Challenge: Deindustrialised Germany

Challenge: Turn Germany into a poor, agricultural-pastoral country with little modern industry, ideally during or after World War Two, without involving nuclear weapons.
 
Challenge: Turn Germany into a poor, agricultural-pastoral country with little modern industry, ideally during or after World War Two, without involving nuclear weapons.

Short answer: impossible, probably ASBish.

Long answer:
- there's several problems involving it (and the reason why the Allies gave up on it), first being that it was utterly impracticality: Germany's industrial capabilities could be, and effectively were being used for rebuilding Europe - if you dismantle them, you actually slow down the reconstruction process across the continent. Conversely, it'd drain even more resources from the allies.
- demographics: within the post-1945 borders, Germany could, via subsistence agriculture, support a maximum population of 30 million people. The remaining 30-35 million would have to be either deported off (which bears the question, to where?), or killed (the latter being extremely problematic, since it probably would make the allies look worse than the Nazis). Even within a restored 1937 boundary (which are probably not going to happen, anyways), it would not work.
- Cold War.

I think, the Morgenthau plan was fundamentally flawed to begin with, and the expectations associated with it were utterly unrealistic.
 

Typo

Banned
True, as Churchill puts it, de-industrializing Germany chains Europe to a corpse.

And the allies don't really have the stomach to starve 30 million Germans to death once the war is over.
 

Cook

Banned
Franklin Delano Roosevelt doesn’t die in April 1945, the United States ignores British objections and enacts the Morgenthu Plan.

Henry Morgenthau Jr., Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury had a plan for the occupation of Germany intended to remove Germany’s ability to wage war.
  • Germany was to be partitioned into two independent states.
  • The Saar, Ruhr and Upper Silesia were to be internationalised or annexed by neighbouring nations.
  • All heavy industry was to be dismantled or otherwise destroyed.

Add to that Stalin’s initial plan to shoot the 50 000 Germans deemed to be potential ringleaders of future resistance.

Just because they are stupid plans doesn’t mean they didn’t have a chance of being introduced.
 
The reason Germany was industrialised, moreso than France and Italy for example, was because of the happy coincidence if lots of coal and iron ore deposits in close proximity to each other and within easy reach of bulk transport. The fact of the matter is that these resources are there and everybody knows it and there will be no shortage of takers willing to exploit them.
 

Just because they are stupid plans doesn’t mean they didn’t have a chance of being introduced.

Well, maybe the Allies begin introduction of the plan. And let's assume that not a single occupational officer is notices that it's a stupid plan. And let's furthermore assume that noone is interested in Germans starving as well. Nevertheless, millions of Germans will think that:
1. the Nazis were right all along
2. there's can only misery and poverty for the Germans in the future
3. there is no food

There'll be a reaction by the Germans to this outlook of their future, and this reaction will come rather quick. And it will end that stupid plan.

Stupid plans may be introduced, but typically people notices what's going on and stop it. The more stupid the plan, the earlier that should happen. Actually, it's a wonder that that Morgenthau plan came into recognition at all.
 
It doesn't have to be quasi-medieval conditions; a bit more like Ireland in, say, the 1910s. And it doesn't have to be by the Morgenthau plan, though that is something I had in mind - what might the Soviets do if they controlled all or most of Germany by 1945?
Edit: And what if Hitler's scorched earth order were at least partially implemented?
 
what might the Soviets do if they controlled all or most of Germany by 1945?

If the USSR had gotten all of Germany they certainly would not have tried to de-industrialize it.

If they control it as a Satellite they'd likely just invest alot in it and make sure those in charge were blindly obedient to them.

If they were really lucky and a German SSR came to be they'd likely initiate a massive population movement scheme, moving Germans to various other places and other nationalities to Germany and then build up the industry even more.
 
If the USSR had gotten all of Germany they certainly would not have tried to de-industrialize it.

If they control it as a Satellite they'd likely just invest alot in it and make sure those in charge were blindly obedient to them.

If they were really lucky and a German SSR came to be they'd likely initiate a massive population movement scheme, moving Germans to various other places and other nationalities to Germany and then build up the industry even more.

The Soviets DID de-industrialize big parts of Saxony and Silesia, at least temorary. Not as any kind of "punishment" but as reparations - industrial facilities, but also stuff like railway tracks, were carted off and built up again in the Soviet Union. East German mainlines operated on single tracks well into the 1960s, and in Russia (especially in the rural areas) you can still find German industrial machinery - lathes etc. - from early 1940s.
 
The Soviets DID de-industrialize big parts of Saxony and Silesia, at least temorary. Not as any kind of "punishment" but as reparations - industrial facilities, but also stuff like railway tracks, were carted off and built up again in the Soviet Union. East German mainlines operated on single tracks well into the 1960s, and in Russia (especially in the rural areas) you can still find German industrial machinery - lathes etc. - from early 1940s.

