6.11.1944.' Across one corner of Churchill's letter.

Anthony Eden wrote to his permanent secretary, Sir Alexander Cadogan, on November 7, 1944: 'I don't think I ever read any draft. At the same time I cannot see that this is any business of Mr Morgenthau's, still less Lord Cherwell's & should like to say so. Would you please go into the matter for me? A.E. Nov 7.'



A BATH OF HATE


Rejoicing at the chance, Eden's staff drafted a lengthy, rough-tongued reply to go jointly from the Foreign Office (Eden) and the War office (Sir James Grigg) and Mr Churchill. Eden approved the draft, writing in a handwritten memo: 'I have never read the documents and I hope that they deserve this stalwart defence. Anyhow it is well stated & Morgenthau's interference is a piece of gratuitous impertinence. These ex-Germans seem to wish to wash away their ancestry in a bath of hate. A.E. Nov 19.'

The British government retained its logical approach to the German occupation problem. On November 20 the War Cabinet circulated the E.I.P.S. re- draft of the economic and relief directives. Characteristic of the British attitude was the paragraph ordering Eisenhower, after closing down the munitions factories, to 'ensure that the other utilities are restored to full working order and that coalmines and are maintained in working condition and in full operation so far as transport will permit.'

Mr Roosevelt's metamorphosis was now complete. When the British Minister of State had lunch with President Roosevelt on December 22, 1944, Roosevelt told him he was quite sure 'that it was most unwise to attempt to come now to any long term decisions about Germany,' since it would be folly to commit themselves to plans which might be found to be inappropriate when they arrived. F.K. Roberts, head of the F.O.'s Central Europe department, minuted on his copy, 'This surely marks a considerable retreat on the part of the President from the Morgenthau Plan of forcible dismemberment.'



By January 1945 there still seemed little doubt in SHAEF's mind that entire classes of German captives were to be shot out of hand. SHAEF's views as formulated in a report of its Psychological Warfare Division were hotly discussed in Washington. There was little doubt why the new plan proposed to differentiate between the German people and the members of their government, High Command, and Nazi Party on the other. Marineminister Forrestal objected. 'The American people,' he wrote in his diary on Janury 16, 1945, 'would not support mass murder of Germans, their enslavement, or the industrial devastation of the country.'

Churchill continued to argue for liquidation of the enemy leaders.

At Yalta, Admiral Leahy noted in his diary on February 9, that 'The Prime Minister.. expressed an opinion that the 'Great War Criminals' should be executed without formal individual trials.' Again Stalin blocked this proposal, and Truman would later strongly adopt the same position, that a trial was vital.

'The British,' summarized Stimson in his diary one weekend (April 27-29) 'have to my utmost astonishment popped out for what they call political action which is merely a euphemistic name for lynchlaw, and they propose to execute these men without a trial.. Fortunately the Russians and the French are on our side.'

Morgenthau continued to peddle his plan around Washington. He visited Roosevelt on the day before the president died, and again badgered him to adopt the plan. On the day the war ended, May 8, 1945, Morgenthau would resume his vicious campaign for the starvation of central Europe, this time with Harry S. Truman. He telephoned Henry Stimson, lunching at home, and complained that the Coordinating Committee was not carrying out his 'scorched earth' policy as hard as he wanted, particularly as related to the destruction of all oil and gasoline and the plants for making them in Germany, and Directive 1067 that ordained this. Except for the purpose of facilitating the occupation, JCS.1067 defined, 'you [Eisenhower] will take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany nor designed to maintain or strengthen the German economy.'

The U.S. army was protesting this senseless order. But Morgenthau wanted his evil will performed. Stimson privately dictated next day, 'I foresee hideous results from his influence in the near future.' In a memorandum to Mr. Truman dated May 16, Stimson outlined the probable consequences of such pestilence and famine in central Europe'political revolution and Communistic infiltration.' And he added a warning against the emotional plans to punish every German by starvation: 'The eighty million Germans and Austrians in central Europe today necessarily swing the balance of that continent.'

©1986 David Irving

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German POW's Diary Reveals
Post War US Camp Horrors
1-30-2

Note - The following diary extract has been provided by the nephew of the author under the conditions we honor his request for anonymity.

A transcript of my Uncle's words...from my Mother's diary:

"Suddenly an American Jeep moved towards us and several American Soldiers surrounded us. There was no officer in charge, and the first thing the 'Amis' did - they liberated us, I mean, from our few valuables, mainly rings and watches........ We were now prisoners of war- no doubt about it!

The first night we were herded into a barn, where we met about 100 men who shared the same fate. To make my story short, we were finally transported to Fuerstenfeldbruck near Munich. Here we, who were gathered around Hermann, interrupted him and gasped in dismay.

Fuerstenfeldbruck had become known to us as one of the most cruel POW camps in the American zone.

Then my brother continued:

Again we were searched and had to surrender everything, even our field utensils, except a spoon. Here, in freezing temperature, 20,000 of us were squeezed together on the naked ground, without blanket or cover, exposed day and night to the winter weather.

