The Allies’ Revenge on Germans Was Pure Evil *Disturbing Historical Content

Hitler is dead. The fascist Reich has fallen. But what comes next? This was the question facing the Allied leaders in the final months of the war. What should they do with war ravaged Germany after the fighting was done? How would they deal with the Nazis who remained? And what could be done to make sure Germany didn’t come back for round three? Today on a day in history, we’ll explore the controversial post-war plans the Allies had for Germany.

 Germany was in ruins by the time the war was over. The Nazis had squeezed the country for all its resources, industry, and manpower. Over 6 years of war, it had lost almost 7 million people. Most of them young men, and most of its major cities like Berlin, Dresden, and Cologne had been reduced to rubble. Millions more men were prisoners of the Allied powers.

 The civilian population had also been hit hard by aerial bombing and the brutal advance of Allied troops, especially the Soviet soldiers who brought looting, rape, and murder. The idea that the Allies advanced with clean hands through Germany is a post-war myth. Of course, the Nazis had committed countless crimes against humanity themselves, and many allies felt everything they did in Germany was a fair response to the atrocity of Hitler’s regime.

 Much has been said about Soviet abuses in Germany. We have our own video on that subject, but the Western Allies committed their share of crimes, too. American and British soldiers were guilty of looting, abuse, rape, and murder during their advance through Germany as well. A reporter for the Chicago Daily News, who was accompanying US troops through Germany, described it as wanton vandalism.

 They naturally take what they find if it looks interesting, and nobody says anything. The Allies embraced policies that it condemned in its enemies. For example, for all of the condemnation of how Germany and Japan used captured soldiers as forced labor, the Allies saw no problem with using German prisoners as forced laborers to rebuild Europe.

Britain imported German prisoners of war to repair damage from the Blitz. While France was eager to use Germans to repair the devastation caused by the occupation, some 700,000 German prisoners were laboring in France by summer of 1946. Stalin, with his millions of captured Nazi soldiers, put the prisoners to work in rebuilding Soviet industry, while many others ended up in the infamous Siberian goologs.

Conditions for German prisoners were often terrible. Outbreaks of disease and malnutrition claimed thousands of prisoners lives in American, British, and French prison camps after the war. Things were even worse in Russia, where tens of thousands of prisoners ended up in the infamous Siberian gulogs.

 We also have to acknowledge the fate of Germans outside of Germany. The end of the war saw a massive program of deportation and resettlement of Europe’s German minorities. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and several other nations expelled a total of 12 million ethnic Germans, often from places that they had called home for centuries.

 We have an entire video dedicated to this overlooked policy that resulted in the largest ethnic cleansing in European history. For decades before the war, Germany had been the industrial powerhouse of Europe. Its industry was second only to America in the entire world. The war destroyed most of it and the allies believed in crippling what remained of German industry to ensure it could never rise again.

 In 1944, the US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgantha Jr. drew up a plan to control Germany’s post-war industry and permanently end the threat of German expansion. The Morganthal plan demanded the total demilitarization of Germany and the destruction of all military industry. East Prussia and southern Seleia would go to Poland and France would get the Sarland and the Palisinate.

 The rest of Germany would then be split in two. Bavaria would form the core of a southern German state while Prussia and Saxony would be the center of a North German state. The plan also proposed that the Ruer Valley, the center of German industry for decades, would be placed under international control and be completely de-industrialized.

 Every factory and railroad would be dismantled and melted down. and a total ban placed on any new industry in the area for the foreseeable future. Anyone with any industrial skills would be encouraged to leave. Furthermore, the remaining German industry outside of the ruer would also be broken down and its equipment redistributed around the war torn country of Europe.

 The goal, in Morgan Fa’s own words, was to take the most industrialized nation in Europe and render her primarily agricultural and pastoral in character. That way, Germany could never embark on World War II. Morgan thou approached President Roosevelt and made a persuasive case. Roosevelt had been planning to rebuild Germany as a potential ally, but Morgan thou convinced him that punishment was better than recovery.

 Secretary of State Cordell Hull quickly realized that Morgan thou’s plan was unworkable. Germany’s farmland could only support around 60% of the population and without imports which Morgan Fa planned to restrict millions would starve. Morgan Fa and Roosevelt were unmoved. Secretary Hull was disgusted by the plan. It weighed so heavily on him that he stopped eating and sleeping which eventually led to him being hospitalized and resigning from office.

 Without hold to push back, Morgan thal’s plan became Roosevelt’s main vision for Germany. In late 1944, Roosevelt presented the plan to Church Hill. Even Church Hill thought it was too harsh. But after allegedly being bribed with billions of dollars of extra aid to Britain, Churchill accepted the plan.

