Soviet Containment & Marshall Plan

[Roberto]

Unfortunately I don't have the time to translate all I like to add to this topic to English. My lack of English would take me hours and I'm sure my grammr would cause several irritations. Maybe some fellow members of this forum who are able to read German are able to translate some interesting points of this text for the English readers:

I'll be glad to take care of that, POW.

[viriato]

Roberto asked:

Was Germany divided into federal states, or was it split up into small units often hostile towards each other?

Apart from the lost territories, Germany was divided in 3 countries, one of them made neutral - Austria -, another made a Soviet satelite, the GDR and another an US satelite, the BRD. Apart form the Austrian separation, in fact a Versailles retake, the "Germany" as we know now was separated in spite of the Soviet advances that would not only permit the "German" reunification but that this reunification would have happened years before what actually happened and probably would have ensured that at least some of the lost territories would have been returned to her (East and Central Pomerania and Lower Silesia). In return Germany would have to accept a neutral condition identical to the one of Austria. One in which Austria did not have any problems with and on the contrary even throve. We have to thank the "wise" policy of Adenauer for this "western entrenchemnet" of the BRD (although I would rather call it western subservience). But one could always ask, who was after all behind Adenauer?

And yes the BRD and the GDR were quite hostile to each other.

[David Thompson]

viriato -- Given the behavior of the Nazis during WWII, I don't think a peace along the lines you suggest was a realistic possibility. After five confrontations between the German states (after 1870-1871, Germany) and her neighbors in a period of little more than eighty years (war with Austria-Hungary, war with Denmark, the Franco-Prussian war, WWI and WWII), folks were getting tired of having to fight them. Between 1917 and 1945, both of my grandfathers, my father and two of my uncles had to go over there and tone those people down. Lots of other families had similar or worse experiences. The Germans had no cards to play in 1945.

[Caldric]

in fact a Versailles retake, the "Germany" as we know now was separated in spite of the Soviet advances that would not only permit the "German" reunification but that this reunification would have happened years before what actually happened and probably would have ensured that at least some of the lost territories would have been returned to her (East and Central Pomerania and Lower Silesia).

Do you really think the Soviets were just letting Germany reform without a reason? Why would the Soviets all of sudden feel sorry for the break up of Germany? They had one plan and that was the complete communization of Germany and the removal of western powers from Germany and with their removal from Germany, continental Europe as a whole. I suppose this is a good thing if your sympathies lay with communist camp, however from a western standpoint that is not a very good option to a split Germany. You talk as though West Germany was a slave to the United States, West Germany prospered after WWII. They were treated fair and did not fall into the industrial Dark Age that East Germany suffered under for 50 years or so.


As far as Germany being broke up, well after starting a second world war that destroyed 35 or more million people they are lucky they exist at all, I have no sympathy for them. German plans for Europe were far worse then what they received in turn, far worse.

[Scott Smith]

Your "witch-hunt" approach to the Nuernberg prosecutions taints an otherwise legitimate point of view on current affairs, and certainly alienates the greater part of an otherwise potentially receptive audience. But perhaps I've been misreading your arguments.

I suggest you read the chapter on Senator Robert A. Taft in John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer prize-winning book Profiles in Courage and Taft's opposition to the Nuremberg trials and then we can continue. I've posted it here on the forum before because Roberto was having trouble understanding my views.

Post it again, bigmouth, so that I may once more enjoy exposing the good senator's not exactly objective polemics.

Which good Senator, Taft or Kennedy?

One of those very rare very stupid questions.

So repost it already since you know so much.
:roll:

Just pull it off your harddrive Roberto. I posted it for you once. I don't really want to go looking for it...

Furiously backpedaling, Smith, or are you just unable to control your anger?

I think Freud called that Projection. For the reader, in Kennedy's book about Americans who he thought had done courageous things, he admired the very unpopular stance that Senator Taft took about the Nuremberg trials, even though Taft was about as close to a Nazi as Robert E. Lee was to Mao Tse-Tung. (That is sarcasm, Roberto.) Taft was a great legal mind, the son of the former President and Supreme Court justice, and an inscrutably honest poitician (very rare). Roberto has trouble with that concept because it doesn't fit his bubble. Justice Douglas was also a critic of the Nuremberg trials. Mr. Kaschner did not regard him as a great legal mind, but he must've outshone Justice Jackson at least, a good example of a sell-out to mammon among a legal priesthood where principles are swapped like pelts and pies.

