The Morgenthau Plan and Kaufman’s ‘Germany Must Perish!’: A Comparison

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From Karl Radl:
The Morgenthau Plan and Kaufman's 'Germany Must Perish!': A Comparison
https://thepurityspiral.com/the-morgenthau-plan-and-kaufmans-germany-must-perish-a-comparison/

As I intimated in my previous article on the subject of the probable derivation of the
Morgenthau Plan of 1944 from the plan to exterminate Germans that was advocated by Theodor Nathan Kaufman's 1941 book 'Germany Must Perish!' (1), it is necessary to perform a textual comparison of the concordance of these two documents bearing in mind that scenario that I previously outlined.

To briefly recap: I suggested that as Kaufman's 'Germany Must Perish!' was sent to major officials and journalists in 1941 with a highly successfully marketing campaign that caused reviews in major periodicals of the book to appear, coupled with the fact that Goebbels made it a centrepiece of the Third Reich anti-jewish propaganda effort. It would not be unreasonable to assert that the three parties who had a central hand in conceiving and advocating the Morgenthau Plan; i.e. Henry Morgenthau Jr, Harry Dexter White and Soviet Intelligence (with their leader in the USA being Rudy Baker [nee Rudolph Blum]), had read or were very aware of Kaufman's otherwise inconsequential book 'Germany Must Perish!'

Further, I pointed out that the book's proposed campaign of revenge and extermination by the sterilization of the Germans played nicely into the feelings that were elicited in all three parties, given the atrocity propaganda that was a staple of Allied and Soviet propaganda and the fact that all three of the parties concerned were jewish.

I also argued that the probable origin of the Morgenthau Plan lies in Soviet Intelligence; who Harry Dexter White worked for, and Morgenthau's central crime was his continued advocacy of the plan rather than its composition per se. Although the difference is slight it still should be made in the interests of historical accuracy as we should not ascribe to Morgenthau the authorship of the plan that bears his name per se (although he may well have made some minor adjustments to it), but we should ascribe to him the implementation of the plan which he cannot but have known would lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people across Europe.

I suggested Soviet Intelligence and White used Kaufman's plan in 'Germany Must Perish!' as a base for the Morgenthau Plan, but instead of the extermination of Germans they sought to create such a dire socio-economic situation in occupied Germany that the Allies would be discredited by their treatment under capitalistic so-called liberal democracies and thus it would pave the way for communist revolution as the 'working class would have nothing to lose but their chains.'

Now in order to understand the logic behind this thinking among the Soviet intelligence community as well as in White's mind, we have to remind ourselves of the fact that we are dealing here with convinced Marxists who sought to apply Marx's theories as if they were Hegel's 'end of philosophy'. They saw Marx, as many Marxists still do, as being the greatest philosopher and thinker in human history, whose ideas are, to paraphrase Marx's own critique of his fellow jewish socialist Lassalle's economic ideas, an 'iron law of history'.

This means that Marxists, past and present, will always attempt to frame their policy ideas within the context of their understanding of Marxism. When we understand this, we can begin to see the cynical logic behind the Morgenthau Plan.

Marx argued, you see, that the driving force of history was the interplay of economic forces and the ownership of the means of producing goods and services (i.e. the means of production). This meant that every idea and concept that had evolved in human history had a specific purpose based on the economic situation of the time. This is the difference in Marxism between the base (economics) and the superstructure (religion, patriotism, philosophy, identity, gender roles and so on) and is the rational behind the frequent Marxist claims that anything that isn't Marxist is a based on a 'social construct' as opposed to an objective material foundation.

Marx reasoned that every individual who did not own the means for producing goods and services themselves had nothing to sell but their ability to labour and produce goods and services for wages. This then meant that as the market for these goods and services became more competitive and new sources of capital were opened up by the internationalization of trade, then the owners of the means of production (i.e. the capitalists) would be forced to look to new ways to keep and even increase their profit margins: primarily by forcing down wages.

This combined with the fact that the owners of the means of production could get more value out of the labour power of each individual worker (Marx's conception of value was that it was directly linked to the amount of labour power used as opposed to things like resource scarcity) and could produce more goods and services now with less workers due to the advancement of technology creates what Marx called the 'theory of surplus value' and the 'law of diminishing returns'.

In other words: due to increased competition for jobs (i.e. the capitalists need less workers hence more pressure is put on any jobs that are created/already extant being exacerbated by the influx of cheap immigrant labour) and the advance of technology the workers could be paid less for their labour power. This would mean in turn that they would have less purchasing power and would thus have to either work more or consume less.

