MORGENTHAU'S REVENGE
Mayer, Milton
Morgenthau's Revenge By MILTON MAYER THE Associated Press reports that President Roosevelt has accepted Secretary Morgenthau's plan for "completely destroying Germany as a modern . industrial...
...But Henry is not a Nazi, or a fascist...
...2. Permanent closing of whatever mines remain in the territory of the postwar German state...
...I am afraid that Morgenthau's heart is permeated, and I do not want to live in a Nazi world, not even if it is Henry's...
...The AP reports, in connection with Henry's plan, that "Morgenthau always has been regarded by his associates as an advocate of ruthless handling of Germany' after the war...
...My effort enabled me, and enables me now, to see clearly that all Germans are not Nazis, and that even if they were they would not be improved by being subjected to Nazi treatment by their foreign conquerors...
...I am afraid it will enrage them...
...It was natural...
...I think it will make Nazis of them all, and of their Germanic neighbors...
...And I suppose that the people who think that will be right...
...His program for Germany is indistinguishable from the Nazi program for the countries they conquered...
...Henry was not...
...We, Henry and I, were especially selected by the Nazis for torture and extermination...
...We had done nothing to deserve it...
...No, my fellow-Americans, Henry's plan is too practical for me...
...Mine is the hard one...
...7. No outright reparations—since a German agricultural state with little or no commerce would not be able to pay them—although distribution of German machinery might be considered as reparations in some respects...
...For some Germans and Jews have good ideals and some have bad...
...Henry and I, as Jews, were among the first and hard-• est to hate the Nazis...
...Now I suppose that nearly everybody in America knows that Henry is a Jew, and that nearly all the people who know he is a-Jew will assume that his ruthlessness arises from his desire for vengeance -on the Nazis for their bestiality against the Jews...
...So I set myself to restraining my parochial hatred of the Nazis as a Jew, and to hate them for all I was worth as a human being...
...we were simply handy, few, and traditionally tortured...
...Henry's is the easy way...
...I think that we will pay as dearly for Henry's revenge as we paid for Orlando's "destruction" of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in 1919...
...Morgenthau, Hull, and Stimson comprise the President's Cabinet.committee on German peace policy, Henry's plan, and the President's acceptance of it, are serious matters...
...One Thing Might Work And if I were able to sleep, having taken Henry's way, I would still be afraid...
...Where Henry and I diverged was in keeping our shirts on while we set out to exterminate Nazism...
...Mayer has murdered sleep...
...Henry and I do not know for sure which Germans are which...
...destruction of the rest of Germany's industry...
...If I accept Henry's way I can hear, in the nights to come, a •voice in my ear: "Sleep no more, Mayer...
...With malice toward none, with charity for all" is more my line...
...My first reaction, on reading Henry's plan, m to call him a Nazi and let it go...
...Whence Henry's Ruthlessness 4. Dissolution of large German land holdings into small farms which would enable the 40 to 50 million people remaining in Germany to exist largely on an agricultural basis...
...Morgenthau's Revenge By MILTON MAYER THE Associated Press reports that President Roosevelt has accepted Secretary Morgenthau's plan for "completely destroying Germany as a modern . industrial state and converting it into an agricultural country of small farms...
...This, says the AP, is Morgenthau's plan: 1. Removal from Germany to devastated countries of whatever industrial machinery those countries want...
...You, and Henry, may say, "Yes, indeed, it will enrage them, but what of it...
...It might take years of dangerous and expensive investigation to discover...
...Since the Messrs...
...And I concede that they will be militarily impotent, but I can not drive out of my head the grinning threat of the demoniacal Goebbels that if the Nazis are defeated they will win anyway, for the Nazi ideas will permeate the hearts of the victors...
...Up until the publication of this news, nobody knew that the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Andrew Mellon had any such plan...
...Henry is a schlemiehl, or, as Henry's and my German ancestors would have put it, a dummkopf...
...If the Jews were just the first, the struggle against Nazism was not the Jews' struggle...
...I am afraid that Henry's will prevail...
...Without their machinery and land and mines they will be impotent, powerless even to pay reparations...
...5. Refusal by other countries to extend any assistance, economic or otherwise, to the people of Ger-?many, so that they would have to make their own way as best they could out of the wreckage of their war on Europe...
...The easy way is to slaughter or starve them all...
...but we can not say that all Germans are bad any more than Hitler can say that all Jews are bad...
...I am able to see clearly, as Henry is not, that we can say truthfully that all conscious, freely acting Nazis are bad, because their ideals are bad...
...I was aware that the Jews were just the first on Hitler's list...
...6. Prolonged control of Germany by an allied nations or allied military commission...
...3. Cession of the Saar and western German industrial areas to France as well as cession to Poland of eastern German areas which Russia might want handled that way...
...it was humanity's...
...The reason I am afraid is that Henry and I will have the blood of many millions of innocents—worse yet, of their children—on our hands if Henry's way prevails...
...I do not believe that stealing the Germans' machinery and land and shutting down their mines will civilize them...
...I know that the doctrine of Judeo-Christian forgiveness is a lot of damned sentimental nonsense, and the only reason I have for calling it to the attention of the President's Cabinet committee is that, impractical as it is, it seems to be the only thing that stands a Chinaman's chance of working...
Vol. 8 • October 1944 • No. 40