Smith’s knowledge on the implementation of directive JCS 1067 seems to be unsurprisingly deficient.

And you didn't even know what JCS 1067 was until I gave you the little eye-opener.

Now what gave you that idea, my poor pissed-as-hell friend? The usual combination of wishful thinking and an overblown ego (or the pretension thereof masking a deeply rooted inferiority complex), perhaps?

Oh, Roberto. Just admit it. You resisted the idea with all fours when I introduced it. But the boy will get to the barber chair just the same.

This is what you wrote after I posted the Murphy quote:

What a shame we cannot look at this “top-secret directive JCS 1067” and are thus asked to rely on what Mr. Murphy tells us about it.

Does Murphy, who claims to have seen the document himself, at least get more specific anywhere in his book about the directive’s provisions that allegedly reflected “the spirit-and sometimes the letter-of the Morgenthau Plan” ?

Churchill and Unconditional Surrender

clearly Roberto didn't even believe in JCS 1067 or that it said what Murphy claims; he and General Clay must have been Deniers.

Btw, here is what I posted on that day in entirety:

I've posted this before on the forum. For all intents and purposes, Germany was divided into sections and kept politically and economically prostrate until West Germany was restored as a counterbalance to the Soviet threat. There was nothing but an occupational government following Unconditional Surrender, and the official but SECRET policy was to sabotage the economy, although American officials did their best to undermine those policies to make their administrations more workable. More later...

To my astonishment, I learned in Washington that no American [occupation] plan was ready yet because President Roosevelt had not made known his own views, and three departments of the government were wrangling among themselves about postwar Germany. The State Department had drawn up its plans under the expert direction of two of my best friends in the Foreign Service, H. Freeman Matthews and James W. Riddleberger. The War Department had developed other plans under the skilled supervision of Secretary Stimson and Assistant Secretary John J. McCloy. And the Treasury Department had produced a third program which became known as the Morgenthau Plan, named for the Secretary of the Treasury who sponsored it. Although the occupation policies of the State and War Departments disagreed in details, they were essentially similar, and secretaries Stimson and Hull were willing to merge them. But the Morgenthau Plan was based on a drastically different conception--the proposition that Germany should be transformed from an industrial to an agricultural economy. It was the contention of the Treasury Department that the world could protect itself against a revival of militarism in Germany only by depriving that country of its heavy industry and by shutting down its coal and iron mines.

These policy disputes encompassed much more than the fate of Germany alone; the future of the entire continent of Europe was involved. Hull and Stimson and Morgenthau were in agreement that the Germans must be made to pay for Nazi crimes, and no one in Washington was recommending any "soft" occupation. But opponents of the Morgenthau Plan believed that the postwar reconstruction of all Europe depended on utilizing Germany's resources and skilled workmen, and they were aghast when the President became so impressed with the Treasury Department's proposal that he wrote on a preliminary draft of it: "O.K. FDR." Stimson soon persuaded Roosevelt to withdraw his unqualified approval of the Morgenthau Plan, and a Joint Committee representing the White House and the three departments tried to reach a compromise which would satisfy the President. (pp. 226-227)

[...]

One of the first tasks undertaken by the AGCC [American Group Control Council] was to compile a manual for the guidance of American occupation officials. This policy guide was patterned on a similar Army manual used in Germany after the First World War, and it not only tolerated but encouraged friendly relations between American soldiers and German civilians. Suddenly word arrived from Washington that the new manual had aroused indignation in the highest quarters and was to be scrapped almost entirely. Secretary Hull sent me a copy of a long Roosevelt memorandum on the subject. In light of what happened later in Germany, one part of the memorandum is interesting. Roosevelt wrote that the AGCC manual "gives the impression that Germany is to be restored just as much as the Netherlands or Belgium, and the people of Germany brought back as quickly as possible to their prewar estate." The President emphasized that this decidedly was not American policy. Another manual, prepared by a rival section of the Army, was substituted for the AGCC compilation. The substitute forbade "fraternization" with the German people, banning personal relations of any kind between American occupants and Germans. [Eisenhower refused to have contact with any Germans whatever so there was almost no cooperation between German managers and the occupational authorities. ~Scott Smith] […]

Eisenhower's directive for the occupation finally arrived, and Clay and I were permitted to study the top-secret document about ten days before the surrender. This directive, which later became notorious, was entitled JCS 1067, 6-7. The letters stood for Joint Chiefs of Staff and the tag numerals signified that this version combined the sixth and seventh drafts of this much revised plan. The reason there had been so many revisions and such long delays was because JCS 1067, in its definitive form, combined details from the original occupation programs of the State and War Departments together with incongruous additions inspired by the Morgenthau Plan. (p.250)

[...]

