Germany is turned into a cow pasture:

Titus_Pullo

Banned
re: Urban Fox

They didnt they bought much of what happened on themselves by supporting an evil regime literally to the death, The disaster that befell Germany wasnt as bad as one they had already inflicted on others.

I woulnt have supported the death of 30 million Germans, but I wouldnt have cared much about them either. You reap what you sow.


I think we're going round in circles with this.:(


That's exactly how Morgenthau and his supporters felt. And the premise of my original post centered on what would have happened if they had their way. Even Roosevelt for a time went along with it.
 
Oh yes the people in eastern Europe will love the idea of germans comming in their countries and telling them that their tech is crap and should look how it is done right. Just for your information those people forced the remaining germans out, because they had had enough germans during the last years.
It is totally unreasonable to believe that the poles would welcome several hundred thousand germans after WWII.

May I suggest that you read all the posts? The issue is already dealt with in a previous message. Besides, in OTL there were Germans in the tens of thousands in a certain Eastern country, working hard for it, and the locals don't seem to have complained.

I think you don't understand the problem. Yes, machines can be replaced by humans (or animals for that matter) but they will need food too! If you use horse instead of machines, approximatly a quarter of your land will be needed to feed the horses. So if you replace the machines by humans you will reduce the food surplus produced by the farmes greatly.

Yes. That is why there is a debate as to whether it would be subsistence farming, intensive farming, or, which is absolutely possible, something halfway.

I doubt that there would much food to export. After all in 1939 the Reich (with Austria and the Czech lands) produced only 83% of it's food. So the allies would have to give fertilizers and machines without any payment.

Yes, that's possible. It still does not equate with half the population starving over a couple of years, is it? If you read all the posts, you will notice a distinction was made between
a) setting up a viable economy, and
b) avoiding the catastrophic famine somebody mentioned, without much evidence to support it.
I never said the plan would come out with a). I did and do question that b) would be the automatic result. failing to achieve a) might mean that in order to keep Germany the way they want it, some external powers have to pay for the privilege. That still isn't a German Holodomor, is it?
 
May I suggest that you read all the posts? The issue is already dealt with in a previous message. Besides, in OTL there were Germans in the tens of thousands in a certain Eastern country, working hard for it, and the locals don't seem to have complained.
But said geramns didn't "send home their pay, or foodstuffs, or consumer goods." as you suggested did they?
Yes. That is why there is a debate as to whether it would be subsistence farming, intensive farming, or, which is absolutely possible, something halfway.
Yes and you suggested that machines could be replaced by humans and I said that this would be a step towards subsistence farming, therefore reducing the food availible for export.

Yes, that's possible. It still does not equate with half the population starving over a couple of years, is it?
And where did I say it does?

If you read all the posts, you will notice a distinction was made between
a) setting up a viable economy, and
b) avoiding the catastrophic famine somebody mentioned, without much evidence to support it.
I never said the plan would come out with a). I did and do question that b) would be the automatic result. failing to achieve a) might mean that in order to keep Germany the way they want it, some external powers have to pay for the privilege.
My opinion is that it's impossible to deindustrialise a country while maintaining an intensive farming. Such a system is unstable and would either break down to subsistence farming or develop the industry to produce the machinery for the farmers. Oh with strong enforcements it may be keept for 20 or even 30 years, but sooner or later the allied countries will get tired of paying for the germans and then the system will crash one way or the other.
That still isn't a German Holodomor, is it?
Could you take your own advise and read what other people writte or don't write? I never said that this would be the inevitable consequence.
 

Ian the Admin

Administrator
Donor
As for the other part, people supported the Mourgenthau plan because they feel Germany deserved it, and to a degree they did the Nazi party enjoyed popular support thought their reign, they only time this started to slip was when Germany itself faced invasion by a vengeful red army & some people wanted to save their own skin by killing Hitler and launching a coup.