This Marx conceived of as a continuous cycle with the capitalists continually forcing down wages, thus impoverishing the wage earners more and more, while also using the high cost of keeping up with technological innovation and economics of scale to appropriate or force smaller, less efficient competitors (the so-called petit bourgeoisie, or to put it into more understandable language: small-scale capitalists) down into the ranks of the wage earners.

This would, so Marx believed, create a situation where there was a great material (i.e. economic) distance (i.e. inequality of wealth) between the owners of the means of production and the wage earners who created this surplus value. As there would be so obvious a difference then it would create increasing solidarity among wage earners, which in turn would create what Marx called 'class consciousness'.

Then, at an undefined point, the wage earners would be forced into a position where the owners of the means of production were paying them so little they could not manage to feed themselves or their families on what they were being paid. This would create increasing resentment acting as an engine to facilitate the development of this 'class consciousness' and with the increasing impoverishment of the wage earners, due to capitalist desire to make a profit, it would then mean that there would be a point at which the wage earners as a class would snap and revolt.

This would then in Marx's view be the start of the communist revolution.

The point of this necessary lengthy digression is simply to explain to the reader the logic behind the adaptation of the Morgthenau Plan to create the social and economic conditions necessary for communist revolution according to Marx from Kaufman's original plan to simply exterminate the German nation by sterilization.

Bearing in mind then that Marxism asserts the fact that the majority of the people must be impoverished to the point of starvation to cause the formation of a political working class movement against capitalism vis-a-vis 'class consciousness'. We can then go forward to compare Kaufman's plans to those of Morgenthau, but three years later.

Now before I begin I should briefly point out that my quotes from Kaufman's text are necessarily much longer than those from Morgenthau's 1944 memorandum in large part because the former is over a hundred pages while the latter is but eight. My use of longer quotes from Kaufman is intended to demonstrate that the ideas behind the Kaufman and Morgenthau plans are essentially the same. On this score I have taken pains to separate the text of Kaufman's specific recommendation in chapter seven of his book from his argument, so that it is shown to be the result, and then compared that recommendation with Morgenthau's.

Now to begin with the subject of the first of Morgenthau's recommendations. Kaufman states thus:

'For not only must their be no more German wars in fact; there must not even remain the slightest possibility of one ever again occurring. A final halt to German aggression, not a temporary cessation, must be the goal of the present struggle.
This does not mean an armed mastery over Germany, or a peace with political or territorial adjustments, or a hope based on a defeated and repentant nation. Such settlements are not sufficiently conclusive guarantees of no more German aggressions.
[...]
When the day of reckoning with Germany comes, as come it will, there will be only one obvious answer. No statesmen or politician or leader responsible for post-war settlements will have the right to indulge in the personal luxury of false sentiment and specious sanctimony and declare that Germany, misled by her leaders, shall deserve the right of resurrection! He will not be permitted this time to forget so easily the bomb-blasted, earth-entombed millions of women and children who lived through a hell on earth; the bullet-ridden, tank-crushed bodies of soldiers; the many countries whose energies were sapped and resources drained.
And most of all, he will not be permitted to disregard the unselfish sacrifices made by the common people so that the beast that is Germany shall never roam on earth again!
It is a definite obligation which the world owes to those who struggled and died against the German yesterday, and to those who are fighting him again today, as it is the bounden duty of the present generation to those yet unborn, to make certain that the vicious fangs of the German serpent shall never strike again. And since the venom of those fangs derives its fatal poison not from within the body, but from the war-soul of the German, nothing else would assure humanity safety and security but that that war-soul be forever expunged, and the diseased carcass which harbours it forever removed from this world. There is no longer any alternative.' (2)
Plus the following:

'For it must be patent by now that while all the Germans may not approve of the means being employed by the Nazis in achieving German-world-dominion, they are practically unanimous in agreeing that that goal must, now or in the future, be definitely achieved by Germany. Were the German nations to win this war, not one German would hesitate laying claim to a share in the loot. But, losing the war, they intend to be ready to disclaim, individually, the actions taken by then collectively, under their "government." Thus they intend to escape, once again, punishment for their crimes. Yet defeat will on no account erase their desire to conquer and rule the world. There is only one way to frustrate such a desire: the goal of world-dominion must be removed from the reach of the German and the only way to accomplish that is to remove the German from the world!' (3)
This then provides the rationale for the following recommendation by Kaufman:

'Immediately and completely disarm the German army and have all armaments removed from German territory.' (4)
Then compare this to Morgenthau's first recommendation:

'It should be the aim of the Allied Forces to accomplish the complete demilitarization of Germany in the shortest possible period of time after surrender. This means completely disarming the German Army and people (including the removal or destruction of all war material), the total destruction of the whole German armament industry, and the removal or destruction of other key industries which are basic to military strength.' (5)
It isn't difficult to see that in the above Morgenthau's recommendation on the need to, and mode of, de-militarising Germany is almost identical to Kaufman's of three years earlier, and indeed, if were to borrow the logic of Norman Cohn and Umberto Eco in their fulminations against the Protocols of Zion, we could almost say that Morgenthau was plagiarizing Kaufman.

