The Ruling Elite

by Deanna Spingola

  At the Yalta Conference (February 4-11, 1945), Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill determined Germany’s future using the Morgenthau Plan of demilitarization, de-Nazification and deindustrialization. In the last stages of World War II, FDR, referring to the Germans, said “they must not allow the seeds of the evil we shall have crushed to germinate and reproduce themselves in the future.” 1619 FDR died on April 12, 1945. The war in Europe officially ended on May 8. On May 10, President Harry S. Truman implemented the plan. Harry Dexter White, Frank Coe and Harry Glasser, who represented the War, Treasury and State Departments, formalized the Plan, and designed it to cause immediate destabilization, known as the Joint Chief of Staff Directive 1067/6 (JCS 1067/6). In 1945, the Government created the Information Control Division (ICD), part of the army, to function in the occupied Germany until 1952. Its tasks were Germany’s re-democratization, de-Nazification, demilitarization and decentralization, which evolved from the Psychological Warfare Division that had operated during the war.

  Author Ralph Franklin Keeling said, “The life of every nation is supported by three main pillars, land (all natural resources), labor (both brawn and brains), and capital (plants and equipment).” A nation will ultimately collapse minus these three factors. The Allies, after World War II, pulled down all three pillars in Germany. 1620

  Churchill endorsed the Morgenthau Plan and applauded the expulsion of millions of Germans from their homelands. He viewed it as the “most satisfactory and permanent method,” however illegal, as “compensation” for the territory that Poland had surrendered to the Soviet Union. Following the war, Churchill said, “There will be no more mixture of peoples which has caused endless quarrels. I am not alarmed by the reduction of the population. Six million Germans have lost their lives in the War. We can expect that by the end of the war many more will be killed, and there will be room for those who shall be expelled.” On February 7, 1945, at Yalta, Churchill said, “We have killed five or six million and we shall very likely kill an additional million before this war comes to an end. Because of this, there should be enough room in Germany for the transfer of people who will surely be needed. With that we shall have no problem as long as the transfer remains in the proper proportion.” 1621

  In 1945, Morgenthau, as part of the propaganda machine to shift responsibility for the deplorable conditions in Germany wrote his book in which he outlined his formerly top secret plan and blamed the Germans for what had befallen them. FDR wrote in the front matter of Morgenthau’s book, “The German people are not going to be enslaved because the United Nations do (does) not traffic in human slavery. But, it will be necessary for them to earn their way back into the fellowship of peace-loving and law-abiding nations. And, in their climb up that steep road, we shall certainly see to it that they are not encumbered by having to carry guns. They will be relieved of that burden we hope, forever.” 1622

  On May 9, 1945, the media referred to the Americans as “liberators.” However, Eisenhower announced, “We are not coming here as liberators but as conquerors.” 1623 Officers reminded the soldiers that they were entering Germany as conquerors, not liberators. Accordingly, they were to do nothing to imply that the Allied victory offered freedom, hope, or justice. The motto, allegedly adopted from Hitler, was “Woe to the vanquished.” 1624 The U.S. Government had effectively indoctrinated American soldiers against the Germans before they arrived in Germany. This hateful programming precluded any merciful feelings, empathy or pity towards “the wicked German race.” JCS1067/6, approved by Roosevelt at Quebec, was the foundation of the Army’s occupation policy. 1625

  The Morgenthau Plan (Fourteen Points)

  Demilitarization of Germany (1)

  The Allied Forces sought the immediate and complete demilitarization of Germany following its unconditional surrender. This meant totally disarming the army and the people, the destruction of all war materials and of the armament industry, and the removal or demolition of key industries basic to military strength. 1626

  New Boundaries of Germany (2)

  a)Poland to have that part of East Prussia not going to the USSR and the southern portion of Silesia

  b)France to have the Saar and the adjacent territories bounded by the Rhine and the Moselle Rivers

  c)Allies to create an International Zone containing the Ruhr and surrounding industrial areas

  Partitioning of New Germany (3)

  The division of what remained of Germany into two autonomous, independent states, (1) a South German state comprising Bavaria, Wuerttemberg, Baden and some smaller areas, and (2) a North German state comprising a large part of the old state of Prussia, Saxony, Thuringia and several smaller states.

  They were to create a custom union between the new South German state and Austria, and they were to restore Germany to her pre-1938 political borders

  The Allies seized 28% of Germany’s remaining land including the three main coal regions. They divided Germany, including Berlin, into four sections. The western sectors, controlled by France, Britain and the United States which would merge, on May 23, 1949, as the Federal Republic of Germany. The eastern Soviet Zone, on October 7, 1949, would become the German Democratic Republic, known outside of Germany, as West and East Germany. Germans would pay reparations, in part, by functioning as forced slave labor in France, Britain and the Soviet Union.