The German population for the most part were perfectly happy to go along with Hitler dreams of conquest, enslavement & genocide because it was all happening to other ‘’lesser’’ peoples so nah they dont get any sympathy from me.

Americans re-elected George Bush, so every one of them must be responsible for the worst things he did. Heck, Bush got more votes than Hitler and didn't even get to murder political opponents and sic the secret police on anyone who disagreed. All Americans, including those who voted for Gore and Kerry, must be far more responsible for all of their government's crimes than your average German was for those of the Nazis.

Oh wait, that's fantastically stupid.
 

Rockingham

Banned
Is their enough room in Germany for so much farming-even if its substinence? One of the reason Hitler went to war was Lebensbraum, or living space, because their simply wasn't enough space in Germany to begin with(if I've interpreted his reasoning properly). Nazi Germany, IIRC, had a population on a similar scale to the USSR. In other words, very high density, as Qianlong said. Farming takes up a lot more space then urban living. So even with mass death, what size population could be crammed in an agricultural living in Germany?
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
I think maybe we're all misininterpreting the general idea of Morgenthau. If the plan was just to kill several million Germans in retribution for the war then why not just round them all up into camps and do that? Now the Brits, yeh, maybe they were ready to do this. The Russians actually did when they could.

But the Americans, cmon, do you really think the Americans wanted to slowly kill half of their own ancestors to make a point? They didn't even try that with the Japanese.

The idea was to keep Germany from ever being warlike again. You don't do this by killing off half the population so that revenge and German become synonyms. You do this by diverting the German love of war machinery to cuckoo clocks and making them wear lederhosen and drink beer for the happy tourists who throw money at them. That was, IMO, Morgenthau's vision, it was silly and unworkable for all the reasons we've discussed here but it was, in the end, more benign than punitive.
 
OK - for the plan to work whe need to remove 30~40 million Germans over the next 20 years.

In 1840's Thousnads of Irish fled the Famine, 2 million Dead, 2 million fled
so between 1845~1865 whe had 100,000 /year leave Ireland.
Here whe are talking 1.5~2 Million /year, ?Is 1940's transportation 10 times better than 1840's?

Lets assume that it is, and that these germans are removed.
In the post war years France imported millions of Spanish and Portuguese labors.
If whe replace these with Germans, Whe change the makeup of France, as well as change the development of Iberia,[no money sent back home]

Whe have several Million Germans moving to SAfrica/Rodesia, This will have a major impact on the Color ratio.

Whe also have several million moving to Australia. This may be enuff to allow Australia to hold onto new Guineia.

Several Million well educated Germans in SAmerica, post war has a impect of the speed of Development in the Region.

But somehow I can't help thinking that most of them will end up in the US.
A wave of Immigrants in the late 40's thru early 60's will effect the Blacks move to the cities in the north.
[OTL they took the place of the missing Immigrants caused by the cuttoff after WW1] Here they stay South on the Farms.
By 1965 they have completly revitialized the US-German Community,
Immigrant communities tend to be Conservitive, So whe delay the whole Civil rights movement by 20~30 years.
Whe also wipe the Rock & Roll Movement,
OTOH whe do get some Good Beer out of this.
 
But said geramns didn't "send home their pay, or foodstuffs, or consumer goods." as you suggested did they?

No, of course. Evidently, there is a half-way solution between Germans being allowed to remain in newly Polish territory with their families, farmland and other properties, and Germans being exploited to death as former POWs in Siberia. What I'm saying is that while the Poles would object to the former, they would probably not object to another kind of solution, half-way towards the unlucky situation of Germans in Siberia. Interestingly, it's the German language that provides us with the term: Gastarbeiter. As mentioned, keeping only men, living in workers' barracks, not allowed to own property in the host country, and paid sparingly, but allowed to send home money and stuff, is a solution that Switzerland adopted in the early postwar years, and I think it has been used even up until recent years in some Gulf states short on manpower. I do not think the Eastern countries would have objected to such a solution.

