The Policy of Hate

After a couple of days of cloudy rumors, the news broke over the weekend. The Roosevelt Cabinet was violently split, over the gravest problem now before all Allied Governments: what to do with postwar Germany?

Again there had been no real advance planning on a huge problem that had been visibly approaching for a long time. Again there had been some hasty last-minute improvisation, and the plan that was handiest and most attractive at the moment had been seized on.

The plan that had been put forward, by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, had roused the violent objections of Secretaries Cordell Hull and Henry Stimson. The President was said to be leaning toward the Morgenthau side.

The Morgenthau plan was the first reported by the Wall Street Journal's Alfred ("Mike") Flynn, and expanded by Associated Pressman John M. Hightower. Far & away the most drastic yet proposed for the future of Germany, it was just barely above the level of "sterilize all Germans." It would reduce Germany from a prewar industrial giant to a fourth-rate nation of small farms. Its points called for:

P: Removal from Germany of all industrial machinery which any liberated country wants; obliteration of the rest of German industry.

P: Permanent closing of all German mines--if any are left after territorial changes.

P: Cession of the Saar and other Rhineland industrial areas to France; cession of East Prussia to Poland.

P: Breakup of all large land holdings into small farms.

P: Withholding of any economic aid whatsoever to Germany; no food, clothing or other relief supplies to be furnished to the German people; no reconstruction of railroads or factories within Germany to be permitted.

P: Prolonged occupation by Russian, British and American troops, perhaps for a generation.

P: No reparations--since Germany would have nothing to pay them with, and would be allowed no way to earn payments in the future.

This was indeed a Carthaginian peace. But Henry Morgenthau believes that Germany must be destroyed, as Carthage was. When he visited the battlefields last October, General Eisenhower showed him a booklet outlining Allied Military Government directives to soldiers for the occupation of Germany. This was strictly a military document drafted by the War Department. Henry Morgenthau, fanatical Naziphobe, was much exercised over several passages which to his mind were indications of a too lenient attitude. He lifted these passages and put them in a memorandum to the President.

All sources in Washington agreed that the President was equally exercised. The meeting with Prime Minister Churchill in Quebec was imminent, and he had no real plan for the management of occupied Germany. The Allies have mainly agreed only on which zones of Germany each will occupy (see FOREIGN NEWS).

Hastily the President appointed a Cabinet committee to consider the problem. The members: Secretaries Stimson, Hull and Morgenthau. The Cabinet committee met three times in three days, just before the President was forced to leave for Quebec. Messrs. Hull and Stimson strongly opposed the Morgenthau program to strip Germany. Both agreed that such a super-Versailles would only justify a future German generation in once more uniting to plan revenge. They wanted rigid controls, for many years to come, but they wanted Germany, for centuries the economic center of Middle Europe, put back on its economic feet. They only wanted to make sure that German development is not along military lines. Both emphatically agreed that they "did not want to maintain a nation of haters."

Henry Morgenthau, talked down in this session, went ahead on his own. Suddenly Messrs. Hull and Stimson learned that Morgenthau was in Quebec. Neither Mr. Hull nor Mr. Stimson enjoy a basic Morgenthau advantage--(for years Henry Morgenthau has always had Eleanor Roosevelt's ear).

How the Morgenthau Plan was received by the British had not been reported early this week. But London dispatches said that Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden or even Prime Minister Winston Churchill may speak soon upon the controversial subject in Parliament. Some Washington sources insisted that Foreign Secretary Eden received the Morgenthau Plan with warm approval. Others insisted that this was mere British politeness; these took the view that Mr. Eden was privately horrified at the Morgenthau Plan.

There was some reason to believe that the President's personal preference for the Morgenthau Plan would fade under the steady pressure of the two Cabinet officers who will actually have the most responsibility in the occupation of Germany. Furthermore, it might cost votes from those citizens who would prefer a more careful--and less vindictive--program for the re-education of Germany. And finally, it was of the highest political urgency that the latest Cabinet split be mended before Candidate Dewey hammered again at the "old, tired, quarrelsome" men of Washington.

But, said one New Deal chieftain, a White House intimate: "Even the airing of this plan is going to cost a lot of American lives. It is going to stiffen resistance inside Germany. We have placed a powerful weapon in the hands of Goebbels."

A few hours later, the Goebbels propaganda machine began grinding. Shouted the German radio: "The occupation of the Reich by Americans and British would be as horrible as by the Bolsheviks. Morgenthau is outdoing Clemenceau. Clemenceau said there were 23,000,000 Germans too many--Morgenthau wants to see 43,000,000 Germans exterminated."

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