For six days we received neither food nor water! We used our spoons to catch drops of rain.

We were surrounded by heavy tanks. During the night bright searchlights blinded us, so that sleep was impossible. We napped from time to time, standing up and leaning against each other. It was keeping us warmer that sitting on the frozen ground.

Many of us were near collapse. One of our comrades went mad, he jumped around wildly, wailing and whimpering. he was shot at once. His body was lying on the ground, and we were not allowed to come near him. He was not he only one. Each suspicious movement caused the guards to shoot into the crowd, and a few were always hit.

German civilians, mainly women of the surrounding villages, tried to approach the camp to bring food and water for us prisoners. they were chased away.

Our German officers could finally succeed to submit an official protest, particularly because of the deprivation of water. As a response, a fire hose was thrown into the midst of the densely crowded prisoners and then turned on. Because of the high water pressure the hose moved violently to and fro. Prisoners tumbled, fell, got up and ran again to catch a bit of water. In that confusion the water went to waste, and the ground under us turned into slippery mud. All the while the 'Amis' watched that spectacle, finding it very funny and most entertaining. They laughed at our predicament as hard as they could. Then suddenly, they turned the water off again.

We had not expected that the Americans would behave in such a manner. We could hardly believe it. War brutalizes human beings.

One day later we were organized into groups of 400 men .... We were to receive two cans of food for each man. This is how it was to be done: The prisoners had to run through he slippery mud, and each one had to grab his two cans quickly, at the moment he passed the guards. One of my comrades slipped and could not run fast enough, He was shot at once ....

On May 10th , several truckloads of us were transported the the garrison of Ulm by the Danube..... As each man jumped into the truck, a guard kicked him in the backbone with his rifle butt.

We arrived in the city of Heilbronn by the Neckar, In the end we counted 240,000 men, who lived on the naked ground and without cover.

Spring and summer were mild this year, but we were starving. At 6;00 am we received coffee, at noon about a pint of soup and 100 grams of bread a day........

The 'Amis' gave us newspapers in German language, describing the terrors of the concentration camps. We did not believe any of it. We figured the Americans only wanted to demoralize us further.

The fields on which we lived belonged to the farmers of the area...soon nothing of the clover and other sprouting greens were left, and the trees were barren. We had eaten each blade of grass.....

In some camps there were Hungarian POW's. 15,000 of them. Mutiny against their officers broke out twice amongst them. After the second mutiny the Americans decided to use German prisoners to govern the Hungarians. Since the Hungarians were used as workers they were well fed. There was more food than they could eat. But when the Germans asked the Americans for permission to bring the Hungarians' leftovers into the camps of the starving Germans, it was denied. The Americans rather destroyed surplus food, than giving it to the Germans.

Sometimes it happened that groups of our own men were gathered and transported away. We presumed they were discharged to go home, and naturally, we wished to be among them. Much later we heard they were sent to labor camps! My mother's cousin, feared that he would be drafted into the Hitler Youth SS, he volunteered to the marines, in 1945 his unit was in Denmark. On April 20th they were captured by the Americans. his experience in the POW camp was identical that of my brother's. They lived in open fields, did not receive and food and water the first six days, and starved nearly to death. German wives and mothers who wanted to throw loaves of bread over the fence, were chased off. The prisoners, just to have something to chew, scraped the bark from young trees. my cousins job was to report each morning how many had died during the night. "and these were not just a few!" he adds to his report he wrote me.

It became known, that the conditions in the POW camps in the American Zone were identical everywhere. We could therefore safely conclude, that it was by intent and by orders from higher ups to starve the German POW's and we blamed General Eisenhower for it. He, who was of German descent could not discern the evildoers during the Nazi time from our decent people. We held that neglect of knowledge and understanding severely against him.

I wish to quote the inscription on the grave stones of those of my German compatriots who have already passed away:

We had to pass through fire and through water. But now you have loosened our bonds.



