Americans now had a strong complaint against the Soviets, and a strong ally in Britain. They would gain much in other parts of the world by bringing the Soviets to heel. The Soviets threatened the growing American oil interests in the Middle East; they were helping Mao Tse-tung in China against the pro-American Chiang Kai-shek, and communist spies were caught stealing secrets from the highly advanced Canadian atomic development programme.
If the British and Americans had issued a joint ultimatum to the Soviets over Poland, one choice for Stalin would have been war against the most powerful nations in the world, whose aid was now essential to the Soviets just to keep the nation from starving. The USSR, strong compared to Germany, was feeble against the West. The USSR had huge armies in Europe, but much of their food came from Canada and the United States. Their soldiers marched into battle in fifteen million pairs of North American boots. Over 21,000 of their planes, half a million trucks, 12,000 tanks, and one-third of their merchant shipping fleet, were made in Great Britain, Canada or the United States.10 Stalin said in 1943 that ‘without this equipment, we would lose this war’.11 Stalin’s train arrived at Berlin for the Potsdam Conference on Canadian rails; much Russian bread was made from wheat grown in Canada and the USA.12 Not only that, but there were revolts, insurrections and guerrilla movements in several places in the ramshackle Soviet confederation. There was guerrilla warfare in Poland and the Baltic countries; an uprising in the Ukraine; and low-grade protests in the army, in industry and in the Gulag, the Soviet administrative department responsible for maintaining prisons and labour camps. Not only did the allies know the full extent of the supplies the Soviets needed, they also had a statistical picture of the destruction that the country had suffered. In February 1945, the US State Department issued a confidential summary of the state of the Soviet economy, under the title ‘Outline of Factors Determining Russia’s Interest in American Credits’. The summary showed that the Allies judged that the Soviets had lost 25 per cent of their stock of fixed capital (i.e. buildings, dams, roads, equipment, bridges). The losses in inventory (stocks of food, clothing, etc.) would add approximately another 6 per cent to that. In all, the Soviets had lost close to one-third of inventory and equipment, plus millions of young men.13
In addition to the millions of men in their own world-wide forces, the British and Americans in the summer of 1945 held over six million German troops in their camps, while the Soviets had just over two million. The British and American armies nearly matched the Soviets in numbers, and they were far better supplied and more mobile. A lot of the Soviet transport was still drawn by horses, but the armies of the West were the first in the history of the world to be propelled entirely by engines. And the Westerners had the most powerful weapon ever known – the atomic bomb. Why, with the danger of the Soviets plain to see in every sphere, did these two victorious powers not stand firm while they were so superior? For the British, Poland was a matter of honour; for both British and Americans, Poland was a useful pretext to deliver an annihilating lesson to the Soviets. Why did they not do it?
First, there was the fear that Germany might rise from the wreckage and challenge the democracies again. This fear soon diminished as the Allies took over in Germany, then finally disappeared into the antagonism between communism and democracy. But even more important was the desire in the democracies to find a better way than war to settle the hostilities of the world.
They had tried once before with the League of Nations, they would try once again with the UN. But the UN could not work without the USSR. To bring the Soviets into the world community of nations – to create that sense of community in the first place – the democracies sacrificed eastern Europe, including Poland and eastern Germany, and placed their honour and their power in the balance.
Their policy was partly in Churchill’s plan to share power with the Soviets in Europe,14 partly a determination to crush Germany under an occupation so heavy that it could never again threaten the supremacy of the West. It was in the remnants of Wilson’s 14 Points; it was partly in Mackenzie King’s ‘law of peace, work and health’; and it was partly in the determination of Roosevelt and other American leaders to ‘get along with’ the Soviets.
But there were people in the West who believed that the Second World War was only the crusade against Hitler. Victory was all, Poland scarcely mattered, the Soviet threat meant little. After the war, these few powerful people kept the war going in the form of camouflaged vengeance. On the Western side, this vengeance was named the Morgenthau Plan after one of its progenitors, Roosevelt’s friend Henry C. Morgenthau, who was also Secretary of the US Treasury. Morgenthau said it was necessary to reduce the military-industrial strength of Germans forever, so that never again could they threaten the peace.15 To him and his friends, Poland and the security of Europe meant little or nothing. In fact, their plan was a serious threat to the safety of Europe because it distracted the Allies from the resistance they might have made to the Soviets. It caused quarrels among the Western Allies because they feared the communists would ‘exploit’ the misery the Morgenthau Plan would create in Germany. The reconstruction of Europe, which would avert that threat, was seriously delayed by the destruction of the German economy carried out under the Morgenthau Plan after May 1945. And the moral issues raised by the vengeance set people against each other throughout the West.
Western planning for vengeance against Germans and for the destruction of Germany began in England in August 1944, with its chief architects Morgenthau and Dwight D. Eisenhower.16 The birth of the plan was witnessed by one of Morgenthau’s aides, Fred Smith, who wrote:
On August 7, 1944 at approximately 12:35 P.M. in a tent in southern England, the Morgenthau Plan was born. Actually, it was General Dwight D. Eisenhower who launched the project … The subject first came up at lunch in General Eisenhower’s mess tent. Secretary Morgenthau, Assistant to the Secretary Harry D. White and I were there.
White spoke of Germany, which was now certain to be defeated … White said, ‘What I think is that we should give the entire German economy an opportunity to settle down before we do anything about it.’ Here Eisenhower became grim and made the statement that actually sparked the German hardship plan. [Smith notes here that ‘This material is taken from notes made directly after the meeting.’] He said: ‘I am not interested in the German economy and personally would not like to bolster it if that will make it any easier for the Germans.’ He said he thought the Germans had punishment coming to them: ‘The ringleaders and the SS troops should be given the death penalty without question, but punishment should not end there.’
He felt the people [emphasis in the original] were guilty of supporting the regime and that made them a party to the entire German project, and he personally would like to ‘see things made good and hard for them for a while’. He pointed out that talk of letting Germany off easy after taking care of the top people came from those who feared Russia and wanted to strengthen Germany as a potential bulwark against any desires Russia might someday have …
The General declared he saw no purpose in treating a ‘paranoid’ gently, and the ‘whole German population is a synthetic paranoid. All their life the people have been taught to be paranoid in their actions and thoughts, and they have to be snapped out of it. The only way to do that is to be good and hard on them. I certainly see no point in bolstering their economy or taking any other steps to help them.’
White remarked: ‘We may want to quote you on the problem of handling the German people.’
Eisenhower replied that he could be quoted. He said: ‘I will tell the President myself, if necessary.’17
Lord Keynes, the famous British economist, asked President Roosevelt in late November if he was planning ‘a complete agrarian economy’ for Germany. Although the American people had been told that the Morgenthau Plan had been abandoned, Roosevelt now told Keynes in secret that the plan would be implemented. The German economy would be reduced to a level ‘not quite’ completely agrarian, he said. The plan went ‘pretty far’ in de-industrializing the Ruhr and eliminating many of Germany’s basic industries.18
The Morgenthau Plan has three remarkable aspects: that it was devised, that it was implemented after it had been cancelled, and that it has since been covered up so well. Now it has shrunk from sight in the West. The basic