All Morgenthau did was take Kaufman's proposal and add some specificity to parts of it!

This continues when we read Kaufman's next recommendation based on this same logic, which is as follows:

'Place all German utility and heavy industrial plants under heavy guard, and replace German workers by those of Allied nationality.' (6)
Compared to point B of Morgenthau's third recommendation, which is:

'All people within the area [the Ruhr] should be made to understand that this area will not again be allowed to become an industrial area. Accordingly, all people and their families within the area having special skills or technical training should be encouraged to migrate permanently from the area and should be as widely dispersed as possible.' (7)
Plus points B to E of Morgenthau's fourth recommendation, which are:

'(b) by transfer of German territory and German private rights in industrial property situated in such territory to invaded countries and the international organization under the program of partition;
(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 whatsoever outside of Germany.' (
Now in the above parallel text we can see that Morgenthau has once again taken Kaufman's basic recommendation and made some practical changes to it. In order to make it achieve the goal of removing the ability of Germany to 'make war' and also to impoverish them at the same time.

Kaufman recommends that German industrial plants (i.e. the Ruhr and to a lesser extent Silesia) be confiscated and Morgenthau envisions just this when he says that these should be unceremoniously stripped from their German owners and become the property of whichever state the territory they are located in has been gifted to, or, if in the new smaller Germany, they should be the property of an 'international organization' which will then dispose of them accordingly (i.e. to non-German owners).

We also should state that the reason that Silesia didn't factor into Morgenthau's calculations was simply because the Soviet Union was going to overrun that before the Allies did. Thus would not be a factor in any plan put together for the Allied nations.

Kaufman further recommends that German workers should be replaced with Allied ones - Morgenthau envisions just this when he tells us that the German workers should be told that they can no longer seek work at industrial factories in Germany and should be dispersed as widely as possible so that they can not, in Kaufman's words, create an industrial base for Germany again.

This is completed by Morgenthau's addition of the removal of all machinery and tangible movable assets from German factories, which are then to be redistributed to Allied countries so that they can be used by Allied workers to get Allied nations back on their feet economically.

We can thus see that once again Morgenthau's recommendations closely follow Kaufman's ideas with Morgenthau merely adding some detail and turning Kaufman's somewhat vague ideas into practical policy.

This continues when we read Kaufman's description of one of the policy ideas that he rejects. To wit:

'A final solution: Let Germany be policed forever by an international armed force?
Even is such a huge undertaking were feasible life itself would not have it so. As war begets war, suppression begets rebellion. Undreamed horrors would unfold.' (9)
Compare this to point C of Morgenthau's proposal:

'The area should be made an international zone to be governed by an international security organization to be established by the United Nations. In governing the area the international organization should be guided by policies designed to further the above stated objectives.' (10)
As well as Morgenthau's sixth recommendation:

'The military administration in Germany in the initial period should be carried out with a view toward the eventual partitioning of Germany into three states.' (11)
Now in Kaufman's work, he regards the idea of Germany being policed by an international armed force as simply being non-feasible and that it would simply lead to rebellion due to his conception that the 'German spirit' could never be crushed enough.

I would also opine that Kaufman's rejection of this alternative solution is probably partly a consequence of the time that he wrote 'Germany Must Perish!' (i.e. from 1938 to 1940) when the Third Reich seemed unstoppable and thus an 'international armed force' would have little practical meaning to anyone other than as a future pipe dream.

What Morgenthau does is to take Kaufman's rejected proposal and rework it into a practical basis for policy by putting a name to the 'international armed force' of Kaufman in an 'international security organization' under the fledgling United Nations, which then splits Germany up into three zones to be governed by different Allied powers (i.e. the United States, Britain and France) thus helping 'de-Germanize' the Germans by severing them from each other (i.e. restricting the power of Kaufman's bête noire 'Pan-Germanism') and then having different Allied powers dominate them economically, politically and culturally.

Thus we can see that Morgenthau is taking what he needs from Kaufman; and that means that he accepts proposals that Kaufman rejects, reworking them into practical policy once again.

We see a similar scenario unfold when we compare Kaufman's ideas about the re-education of the German people to what Morgenthau wrote.