As to my references to famine, of course I noticed you did not support the idea. I was just explaining to you the reason behind some of my posts, which were in reply to posts that agitated that fear. I'm glad to see you agree a famine killing half of the population, that is some 30 million persons, wouldn't be the plan's outcome; thank you.

As to your assessment that the system would remain unstable, that is absolutely possible, it's the same as myself suspecting that such an economy would not be viable without some external input.

While I'm at it, I'd like to go on record stating that if the plan had been applied, personally I would not have approved or condoned it, for several reasons:
- ethically it was wrong. No matter what the intentions (as mentioned by Napoleon XVI), it would have amounted to unnecessary collective punishment. That's what the Germans had routinely done over the war, and, needless to say, it is evil.
- legally it was dubious. Of course, given the kind of arrangement the Allies administered Germany under, technically they could do anything they wanted, but the closer they stayed to customary usages for similar situations, the less exposed to allegations of illegitimate behavior they would later be.
- politically it was stupid. And that applies even if we look at it strictly from the POV of the victors' interests. I don't think I need to explain why. We have today's Germany to show it: without that plan, it turned out to be a peaceful, responsible and wealthy nation, Europe's powerhouse, and it's not unlikely a rearrangement of the balance in the UN will give it a deservedly even more important place in international politics. In the Cold War, of course, the Western part was a valid NATO ally. I doubt that the same outcome would have taken place if the plan had been enforced.
 
Is their enough room in Germany for so much farming-even if its substinence? One of the reason Hitler went to war was Lebensbraum, or living space, because their simply wasn't enough space in Germany to begin with(if I've interpreted his reasoning properly). Nazi Germany, IIRC, had a population on a similar scale to the USSR. In other words, very high density, as Qianlong said. Farming takes up a lot more space then urban living. So even with mass death, what size population could be crammed in an agricultural living in Germany?

Hitler wanted Germany not to be forced to import foodstuffs. A solution was stealing farmland from others and killing those who lived off that farmland, of course. Another might have been drastically improving the yield per square kilometer of German farmland, which, as already mentioned by others, was particularly low, also given the absurdly high number of workers employed in the sector. In any case, either solution would have been carried out _without_ dismantling all the industry. If one chooses to dismantle that, you'll see that the terms of the problem change a lot.
Space is not so much of a concern. Even today, vast areas of Germany are forested. The Germans prefer to use them for the wood and paper industry. It could be turned to agriculture, even though with significantly lower yields than better soils. Also note that with today's Germany being much smaller than in 1939, with most of the really wide farming areas gone, all those forests, and the first industry in Europe, the Germans are exporting dairy products.

As to the absolute numbers of population, no, you don't remember correctly. The Soviet population in 1941 was more than double the German population in 1939.
 

sanusoi

Banned
This thread could be a death trap for me but I will put my head in the shark's mouth. I don't think that the pan to snap away all industry from Germany could work. I t just couldn't function as a viable solution to the problem of disarming Germany.

Also it's technically impossibile to kill 25 million people quickly unless you were to go down a route of using nerve gas and shoot style tatics to massacare a population. Only then that plan could work but even Stalin or anyone who saw the Allies do this would declare war on them. It would be considered worse then what any monster could do.

If you follow the idea further, you have a Soviet Union under Beria who is going to fight to protect the Germans, if you went that far. You would be crushed by the Soviets. Yes they did commit massacres but even they would sickened by what could happen in Germany.

|Basically the idea would never work, a vengeful Germany and Soviet union that would come in not only for conquest but to stop complete destruction across Germany. Thank god those pans were never inplemented.
 
Anyone know the novel "Stimmen der Nacht" (Voices of the Night)?

In that ATL, Franklin D. Roosevelt lives until 1946 and follows Morgenthau's ideas. So Germany lost: Silesia east of Breslau (nowadays Wroclaw) to Poland,
the area between Moselle and Rhine comes to France. Between USSR and USA there is no Cold War. World economy has collapsed. Charles de Gaulle has shot down the students' riots in May 1968.