  The Ruhr Area (4)

  The Allies would seize and implement the stripping and weakening of all existing industrial power, so that the Germans could not, in the foreseeable future, reindustrialize those areas. The following steps will accomplish that:

  a)The Allies, within six months after the cessation of hostilities, will dismantle all surviving industrial plants and equipment and transport them to Allied Nations as restitution. The Allies will remove all equipment from the mines and close them.

  b)The Allies will designate the area as an international zone that an international security organization established by the UN shall govern according to principles devised by the objectives stated above

  After World War I, the Allied Powers, using the Versailles Treaty, had stripped Germany of many of her natural resources and territory. After World War II, the Allies destabilized whatever survived the bombs. They removed industrial plants if possible, or totally staffed remaining facilities with Russian workers. So-called civilized countries kidnapped and enslaved the Germans who could have rebuilt their country and benefitted from their own labor. The abductors forced their captives to labor under bare subsistence or starvation circumstances. The German census taken in 1933 showed a population of 69,000,000. The estimated postwar census, with considerably less land, was between 55,000,000 and 60,000,000. 1627

  Restitution and Reparation (5)

  JCS 1067/6 explicitly declared that reparations/restitutions were mandatory without regard to German rights. Reparations in the form of future payments and deliveries, through the transfer of existing resources and territories:

  a)Restitution of property looted by the Germans in territories occupied by them;

  b)Transfer of territory and private rights in industrial property in such territory to invaded countries and the international agency under the partition program;

  c)By the removal and distribution among devastated countries of industrial plants and equipment situated within the International Zone and the North and South German states delimited in the section on partition;

  d)By forced German labor outside Germany; and

  e)By confiscation of all German assets of any character outside of Germany 1628

  The United States relinquished many German citizens, as slave labor, to the Soviets. They would not allow them, on threat of imprisonment, to criticize the cruel treatment they had received under the Soviets, if, in fact, they survived. 1629

  Education and Propaganda (6)

  a)An Allied Commission of Education will close all schools and univers
ities and will formulate an effective reorganization program. This may require a lengthy period of time before they reopen any institutions of higher education. Meanwhile, students may attend foreign universities. They will reopen elementary schools as quickly as appropriate when teachers and textbooks are available.

  b)The Allies will discontinue all German radio stations and newspapers, weeklies, magazines, etc. until they establish adequate controls and formulate an appropriate program according to JCS 1067/6 1630

  American officials installed German Marxists and their cronies into powerful positions in the Military Government, in state and town governments, on de-Nazification boards, and as newspaper editors and managers of radio stations. The United States, by such actions, persuaded the Germans that America did not oppose any totalitarian dogma or actions which obviously served the best interests of the Soviets at the expense of the Germans. 1631

  Political Decentralization (7)

  The military administration in Germany in the initial period will implement a plan of the eventual partitioning of Germany. To assure its permanence, Military authorities shall use the following principles:

  a)Dismiss all policy-making officials of the Reich government and deal primarily with local governments.

  b)Encourage the reestablishment of state governments in each of the states corresponding to eighteen states into which Germany is presently divided, and, in addition, make the Prussian provinces separate states.

  c)After partitioning, officials shall encourage the state governments to organize a federal government for each of the newly partitioned areas. New governments are to form a confederation of states, with emphasis on states’ rights and a large degree of local autonomy.

  According to the JCS 1067/6, sent to the Commander in Chief of U.S. Forces of Occupation, ten groups were immediately subject to mandatory arrest. 1632 They included (1) Party officials down to Ortsgruppenleiter (2) Gestapo and SD (3) Waffen-SS down to the lowest non-commissioned rank (USchaf.) (4) General Staff officers (5) Police officers down to Oberleutnant (6) SA to the lowest rank (7) Ministers and leading civil servants and civil and military town commanders in occupied territories (8) Nazi and Nazi sympathizers in industry and commerce (9) Judges and prosecutors of special courts and (10) Allied traitors. 1633 Those categories could conceivably include the majority of the population.

  The American Military Government (AMG) attempted to de-Nazify the one political party in the country by purging government and industry of all Nazis, people who had made what they thought was a wise political decision. This law applied to almost 3,000,000 men out of 16,682,000 then living in the American zone. American forces incarcerated 75,000 people and targeted an additional 80,000 people as principal Nazis. The AMG ejected over 100,000 people from public office and shattered industry by firing or demoting hundreds of thousands of people with managerial or technical skills. To identify the targeted group, Heinrich Schmitt, serving under the AMG as Bavarian De-Nazification Minister, employed early morning mass raids, halting vehicles, checking papers, and sweeping through every residence in the American zone. 1634 Certainly, they did not design these tactics to assist the citizens in returning to postwar normalcy but to debilitate the people and destabilize the country to prevent any kind of a reasonable recovery.