Kaufman states as follows:

'If Hitler was able to make such rapid strides in resurrecting again the monstrosity that is Germanism, it was only because the German people, long before his birth, had already become completely instilled with each and every principle and precept, with every yearning and desire which he himself, later, came merely to express and advocate. The poisonous wine of destruction has long before been distilled; Hitler is merely the agent decanting the poisonous fluid from its bottle, which is the German war-soul, into the jug that is world humanity. In detailing those ingredients which combine to constitute the toxic formula of Germanism the author shall quote, wherever confirmation of his statements may be deemed advisable, principally from German sources. For after all no one can explain the German so well as he himself. He has made no secret of his character, his ambitions and his intentions. By his acts he has himself bared his heart and soul; by his words, by his own hand he will someday come to dig his own grave.' (12)
Then:

'According to her own writers, teachers and statesmen Germany has but one great reason for existing; that of achieving world-dominion! Since that is its highest aim, therefore, Germany constantly claims that it has every right to make free and liberal use of chicanery, deceit, intolerance, lust, persecution and oppression, in order to achieve that goal. Consequently such a perverted nation, such a State of human negation, views its vice as being the only true virtue in life, whereas to the Germans the virtues as they are known and may be practised by the rest of the world are merely vices due to the latter's decay and degeneration! As though there exists anywhere in the world a nation which can boast of degeneration in the same degree as Germany!' (13)
Then:

'Germanism – the theory of a master race of Germans destined to enslave a weak world by force and brutality – had been an unvoiced doctrine of German belief since tribal days until the latter part of the last century when it reached its maturity by becoming fashioned into a vast and well-organized movement. Its astounding and ambitious program amalgamated all the major doctrines and beliefs of such German teachers, writers, statesmen and philosophers as Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel, von Bernhardi, Rohrbach, Treitschke and Spengler. And because the doctrine which it preached touched upon the very roots of the German soul, and embraced the fundamental tenets of the German intellect, the movement met with immediate and tremendously popular response. In fact its program was so popular with the Germans that within ten years after its inception its malignant dogma was already spread throughout the entire world.' (14)
Then:

'Treitschke was a war-monger and a "might makes right" advocate of the first rank. Possessing a natural gift of eloquence he held his students spellbound during his lectures on "conquer at all costs" for, according to his interpretation of Germany's development and history, it had to pursue such a course in order to spread itself beyond its boundaries. At first he set Europe as the area of Germany's "Lebenstraum" but, after the success of the German army in 1870 he enlarged and expanded upon his original declaration by stating that the world was Germany's to conquer and dominate; that through foisting war upon the world the German nation was destined to become the "super-state" of the universe, and to hold its people in thraldom.
These teachings so appealed to the German character that Treitschke, like Hitler, soon captured the intellectuals as well as the masses of his day. His doctrines were spread throughout Germany by his many pupils until, eventually, practically every educated German of that day fell under his influence. Conceivably, he could not have inspired such a profound belief in such monstrous doctrines unless, in substance, they embraced aims and ideas already very definitely existing as inherent in the German character and innate in his soul. Many of those beliefs explain much of Germany's present actions.' (15)
Kaufman then moves on to tell his readers why re-educating the Germans would not be possible.

To wit:

'Re-educate the younger generation?
Even were such a vast program put into operation it is highly doubtful whether it would be worth the effort, or achieve its objective. The soul is a greater and infinitely more powerful force than the brain. And the martial characteristics of the German are linked indelibly with his spirit and have become an integral part of his soul. Some day that war-soul would again come to dominate his brain.' (16)
Kaufman's resulting recommendation is as follows:

'Compel the German population of the apportioned territories to learn the language of its area, and within one year to cease the publication of all books, newspapers and notices in the German language, as well as to restrict German-language broadcasts and discontinue the maintenance of German-language schools.' (17)
Now compare this to points A and B of Morgenthau's fifth recommendation. To wit:

'All schools and universities will be closed until an Allied
(a) Commission of Education has formulated an effective reorganization program. It is contemplated that it may require a considerable period of time before any institutions of higher education are reopened. Meanwhile the education of German students in foreign universities will not be prohibited. Elementary schools will be reopened as quickly as appropriate teachers and textbooks are available.
(b) All German radio stations and newspapers, magazines, weeklies, etc. shall be discontinued until adequate controls are established and an appropriate program formulated.' (18)
Kaufman once again rejects the policy of re-educating the German people because, like with his rejection of an international armed force policing Germany, he does not see the scope of such a proposal to be realistic. This is partially to do with the time that Kaufman was writing once again in that such a proposal would seem rather, shall we say, mild to Kaufman's primarily jewish audience so near the apex of German military power and with their ears filled with stories of alleged German atrocities against the jews.