Both of Clay's advisors were shocked by the detailed prohibitions described in JCS 1067. [ Ex-Congressman from Arizona, Lewis Douglas, who was Roosevelt's former Budget Director] exclaimed, "This thing was assembled by economic idiots! It makes no sense to forbid the most skilled workers in Europe from producing as much as they can for a continent which is desperately short of everything!" Clay agreed, and he asked Douglas to fly back to Washington at once to try to get the directive modified. But Douglas returned back to France dejected. The only change he had been able to obtain was an ill-defined authority to exercise certain financial controls if necessary to prevent inflation. I shared quarters with Douglas during the period, and observed his gloom increase the more he studied JCS 1067. He came to the conclusion that the disputes in Washington had tied American occupation plans into fatal bowknots, and before long he quietly resigned. Two years passed before he resumed activity in European affairs as Ambassador in London.

As for Clay, he was destined to become the most influential American in Europe during several crucial postwar years. His sponsor, [James F.] Byrnes, was [a staunch anti-Communist] Secretary of State from July 1945 to January 1947, and a Byrnes-Clay partnership not only changed the American conception of the German occupation, but affected the whole pattern of European events. (P. 251)

[Morgenthau wanted to come to Potsdam but was not made a member of the delegation and resigned. ~Scott Smith] According to Admiral Leahy, "The President [Truman] has told us emphatically that Treasury proposals for the treatment of Germany are out." However, that did not prove to be quite the case. In the long process of compiling Eisenhower's directive for administering the American zone in Germany, various compromises had been accepted by the numerous planners in Washington. The spirit-and sometimes the letter-of the Morgenthau Plan was reflected in many mandatory provisions of the top-secret directive JCS 1067, which haunted Military Government for several postwar years. (p. 270)

The third essential for administering our zone in Germany was to make it self-supporting, so that the occupation would not become an intolerable burden on the American taxpayer. But here again our attempts were thwarted by JCS 1067, with its traces of the Morgenthau Plan which threatened to delay Germany's economic recovery indefinitely. […]

Our difficulties with the arbitrary restrictions of JCS 1067 were aggravated by the fact that OMGUS [Occupational Military Government of the United States] could not publicly explain that it was functioning under an explicit directive from Washington. […] It was not until two years later, after Clay was promoted to succeed McNarney as military governor, that a revised JCS 1067 was officially approved and made public. (P. 285)

[...] But the Germans in our zone were partly protected by Clay's deep feeling about what had occurred in his own state of Georgia after the American Civil War. Clay discouraged looting and did everything in his power to control the activities of "carpetbaggers" intent upon making exorbitant profit of Germany's defeat. (pp. 292-293)

~Robert Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors. NY: Doubleday (1964). [Emphasis added.]

Ibidem

And your source is Zimmerman.

Don’t know what’s wrong with Zimmerman as a source, and Smith should be careful with bitching about sources anyway considering the "Revisionist" crap that often sources his ramblings. Anyway, Zimmerman is my source on the genocidal Jew Kaufman, not on Morgenthau or JCS 1067. Smith seems to have been so out of control that he didn’t even read the quote.

Why don't you go to Kaufman himself?

Theodore Kaufman's, Germany Must Perish!

Snip! (Corty is starting to nod-off and I'm going to have to put him to bed.)

recommends that you read Lucius Clay's memoirs as well as diplomat Robert Murphy.

Thanks for the recommendation. From what Smith has shown me of both, they seem to confirm Mausbach’s assertion that the negative elements of JCS 1067 were deliberately postponed, and thereby in effect dismissed, by Military Government officers in the field.

No, it was implemented in full force as the law of the land but Clay and some others did their best to obstruct it. The problem is that it was a also a passive obstruction to German economic recovery and it wasn't until circa 1948 that it was dead. The rest is called the "German economic miracle."

Snip. (Stay with me, Corty. I'm almost done with this guy.)

(Kaufman’s plan would certainly have qualified, had it ever gone beyond the lonely ramblings of a lonely, ridiculed madman).

