Germany is our problem,
by Henry Morgenthau
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Book Summary Information
Author: Henry MorgenthauEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1945
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 4
Publisher: Harper & brothers
Book Reviews of Germany is our problem,
Book Review: A Plan for Permanently Disarming Germany
Summary: 4 Stars
The Morgenthau Plan may be summarized as follows: "The German lust for war survived defeat in 1918, and was intensified by skillful propaganda and wild demagogy. But the yearning for revenge, the myriad illegal military organizations, the intensive search for new and improved weapons, the fifth column work among intended victims--the whole scheme of German aggression would have had to dissipate itself in empty mouthing and ridiculous parades if it had not been equipped by German heavy industry." (p. 122). Morgenthau rejects the premise that WWII had been caused by the oppressive nature of the Versailles accords. They were actually mild and ineffective (e. g., p. 123, 150-151)
The old alternatives are useless. Simply watching over Germany would have allowed a German re-arming as soon as the monitoring slackened, as it inevitably would in time. Forbidding Germany to use industry for military purposes meant nothing. Once an industrial infrastructure is in place, it is very easy and quick to convert it from peacetime uses to military ones (p. 18). Clearly, the disarming of Germany must be made difficult to reverse: hence deindustrialization. The entire Ruhr region must be taken from Germany, de-industrialized, and, to avoid becoming a bone of contention, jointly ruled by the United Nations (pp. 20-23).
But wouldn't a de-industrialized Germany have starved? No! (p. 61) Morgenthau presents facts and figures that argue for a viable agricultural Germany. In fact, German agriculture had always been underdeveloped, and, ironically, past German politics (notably that of the Junkers) had hindered this development (pp. 57-61).
Although Morgenthau rejects collective German guilt, he doesn't lose sight of the deep historical roots of German aggression (pp. 102-115). He quotes Heinrich Heine: "It is the fairest merit of Christianity that it somewhat mitigated that brutal German gaudium certaminis or joy of battle, but it could not destroy it...That talisman is brittle, and the day will come when it will pitifully break." (p. 103). Racist theories existed everywhere, but only in Germany were they developed so extensively and taken so seriously (pp. 104-105)
Morgenthau anticipates and rejects the argument that an armed Germany was necessary as a bulwark against Communism. Subsequent events of the Cold War have borne him out. Germany, whether disarmed or armed, was largely irrelevant. Even with a re-armed West Germany, NATO forces were too weak to have stopped a Soviet-bloc invasion of Western Europe through conventional weapons alone. They would have needed to resort to tactical nuclear weapons which, in no time at all, would have escalated into a global nuclear conflagration. The Soviets, of course, knew this also.
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