The Morgenthau Plan and JCS 1067

Abstract

The pattern for the post-war treatment of Germany had been set at Tehran and the architect of it was Joseph Stalin.✳ Using arguments not unreminiscent of those employed by Georges Clemenceau twenty-five years before at the Peace Conference of Paris, the Marshal demanded Draconian measures against Germany to the end that she might never again be capable of aggression. These measures included complete dismemberment and the prevention of any sort of war-potential remaining in German hands after the Reich had been partitioned. Stalin’s interpretation of this latter measure was all-embracing. While President Roosevelt thought in terms of the control of war industries, the Marshal proposed the virtual de-industrialization of Germany, claiming that civilian industries, like watch-making and furniture manufacture, were easily capable of being turned to military production and that the Germans could therefore not be trusted with them.