WI: Morgenthau Germany?

I think the general consensus is that the Morgenthau Plan was not feasible, which is the primary reason why it was scrapped in OTL.

However, the specific reasons why include:

1) As WolfBrother mentioned it, you would need to either kill or expulse 30 million Germans because the post-1945 area of Germany could only support so many people by subsistence agriculture. If you don't go for the genocide option, mass deportation is the only viable option... but it raises the question to where?

2) It would have slowed down the reconstruction of Europe as a whole. Without Germany's industrial base, Europe as a whole would have recovered far slower from WWII.

3) It was impractical, if not outright counter-productive in the face of the Cold War. If the Western Allies had continued with the deconstruction of industry in the face of the ensuing Cold War and a Soviet remilitarization of the DDR, they might have even risked that the general West German population would have become favourable of the Soviet cause because they might have seen it as salvation from the West and it's Morgenthau Plan.
 
It was impractical, if not outright counter-productive in the face of the Cold War. If the Western Allies had continued with the deconstruction of industry in the face of the ensuing Cold War and a Soviet remilitarization of the DDR, they might have even risked that the general West German population would have become favourable of the Soviet cause because they might have seen it as salvation from the West and it's Morgenthau Plan.

I think For All Time had a pretty accurate description of this, although Taft's USA didn't even really care.
 
It's important to remember that the Morgenthau plan was implemented in the Western occupation zones. Not in its most extreme version, granted, but still a plan designed to pastoralize Germany was put in place. It wasn't rescinded until July 1947.
 
Well, the Allies were restricting food shipments and international aid organizations from entering Germany until 1946, which might fall under the depopulation category.
 
2) It would have slowed down the reconstruction of Europe as a whole. Without Germany's industrial base, Europe as a whole would have recovered far slower from WWII.

OTOH, the industrial base taken from Germany might partially offset this.

3) It was impractical, if not outright counter-productive in the face of the Cold War. If the Western Allies had continued with the deconstruction of industry in the face of the ensuing Cold War and a Soviet remilitarization of the DDR, they might have even risked that the general West German population would have become favourable of the Soviet cause because they might have seen it as salvation from the West and it's Morgenthau Plan.

I had thought the Morgenthau Plan would have been implemented in the whole of Germany, including the Soviet Zone?

As for being counter-productive, it was; Stalin was amenable to the Plan, because it would mean a defanged Germany for a long while. To the western Allies, a Morgenthau Germany wouldn't be useful.
 
Well, the Allies were restricting food shipments and international aid organizations from entering Germany until 1946, which might fall under the depopulation category.

No sorry that cant stand. Britain was feeding it’s occupation zone in Germany at a time when it’s economy had tanked and it’s own food supplies were being severely strained.
The efforts international aid organizations were re-directed to countries the Germans had occupied and devastated, and scarcely began to solve the problems those nations faced. The Allies had to take up the slack there too.
 
If the allies wanted to destroy Germany, anthrax would have been much less complicated during the war, and it would have created a poisoned barrier to keep the russians out; and there was the political will to do this during the war
 
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