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Vae Victis - Blow to the loser
After the transport over the Atlantic, many prisoners where locked in "cages". It were extremely bad conditions there. In the book "Other losses" written by James Bacque he claimed, that Eisenhower was primarily responsible for the catastrophe in the cages. Eisenhower let the German soldiers starve despite sufficient supplies, just due to his feelings of personal revenge. General Eisenhower was in his own words on a "crusade in Europe". The Canadian Bacque estimates, that about 1 million soldiers died in US custody. The anthology by Bishop and Ambrose tries to refute the thesis of James Bacque. They doubt that there where 1 million casualties. How many men exactly died in the cages, fact is that the SHAEF had with 5 million prisoners a considerable problem at the end of the war. An objective report, of the 11 to 12 million German prisoners of war in 20 custody states, is a publication of the "scientific commission for the documentation of the destiny of the German prisoners of the second World War". With up to 16 employees and important scientists, that commission became 400.000 statements of men returned from captivity, 50.000 reports as well and own interviews, published in 22 volumes at more than 10.000 printed pages. After ten years work, when the study had been finished, the (socialist) Westgerman chancellor Herbert Frahm, better known under his pseudonym "Willy Brand", ordered that this report had to be closed and prohibited publishing. He wanted to avoid a public discussion in Germany or even worst in the foreign countries. In his opinion people could get the impression, that a crosscheck would be opened about the injustice of the Allies against the injustice of the Nazis. He was scared that this could endanger the foreign policy turned toward reconciliation. However, it cannot be that the wrong of one site is discreet and the wrong of the other site get accused again and again. In this air picture of the "Rheinwiesenlager" represents every dot a German soldier sitting on the bare field for month. They graved holes to be protected of the wind at least. Some drowned in their foxhole when it rained strongly because they were too weak to creep out, died by their war wounds, by diarrhea, starved..... A horrible catastrophe. The viable prisoners where obliged to forced labor in France and England for many years. To this the Americans submitted to the French powers approx. 800.000 men. The need of the prisoners was particularly great in France. This doesn't have to be explained by revenge, hate or prejudices but we must consider, that large portions of France were destroyed and the Frenchmen had to suffer under a lack of food also. On 8-21-1945 the ICRC wrote a memorandum, that the life of 200.000 German POW's in French custody where immediately endangered, 2000 would hardly recover, 2000 could take no food and had to be fed artificially and 600.000 men had only inadequate accommodations what dangers their life in the approaching winter. Like on a slave market, farmers chose their workers. Thigh, arms and teeth were examined but the soldiers had not to be naked during that procedure like in Russia. A speedy dismissal was offered to soldiers who voluntarily reported for mine clearing commands in view to their highly dangerous job. But, the explanation was even given in writing, the soldiers who risked their life day for day were sent to the coal mines later. That made the prisoners so brittle that some recruited to the Foreign Legion either and died for France on battle-fields in Alger or Indochina, mutilated their self or tried an escape like 171.029 POW did.

Bradley Smith Holocaust Revisionism by CODOH, PO Box 439016, San Diego, CA 92134 The Revisionist

Crimes and Mercies:
A Hidden Holocaust--Revealed


A Review of James Bacque's "Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation 1944-1950"
by Eric Blair



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Canadian historian James Bacque's new book, "Crimes and Mercies" [Little, Brown], is a sequel to his 1989 work "Other Losses".

While the latter focused on the fate of millions of German POWs at the end of the Second World War, more than a million of whom the Allies deliberately left to die of a synergistic combination of disease, exposure, and starvation, his current book focuses largely on the grim, post-war fate of 60 million German civilians.

Published this September, "Crimes and Mercies" is over 300 pages in length. These include over 30 maps, photos, and illustrations; a foreword by historian and legal scholar, Alfred de Zayas, and an introduction by the author; eight chapters of text, as well as an index, bibliography, notes, and appendices.

But it is probably on page 131 that we find the epicenter of the book, and its seismic thesis; it is here, in a little, statistical chart, that Bacque's findings may be seen in a single glance.



TOTALS OF DEATHS

Minimum Maximum

Expellees (1945-50) 2,100,000 6,000,000
Prisoners (1941-50) 1,500,000 2,000,000
Residents (1946-50) 5,700,000 5,700,000
_________ __________

Totals 9,300,000 13,700,000


"Expellees" refers to the 16,000,000 ethnic Germans who were driven from their ancestral homelands in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere in Europe, at war's end.

These included mostly women and children and elderly men who, with a few belongings in hand and running the gauntlet of deep, local animosity, set out upon the open road toward the rump state of Germany.

"Prisoners" are, of course, the German POWs, the subject of Bacque's first book.

"Residents" here refers to the German civilian population that survived the Second World War.

According to Bacque, given the extraordinarly harsh conditions imposed upon them by the Allies (i.e., the British, French, Soviets, and Americans), at least 9.3 million and possibly as many as 13.7 million Germans, had, by 1950, needlessly died as a result.

He writes: "This is many more Germans than died in battle, air raids and concentration camps during the war. Millions of these people slowly starved to death in front of the victors' eyes every day for years."

Adding: "These deaths have never been honestly reported by either the Allies or the German government."

It is this dishonesty, which is also part silence, part indifference, part anti-German animus, as well as corrupt scholarship, that Bacque intends to remedy with the present volume.

Weaving in and out of the central storyline are a number of recurring motifs.

There is the exposure of the unabashed inhumanity of the Allied leadership: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and De Gaulle.

But it is the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., who is the arch-villain of the piece, the one who hatched the serpent's egg: the vicious, vengeful Morgenthau Plan for the post-war "pastoralization" (read: the de-industrialization and abject subjugation) of the German people.

Devised, "cancelled," then implemented via the punitive directive JCS/1067, the Morgenthau Plan wreaked havoc on the German economy and, by extension, the fragile European economy.

Because of it, post-war reconstruction in Germany was delayed until late 1948; by which time millions of German civilians had already perished.

By starkest contrast, the hero of the book--and to whom it is dedicated--is Herbert Hoover.