The other reason is ideological in that, as Kaufman himself tells us, he does not believe that the 'German problem' has anything to do with how Germans are educated (i.e. Germanism does not emanate from rational thought i.e. 'the brain'), but rather it is an innate characteristic of the Germans (i.e. Germanism emanates from the German soul and thus requires the physical destruction of the Germans to expunge).

Morgenthau however disagrees with this and sees the problem as primarily one of re-educating the Germans, to which purposes he once again turns Kaufman's rejected proposal into practical policy. He essentially adds the policy steps required to facilitate Kaufman's rejected idea into being a now practicable policy.

Kaufman's actual recommendation is interesting precisely because we should note that in it Kaufman sets out the policy of the de-culturalization of the German people by inserting the culture of Germany's neighbours over them.

This is taken by Morgenthau as the unstated basis of his sixth recommendation (to split Germany up into three areas of governance by different Allied powers) which ensures the socio-political element of the cultural domination is in place to allow it to be affected, while points A and B of the fifth recommendation provide the basis of how this cultural domination should be achieved by preventing any German publications whatsoever. Thus meaning that all German publications would have to be printed and brought in from abroad that would in turn mean that the publications were filled with the culture of the relevant Allied power.

This would ensure that the Germans were de-culturalized and then re-culturalized by the exposure to the culture of relevant Allied powers, which Kaufman recommended and Morgenthau put into practice.

We should note that Morgenthau's changes in his ideas on the re-education from the Germans do have a different ideological assumption driving them (i.e. that the material is what matters not the national spirit [or more put more succinctly the ideological difference between Kaufman as a jewish nationalist and Morgenthau as a left-leaning liberal]) but that most Morgenthau's changes are merely cosmetic to Kaufman's rejected idea as well as his actual recommendation.

Continuing on this theme of splitting Germany into small independent states in order to defeat the looming spectre of 'pan-Germanism' Kaufman argues as follows:

'According to Treitschke the individual has no right of his own, but exists only for the State which has the exclusive right to use him as it wills. There is no other force except the will of the State, and war is the only and best way in which that will might be employed by it.' (19)
He then poses the question to himself about whether the breaking up of Germany into small independent states would solve the 'German problem' or not. He answers it thus:

'Well then, break Germany up into small autonomous states? Nonsense!
That Pan-Germanism which has received blind allegiance in Berlin of every German irrespective of his remoteness or his nationality could not overnight endure such an arbitrary and weak barrier to its dreams.' (20)
His recommendation having rejected splitting Germany up into small independent states is thus:

'Partition Germany and apportion its lands. The accompanying map gives some idea of possible land adjustments which might be made in connection with Germany's extinction.' (21)
Compare this to points A to C of Morgenthau's sixth recommendation, which are as follows:

'(a) Dismiss all policy-making officials of the Reich government and deal primarily with local governments.
(b) Encourage the re-establishment of state governments in each of the states (Lander) corresponding to 18 states into which Germany is presently divided and in addition make the Prussian provinces separate states.
(c) Upon the partition of Germany, the various state governments should be encouraged to organize a federal government for each of the newly partitioned areas. Such new governments should be in the form of a confederation of states, with emphasis on states' rights and a large degree of local autonomy.' (22)
Now in the above we can see that once again Kaufman's rejected idea is actually the one adopted by Morgenthau, but in this case we can also see that Morgenthau has also used Kaufman's actual recommendation and combined them into a practical policy base. Kaufman rejects the idea that devolving Germany into its constituent states would work as he, as has been shown above, believed that the problem of 'Germanism' (i.e. Germans eternally wanting to conquer and enslave the known world in Kaufman's conception of them) was inherent to the German people and thus could not be cured by re-education and the complete destruction of the former state of affairs.

Morgenthau disagrees and takes Kaufman's rejected idea that Germany should be devolved into its constituent states as his point B, having added the necessary step (to allow this devolution/decentralization to occur) of dismissing or rendering ineffective the members of the German central government in point A. This then creates a highly decentralized government, which is split over three zones of Allied occupation (i.e. Germany is subject to a partition as Kaufman recommended) which Morgenthau then remedies the problem of by using Kaufman's recommendation in modified form of having a partitioned Germany with a central government of each partition being run by a different Allied power, thus causing Germany to be de facto absorbed into said country or at least becoming a puppet rump state of that country.

Morgenthau has simply takien what Kaufman wrote three years earlier and once again brought it into line with the markedly different political and military situation of 1944.