Kaufman's plans were taken seriously by the "media elite," as I said. The New York Times and others liked the idea, but there is no evidence that anyone from the Roosevelt administration (including Morgenthau) ever took it seriously, and I'm never said otherwise, although there are key simularities if one compares the two plans.

Smith, on the other hand, shuns the term whenever it goes against his articles of faith (i.e. whenever applied to the crimes of his beloved Nazis) but bleats it out when his "ox" is being "gored", even if the "goring" goes no further than the ramblings of a lonely moron in a self-edited book ridiculed by its reviewers.

I didn't realize that Raphael Lemkin was a lonely moron and that his book Axis Rule in Europe was ridiculed by its reviewers. Certainly his views carried political aspects and not just the austere majesty of "the law." But then all non-members of the priesthood-of-the-legal-bar already know that the law is to politics as prostitution is to vice.

Oh, and enlighten me about Professor Bernadotte Schmitt's plan, Roberto.

I have a better idea. Smith is invited to show us that the genocidal ideas of Mr. Schmitt got any closer to becoming a government-supported genocidal intention than Kaufman’s dreams of sterilization.

I never said anything about sterilization. But if you say that Nazi plans to requisition grain from Ukraine in spite of starvation was Genocide then so was the expulsion and deaths of millions of ethnic Germans after the war, and so would have been any kind of postwar economic terrorism that resulted in millions of deaths from starvation.

A few other points, federalization and balkanization are completely different concepts.

Why, I didn’t know that, teach. Thanks for enlightening me.

Was Germany divided into federal states, or was it split up into small units often hostile towards each other?

Evidently you still don't get it because the Allied occupation into zones and JCS 1067 was intended to balkanize Germany economically and politically. When the Cold War started heating-up (or is that chilling-down?) the Western Allies united their zones and produced a sovereign West Germany, called the Bundestablishment by me. "Bundes" in German means Federal. That was the end of the policy of economic balkanization for West Germany. East Germany was incorporated in 1990. Austria is still independent and probably now wants to stay that way (although with European unity it doesn't make much difference). I wouldn't favor a return of the lands east of the Oder-Neisse line because too much water has gone under the bridge and it is not fair to do to the Poles what the Allies did to ethnic Germans after the war. Besides, Poland will be part of the European Union anyway so what difference does it make now?

The purpose of JCS 1067 was economic disintegration, although not pastoralization.

Not that I consider this assertion to be necessarily wrong, but a verbatim quote of the pertinent provisions of the document or of statements by Clay, Murphy or another critic in this sense would be appreciated.

I've already posted more than you deserve. Time to do your own reading and not just what Zimmerman or somebody at Nizkor says is okay. I agree with his viewpoint on Morgenthau's agricultural romanticism, however. FDR was an agricultural romantic himself. Morgenthau's plan was still Genocidal just the same.

The "draconian" (Murphy's terminology) plans of Hull and Stimson did not favor pastoralization because they wanted to milk German productive capacity for reparations.

Did Murphy say that?

Seek, ye shall find...

[…]These policy disputes encompassed much more than the fate of Germany alone; the future of the entire continent of Europe was involved. Hull and Stimson and Morgenthau were in agreement that the Germans must be made to pay for Nazi crimes, and no one in Washington was recommending any "soft" occupation. But opponents of the Morgenthau Plan believed that the postwar reconstruction of all Europe depended on utilizing Germany's resources and skilled workmen[my emphasis], and they were aghast when the President became so impressed with the Treasury Department's proposal that he wrote on a preliminary draft of it: "O.K. FDR." Stimson soon persuaded Roosevelt to withdraw his unqualified approval of the Morgenthau Plan, and a Joint Committee representing the White House and the three departments tried to reach a compromise which would satisfy the President. (pp. 226-227)[…]

The Soviets did, however, effectively deindustrialize since they carted off entire industrial plant not just goods. They scrapped everything and sent it to Russia. Working radio sets were smashed, turned into scrap metal, shovelled onto boxcars and sent East. The same with heavy machinery.

Why, looks like de-industrialization of Germany was related to Soviet reparation claims rather than to Morgenthau’s proposals, as I presumed.

If you read what I wrote, I said that JCS 1067 was no less draconian than Morgenthau but wasn't intended to pastoralize Germany like Morgenthau, or what initially happened when the Soviets hauled off industrial plant. JCS 1067 was intended to keep Germany economically and politically balkanized to keep her weak (even though this actually made occupation more difficult).

Both the French and the Soviets used German forced-labor well into the peace.

