XIV. Quebec II

ChapterXIV QUEBEC II WE KNOW NOW that Mr. Hull, the Secretary of State, and Mr. Stimson, the Secretary of War, were horrified by what happened at the OCTAGON Conference in Quebec in September, 1944 At that time, their "stupefaction" (to use Hull's own word) was made a White House secret, and it was quickly deemed expedi ent to let the conference go down in history as one of the minor decision points of the war. Actually, it was the scene of one of the most damning blunders of Franklin D. Roosevelt's career a blunder inspired by a Svengali-like figure in the administration who was later to be identified by the F.B.1. as a key member of the Washington Communist spy ring. Although Roosevelt par tially extricated himself from the blunder, thanks to the frantic rescue work of Hull and Stimson, his Quebec decision almost delivered postwar Germany entirely to Communism. Nine months had passed since Teheran. Events had moved with dizzy speed. At Quebec, the Big Two sat down together in the realization that the war was won. OVERLORD had been a stupendous success,and the Anglo-American armies were poised at the Siegfried Line. Russia had pushed the German invaders off Russian soil, and its battle-flushed armies were now at the Vistula in Poland. It was no longer a question of victory. It had 228 QUEBEC II 2~ become a questionof what.the so-calledAllies would do with their victory.

I'll this intoxicating clitnate, some of Roosevelt's most intimate advisors began to losetheir heads. One of these was Henry Mar.. genthau, the long-time Secretary of the Treasury and the Presi dent's Dutchess County neighbor. From the beginning, Henry Morgenthau had looked upon World War II as a punitive expe dition to punish Hitler and the Germans for persecuting the Jews. He was close to those powerful circles, largely centered in New York City, which were demanding a Carthaginian peace. Since Roosevelt was in the middle of his fourth-term campaigp, running against Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York, and since New York was a pivotal state in the com.. ing election, the moment was politically propitious for Mr. Roosevelt to evidence a special regard for the opinions of Henry Morgenthau. So when the leaders of these "groups," as Hull calls them, caught the President's ear and asked him to invite Morgenthau to the Quebec Conference, he was "induced." To the country's surprise, the Secretary of the Treasury was called to Quebec.

Morgenthau, never considered a strong figure and lightlyre.. garded in the administration, even by Roosevelt, had come un.. der the influence of a Treasury economist named Harry Dexter White (his parents were Jacob and Sarah Weit when they emi... grated to America from Russia). White had an indefatigable drive and a facile brain. After teaching at Harvard University and Lawrence College, he had entered the Treasury Department in an obscure role in 1934. Moving up the departmental ladder, he had won Morgenthau's confidence early in the war period and was entrusted with a series of important missions. He be.. came Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, which, under a figure .. head such as Morgenthau, was a post from which he could wield influence throughout the Washington bureaucracy. On the eve 230 WASTEBASKET ROAD of Quebec, he was in full charge of all operations of the Treasury Department pertaining to foreign affairs. With his astute mind, he had easily established intellectual mastery over his chief, and when, on the night of September 4, 1944,a week before the can..

ference began, Morgenthau dined with Secretary of War Stirn.. son to propound his plan for .postwar -Germany, he brought Harry Dexter White, who had drafted it, to dinner with him.1 Stimson immediately saw trouble ahead. Indeed, this was the beginning of the most violent single interdepartmental struggle of Stimson's career. The successstory of Harry Dexter White is, of course, one of the bizarre phenomena of the Rooseveltian dispensation. This vulpine character, whose signature placed many men in the gov... ernment and brought fat promotions to others, was a traitor. On November 8 and December 4,.1945,only a little more than a year after the OCTAGON Conference, the F.B.I. transmitted mem... oranda to the WhiteHouse identifying him as a Soviet inform... ant. The F.B.l. reported that he was part of the Silvermaster ring. For years he had been supplying Russia with confidential information.

2 Later, White was publicly named by both Eliza... beth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, former Soviet spy cour... iers, as one of their Washington contacts. While his case was being probed, he died under mysterious circumstances. Subse quent revelations verified his treachery, which is no longer an Issue. This was the man who sold Henry Morgenthau the so..called Morgenthau Plan for the pastoralization of Germany, which was to be the crowning achievement of the second Quebec Con ference. That the President of the United States fell into this transparent Communist trap demonstrates the wild irresponsi bility with which he was conducting American foreign policy in these final months of the war. The supple sycophants who write obeisant biographies of Rooseveltnimbly shun the episode, QUEBEC II 231 hoping to expunge it by silence. Sherwood, compelled at least to mention it, makes an offhand allusion to the "notorious" Mor genthau Plan, but he charitably refrains from telling his readers what it was.

