Status Updates From Nuremberg: The Last Battle

Six million? By sad but extraordinary coincidence, the American Jewish community had raised a similar outcry about a ‘holocaust’ a quarter of a century ear-lier, after World War One. In a 1919 speech the governor of New York, Martin Glynn, had claimed that ‘six million’ Jews were being extermi-nated.

Stimson learned of Morgenthau’s triumph at Quebec in a phone call from his deputy John J. McCloy that weekend. It hung like a cloud
over him for days. ‘I have yet to meet a man,’ he dictated, ‘who is not horrified with the “Carthaginian” attitude of the Treasury. It is Semitism gone wild for vengeance and, if it is ultimately carried out (I can’t believe that it will be), it as sure as fate will lay the seeds for ano

One of the conditions, said Stalin, that must be met was that ‘at least 50,000 and perhaps 100,000 of the German Commanding Staff must be physically liquidated'

The economic part of what was more properly called the Treasury Plan was drafted by Morgenthau’s principal assistant Harry Dexter
White (who was later accused of being a Soviet agent); White com-pleted the first draft on September

Morgenthau said: ‘That’s very interesting, Mr President, but I don’t think it goes nearly far enough.’ He wanted to put eighteen or twentymillion Germans out of work

‘There was agreement,’ noted the aide in his
unpublished diary, ‘that extermination could be left to nature if the Russians had a free hand.’ Why just the Russians? inquired Eisenhower:
the victorious powers, he suggested, could temporarily assign zones in Germany to the smaller nations with scores to settle. He repeated these views to Henry Morgenthau when the latter vis-ited the Portsmouth command post

I took a respite in the form of reading a book in the no 1 ladies agency series. But I am back to my ww2 chronicles and this sounds like another heavy read based on the foreword.