  Responsibility of Military for Local German Economy (8)

  According to JCS 1067/6, the Allied Military Government will not be responsible for economic problems such as price controls, rationing, housing unemployment, production, reconstruction, distribution, consumption, or transportation and will not take any measures designed to maintain or strengthen the German economy, except those that are essential to military operations. The Germans must accept responsibility for sustaining their economy and any available public facilities. 1635

  The United States occupational forces were to do nothing whatsoever to revive the German economy. Further, they repudiated all responsibility for feeding the conquered country. The United States had required, during the war, that Germany provide sufficient food for the citizens of German-occupied countries and prisoners within their camps. However, that was absolutely impossible due to the persistent Allied blockade, along with the pervasive bombing. 1636

  Controls over Development of German Economy (9)

  During a twenty-year period after surrender, the UN will maintain adequate controls, including controls over foreign trade and tight restrictions on capital imports, designed to prevent the establishment or expansion of key industries basic to the German military potential and to control other key industries. The Morgenthau Plan remained the basis of treatment and set occupation policies until 1947. The politicians issued JCS 1067/6 to Eisenhower in April 1945, which stipulated that they take “no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany or designed to maintain or strengthen the German economy,” to “prohibit and prevent” any kind of manufacturing. 1637 Morgenthau, in 1945, wrote, “The loss of heavy industry would decrease German imports of agricultural products, and in value this was always more important to Europe than the buying of German heavy industry. But the net amount of food for Europeans to eat will be bigger than ever, for the rest of Europe will feed itself instead of feeding Germany.” 1638

  Agrarian program (10)

  Morgenthau wrote, “The 1937 imports of agricultural products from Europe were unusually high for Germany and reached a total of $360,000,000. The big suppliers of Germany in 1937 were Denmark to the extent of $50,000,000; the Netherlands, Italy and Romania with more than $40,000,000 each; Yugoslavia and Hungary, about $35,000,000 each. They accounted for about two-thirds of Germany’s agricultural imports from Europe. Yet all of these countries except perhaps Denmark and Holland need food for their own people far more than they need exports.” Morgenthau viewed Germany as parasitical. Yet, her trading partners enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship.

  The authorities shall abolish or break up all large estates and divide them among the peasants. Germany’s industry had previously supported their food importation, a necessity, as they could not produce sufficient food for their dense population due to infertile, inadequate land. Morgenthau’s plan of an immediate systematic deindustrialization followed by a transformational shift into a pastoral state would surely result in unemployment, homelessness, starvation and death. The official assumptions were that about forty percent of the population would die—about twenty million German civilians. 1639

  Displaced Germans, homeless and hungry, from the former provinces of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere were competing with the Russian and French occupational troops who lived off the land and had top priority over the resident Germans and struggling, starving refugees. The military had sufficient food compared to the starvation conditions that the majority of Germans suffered. 1640 After the war, Canada and America shipped food to Europe and Asia, including their former enemies, Japan and Italy. However, the Allies cut Germany off from any charitable food distributions. In June 1945, the Red Cross attempted to send trainloads of food to the German civilians but the U.S. military, per Eisenhower’s instructions, halted those trains.

  The Allies deprived Germany of the rest of her industrial territory; the people could not produce the exports with which they imported their food, otherwise unobtainable. According to Morgenthau, the occupiers would constrain Germany’s food consumption to a bare minimum. No surpluses were to be accessible to displaced persons. The Soviet’s occupation of the east deprived Germany of her breadbasket and the Polish seizure of Silesia affected her ability to sustain the people. They kept the country at a starvation level. Officers prohibited any fraternization with the enemy and threatened soldiers who disobeyed orders with severe punishment. The American treatment of the Germans was every bit as egregious as the Nazi’s alleged treatment of its neighbors. Officers considered kindness, even to children, as a misdemeanor and forbade soldiers from giving food to the starving Germans. Office
rs directed the mess sergeants to dispose of food rather than allow a famished German to have it.

  The pastoralization plan, if fully implemented, would have constituted one of the worst genocidal acts committed in modern times. The Germans would have been dispossessed of the majority of their industries. Given the incapacities of their depleted soil, millions would have starved to death. 1641 Morgenthau wrote, “The men and women in the German labor force can best serve themselves and the world by cultivating the German soil. Such a program offers security to us as well as food for Germany and her neighbors.” 1642

  Punishment of War Crimes and Treatment of Special Groups (11)

  Section 11 contains a program for the punishment of certain war crimes and for the treatment of Nazi organizations and other special groups.

  Uniforms and Parades (12)

  a)The Allies prohibit any German from wearing, after an appropriate period of time following the cessation of hostilities, any military uniform or any uniform of any quasi-military organizations.

  b)The Allies prohibit all military parades within Germany and mandate that Germans disband all military bands.

  Aircraft (13)

  The Allies will confiscate all military and commercial aircraft (including gliders) for later disposition. The Allies prohibit all Germans from operating or helping to operate any aircraft, including those owned by foreign interests.