The Soviets I know about. As to the French, I asked POW to tell us more about their use of German forced labor in one of my last posts.

Now you're being coy but I agree that we need some more input for your education.

Snip. (Corty is about to fall off of my shoulder asleep. I've never seen a bird do that before. I thought each half of the brain could sleep independently or something like that.)

No, Corty, I can't tell him that...

Come on, Smith, I know you’d like to leap at my throat, so what’s keeping you from letting out all of the manure that your skull is so full of?

He just meant that I should tease you about the conversation going on behind your back at another board. I didn't want to rub it in but since you must know... And you will note that I didn't participate in talking about you since you can't reply (having been banned and all). I told Andrew that it was like an itch that the doctor says not to scratch. Unfortunately Corty really wanted to tease his namesake but I insisted that we don't.


No, need to get all paranoid--this is all we were talking about:

Not Banned

I hope Corty has a nice dry place up there and doesn’t have to wade through the thick of it.

Nighty-nite.

[Scott Smith]

viriato -- Given the behavior of the Nazis during WWII, I don't think a peace along the lines you suggest was a realistic possibility. After five confrontations between the German states (after 1870-1871, Germany) and her neighbors in a period of little more than eighty years (war with Austria-Hungary, war with Denmark, the Franco-Prussian war, WWI and WWII), folks were getting tired of having to fight them. Between 1917 and 1945, both of my grandfathers, my father and two of my uncles had to go over there and tone those people down. Lots of other families had similar or worse experiences. The Germans had no cards to play in 1945.

Nobody had to go over and do anything. Our leaders barked and our yellow-press howled. But Germany was not a threat in WWI except that The Allies would default on their loans as Russia had and the Anglophile plutocrats therefore began to pressure Wilson for war. He saw in Liberal-Intervention a way of realizing his utopian schemes of world government and stopped keeping the USA out. We went to war, saved the Allies and enabled them to impose their New World Order, which they did not deserve and could not long maintain. In the second war, Germany even presented less of a threat to the United States and actively tried to stay OUT of war with America, something the Kaiser should have actively done. FDR wanted war so bad he could taste it; his New Deal was dead without it.

Besides, the Germans have been historically the least bellicose of almost any Europeans, particularly France and Albion herself, despite her talent at atrocity-propaganda. Basically, when Germany started to industrialize in the late 19th century she stood to surpass the British model, and her technological development, particularly in the chemical industry, was making her a formidable commercial rival. England could not play its game of "splendid isolation" (or whatever you want to call it) with a united Germany on the continent. So WWI was fought to re-balkanize Europe, particularly Germany, the keystone of Europe. Germany would have won a narrow victory in WWI because of the collapse of the Tsar.

United States Intervention handed the British Empire a victory in two world wars, an empire that was defunct by the end of the 19th century except in name until President Eisenhower refused to continue nursing a bankrupted Albion along during the Suez crisis. Great Britain still thinks that she is not part of Europe and tries to play the America-card to this day. We saw this with the support of Junior Bush in the Iraq War "of WMD and regime change." A more realistic UK policy would be to stop dragging its heels and become part of Europe instead of trying to "poodle" the superpower grandeur of the United States. Of course, the Anglophile and pro-Zionist American plutocracy might not agree; they see themselves as America's good citizens but Oceana's first (to put it into Orwellian-Moresian terms). The New World Order is their Democracy-Capitalist utopia. And Intervention is their Holy Grail. Globaloney sucks.

Btw, when Americans are crossed (I mean really crossed) our behavior makes the Germans look like pikers. We don't have a monopoly on virtue so we shouldn't be judging the Germans any too harshly unless-and-until we've walked in their shoes. If Danzigers were Texans then WWII would have come early.

[Roberto]

I suggest you read the chapter on Senator Robert A. Taft in John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer prize-winning book Profiles in Courage and Taft's opposition to the Nuremberg trials and then we can continue. I've posted it here on the forum before because Roberto was having trouble understanding my views.

Post it again, bigmouth, so that I may once more enjoy exposing the good senator's not exactly objective polemics.

Which good Senator, Taft or Kennedy?

One of those very rare very stupid questions.

So repost it already since you know so much.

And with this remark Smith sinks even deeper into imbecility.

Just pull it off your harddrive Roberto. I posted it for you once. I don't really want to go looking for it...

Furiously backpedaling, Smith, or are you just unable to control your anger?