The borrowings continue when we see Kaufman state as follows:

'There remains then but one mode of ridding the world forces of Germanism – and that is to stem the source from which issue those war-lusted souls, by preventing the people of Germany from ever again reproducing their kind. This modern method, known to science as Eugenic Sterilization, is at once practical, humane and thorough. Sterilization has become a byword of science, as the best means of ridding the human race of its misfits: the degenerate, the insane, the hereditary criminal.' (23)
Then:

'Firstly, no physical pain will be imposed upon the inhabitants of Germany through its application, a decidedly more humane treatment than they will have deserved. As a matter of fact it is not inconceivable that after Germany's defeat, the long-suffering peoples of Europe may demand a far less humane revenge than that of mere sterilization.
Secondly, execution of the plan would in no way disorganize the present population nor would it cause any sudden mass upheavals and dislocations. The consequent gradual disappearance of the Germans from Europe will leave no more negative effect upon that continent than did the gradual disappearance of the Indians upon this.' (24)
Then:

'Make one exception to an otherwise severely strict enforcement of total sterilization, by exempting from such treatment only those Germans whose relatives, being citizens of various victor nations, assume financial responsibility for their actions.' (25)
Then compare this to Morgenthau's seventh and eighth recommendations, which are:

'The Allied Military Government shall not assume responsibility for such economic problems as price controls, rationing, unemployment, production, reconstruction, distribution, consumption, housing, or transportation, or take any measures designed to maintain or strengthen operations. The responsibility for sustaining the German economy and people rests with the German people with such facilities as may be available under the circumstances.' (26)
And:

'During a period of at least twenty years after surrender adequate controls, including controls over foreign trade and tight restrictions on capital imports, shall be maintained by the United Nations designed to prevent in the newly-established states the establishment or expansion of key industries basic to the German military potential and to control other key industries.' (27)
Now on the face of it Kaufman's recommendations and Morgenthau's plans seem rather different, don't they?

Kaufman on the one hand is advocating the mass sterilization of the German people leading to their extermination over the period of a lifetime, while Morgenthau is refusing to give any economic or food aid to the Germans and reduce any imports to a trickle.

They seem to be completely unrelated until we take into account the difference in ideological outlook of those who created the Morgenthau plan versus that of Kaufman. Kaufman, as I have said, was a jewish nationalist who subscribed to a quasi-biological view of the origin of German foreign and domestic policy: thus to Kaufman the solution would have to logically be extermination, otherwise it would no solution at all.

By contrast those who created the Morgenthau plan, as I have pointed out above, were Marxists (i.e. Harry Dexter White and Soviet Intelligence) and did not subscribe to what they, still to this day, call 'biological determinism'. Instead of sterilizing the Germans, they wanted to create so dire a socio-economic situation that it would cause the German people to starve and thus cause, as remember Marxism predicts will necessarily happen, a communist revolution.

Kaufman's idea of sterilizing the Germans would be, and was, essentially untenable in part because to do so would probably cause fighting to break out afresh in addition to the considerable loss of Allied moral capital that would occur, as well as there being little or no support, except among jews, for such a radical action. It is worth remembering incidentally that in the 1930s a large number of Americans citizens actively identified as being German-American and any attempt to sterilize Germans en masse would lead to political disaster (and probably a great deal of violence) at home for an administration that dared to undertake so overtly vicious a vengeance action.

Kaufman's idea was thus impossible to implement, but we should note that Kaufman himself introduced a caveat into his recommendation. He believed that sterilization would be the humane way to deal with the 'German problem', but he thought that public opinion might call for something far more drastic and painful by way of revenge.

Now if we look at what Morgenthau is outlining, he is doing two things. He is removing the means for German industrial and agricultural self-sufficiency (the removal of machinery, reduction of territory and the breaking up of effective government [hence no subsidies or local schemes to help share what was left]) and then preventing the Germans from importing products and goods (e.g. foodstuffs) from outside the country.

This is nothing less than a blueprint for mass starvation, which is precisely what occurred. Kaufman's caveat is simply applied to this by understanding that because Kaufman's original policy idea is completely untenable, it then means that Morgenthau had to look elsewhere for his means of exterminating the German people. He found his methodology in Stalin's own famine caused by massive changes to the economic situation in the Ukraine: starvation.

Starvation would exterminate the Germans over a shorter period of time and would also be a vicious play on National Socialism's own demands for self-sufficiency in the 1930s. It would be Morgenthau's nasty way of saying to the Germans: 'you wanted to be self-sufficient so have at it!'

Now, I am sure some readers will be wondering why I am suggesting that Morgenthau deliberately set out to exterminate the Germans with his plan. Well if we simply look at his eighth recommendation, then we notice that it isn't intended for just one or two years, but rather for twenty!

Twenty years of not being able to important foodstuffs in bulk while not having much machinery or technology left to produce necessities means simply death by starvation on a colossal scale. Bear in mind that not only would there not be enough food for the Germans, but there wouldn't be any medical supplies (or certainly nowhere near enough) to deal with the consequences of having little to no undamaged infrastructure, industrial or agricultural capacity.

