Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (May 11, 1891 – February 6, 1967) was appointed Secretary of the Treasury of the United States during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Morgenthau Plan, which bares his name, was actually written by his assistant, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and KGB agent Harry Dexter White who worked in the Division of Monetary Research.

Roosevelt biographer John Flynn described Morgenthau as "a slow, dull youth with no capacity for study. Up to the time he was given an important post by Roosevelt he had had no success in any kind of business. His father had set him up as a gentleman farmer on an estate next to Roosevelt's home at Hyde Park and endowed him with plenty of money. That is how he met Roosevelt and he remained for life the latter's humble and compliant servitor."

Morgenthau plan

The Morgenthau plan, authored by Morgenthau's assistant, KGB agent Harry Dexter White, called for the great industrial area of Germany, the Ruhr, ­ "should be not only stripped of all existing industries but should be so weakened and controlled that it cannot in the foreseeable future become an industrial area ... All industrial plants and equipment not destroyed by military action shall either be completely dismantled or removed from the area or completely destroyed; all equipment shall be removed from the mines and the mines wrecked." The proposal looked forward to "converting Germany into a country principally agricultural and pastoral in character."

Secretary Hull said: "This was a plan of blind vengeance ... It failed to see that in striking at Germany it was striking at all Europe." When the Americans did invade Germany almost their first act was, and needed to be, to work the mines to fullest production to aid the European economy.

On September 11, Roosevelt went to Quebec to meet British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. There, Roosevelt agreed to the Morgenthau Plan to destroy German industry and to reduce Germany to a country primarily agricultural and pastoral.

Churchill had at first vigorously opposed the destruction of Germany. ­ Churchill however, seeing the approach of the war's end, was troubled about England's financial condition and anxious to get from Roosevelt a huge grant of billions of dollars for post-war use. While Churchill, Roosevelt held out against any more money. Ultimately Roosevelt yielded and agreed to give England another six billion dollars. Churchill agreed to the Morgenthau Plan.

The French later bitterly assailed the Plan. They understood too well the importance of the Ruhr to the French economy. James Byrnes, later Secretary of State, declined the post of High Commissioner for Germany because he wanted nothing to do with such a plan. The contents of the Morgenthau Plan leaked to the papers and Roosevelt became alarmed at the violence of the reaction, a fine evidence of the fundamentally decent nature of the majority of Americans. Roosevelt tried to deny what he had done.