It was Hoover who, in a spirit of Christian charity and true to his Quaker roots, led a worldwide food relief effort during the post-war era; saving, in the process, Bacque claims, probably as many as 800 million lives; a headspinner in a history book full of such daunting statistics.

Hoover also lobbied for a food program to relieve the desperate conditions inside Germany, which, along with the Marshall Plan, helped put an end to the Morgenthau nightmare and rescued literally millions of people from a slow, agonizing death.

Bacque also shines a hard light on the Western media, from the "New York Times" on down, for concealing or outrightly denying the Allies' complicity in numerous atrocities; on their craven betrayal of the anti-Hitler German resistance, the anti-Soviet Cossacks, and the Free Poles; and on the hideous cruelties they, as victors, inflicted on weak, defenceless, but fearless, Germen women seeking to help ill and starving husbands interned in Allied POW camps.

Bacque's determination to shine a hard light on some long-hidden and neglected truths regarding the Western Allies and their often inglorious actions during and after World War Two will, as sure as night follows day, provoke the animus of the coterie of mythologists who have dined out on simplistic notions of Allied heroism and decency--and exclusively German villainy--for the past half-century.

Recalling his bumpy ride following the release of "Other Losses", historian James Bacque expects that a firestorm will likewise follow the publication of "Crimes and Mercies".

Up in Canada, in the letters page of the "Toronto Globe and Mail", a debate has already begun; and signs of bitchery, if not nastiness, are already evident.

But what is encouraging is that Bacque also fully expects that the truth about this tragic page of German history will at long last be made known.

[End]




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Crimes and Mercies: A Hidden Holocaust--Revealed


Installed: 5/16/98, 6: 00 PM, PST

Chapter 3

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE BIRTH OF A MONSTER: THE INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC STATE OF CROATIA
The Yugoslavs were stunned. But not for long. Two days later, on March 27, 1941, an anti-Nazi coup d'etat, carried out by General Mirkovic, unsaddled the pro-Nazi Yugoslav Government. While the rest of Yugoslavia celebrated the event in Zagreb, circulars, full of threats, were found on the doors of Serbs. Pavelic, who only a few days before had been relegated to the background, suddenly found himself the centre of feverish activities. Orders were conveyed to all the Ustashi, inside and outside Yugoslavia, to be ready for action. Ustashi leaders from Germany and Italy moved at speed towards the Yugoslav frontier. The German Army moved with them. On April 6, 1941, Hitler attacked the Yugoslav Kingdom.

Many of Pavelic's followers joined the Nazi invaders; others directed their arms against Yugoslavia; still others turned plain traitors—e.g. Colonel Kren, an active fanatic, a secret member of Pavelic's army, an Ustashi who flew from Belgrade airdrome to give the Nazi Air Force the secret location of all Yugoslav aircraft, with the result that the Yugoslav war planes were destroyed on the ground by Nazi bombers, which Kren directed. Thanks to Ustashi Kren's action, the whole of the Yugoslav Air Force was thus annihilated in one single blow.

While Belgrade was still burning after the Nazi air raids, Ante Pavelic addressed the Croats by radio: "Croat soldiers," were his words, "use all your weapons against all the Serbian soldiers and officers. We are already fighting shoulder to shoulder with our new Allies, the Germans and the Italians."

On April 7 the Yugoslav Government left Belgrade for Montenegro. Two days later, on April 9, Vladko Macek, its Vice-President, in his turn deserted it. Macek was a Croat, a Catholic, and the leader of the Catholic Croat Peasant Party. Yet this individual, while acting as the leader of that Party, and, indeed, as Vice-President of the Yugoslav Government, was simultaneously plotting with Fascist Italy for the disintegration of his country. As early as 1939 Macek had, in fact, established contact with Mussolini, who had agreed to pay him 20 million diners to finance his bold Separatist plot—that is, to destroy Yugoslavia in order to set up a Catholic Fascist State of Croatia, as was subsequently disclosed by none other than the Fascist Foreign Minister, Count Ciano.[1]

The Minister of Commerce, another Catholic, followed Macek's example, soon imitated by a third Minister, who treacherously and for a long time had been a secret member, not only of the Ustashi, but also of Nazi Intelligence. He was, in fact, a liaison with the main Nazi Intelligence Agent in Yugoslavia, D. Tomljenovitch, former Austrian officer and a Catholic, to whom he passed details of all the secret deliberations on defense which took place in the Yugoslav Cabinet, of which he was a member.

Following all this, while Slavko Kvaternik, having arrived in Zagreb from Italy, announced the formation of the Independent State of Croatia, Macek incited his followers to recognize the New State: "I invite all the members of the Peasant Party of Croatia to recognize the change, to help the New Croatia, and, above all, loyally to obey all its laws."[2] Within a few days all the secret members of Pavelic's Catholic terrorist organization within the civil administration and the Yugoslav Army came to the fore, working havoc wherever they appeared; and this to such an extent that they quickly succeeded in paralyzing the prosecution of the war against Hitler.