I think Freud called that Projection. For the reader, in Kennedy's book about Americans who he thought had done courageous things, he admired the very unpopular stance that Senator Taft took about the Nuremberg trials, even though Taft was about as close to a Nazi as Robert E. Lee was to Mao Tse-Tung. (That is sarcasm, Roberto.) Taft was a great legal mind, the son of the former President and Supreme Court justice, and an inscrutably honest poitician (very rare). Roberto has trouble with that concept because it doesn't fit his bubble. Justice Douglas was also a critic of the Nuremberg trials. Mr. Kaschner did not regard him as a great legal mind, but he must've outshone Justice Jackson at least, a good example of a sell-out to mammon among a legal priesthood where principles are swapped like pelts and pies.

Smith would make less a fool out of himself if, instead of shooting the bull and beating around the bush, he posted Senator Taft's ramblings for me to tell our readers what I think about them once again, as I remember having done on the thread

Any information on the Nurenberg trials?
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fskalmanforumfr ... =116.topic

of the old forum.

The link is no longer online, unfortunately (though maybe Marcus can reactivate it), but I kept the very instructive considerations of Mr. Kaschner in my files, which I'm sure our audience will benefit from.

In his post # 240 (9/18/01 2:34:44 am) on the thread:

Any information on the Nurenberg trials?
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fskalmanforumfr ... 21&stop=40

1. Should there have been any trials at all? IMHO this can only be answered in the affirmative. The atrocities committed by Hitler’s regime and his minions had to be published to the German people and to the world at large, so that thinking people could wonder and ponder (and perhaps take heed) at how incredibly fragile is the thin veneer of civilization which protects human kind from reversion to barbarism. The perpetrators had to be punished – basic concepts of justice simply would not permit them to go scott (sic) free. But the punishment could not be permitted to be meted out indiscriminately by the same sort of barbarism that accompanied the acts of which the Nazi regime was accused. Turning the accused over to the various countries in which the atrocities had been committed: Russia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, Czechoslovakia, France, Britain etc.etc. would probably have accorded them the same treatment that Mussolini and Clara Petacci received at the hands of the Italian communist partisans.
And I think it is extremely important to recognize the passions existing in the mid-1940s toward the treatment to be handed out to Germany when (eventually) defeated. At Teheran, Stalin toasted the idea of simply shooting 50,000 Nazis. The British were initially of the view that the senior Nazis and generals should be summarily shot, without trial. An influential group in the US, headed by Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of Treasury, wanted the senior German officials shot without trial, the entire SS membership exiled to some foreign island and the whole of Germany pastoralized.. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that Germany’s industrial capacities should be crushed, that it should be turned into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral, that the major war criminals were to be summarily shot, and it was proposed to get together with Stalin to draw up a list of names. The vigorous efforts of Henry Stimpson ( the US Secretary of War ), General Marshall and Justice Frankfurter led Roosevelt to change his mind, the Morgenthau plan was abandoned and under American pressure Churchill and Stalin agreed at the Moscow Conference that war criminals were to be tried and punished.

2.Were the charges appropriate? I have never questioned the legitimacy of Counts Three and Four of the Indictment, i.e. War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. They have been criticized as ex post facto in nature, but that doctrine is designed to protect against being charged with an act which one could not know at the time of commission was criminal. No one living in a civilized nation in the mid-20th century could have been unaware that the conduct identified under those charges was criminal under the laws of every civilized nation, including Germany , at least until the Hitler regime.
As to Count 2, Crimes Against Peace (planning or waging a war of aggression), I am somewhat more troubled, for two reasons. First, because in theory it can be very difficult to determine whether a war is aggressive or defensive, and second, there was no clear precedent or predicate for making a war of aggression a criminal offense. As to the first problem, however, although the determination might well be difficult in another case, clearly it was not Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Yugoslavia, Greece or Russia that invaded Germany. As to the 2d, there had been a long condemnation (at least since St. Augustine) of unjust wars, carried through thinkers like de Vitoria, Suarez, Grotius, Pufendorf and Vatel, and the war commenced by Germany IMHO squarely falls within that category. And while the 15 member Commission on Responsibilities of the Authors of the War established by the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, although finding that the Central Powers had launched a war of aggression, determined that this did not consist of a crime under international law, it went on to state that it should be made a penal offense in the future. Moreover, the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Treaty, to which Germany was a party, in effect outlawed war itself. As a lawyer trained in the common-law tradition, which finds its source of law in developing customs and practices, and not only in written statutes, I lean strongly toward the view that Count 2 was legitimate, particularly in light of Hitler’s long legacy of broken treaties and promises.
Count 1, Conspiracy to Commit Crimes Against Peace, gives me a great deal of trouble. The notion of conspiracy is, as I understand it, primarily an American legal concept and alien to most continental criminal jurisprudential thinking. I think it is a dangerous notion, and although undoubtedly useful in certain situations I can not see the grounds for its application in the context of international war crimes trials. But I don’t recall that anyone at Nuremberg was convicted solely on Count 1, and indeed only one solely on Counts 1 and 2 (Hess).