Most Germans were expelled and transported to South America. There they joined the militarist regimes and formed a technologically sophisticated "Anden Pact". They own nukes and want to return to the Reich.

In Germany - three-parted as premised in this thread -, people remain positive memories to Nazism. But they have turned in brutal and wild racists living in the woods. And then - Goebbels's voice is heard in the ruins of the Cologne Cathedral. Later, Hitler's voice can be heard from his nuked Reichskanzlei in Berlin. Martin Bormann, still living in the Andes mountains, wants to see his former master. To get there, he would even start World War III...

It takes place in 1984.
 
No, of course. Evidently, there is a half-way solution between Germans being allowed to remain in newly Polish territory with their families, farmland and other properties, and Germans being exploited to death as former POWs in Siberia. What I'm saying is that while the Poles would object to the former, they would probably not object to another kind of solution, half-way towards the unlucky situation of Germans in Siberia. Interestingly, it's the German language that provides us with the term: Gastarbeiter.

... Snipped text...

As to my references to famine, of course I noticed you did not support the idea. I was just explaining to you the reason behind some of my posts, which were in reply to posts that agitated that fear. I'm glad to see you agree a famine killing half of the population, that is some 30 million persons, wouldn't be the plan's outcome; thank you.


As to your assessment that the system would remain unstable, that is absolutely possible, it's the same as myself suspecting that such an economy would not be viable without some external input.

...Snipped text...

- politically it was stupid. And that applies even if we look at it strictly from the POV of the victors' interests. I don't think I need to explain why. We have today's Germany to show it: without that plan, it turned out to be a peaceful, responsible and wealthy nation, Europe's powerhouse, and it's not unlikely a rearrangement of the balance in the UN will give it a deservedly even more important place in international politics. In the Cold War, of course, the Western part was a valid NATO ally. I doubt that the same outcome would have taken place if the plan had been enforced.

Lets see here If we can suggest some alternatives to some of the assertions in the quoted post.
First: Forced labor outside Germany is what we are talking about here I suppose, to decrease the number of Germans living out of the agricultural production in Germany? By 1947 the Allies actually held roughly 4 million of them, more than a million of them in the Western countries.
Funny that you should speculate about "guestarbetiers" in Poland. In deed there they actually were. Many of them, but mostly women and children, not men. And from the look of things if it had been kept up past 1950 they would probably be a drain on their "hosts" food supply for only an additional decade before all had expired.

Second, how many Germans would have to be somehow exterminated or otherwise removed for the plan to work? The estimate of an expert on food supply, former U.S. president Herbert Hoover, was that roughly 25 million Germans would have to be exterminated or otherwise removed. He made this estimate in the spring of 1947, while pointing out the stupidity of what he saw as the then U.S. policy of turning what remained of Germany into farmland. Armchair experts can argue all they want, this guy was there and he had the experience to back up his estimate.

Now 25 million is less than 30 million, but that missing 5 million is perhaps due to the fact that part of the population reduction had already been achieved, but probably more to do with the millions of involuntary "guestarbeiters" in Poland, the UK, France and elsewhere.

So, we have according to a U.S. president, a pastoralization plan still being carried out in 1947, 2 years after the surrender despite what some would protest. The Germans should be thankful to President Hoover, wily as he was he new that the best way to change the Americans mind was to point to the danger to the contents of their wallets.

Third: How come Germany is still here and a stable democracy? Well, some would argue that the U.S. should be thanked for it, while those who have looked closer at the question say quite the contrary. Germany is democratic today mainly despite U.S. efforts. Memory seems to be a funny thing, apparently collective memory-loss happens quite easily.There once was a great and very powerful nation who pretty much could act with impunity and where the mindset of the public was such that this was Life Magazine picture of the week. How easy it is to forget.:D
 
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