Standing in sinister prominence among them all, the Ustashi initiated vigorous fighting in the rear of the Yugoslav units; while others within the Yugoslav Army carried out fifth-column activities to such an extent that nothing could be done according to plan. Ustashi officers like Colonel Kren fled to the Germans, to whom they disclosed vital military information. Units of Macek's "Peasant Guard" immediately became Ustashi units and disarmed units of the Yugoslav Army. The widespread disorganization created by Catholic extremists was such that it turned out to be one of the paramount factors enabling the swift Nazi conquest of Yugoslavia.

This was confirmed by Lorkovitch, Minister of the Foreign Affairs of the Independent State of Croatia, in full Parliament (February, 1942):

It was thanks to the support of the Croat people and of the Croat revolution, which have shortened the duration of the war in Yugoslavia, greatly reduced the losses of the Germans and Italians, and permitted, at the Eastern frontier of Serbia, the death-blow to be given to Yugoslavia.[3]

The promotion of such a large treacherous body within the country would have been impossible without the active cooperation of the Catholic Church. Pavelic's terrorist bands, the Ustashi, had been morally and financially encouraged and supported by her. Indeed, their backbone had been formed by priests, monks, and even bishops. Monasteries had been used as the clandestine headquarters of the Ustashi long before the Nazi attack. Secret separatist and military activities had been disguised for years under the cloak of religion. The Catholic priesthood in Croatia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia had repeatedly convoked so-called Eucharistic Congresses which in reality were for extremist political purposes (e.g. those held in Pozega as late as 1940, under the fictitious name of Mary's Congregation). The sundry semi-military, illegal terrorist movements were likewise screened by the mantle of religion. Most of them were affiliated with Catholic organizations under the direct supervision of Catholic Action, which was strictly controlled by the Catholic Hierarchy—e.g. the Brotherhood of the Crusaders, with about 540 societies and 30,000 members; the Sisterhood of the Crusaders, with 452 societies and 19,000 members; the Catholic Student Associations, Domagoj, and such like.

Most of the members of such religious organizations were active in sabotage, acts of terrorism, and a good number of them even participated in the treacherous disarming of the Yugoslav Army following Hitler's attack. As soon as they came into the open, many of them appeared transformed into Ustashi authorities, functionaries in Ustashi commissions, heads of district councils, or even of concentration camps. The President of the Great Crusaders' Brotherhood, Dr. Feliks Niedzelski, was nominated Ustashi Vice-Governor of Bosnia and administrative head for the Ustashi youth, while Father Grga Peinovic, also a director of Catholic Crusaders, was appointed President of the Ustashi Central Propaganda Office.[4] Many of the priests of the Crusaders' Brotherhood and of Catholic Action took or



Archbishop Stepinac, Head of the Croatian Hierarchy, welcomes Ante Pavelic at the opening of the Ustashi Government in Zagreb, February 23, 1942.

Stepinac was a steady, zealous and efficient partner of Pavelic's Dictatorship. He supported the Ustashi Government from the beginning until the end. Indeed, even after Ustashi Croatia collapsed following the disintegration of Nazi Germany.

Stepinac was not only the Head of the Council of Croatian Bishops and of the Committee which carried out a policy of forcible conversions, he was none other than the Supreme Military Apostolic Vicar of the Ustashi Army.

When Ustashi Croatia fell in 1945 as a result of the defeat of Nazi Germany and Pavelic had to run for his life, Archbishop Stepinac, in a vain effort to save the Regime, succeeded him as Head of Ustashi Croatia.

Stepinac ordered special ceremonies in all the Catholic churches on Pavelic's birthday, and he frequently invoked the blessing of God upon the Ustashi.


gave military training, or were sworn officers of the Ustashi formations—e.g. Father Radoslav Cilavas, a Franciscan monk, who on April 10 and 11, 1941, disarmed the local gendarmerie, captured the Post Office, and drew local plans to prevent the mobilization of the Yugoslav Army; or Father Chaplain Ivan Miletic, who, in collaboration with the Nazis, led bands of guerrillas against the Yugoslav Government. In Herzegovina the centre of the Ustashi movement was located in the Franciscan monastery and in the high school of Siroki Brijeg.

On the same day as the German Army had entered the capital of Croatia, one of the chief Ustashi leaders, Kvaternik, proclaimed the Independent State of Croatia (April 10, 1941), and, while fighting between the Germans and the Yugoslav Army was still going on in the Bosnian mountains, Archbishop Stepinac called on the leader of the Ustashi and urged all Croats to support the New Catholic State. On that very day the newspapers of Zagreb carried announcements to the effect that all Serbian Orthodox residents of the new Catholic capital must vacate the city within twelve hours, and that anyone found harbouring an Orthodox would immediately be executed. On April 13 Ante Pavelic reached Zagreb from Italy. On the 14th Archbishop Stepinac went personally to meet him and to congratulate him on the fulfillment of his life-work. What was Pavelic's life-work? The creation of perhaps the most ruthless Fascist tyranny ever to dishonour Europe.