Morgenthau presented his plan to President Roosevelt on September 6 at a meeting attended by Hull and Stimson. The three met again with Mr. Roosevelt on the ninth. On the elev enth, the conference was to begin in Quebec. These last few days saw a vigorous battle between Hull and Stimson on the one hand, and Morgenthau on the other, for the President's decision. Both Hull and Stimson considered Morgenthau's pro posal barbaric and disastrous, and they warned the President against it in strongly worded memoranda. The· Morgenthau Plan, in brief, was to strip, pillage, and so destroy Germany that it would be permanently converted into "a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in character." Speaking of the Ruhr "and surrounding industrial areas" to a total of over thirty thousand square miles, Morgenthau (or, in reality, Harry Dexter White) had written: "This area should not only be stripped of all presently existing industries but so weak ened and controlled that it cannot .in the foreseeable future be come an industrialized area.... All industrial plants and equip ment 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 shall be thoroughly wrecked."3 But that was not all. Even more diabolical punishment was prescribed for the German people and their children and grand children. First, a list was to be made of Germans who were to be shot at oncetipon apprehension and identification. Second, the entire German population was to be held down to a standard of living no higher than bare subsistence.

To Hull, this was "blind vengeance." It was blind because "it 232 WASTEBASKET ROAD wasstriking at all of Europe.... The Treasury recommendation that the German mines be ruined was almostbreath-taking in its implications £ora11 Europe, because various other countries relied upon German coal for their industries."4 As for turning Germany into a pasture, Hull argued: "Seventy million Ger... mans could not live on the land within Germany. They would either starve Qr become a charge upon other nations. This was a scheme that would arouse the eternal resentment· of the Ger mans. It would punish all of them and future generations too for the crimes of a portion of them. It would punish not only Germany but also most of Europe." Stimson was horrified at the idea of turning "the center of one of the most industrialized continents in the world" into a nonproductive "ghost territory." "1 cannot conceive," he told the President, "of turning such a gift of nature into a dust heap."5 The proposal to hold the ·German population to a bare subsist ence level seemed downright immoral to him. "This would mean," he argued, "condemning the German people to a condi tion of servitude in which, no matter how hard or effectivelya man worked, he could not materially increase his economic condition in the world."

How a plot of such pre-medieval vindictiveness could be seri ously considered by supposedly "liberal" twentieth-century statesmen is not easy to understand. Even the passions of war could not, in a civilized age, rescue itfrom the charge of deprav ity. Harry Dexter White, of course, along with his Sovietpromp ters, wanted the Morgenthau Plan because it would wreck the economy of western Europe. This was part of the program of nlilitant Communism .. There was another Machiavellian twist to the proposal. By inducing the Americans and the.British to father this "cataclys mic plan for Germany," as Cordell Hull described it, these con... spirators could turn the hate of the German people against the QUEBEC 'II 233 Westerndemocraciesfor years to come. Moscowforesawa turn of the German masses to Communism, with the Soviet Union looming in their eyes as the lesser of two evils. From any angle, the Morgenthau Plan could bring nothing but loss to the United States.

Athis meetingswith Morgenthau, Hull, and Stimson before going to Quebec, President Roosevelt was noncommittal, al· though his remark that "Germany could live happily and peace fully on soup from soup kitchens" evinced to Stimson the shal· lowness of his attitude. Actually, Roosevelt was not a well man. Sherwood, who saw him in the White House just after the Quebec Conference after having not seen him for severalmonths, writes: "I was shocked by his appearance. I had heard that he had lost a lot of weight, but I was unprepared for the almost ravaged appearance of his face."6 Secretary Stimson was worried about the President's state of body and mind. He wrote in his diary on September II, the day the conference began: "I have been much troubled by the President's physical condition.... I rather fear for the effects of this hard conference upon him. I am par ticularly troubled ... that he is going up there without any real preparation for the solution of the ... problem of how to treat Germany. So far as he has evidenced it in his talks with us, he has had absolutely no study or training in the very difficult prob lem which we have to decide."7 This entry in Secretary Stimson's diary-it is not extravagant to say-may be the most trenchant observation penned during the entire war period. He knew, as did any person informed on the ethnography and the economy of Continental Europe, that the German question would be as vital after the war as it was before, if not more so, and that to treat it either casually or emo tionally would prove an expensive folly. Roosevelt was now go ing forth to deal with this question. And here we have a mem ber of the Cabinet, fresh from intimate White House talks, 234 WASTEBASKET ROAD writing sorrowfully in his private diary that the President was going to Quebec "without any real preparation" and that he had "absolutely no study or training" in the problem.

Harry Dexter White was thoroughly prepared. Through the red network of treachery, he had received his orders from Jacob Golos, a high Rusian officialin America who directed a number of Communist cells in the American government and was one of the ghostly manipulators of two espionage .. rings which encircled the White House. The Communist apparatus knew, of course, that Henry Morgenthau was the weak reed who could be used for their purpose and that White, his "assist ant," was the perfect agent for the job. Neither Hull nor Stimson was at Quebec. Generals .and ad mirals were in abundance, but the ball had long since passed to the statesmen. It was they who could lengthen the war and fumble the peace. Germany was on the verge of collapse, and as for Japan, Admiral Leahy, who was with the President at Que bec, writes: "By the beginning of September, Japan was almost defeated through a practically complete sea and air blockade."8 At a propitious moment, Henry Morgenthau put before Mr.