German Economy Under The Morgenthau Plan

One thing for sure, anti-Semitism is certainly stronger in TTL, particularly in Germany. It would strengthen the argument that Jews were out to ruin Germany as Morgenthau
was Jewish. Although I understand him wanting revenge, very often revenge backfires and it would be the case here.
 

kernals12

Banned
One thing for sure, anti-Semitism is certainly stronger in TTL, particularly in Germany. It would strengthen the argument that Jews were out to ruin Germany as Morgenthau
was Jewish. Although I understand him wanting revenge, very often revenge backfires and it would be the case here.
In just 1 generation, Germany managed to start the two bloodiest wars in human history. There were a lot of people, of all faiths, who wanted to take extreme precautions that it wouldn't start a third.

And the bitterness would wear off once the transition was completed.
 
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In just 1 generation, Germany managed to start the two bloodiest wars in human history. There were a lot of people, of all faiths, who wanted to take extreme precautions that it wouldn't start a third.

And the bitterness would wear off once the transition was completed.

Why? Even when the transition is completed Germany would be an impoverished hellhole. The plan included wrecking mines for crying out loud. What good would wrecking mines do except satisfying a need for vengeance? The world would still need iron and coal sooner or later and would be forced to allow them to open back up. All you would be doing is forcing a waste of money.
 

kernals12

Banned
Why? Even when the transition is completed Germany would be an impoverished hellhole. The plan included wrecking mines for crying out loud. What good would wrecking mines do except satisfying a need for vengeance? The world would still need iron and coal sooner or later and would be forced to allow them to open back up. All you would be doing is forcing a waste of money.
I guess they had toned it down, because by February 1946, it was agreed that coal and coke would be on the list of things Germany would be allowed to produce.
 
I guess they had toned it down, because by February 1946, it was agreed that coal and coke would be on the list of things Germany would be allowed to produce.

Even with that, it is clearly a plan meant to completely impoverish Germany and you can't expect that there would be no resentment over that.
 

kernals12

Banned
Even with that, it is clearly a plan meant to completely impoverish Germany and you can't expect that there would be no resentment over that.
It wasn't meant to impoverish them, just to take away their means of waging war. And heavy industry is not a prerequisite to prosperity, just look at Switzerland.
 
It wasn't meant to impoverish them, just to take away their means of waging war. And heavy industry is not a prerequisite to prosperity, just look at Switzerland.

Switzerland has a fraction of the population, a highly secret banking system that allows people to launder money, and is a tourist paradise. Unless the US government would allow the Germans to run money laundering operations it isn't the same thing.
 

kernals12

Banned
Switzerland has a fraction of the population, a highly secret banking system that allows people to launder money, and is a tourist paradise. Unless the US government would allow the Germans to run money laundering operations it isn't the same thing.
Germany would do just fine producing refrigerators, television sets, and computers.
And Deutsche Bank does a good job filling the demand for money laundering IOTL.
 
Germany would do just fine producing refrigerators, television sets, and computers.
And Deutsche Bank does a good job filling the demand for money laundering IOTL.

The markets of which were owned by the US, the US and the US in the 1950s with little likelihood for it to go to Germany. You would be expecting a nearly flat broke country to compete with Westinghouse, RCA, and IBM. In 1954 that isn't going to happen.
 
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Deleted member 1487

Konrad Zuse created the world's first programmable computer in 1943. Maybe Zuse AG could dominate the computer market instead of IBM.
Given that IOTL he wasn't allowed to work on computers for years after the war, unlikely especially given IBM's position even pre-war even within the European market (see their role in computing for the Holocaust...). Zuse did form a company when allowed to in 1949, but was years behind global developments and though he was able to find a niche, eventually the company was sold to Siemens, which apparently eventually sold of that business to a Japanese company. The US was just so far ahead and Germany left in such ruins that it took them quite a while to catch up in R&D especially when so many of their scientists were taken abroad by the victors, their next generation of potential scientists and engineers were beyond decimated, research forbidden for years, and the transistor invented in the US first (technically some German electronics engineers did develop it while working in France about the same time, but two guys weren't able to keep up with Bell Labs, the best electronics R&D center on the face of the earth at the time).
 

kernals12

Banned
Given that IOTL he wasn't allowed to work on computers for years after the war, unlikely especially given IBM's position even pre-war even within the European market (see their role in computing for the Holocaust...). Zuse did form a company when allowed to in 1949, but was years behind global developments and though he was able to find a niche, eventually the company was sold to Siemens, which apparently eventually sold of that business to a Japanese company. The US was just so far ahead and Germany left in such ruins that it took them quite a while to catch up in R&D especially when so many of their scientists were taken abroad by the victors, their next generation of potential scientists and engineers were beyond decimated, research forbidden for years, and the transistor invented in the US first (technically some German electronics engineers did develop it while working in France about the same time, but two guys weren't able to keep up with Bell Labs, the best electronics R&D center on the face of the earth at the time).
With a big devaluation of the Deutschemark, Zuse's computers would be less expensive than IBM's, giving them an advantage.
 