That's with them having only East Germany as a puppet though, if they had the whole of Germany to themselves they'd use Germany's industry to their advantage, yes they may do things like the aforementioned for a short time, but they'd not need to have to for very long as they could simply utilize Germany's vast industrial capacity to make their own.
 
That's with them having only East Germany as a puppet though.

I think the main reason for Soviet reparations from their own occupation zone (they also received some from the western zones, as far as I know, although this was stopped pretty fast) is that they feared loosing it.

The main problem is not whether they have all of Germany as a puppet or only Eastern Germany as a puppet, but how long they have that puppet. If they had known to keep control of Eastern Germany for that long, I think they wouldn't have taken what they did IOTL, they simply feared some form of German unification, in which case all of the German industrial capacity would have been lost.
 
The reason Germany was industrialised, moreso than France and Italy for example, was because of the happy coincidence if lots of coal and iron ore deposits in close proximity to each other and within easy reach of bulk transport. The fact of the matter is that these resources are there and everybody knows it and there will be no shortage of takers willing to exploit them.

Is there any way that said resources could be coopted by foreign powers?
 
I think the main reason for Soviet reparations from their own occupation zone (they also received some from the western zones, as far as I know, although this was stopped pretty fast) is that they feared loosing it.

The main problem is not whether they have all of Germany as a puppet or only Eastern Germany as a puppet, but how long they have that puppet. If they had known to keep control of Eastern Germany for that long, I think they wouldn't have taken what they did IOTL, they simply feared some form of German unification, in which case all of the German industrial capacity would have been lost.

They certainly not feared a unification in itself - that's actually what Stalin propsed. The cornerstone of Russian politics towards the West - from 1700s on and until today - is
a) industrial/economical self-sufficiency and
b) a belt of buffer states which are not necessary under Russian thrall but are at least benevolently neutral to Russia.
(not that these goals are always met)

Carting off all the industrial materials was to meet a) - Soviet Union lacked in a lot of areas, starting with high-quality steel and up to precision machining equipment. They were able, like modern China, to either produce small quantities of high-end stuff or large quantities of substandard stuff, and getting their hands on a lot of high-end equipment played a big role. One may say that the German precision machining equipmen and know-how contributed more to the Soviet nuclear bomb than what they were able to get via Klaus Fuchs and Rosenbergs from Manhattan Project.
 
They certainly not feared a unification in itself - that's actually what Stalin propsed.

Bu only in 1953, if I remember correctly. And it is not clear whether he truly meant it or whether the proposal was only meant as a diturbance of the West-integration of Germany.

In 1953 it was clear that Germany wouldn't be an enemyin the foreseeable future, but the western block was. So giving up the GDR but the West loosing Western Germany as well would be a good bargain. Furthermore, Stalin could hope that the communists in Eastern Germany would get quite influential in a unified Germany, which would also help the Soviets. However, all these considerations are atthe height of the Cold war, at which time deindustralization must already have happened years ago.
 
Trying to move millions of Germans out of Germany would be next to impossible, simply because the Allies would have severe difficulties moving them to somewhere else, and starving millions of people is just not gonna be on the agenda. I can see them limiting Germany's heavy industry and moving some people out of it, but full implementation of the Morgenthau plan would be impossible. Stalin could have tried such a stunt, too, but he'd face the same problems, not to mention he'd put Germany firmly back into the Western camp, which he probably didn't want by the time of the Berlin Airlift.

Perhaps the Morgenthau Plan gets amended to reduce Germany's industrial capabilities, but not totally gut them? That might also placate Churchill and Atlee. And as for where to move 10-20 million Germans, between Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and Britain's colonies, I think that number might be possible. The results of that in terms of the history of most of those countries could have many effects, ranging from apartheid to "White Australia" a stronger Latin America.
 
The problem really is, from both the Allied and the Soviet perspective, a deindustrialized Germany is not only pointless, but also counter-productive. I mean, you have to look into why JCS-1067 was abandoned in OTL: it was simply not practical. Also, the largest obstacle remains, anyways, and that's the Cold War. Germany was located along the faultline of the Cold War, and it'd have been negligient for both sides of the cold war to ignore Germany's potential.

The only perspective from which Morgenthau Plan makes any 'sense' is if you pretend to think that Germany didn't bleed enough for WWII in OTL... :rolleyes:

Or, projected onto the actual ATL perspective: both the Allies and the Soviets would only be willing to pursue a de-industrialized Germany to the end if they would throw out all pragmatism in the face of the Cold War in favour of a over-the-top desire of revanchism.
 
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