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America did try to punish the Germans. Millions starved as a result of deliberate Allied policy. It wasn't until the schism with the USSR that policies shifte
by yequalsx 9y ago
America did try to punish the Germans. Millions starved as a result of deliberate Allied policy. It wasn't until the schism with the USSR that policies shifted. Eisenhower in particular wanted Germany to be an agrarian society.
- Qub3d 9y agoWait, i'm confused. I've always been told America poured tons of money into Germany via the Marshall Plan [0], which resulted in the "Wirtschaftswunder"[+] of the 50s and 60s. Former president Hoover went over and surveyed Germany almost directly after the war, in 1947. [0]:https://web.archive.org/web/20090419195002/http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2008/webarticles/080103_marshallplan.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090419195002/http://www.un.org... [+]: Literally "economic miracle"
- rtpg 9y agoDidn't Marshall Plan money end up coming back to the US? Essentially a loan to purchase US goods? It's definitely helpful as a loan, of course.
- vkou 9y agoThe initial plan (Carried out between 1945 and 1947) was starving Germany - economically, and literally. Once communism became the big boogieman, the US did a 180 on its occupation policy, and instead started dumping money and American goods into Germany via the Marshall plan.
- sgift 9y agoLong story short: This wasn't the original plan. The original plan, which was in effect for a while, was a variant of the "Morgenthau plan" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#JCS_1067 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#JCS_1067 ). It took two years for them to realize that not only would they be starving Germans (intention), but also the rest of Europe (unintended), and more or less block any economic growth in Europe (+risk Europe falling under the sway of the Soviet Union). So, they reversed their plans and the rest is history (that history includes the Marshall plan).
- klaasn 9y agoThere was a lot of punishment as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_after_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_after_...
- rangibaby 9y ago> Eisenhower in particular wanted Germany to be an agrarian society. The US wanted to apply the same policy to Japan as well.
- maxxxxx 9y agoAs a German. I have never heard about these starved millions. The agrarian society plan was the Morgenthau plan which didn't get implemented from what I know. My parents are WW2 generation. I have never heard any complaints from them or relatives about the American behavior after WW2.
- yequalsx 9y agoBeing German does not preclude you from being ignorant of post war German history. Google it. You can find lots of information on the Allied occupation of Germany. It wasn't until the Berlin airlift that feeding Germans became fashionable. My dad was in WW2 on the American side. He ended as a guard in a POW camp after the war. He'd have denied the starvation too but it did occur. Eisenhower did want, initially, for Germany to be an agrarian society. He wasn't the only one with this view. Morganthau was not the only person with this idea.
- maxxxxx 9y agoThe first years after the war were confusing for everybody. The country had been effectively destroyed,news about German crimes slowly came out, nobody knew how the Germans would respond to occupation. It's no wonder it took years to sort things out. No matter what people in DC were planning I have never heard from people who lived then about Americans getting in the way of people trying to rebuild.
- yequalsx 9y agoBecause the Americans that people in Germany interacted with weren't making the decisions. Use Google. Research it. It's not a controversial topic in terms of historicity. Germans as a matter of deliberate policy were prevented from getting the food they needed.
- maxxxxx 9y agoI guess I'll have to take your word. From what I have heard life in the American Zone was by far the best and it was worst in the Russian Zone.