 The plan leaked in September 1944 and caused a global controversy. While many supported the harsh plan, others criticized. There had been many in America, especially in the business world, who wanted Germany rebuilt as quickly as possible so trade could resume. The Nazis themselves immediately seized on the plan as proof of a Jewish plot to wipe out Germany if it lost.

 The American military was also quite opposed to the plan. The Morgan thou plan promised to ruin Germany if they lost. So, German soldiers might fight even harder than they would have if they were promised a more merciful settlement. In fact, interviews with captured German soldiers in the Battle of Aen in the weeks after the plan leaked confirmed that many German soldiers felt they had to fight harder since the Morgan Foul plan would essentially destroy Germany for generations.

 The public reaction to the plan was so negative that Roosevelt immediately disavowed it. The Morganthal plan was unceremoniously scrapped. Although Morgan thou stood by it. He even published a book Germany is our problem in October 1945 where he defended the plan and hope to influence policy in the newly created American occupation zone of Germany.

 But although Morgan thou’s plan was rejected, the actual Allied policy for Germany was anything but gentle. In September 1944, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued Directive 1067 outlining the policies for US troops in the early stages of the occupation of Germany. American troops were strictly forbidden from fratinizing with the German public.

 They could not speak to German civilians unless it was necessary, could not share a drink, give a gift, visit their home, have a dinner, or even shake the hand of a German civilian, or they would be court marshaled. Of course, actually applying such a law in practice was easier said than done, but any soldier caught doing these things could and would be punished for it.

 Morgan thou’s desire to decimate the German economy was echoed in JCS-67. American troops were not to allow the repair of any German industry of military equipment for the time being. They were also ordered to halt any remaining industry, especially for key resources like oil, steel, or ship building. Treasury officials were even sent out to visit industrial sites recently captured by the US to ensure these instructions were being followed.

These were only temporary measures for the early stages of the occupation. The allies would also need to decide on a longerterm strategy for post-war occupation. At the Potam conference in July 1945, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union agreed on the four Ds of demilitarization, denazification, democratization, and decartalization.

 Of course, these words meant different things to different people. For the Americans and the British, democratization meant liberal democracy, while for the Soviets, it meant a system that only ever returned communists. To the Westerners, decartalization meant the dismantling of Nazi era state control of the economy in favor of private businesses, while the Soviets meant integrating German industry into a communist system.

 At first, all powers agreed that Germany could not be allowed to return to its former strength. In March 1946, the Allied Control Council issued production caps for German industry to prevent this. It was only allowed to produce so much material, and only so many factories would be rebuilt. The caps were set at the same level of production that Germany saw during the worst of the depression in 1932.

For example, Germany’s annual steel production was capped at 5.8 million ingots compared to a previous output of 54 million. The allies said that this industry could be used to remilitarize. Of course, direct military industry like tanks and weapons were completely prohibited, but the sweeping Allied production controls also limited countless other industries that had peacetime applications.

 Production of fertilizers, planes, cars, ships, ball bearings, heavy machinery, gasoline, and most forms of chemical production were strictly limited at levels below those needed to rebuild or maintain German society on any level comparable to that of the rest of Europe. Within months, it was obvious that the policies were having the intended disastrous effect.

Germany suffered shortages of everything from food to clothes to furniture. But the collapse of German industry also meant that much of Europe suffered as well. It turned out that it was difficult to rebuild a continent when its primary industrial power was intentionally crippled. As one US official put it, “This thing was assembled by economic idiots.

 It makes no sense to forbid the most skilled workers in Europe from producing as much as they can in a continent that is desperately short of everything. The Allies also targeted many of Germany’s most useful and productive citizens. Under Hitler’s rule, the Nazi party reached into every aspect of life. All schools, courts, and media organizations were Nazified, and members of almost every major profession had to join the party and its organizations.

 While some were clearly committed Nazis, others were members in name only and had simply been given no choice but to join up to keep their jobs. Clearly, something had to be done to denazify postwar Germany. But how far should the Allies go? The Allies promised a program of dennazification that would work on both an institutional and individual level.

Nazi organizations would be torn down while individual Nazis were subjected to punishment, re-education, and often banishment from their job. The Allies took a guilty until proven innocent approach, applying collective punishment to all alleged Nazis until they could demonstrate why they deserve to be exempt.

 Millions of Germans found themselves kicked out of their jobs with many imprisoned or subjected to re-education. This comprised almost the entirety of Germany’s social, economic, and intellectual capital. Engineers, doctors, lawyers, administrators, teachers, and more were dismissed. For a country already suffering from massive population loss, the effective removal of so many from these vital professions crippled Germany’s recovery efforts.