Considering that millions died in the few years the years the Morgenthau plan was implemented and that revolutionary politics of both the right and left took massive steps forward in those years, it is not difficult to see that twenty years of the same would either virtually exterminate the German people or cause a revolution.

The former would be desirable to Morgenthau and Kaufman given their focus on jewish vengeance for alleged atrocities, while the latter would be desirable to Harry Dexter White and Soviet Intelligence given that it would allow the fledgling German Democratic Republic (GDR) to ride in on a proverbial white horse to save the day with Soviet backing.

Thus we can see how while the Kaufman and Morgenthau plans look very different on this score, the latter is actually derived from modifying the former to take into account its untenable methodology by replacing it with a less obvious one.

This plays into what Kaufman suggests next:

'Segregate the German army into groups, concentrate them in severely restricted areas, and summarily sterilize them.' (28)
Compare this to points A and B of Morgenthau's tenth recommendation:

'(a) No person in Germany (except members of the United Nations and neutral countries) shall be permitted to wear any military insignia of rank or branch of service, service ribbons or military medals.
(b) No such persons shall be permitted to wear, after 6 months from the cessation of hostilities any military uniform or any uniform of any quasi military organizations.' (29)
Now given what we have discussed above about the replacing of Kaufman's ideas about the mass sterilization of Germans with Morgenthau's mass starvation of Germans, it is not difficult to see that these two proposals are more or less the same, as Kaufman is advocating that the German armed forces be forcibly sterilized en masse, while Morgenthau is more subtle in that he simply disbands them and forces them back into the German economy when they would be among those least able to fend for themselves, with many afflicted with mental trauma (such as the then unrecognized PTSD) as well as the numerous ex-soldiers who were physically handicapped and were broadly unsuitable for any kind of manual labour (which was after all the only kind of labour available in Morgenthau's vision for Germany).

This would naturally lead to the former soldiers of the Wehrmacht being some of the first, along with German children and elderly, who would die from starvation due to being unable to fend for themselves without the organized assistance that Morgenthau had explicitly denied to them.

Thus once again we can see how Kaufman's recommendation forms the basis for Morgenthau's.

Kaufman however has plans for whatever able-bodied members of the Wehrmacht remained in Allied captivity. To wit:

'Divide the German army (after its sterilization has been completed) into labor battalions, and allocate their services toward the rebuilding of those cities which they ruined.' (30)
Then compare this to point D in Morgenthau's Appendix B, which states:

'Apart from the question of established guilt for special crimes, mere membership in the S.S., the Gestapo and similar groups will constitute the basis for inclusion into compulsory labor battalion to serve outside Germany for reconstruction purposes.' (31)
The connection between these two statements is fairly obvious in that in Kaufman's original recommendation all Wehrmacht personnel would be formed into labour battalions to aid in the rebuilding of Allied economies. This is modified by Morgenthau to be not all Wehrmacht personnel, but rather any individual who was a member of the SS (and remember by that broad logic this would include the Waffen-SS who by themselves were around a million strong at their peak in 1943-1944, as well as other branches including the large number of unpaid male and female SS members, as well as every single policeman, plus a large number of the medical doctors in Germany) or National Socialist organizations such as the SA or the NSDAP itself.

In effect this means that the Morgenthau plan would imprison the elite of German society, as well as removing a good part of those with the ability to help alleviate some of the suffering of ordinary Germans, and use them for slave labour in Allied countries. This would then further increase the effect of starvation in Germany and also remove the leadership cadre of the radical right, giving the radical left (the Communists) a major advantage in propagandizing the remaining Germans with the Marxist message.

This removal of the leadership cadre from the radical right is also facilitated by the insertion of a recommendation in the Morgenthau plan (Point G in Appendix B) that is not found in Kaufman's original plan: the breaking up of the junker estates (32) and thus depriving the German aristocracy of a good part of their ownership of the means of production and thus their influence, in the Marxist view.

It is worth remembering incidentally that Marxists to this day still claim that the Third Reich was brought about by capitalists and was a capitalist state contra to the scholarly literature, such as the pioneering studies by Conan Fischer and the Pools among others, which have debunked these claims time and time again. Hence the Morgenthau's explicit targeting for the German aristocracy in addition to those who were directly involved with the NSDAP.

Thus we can see that Morgenthau draws his idea directly from Kaufman (in fact, as I have remarked above, it could even be argued that Morgenthau more or less plagiarized Kaufman) and merely adds some flesh to it to make the policy practical and also reflect the radically different situation that he was dealing with some three years later.