The establishment of Pavelic's dictatorship was rapid, efficient, and ruthless. Immediately on his return he reorganized the Ustashi throughout the New State by setting up local branches, known by the names of Stozer, Logor, Tabor, and Zbir, through which he initiated a veritable reign of terror. The objective of his systematic crimes of murder, torture, pillage, and wholesale massacre was nothing less than the total extermination of all non-Catholic, anti-Fascist elements in the New State.

Simultaneously with the reorganization of the Ustashi, Pavelic set up a political body modeled on the Nazi Gestapo and on the Fascist OVRA, called Ustashka Nadzorna Sluzba (Ustashi Supervisory Service), which exercised absolute control over the whole population. This Ustashi Gestapo was composed of thirteen different types of police: Ustashi Police; Intelligence Service; Defense Police; Security



At the opening of the Ustashi Parliament, Archbishop Stepinac, after offering special prayers to God in a ceremony in the Cathedral, ordered the singing of a solemn Te Deum, as thanks to the Almighty for the establishment of the Ustashi Dictatorship.

On April 13, 1941, Pavelic reached Zagreb. On the 14th, Archbishop Stepinac blessed him.

At Easter, 1941, Stepinac solemnly announced from Zagreb Cathedral the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia.

On April 28, 1941, he issued a Pastoral Letter, ordering the Croatian clergy to support the new Ustashi State.

On June 28, 1941, Stepinac, with other Bishops, visited Pavelic. After promising total cooperation with him, Stepinac prayed for him. "We implore the Lord of the Stars to give his divine blessings to you, the leader of our people," were Stepinac's words.

In the photograph, Stepinac accompanies Pavelic to the Cathedral steps after having prayed for him and for the Ustashi.


Service; Supreme Office for Public Order and Security; County Police; Gendarmerie; Military Police; Defense Squads; Security Service of the Poglavnik, a body-guard; Reserve Gendarmerie; Police Guard; and Industrial Police. Parallel with this, Pavelic set up courts extraordinary, entitled Prijeke Sud; Pokretni Prijeki Sud (Mobile Courts); Izvanredni Narodni Sud (People's Court Extraordinary); and Veliki Izvanredni Narodni Sud (Grand People's Court Extraordinary). These courts, thirty-four in number, passed sentences after a procedure which did not offer the defendant any possibility of defense. The judges, all sworn Ustashi, condemned without examination of the charge, on the basis of collective responsibility. The courts could pronounce only death sentences, against which no appeal was allowed.

In addition to passing special legislation against anyone who refused to accept the New Croatia, to permit police organizations to arrest, deport, and execute at will, special tribunals to condemn to death on the flimsiest of pretexts, and, indeed, to mobilize the whole machinery of the State for legalized terror, Pavelic terrorized by means of a Statutory Order "For the direction of the Undesirable and Dangerous Persons to Compulsory Detention in Concentration Camps," dated September 25, 1941. In virtue of this, the Ustashi Supervisory Police could at will send "any undesirable persons dangerous to public order...to compulsory detention in concentration camps" (pares. I and 3). No appeal was allowed against any such decisions.

Within the briefest of periods, Pavelic and his Ustashi had become the arbiters of the freedom, the life, and the death of all men, women, and children in the New State of Croatia, which in a matter of weeks was thus converted into the most ruthless Fascist State in the world, including Nazi Germany. Yet what was the attitude of the Catholic Church when faced by such an abominable transformation? The Catholic Church, represented by the Hierarchy and the Catholic Press, following Stepinac's example, promptly initiated a feverish campaign of praise for Pavelic and Hitler. A leader of the Crusaders wrote:

God, who directs the destiny of nations and controls the hearts of Kings, has given us Ante Pavelic and moved the leader of a friendly and allied people, Adolf Hitler, to use his victorious troops to disperse our oppressors and enable us to create an Independent State of Croatia. Glory be to God, our gratitude to Adolph Hitler, and infinite loyalty to chief Ante Pavelic."[5]

A few days later, on April 28, 1941, Stepinac issued a pastoral letter, asking the whole Croatian clergy to support and defend the New Catholic State of Croatia.

At Easter, 1941, Stepinac announced from the Cathedral of Zagreb the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia, thus giving the solemn sanction of Church and Vatican to Pavelic's work. On June 28, 1941, Stepinac, with other bishops, went to see Pavelic. After promising the wholehearted cooperation of the entire Hierarchy, the Archbishop solemnly blessed Pavelic, as the leader of the Croatian people: "While we greet you cordially as head of the Independent State of Croatia, we implore the Lord of the Stars to give his divine blessings to you, the leader of our people." Pavelic, it should be remembered, was the same man who had been sentenced to death for political assassinations: once by the Yugoslav courts, and once by the French, for the murders of King Alexander and the French Foreign Minister, Barthou.

In his hour of triumph Pavelic did not forget that all those who had helped the birth of a strong united Yugoslavia had contributed to the death of the Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire, the political pet gendarme of the Vatican, and, significantly enough, as a belated tribute to the old Austrian-Vatican alliance in the Balkans, he ordered the confiscation of the real property of "any persons who had volunteered with the Allies against Catholic Austria-Hungary during the First World War" (Statutory Order, dated April 18, 1941).