 The Americans recognized the devastation this policy caused and did lighten the penalties. For example, they offered a total amnesty to all Nazis under the age of 27 who didn’t have any particular charges against them. The argument was that these younger Nazis had been indoctrinated into the party at a young age and didn’t know any better.

 Still, the older Nazis in an age group that included most of Germany’s skilled people were not given such relief. But even this action didn’t have a huge effect since most known Nazi men of that demographic were soldiers who were already prisoners performing forced labor elsewhere in Europe. At a time when Germany was in the most desperate need of its best and brightest, the Allies ensured they were purged from accepted society.

 But it was soon clear that employment was a secondary concern for Germans. Simply staying alive was a challenge as starvation swept in. The collapse of the Nazrun state economy had a disastrous effect on Germany’s food situation. This was exacerbated by the confiscation of much of Germany’s most valuable agricultural land in Pomerania, Lower Clesia, Posen and Brandenburgg.

Germany was already facing food shortages by the end of the war, which only got worse after months of fierce fighting inside the country. Without German industry, it was difficult to support agriculture. Germany simply wasn’t producing necessities like tractors or fertilizer needed to work at the level it had to to feed the population.

 Many Germans became dependent on allied rations. By early 1946, Britain, France, and the US were each supplying millions of people with rations every day in their occupied zones. But even this wasn’t enough. With all of Europe struggling, the Allies could only offer between 1,00 and,500 calories worth of rations per day, or only about half of what an average person needed to survive, and much less than a working person, the sort who might be trying to rebuild Germany or work its farms would need.

 Allied officials within Germany were well aware of the crisis in front of them. Former President Herbert Hoover was sent to investigate the situation in person and reported that Germany had around 25 million more people than it could currently feed. The suffering was so immense that American officials feared that the desperate Germans would run towards communism simply on the promise of having food on the table.

 Children suffered especially hard. With so many orphans after the war, many children had no one to look out for them. Infant mortality hit frightening levels as Germany’s ravaged medical system was unable to provide vital care. Hundreds of thousands of orphans roam Germany’s bombed out streets scavenging for food. However, when the American public found out about the starvation crisis, President Truman banned anyone sending private charity to help them.

 Truman defended this policy, saying it wasn’t fair that any private aid go to Germany until the rest of Europe was restored. No one should be called upon to pay for Germany’s misfortune except Germany itself, he wrote. The results of these policies to hold back Germany’s recovery were predictable.

 At least 500,000 Germans died of starvation or related causes in the months after the war. By late 1946, it was obvious that Allied policy was proving disastrous. With the intense emotions of wartime now faded and news of the problems within Germany becoming common knowledge, Allied governments faced new pressure to provide real aid and recovery to the German people.

 Furthermore, with the dawn of the Cold War, both sides wanted to prove the superiority of their economic system by showing how it could rebuild Germany better than the alternative. In September 1946, US Secretary of State James Burns announced a shift in American policy. The US would now focus on rebuilding Germany rather than punishing it.

 There would be no more production caps on its industry. Dennazification policies would be softer on those not accused of serious crimes, and special attention would be given to the recovery of Germany’s agricultural sector. The change in policy was celebrated in Germany. The Soviets responded with their own policy shift at the Moscow conference of early 1947 where they committed to a similar idea of German recovery, but on a communist model.

 Moscow and Washington began pouring money and manpower into their halves of Germany, partly out of humanitarian concern and partly as a cold war tool. German quality of life did begin to rapidly improve by the 1950s. West Germany especially benefited from this investment, receiving 1.4 $4 billion in aid under the Marshall plan to rebuild the country.

 By the 1960s, West Germany was a place of prosperity, political rights, and modernization comparable to most other capital European nations. However, that does not cancel out the fact that Allied policy was intentionally destructive and deadly to Germans long after the war was over. Between 500,000 and 2 million excess German deaths occurred between May 1945 and the end of 1946.

Millions were subjected to theft, imprisonment, forced labor, and rape by Allied forces advancing through the country. Economically, German industrial output in 1947 stood at 10% of its pre-war amount with millions of skilled workers intentionally barred from working to rectify this. The Allies were aware of the disastrous consequences that their policies would have, from mass starvation to industrial collapse, but supported them anyway.

 Had the Cold War not given the Allies a reason to pour money into Germany for their ideological pride, how much longer would it have taken for them to reconsider their punitive approach? Many have justified these policies by pointing to the Nazis own immense crimes. However, as one journalist noted in 1946, “These horrors should not become the theme of sports competition in which we endeavor to outdo the Nazis.

 We have to judge the enemy, but we have a duty not to resemble them.” But did the Allies go too far in punishing Germany’s civilians, or was it a just reward for the terror the country had unleashed on the rest of Europe? Let us know what you think in the comments below.