> "...the possibility that Roosevelt and the State Department planners had
> specific plans for post-war Europe, mostly
> based on perceived U.S. self-interest, which they were willing to pursue in
> both savory and unsavory ways if need be.
>
> And that sometimes supporting fascists rather than local nationalists with
> considerably greater moral and popular legitimacy was the most expedient way
> to realize those plans."
glb wrote:
In a letter to Secretary of State Cordell Hull in September, 1945 (which made the front page in many newspapers), Roosevelt (taking advice from Secretary of the treasury Morganthau and Assistant Secretary White):
"Defeat of the Nazi army will have to be followed by the eradication of those weapons of economic warfare."
He focused on I.G. Farben but the plan was for the total elimination of all German armaments and chemical and metallurgical industries; desiring Germany to become an agrarian society. Enter Truman who felt that an Agrarian Germany would leave open the path for "Bolshevism." Commie-phobia, again.
Patton, and other senior officers like General Draper and Forrestal, coming from Dillon, Read, bankers who had financed Germany after WW1, agreed and the grand plan of denazification became more and more dilute. Only a minority of industrial and Gestapo leaders were arrested and by 1946 scarcely any Nazi industrial leader was in custody. Many had found new jobs in the US, particularly in the new intelligence agencies.
Right, Brad?