CONFLICTING VISIONS OF GERMANY’S FUTURE
• In September 1944 U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry
Morgenthau secured FDR’s approval for a plan to partition and
“de-industrialize” Germany. He and Stalin both urged the
summary execution of all war criminals.
• Secretary of War Henry Stimson and John Maynard Keynes
protested that German industry must be revived for the sake
of Europe’s economic recovery, and that top German officials
should receive a fair trial by an International Military Tribunal.
• JCS #1067 of April 26, 1945: “It should be brought home to
the Germans that Germany’s ruthless warfare …has destroyed
the German economy and made chaos and suffering inevitable
and that Germans cannot escape responsibility for what they
have brought upon themselves. Germany will not be occupied
for the purpose of liberation but as a defeated enemy nation.”
THE “BATTLE OF BRITAIN” IN 1940
600
German
bombers
attacked
RAF
bases on
August
15, 1940,
but the
Germans
lost 75
planes to
just 34
for the
British
Germany’s first major assault on London, on September 7,
involved 625 bombers, including the Henkel 111’s shown here
Coventry
Cathedral,
after the city was
destroyed in the
night of November
14/15, 1940.
But the Luftwaffe
was losing twice
as many planes
each week as the
RAF.
The German
Messerschmitt 109E
vs. the
British Spitfire.
Great Britain
produced 4,300
fighters in 1940,
vs. just 3,000 for
Germany.
In 1941 Great
Britain devoted over
50% of GDP to war
production, vs. just
35% for Germany.
Four-engine
Lancaster
strategic
bombers of the
RAF rain
bombs over
Germany in
1941
THE GRADUAL EXTENSION OF ALLIED FIGHTER RANGE
Residents of Hamburg spend the night
in an air raid shelter
The RAF inflicted a devastating firestorm on Hamburg in
“Operation Gomorrah” on July 27/28, 1943, killing over 43,000
“Where is Frau
Brylla?”
(Hamburg, 1943)
MUNICH IN FLAMES, JULY 13, 1944
DOWNTOWN COLOGNE, EARLY 1945
U.S. B-17’s in the firebombing of Dresden,
February 1945
(at least 30,000 Germans
were killed in one raid)
Dresden
after the
firestorm of
February
13/14,
1945
HITLER’S LAST PUBLIC APPEARANCE, MARCH 20, 1945,
to award medals to 14-year-olds fighting Red Army tanks
Serious planning for the
postwar order began
when Churchill met FDR
in Quebec on
September 11, 1944,
and agreed on the
Morgenthau Plan
U.S. troops had first
set foot on German
soil near Aachen just
the day before
The Big Three at Yalta, February 1945:
Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, & Joseph Stalin
Occupation
zones for
Germany,
Austria, & Berlin
The Red Army takes Berlin, early May 1945
The Brandenburg Gate in May 1945
Border revisions and streams of refugees in 1945
Some of the 12.5 million German refugees from Eastern Europe
Sudeten Germans assembled in Prague, July 20, 1945,
awaiting deportation to Germany
A SUMMARY OF GERMAN WAR CRIMES
POLAND: The murder of 20% of the prewar population
(3 million Polish Jews + 3 million gentiles)
USSR: Perhaps 10 million civilians killed, plus 10 million
soldiers (10% of the prewar population)
YUGOSLAVIA: 1.2 million killed in anti-partisan actions
and civil war (10% of the prewar population)
FRANCE: 400,000 killed in anti-partisan operations
(1.5% of the prewar population)
Germany suffered 5 million combat fatalities,
plus 593,000 civilians killed in air raids.
The Potsdam Conference, July 1945:
Clement Attlee, Harry Truman, and Stalin
THE POTSDAM ACCORD ANNOUNCED THESE OBJECTIVES:
“The complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany and the
elimination or control of all German industry that could be used for
military production.”
“To destroy the National Socialist Party…, to dissolve all Nazi
institutions.”
“To prepare for the eventual reconstruction of German political life on a
democratic basis.”
“War criminals… shall be arrested and brought to justice.”
“All members of the Nazi Party who have been more than nominal
participants in its activities… shall be removed from public office and
from positions of responsibility in important private undertakings.”
“German education shall be so controlled as completely to eliminate
Nazi and militarist doctrines and to make possible the successful
development of democratic ideas.”
“The German economy shall be decentralized for the purpose of
eliminating the present excessive concentration of economic power as
exemplified in particular by cartels, syndicates, trusts and other
monopolistic arrangements.”
Two American soldiers examine a wagonload of corpses at
Buchenwald in April 1945
Starving
prisoners at
KZ
Vaihingen,
freed in
April 1945
Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton view the bodies
of camp inmates in Ohrdruf on April 12, 1945
A German
woman sobs as
American
soldiers force
her to view
corpses
“26 million
dead are
accusing! In
Nuremberg
there is a
reckoning!”
The historic city of Nuremberg in the summer of 1945
THE INDICTMENT AT NUREMBERG
1. Crimes against peace (based on the Kellogg-Briand Treaty
of 1928, which banned offensive war).
2. Crimes of war (as defined by the Hague Convention on
the Rules of Land Warfare and the Geneva Convention of
1929).
3. Crimes against humanity: participation in mass murder,
the use of slave labor, or the suppression of religion (an
unprecedented charge under international law).
4. Conspiracy to commit one of the acts listed above
(unprecedented under international law).
“Duress” was acknowledged as a legitimate defense, but
NOT the mere receipt of orders from a superior.
Opening session of the Nuremberg Trial, November 20, 1945
The top-ranking defendants at Nuremberg:
Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop, and Keitel
Franz von Papen & Speer sat in the back row….
VICTORS’ JUSTICE?
The Defense was in general forbidden to raise the argument
that the Allies had committed war crimes too….
Sentenced to
death:
Göring, Ribbentrop, Gen. Keitel, Gen.
Jodl, Alfred Rosenberg, Wilhelm Frick,
Seyss-Inquart, Fritz Sauckel, Bormann
[in absentia], Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Hans
Frank, and Julius Streicher
Life
imprisonment:
Walter Funk, Rudolf Hess, Admiral
Raeder
Prison terms of
10 to 20 years:
Albert Speer, Baldur von Schirach,
Konstantin von Neurath, Admiral Dönitz
Acquitted (over
Soviet protest):
Franz von Papen, Hjalmar Schacht, Hans
Fritzsche (Propaganda Ministry)