3. Was the procedure basically fair? I believe it was, although it was certainly not in strict accordance with criminal procedures in US courts. Compromises had to be made with the Russians and the French, who were accustomed to continental civil law procedures rather than the common law of the US and Great Britain. But in some ways (e.g. specificity of charges in the individual indictments) the continental procedures adopted were more favorable to the defense than the US procedures.
Certainly the trials were flawed, but equally certainly not fatally. I have never in my years of practice participated in a trial that I did not believe was flawed in some way or another. The gods of incompetence, confusion and simple mistake – yes and even bias and duplicity – rule in the courtroom as well as in all other realms of human endeavor. But on the whole, I think the trials were as fair, or even fairer, than could reasonably have been expected under the circumstances. One must keep in mind that Germany, and Europe as a whole, was still in chaos. And certainly the trials were infinitely fairer than the defendants would have had under the procedures applied under their legal system. Remember Roland Freisler's court?

4. Were the verdicts just? I do not think Streicher (however despicable) should have been sentenced to death; I think Doenitz should have been let off with time served; I think Hess should have been held unfit for trial and committed to a mental institution. But I have disagreed with other verdicts and sentences in other cases, which doesn’t necessarily mean they were unfair. The administration of justice is not a perfect science in any jurisdiction that I'm aware of. All in all, I can't find too much to complain about.

And in his post # 243 (9/22/01 1:20:20 am) on the same thread, in response to Smith's objections that renowned lawyers had severely criticized the trials,

1. As you point out, Senator Taft and Justice Douglas were opposed to the Nuremberg trials. If I were arguing your side of the case, however, I would not rely on them too heavily. Taft (although I think him a man of unquestionable integrity) was a politician, not a lawyer or jurist. And Justice Douglas will, I think, in the cold light of history be judged as one of the weaker legal minds that have graced the Supreme Court over the centuries, although certainly one of the leading protagonists of liberal political correctness. (Don’t forget that the Chief US prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, was a former Solicitor General and then Attorney General of the United States, an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court and IMHO a far more able jurist that Justice Douglas.)

From my point of view much weightier testimony for your point of view comes from the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Harlan F. Stone, who although not a self propagandist like Douglas, had one of the soundest judicial minds we have seen on that bench. Stone was greatly disturbed by the aggressive war charge, and wrote “That just retribution ought to reach most of the accused is plain enough, but I find great difficulty in finding a firm basis in law for punishing the heads of a state or high government officials for making aggressive war, and I wonder how some of those who preside at the trials would justify some of the acts of their own government if they were placed in the status of the accused.” See Alpheus Thomas Mason, “Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law”, (Viking Press, 1956) p.716 fn. The same concern was held by US District Court Judge Charles Wyzanski, Jr. who, although he ripped the hide off of me as a young lawyer in an oral argument decades ago, was IMHO one of the best legal minds on the Federal bench. Also Pitman B. Potter, Secretary of the American Association of International Law. And also Judge Rahabinode Pal, High Court of Calcutta and member of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. See Davidson, “The Trial of the Gremans” (McMillan, 1956) p. 587, fn.

That certain distinguished jurists had serious doubts, particularly about Counts One and Two, cannot be gainsaid. I have had those myself, although I’m certainly no jurist at all, but after some 50 years I lean far more to the legitimacy of Count Two than I used to, and am comforted by the fact that none of the accused was convicted on Count One alone. But the vast majority of members of the bench and bar, both in the US and as I understand it in the UK, did not oppose the trials. And to expect a unanimity of view, especially among lawyers, about an issue such as this, is as unrealistic as expecting a unanimity of view among the French as to whether Bordeaux or Burgundy produces the better wine.