This last move, like numerous others of a more tyrannical character, was followed with fascination by the Vatican, where the murderer of King Alexander came to be regarded as a great Catholic hero, blessed by none other than Pope Pius Xll himself, who bestowed his paternal protection upon him and the New Croatian State. That was not enough. Pius Xll, that holiest of all modern Popes, spun some of the most unholy diplomatic webs, with the specific object of bestowing upon the political creatures of the devout regicide Pavelic some kind of a king. For to the Catholic Church kings are, next to Catholic dictators, still her most cherished political dodos.



At a Ustashi Meeting. (From right to left) Archbishop Stepinac; General Roata, Commander of the Fascist forces of occupation in Yugoslavia; Field Marsbai Slavio Kvaternik; and the Commander of the German forces of occupation in Croatia.

As Supreme Military Apostolic Vicar of the Ustashi Army, Archbishop Stepinac participated in military and political functions, mingling with the Fascist, Nazi and Ustashi Commanders.

At one time Stepinac directed Ustashi guerrillas following Pavelic's flight. He established contacts and coordinated the scattered Ustashi bands, directing priests and monks to act as liaison with them.

When, finally, on November 8, 1945, Ustashi Croatia disintegrated, Slepinac reconsecrated the Ustashi Crusaders' force with a fiat in his own Chapel. After which he received "a pledge from Ustashi intellectuals" to fight to the end for the liberator of Ustashi Croatia.

He was in constant contact with the Ustashi detachments raiding Orthodox villages and towns. Also with the Nazi occupational forces in and outside Croatia.



Ante Pavelic, the inspirer, creator and leader of the independent Catholic State of Croatia. He employed terrorism, political extremism and religious fanaticism with such ruthlessness as to outsmart even his two main Fascist protectors, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.

He was the brains behind the assassination of King Alexander and other political murders which preceded the disintegration of Yugoslavia and thus the erection of his super-Nazi, super-Catholic independent Ustashi Croatia. He enjoyed the protection of Pope Pius XII, who helped him via diplomatic and monetary means to achieve his ultimate objective.

When Ustashi Croatia collapsed, Pavelic hid at the Vatican, then, disguised as a monk, fled to the Argentine where he set up an Ustashi Government, waiting for "the Day." Sundry Catholic hierarchies openly helped him in exile. Pre-war acts of terrorism were begun anew. Pavelic became the victim of a murder attempt himself. He died shortly before and after the deaths of his two main ecclesiastical supporters, Pope Pius XII and Cardinal Stepinac, still dreaming of resurrecting anew Catholic Ustashi Croatia.


The throne of Croatia had originally been assigned to the scion of the Hapsburgs—i.e. Otto. As, however, Hitler suffered from anti-Hapsburg phobia, plans had to be somewhat modified. Otto had to be discarded. A feverish exploration amid the remaining forlorn royal crowned heads of Nazified Europe was speedily initiated. The new King's paramount virtue had to be a very obvious one: he must be persona grata to the Fuehrer. Catholic Providence, which has always provided the Vatican with an uninterrupted shower of Peter's pence—or, to be more up-to-date, with an ever-increasing shower of Peter's dollars—again proved that her cornucopia could still supply a mankind confused by all the errors of republicanism with that increasingly rare commodity: kings. Now kings have become very rare and, in fact, exceptional. Hence the need for an exceptional man to carry out an exceptional commission. The man: Pope Pius Xll.

Pius XII had been the recipient of portents—that is, of phenomena with which only saints, it is said, are privileged. This even though such phenomena as a rule occur after death, and always when a rational scrutiny of the miracles has become impossible. During the Conclave of 1939, convened to elect a new Pope, Cardinal Pacelli was visited by Pius X in person. Pius X announced that the next Pontiff would be him, Pacelli. It was a miracle. It must have been, for Pius X had died almost three decades earlier. Pacelli was indeed elected Pope. The fact that he cast his own vote for himself did not really affect the issue. Pacelli became Pope Pius XII, choosing the name of Pius in honour of Pius X. [6]

Ten years later, in 1950, Pius XII, after patient years of self-canonization, saw the sun zig-zag in the sky of Rome. Not once, it must be noted, but on three successive days. As if this were not enough, the very Mother of God appeared to him, within the convulsed sphere, "in a spectacle of celestial movements in transmission of mute but eloquent messages to the Vicar of Christ."[7] It was not difficult for so extra-holy a successor of St. Peter, therefore, to find a worthy king. The fact that Pius XII had to conduct down-to-earth secret, hard bargaining with Mussolini was discreetly hushed up. The chosen one? Victor Emanuel, King of Italy, whom Pius XII himself not long before had blessed as "the august and wise Emperor of Ethiopia,"[8] following Fascist Italy's ruthless



Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) was a brilliant diplomat, a cunning politician. These characteristics made of him one of the paramount personalities of our times. A match for his fellow Fascist and Communist Dictators. He, more than anybody else outside Germany, helped Hitler to power. This he did by steering the German Catholic Party, and top Catholic leaders, to support the Fuehrer.