Given that IOTL he wasn't allowed to work on computers for years after the war, unlikely especially given IBM's position even pre-war even within the European market (see their role in computing for the Holocaust...). Zuse did form a company when allowed to in 1949, but was years behind global developments and though he was able to find a niche, eventually the company was sold to Siemens, which apparently eventually sold of that business to a Japanese company. The US was just so far ahead and Germany left in such ruins that it took them quite a while to catch up in R&D especially when so many of their scientists were taken abroad by the victors, their next generation of potential scientists and engineers were beyond decimated, research forbidden for years, and the transistor invented in the US first (technically some German electronics engineers did develop it while working in France about the same time, but two guys weren't able to keep up with Bell Labs, the best electronics R&D center on the face of the earth at the time).

To put it bluntly, a small German company scapes up enough money to build a cheap computer which looks like it might go somewhere and IBM then promptly spends the output of post-war Berlin on R&D in computer technology.
 
With a big devaluation of the Deutschemark, Zuse's computers would be less expensive than IBM's, giving them an advantage.

No, it wouldn't. Devaluation isn't the be-all and end-all in competition or Venezuela would be a rich country. After all its currency is worth less than toilet paper.
 

Deleted member 1487

With a big devaluation of the Deutschemark, Zuse's computers would be less expensive than IBM's, giving them an advantage.
Didn't really help them IOTL. They were ok for the European market, but Japan and the US largely dominated the global one IOTL and ITTL there would be no reason it wouldn't also, as all the same structural factors are still there.

To put it bluntly, a small German company scapes up enough money to build a cheap computer which looks like it might go somewhere and IBM then promptly spends the output of post-war Berlin on R&D in computer technology.
Even worse initially, Zuse was refurbing his WW2 computers and leasing them to the Swiss. His first post-war computer wasn't sold until 1956. I've read somewhere that that was because he was forbidden from doing research for years after the war, though in 1947 he apparently had a small meeting with some British computer researchers including Turing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#Personal_life
 
To put it bluntly, a small German company scapes up enough money to build a cheap computer which looks like it might go somewhere and IBM then promptly spends the output of post-war Berlin on R&D in computer technology.

The Germans dominated a whole bunch of fields in the early 20s century though could never quite take off in some areas. Computing and telecommunications was a bit of a mirage. They weren’t there before WW2 and certainly weren’t going to be after the war. Some areas they were pretty strong in they never quite recovered, though heavy machinery certainly isn’t one of those areas.
 
There would be no Germany if the Morgenthau Plan was adopted, but only North Germany, South Germany and an International Zone containing the Ruhr and Rhineland. Remember that the plan is to completely eliminate Germany's heavy industry by partitioning it.
 
The Nazi view of the economy build on a autarchic idea of how a economy should function, and made some sense as Germany lacked the captured markets, which the French and British had in their colonial empires and as the Green revolution hadn’t happened yet, it made sense to want increase one’s territory to be able to feed one’s population. But talking about the German industry as backward doesn’t really make any sense. The agricultural sector was backward thanks to low mechanization, the industrial sector was not. The German view of the economy was and are warped by Anglophone perspective, but seeing the difference in how the German and British-American economy have developed, it’s hard to say that the Germans have been wrong.
Sorry, I did not mean that Germany industry as such was backward, but that German economy as a whole partly was.
 
Didn't really help them IOTL. They were ok for the European market, but Japan and the US largely dominated the global one IOTL and ITTL there would be no reason it wouldn't also, as all the same structural factors are still there.

Considering that they would have to import the steel in TTL it is even less likely for the refrigerators. The weak currency would actually harm that by making foreign steel more expensive. Westinghouse got its steel straight from Pittsburg, Germany would have to pay inflated prices for steel+ shipping costs.
 
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