Yet again we find Kaufman prefiguring Morgenthau when he states:

'We need not condemn the Germans. They stand self-condemned. For it suffices us to read and hear those words written and spoken only by Germans; to endure sufferings and dislocations caused solely by the German people in pursuit of their megalomaniacal ideals and demonic aspirations to realize that it is the Germans themselves who decree, almost demand, their ostracism from their fellow-man. They have lost the wish to be human beings. They are but beasts; they must be dealt with as such.' (33)
Which then forms the basis of the following recommendation:

'Restrict all German civilian travel beyond established borders until all sterilization has been completed.' (34)
Then compare this to Morgenthau's twelfth recommendation:

'All aircraft (including gliders), whether military or commercial, will be confiscated for later disposition. No German shall be permitted to operate or to help operate such aircraft, including those owned by foreign interests.' (35)
In addition to points one to three of point H of Morgenthau's Appendix B, which are thus:

'(1) A Proclamation shall be issued prohibiting any person resident in Germany from leaving or attempting to leave Germany, except with permission from the Allied Military Government.
(2) Violation of this Proclamation shall be an offense triable by military commissions of the Allied Military Government and heavy penalties shall be prescribed, including death.
(3) All possible steps shall be taken by the military authorities to prevent any such person from leaving (without permission).' (36)
Now clearly once again Morgenthau has taken Kaufman's bare bones proposal of not allowing any German to travel outside of Germany (until the mass sterilization of Germans had been completed) and then modified it into a practical policy by removing any kind of aircraft (down to even gliders) from German ownership and potential German use (hence the inclusion of foreign-owned aircraft in Germany) and also making it a criminal offence potentially punishable by death for a German to try and leave Germany (which you have to admit by any score is rather extreme especially given Morgenthau's other recommendations).

Once we factor in the change of methodology from mass sterilization to mass starvation we can see that Morgenthau's variant is actually more genocidal than Kaufman's in that it keeps the Germans corralled up in Germany with little food and no ability to help themselves. It essentially makes Germany one very large death camp targeted specifically at Germans with the tacit objective, as understood by Harry Dexter White and Soviet Intelligence, of increasing German suffering so much that a communist revolution ensues.

Leaving the recommendations by Kaufman for trials and killing high-ranking Germans, which are also echoed in the Morgenthau plan to one side here. (37) We can thus conclude that the Morgenthau plan is indeed drawn directly from the plan outlined in Kaufman's 1941 book 'Germany Must Perish!'

So much for Kaufman and his book being 'unimportant' and 'inconsequential'!

References

(1) http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-origin-of-morgenthau-plan-in.html
(2) Theodor Nathan Kaufman, 1941, 'Germany Must Perish!', 1st Edition, Argyle Press: Newark, Ch. 1; as I have no print copy of this rare work I have used that available at Wikisource (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Germany_Must_Perish) which has no pagination. Thus I will refer to chapters rather than pages.
(3) Ibid, Ch. 2
(4) Ibid, Ch. 7
(5) Henry Morgenthau, 'Suggested Post-Surrender Program for Germany' (September, 1944),
p. 1 (http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box31/t297a01.html)
(6) Kaufman, Op. Cit., Ch. 7
(7) Morgenthau, Op. Cit., p. 2
( Ibid.
(9) Kaufman, Op. Cit., Ch. 6
(10) Morgenthau, Op. Cit., p. 2
(11) Ibid, p. 3
(12) Kaufman, Op. Cit., Ch. 2
(13) Ibid.
(14) Ibid, Ch. 3
(15) Ibid.
(16) Ibid, Ch. 6
(17) Ibid, Ch. 7
(18) Morgenthau, Op. Cit., p. 2
(19) Kaufman, Op. Cit., Ch. 3
(20) Ibid, Ch. 6
(21) Ibid, Ch. 7
(22) Morgenthau, Op. Cit., p. 3
(23) Kaufman, Op. Cit., Ch. 7
(24) Ibid.
(25) Ibid.
(26) Morgenthau, Op. Cit., p. 3
(27) Ibid.
(28) Kaufman, Op. Cit., Ch. 7
(29) Morgenthau, Op. Cit., pp. 3-4
(30) Kaufman, Op. Cit., Ch. 7
(31) Morgenthau, Op. Cit., p. 7
(32) Ibid, p. 8
(33) Kaufman, Op. Cit., Ch. 1
(34) Ibid, Ch. 7
(35) Morgenthau, Op. Cit., p. 4
(36) Ibid, p. 8
(37) For those interested compare the recommendations in Kaufman, Ch. 7 with those of points A and B of Morgenthau's Appendix B and you will find at least part of the overt rationale for the infamous Nuremberg trials.