Pius' pet obsession was Communism. After World War 1, he allied the Church with Italian, Spanish and German Fascism, and with the USA after World War 11. He became the main instigator of the Cold War that followed.

Besides being ruthless in political matters, he was unscrupulous in religious ones. He self-sanctified himself with alleged miracles. He claimed that the Virgin Mary worked a miracle personally for him, alone. He claimed also that none other than Jesus Christ himself visited and spoke to him.

He practiced nepotism, that is, the granting of undeserved titles, riches and privileges to his own family.

He was a paranoiac, on a par with Hitler and Stalin. He transformed the Catholic Church into a global political instrument, using the Catholic masses as gullible expendable pawns in his own ideological gambles.


conquest of Coptic Abyssinia, where Fascism and Catholicism were jointly to implant Catholic-Fascist civilization. King Victor, although physically a midget, was a very brave man. He was already resignedly suffering under the weight of two crowns: the kingly crown of Italy and the Imperial crown of Abyssinia. The idea of a third, that of Croatia, fired him with the most admirable democratic conviction that three crowns upon the head of one single man might be considered by envious masses as a genuine social injustice. So Victor, for the first time in his life, took a decision. To the chagrin of that most virtuous trinity, Pope, Duce, and Pavelic, he shouted an immortal ditty, "Now then, that's truly much to much, even for me" and refused. Following a moment of bewilderment, and hasty confabulations with the other two members of the trio, Pius Xll, thanks to a supernatural hint, found a priceless substitute: the cousin of Victor, the Duke of Spoleto.

The life of a mere Duke nowadays is somewhat dull. The Duke of Spoleto, although a mere Duke, was born with above-average ducal ambition. Hence, when political fortune blew his way, he seized her tightly by the hair. Having first made quite sure that the somewhat moody Austrian commoner who had promoted himself to the Chancellorship of Germany approved of him, secondly that the son of a blacksmith from Romagna would smile on him, and last but not least that His Holiness Pius Xll would give him a triple blessing, he accepted the royal Croatian sceptre with a blush. A name worthy of such a crown was selected, approved, and hailed. And so it happened that a poor unknown Duke suddenly found himself the head of a new dynasty in the Kingdom of Croatia, and became His Most Gracious Exalted Majesty, Tomislav II.

At such wonderful news a massive Ustashi delegation, led by Ante Pavelic, rushed to Rome, where, in the very seat of the Fascist Empire, on May 18, 1941, Tomislav II's gracious acceptance of the Croatian Crown took place, punctuated by clicking of military heels, Fascist salutes, and hurrahs. At the Vatican the happiness of the Pope was unbounded. Yet his fatherly heart was made a little heavy by the fact that Tomislav II, his triumphant political godchild, could not openly be given a solemn papal blessing. Pius XII was the head of the Universal Church. Catholics by the million were at that very moment fighting with the Allies to smash that very Fascist world with which Pius was on such cordial terms. In addition to that, Pius was simultaneously the head of the Vatican State and as such—oh, happy coincidence!—a king himself. To recognize his new royal colleague at that juncture would have been interpreted by the democratic camp as a breach of "papal neutrality." His Holiness, therefore, had to use caution.

Popes claim they can unlock gates—in heaven and in hell. That is why they have St. Peter's massive keys. But very often they can open back doors as well down here. And, the world being what it is, that is even more important. Particularly on occasions when the official gates of international diplomacy have to remain firmly closed. Adept in the age-old Catholic Macchiavelliana Pius XII solved the riddle triumphantly. He received good King Tomislav one day before the ceremony of his coronation. Who could say this was a breach of "papal neutrality?" The Duke of Spoleto was not yet officially a king. His Holiness the Pope had received him before he had legally become His Exalted Majesty, King Tomislav II.

That same day Croatia was officially proclaimed a kingdom. The devout murderer of King Alexander of Yugoslavia—that is Pavelic—was granted a long and very private audience by the Pope. Only one stenographer, who cautious Pavelic had brought with him and who was made to take the oath never to reveal what he heard, was present. Strengthened by what Pius Xll had told him, Pavelic called on Mussolini, with whom he signed a treaty. Following all this, the indefatigable Holy Father received and solemnly blessed Pavelic's Prime Minister and his whole Ustashi delegation. Who, again, could label this a breach of "papal neutrality?" All those excellent people had been received merely as "Catholic individuals," not as the heads of the Government of the New Croatia, declared the Osservatore Romano. Honi soil qui mat y pense. Yet the real significance of it all did not escape those who knew. Pius XII had granted all those good people a special audience, not because they were mere "Catholic individuals": he had specially received, specially blessed, and specially praised them because, while members of the Mother Church, they were, above all, the representatives of the newly born Independent Catholic State of Croatia, a political creature stubbornly nurtured and ruthlessly promoted by that most malign of all its conceivers, the Vatican.