And of course the fact is that in December 1946 the United Nations General Assembly UNANIMOUSLY affirmed the principles of the IMT Charter as well as its judgment.

2. As to your notion that the Tribunal’s procedures were flawed because it was not bound by formal rules of evidence and could take judicial notice of governmental documents, I can only say that however highly we in the US regard our own rules of evidence that regard is not generally shared on the Continent (at least in France, which I know quite a bit about, and in Germany, which I think I know something of) and they seem to get along pretty well without them. Don’t forget that half the members of the Court were continental lawyers, and as far as I know none of the defense lawyers were familiar with our highly technical evidentiary rules. Moreover, even in the US, in cases where a judge, rather than a jury is the trier of fact, our evidentiary rules are often ignored and the judge allowed to give the evidence whatever weight he deems it’s worthy of. And in our own practice judicial notice is customarily taken of governmental documents if prepared in the ordinary course of business, or if purporting to reflect official acts or decisions.

3. Justice Wennerstrum was not THE Presiding Judge at the NMT, he was only one of 13 Presiding Judges, all of whom had substantial experience on the bench in the US. As far as I am aware, none of the others shared his sentiments.

4. As far as I am aware, Telford Taylor’s belief in the legitimacy of the Nuremberg Trials, and specifically Count Two (Aggressive War) never faltered as you suggested. The point of his book “Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy” was not to criticize the principles of Nuremberg, but to the contrary, to criticize the US for not adhering to them in Vietnam.

5. I agree that Dr. Blaha’s testimony has a distinct odor of fish about it. But if you really want to get some fishy testimony look at the stuff the three Soviet witnesses on the Katyn massacre came up with, particularly Dr. Marko Markov, a Bulgarian who had originally served on the International Medical Commission which the GERMANS had organized to look into the massacre and which concluded that the Soviets were responsible!! At Nuremberg, now that Bulgaria was under Soviet domination, he wheeled 180 degrees and tried to pin the crime on the Germans!! This was the best the Soviets could do and was a great embarrassment to the other Allies.

But OF COURSE you will find confusing, contradictory, self serving, biased, muddled and purely erroneous testimony in that Trial. It lasted 10 months. Feelings were high. I once knew but have forgotten how many witnesses testified and how many documents were offered into evidence, but there were a lot. There was BOUND to be some chaff with the wheat. Any lawyer who has engaged in trial work will testify to that. You simply blink at reality to expect perfection in the workings of any system of justice – we are humans after all, laboring to do the best our frail natures are capable of in the real world, not gods on Olympus. And just because testimony is entered or a document is presented in evidence is no guarantee of its veracity or authenticity. Nor does it indicate that the trier of fact gave it any weight whatsoever. So I think you are quite right in concluding that history can not accept as gospel every piece of evidence offered just because it was offered at the Nuremberg Trial. But on the other hand to try to vitiate the legitimacy of the entire trial process by picking at a few isolated examples of phony-baloney testimony suggests to me either a sophomoric idealism or some ulterior motive. And frankly Scott, I am troubled and disappointed by the fact that most of your posts on this thread follow in lockstep with the stuff on Zundlesite, which IMHO is clearly neo-Nazi, and IHR, which is not much better. I think you have a better and more inquiring mind than that.

6. I quite agree that at Teheran and elsewhere Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt determined that the senior members of Hitler’s régime should be tried and punished. From what I have read I also think they believed the accused would all simply be subjected to a summary trial (much like the Soviet show trials against Kamenev, Vinoviev and Bukharin, et al. in the mid-30s) and then promptly sentenced and hung. But that is obviously not what happened, and the Soviets, at least, were furious. The panel of eight judges (except of course for the Soviets, whose individual heads were at stake) were truly distinguished jurists and acted like real judges. Their deliberations were (in most but unfortunately not all cases) lengthy and contentious. (Read the notes of Biddle and Parker, the American Judges on the panel.) IMHO they pretty well did the job that the ethics of their profession dictated that they do. As I have indicated elsewhere, I do not agree with certain of their verdicts, but in my career I’ve come up with a long list of verdicts I don’t agree with. That does not mean I think the process unfair.

7. It is all too easy to dismiss the Trials as “sham”, “fraudulent”, “kangaroo court” but to me that just demonstrates a poverty of analysis. Actually, I don’t really know just what a kangaroo court is. In my younger days I thought it meant a court held among convicts in a prison to judge one of their own. And then I read somewhere that it derives from the gold mining days in California, where informal courts were set up to adjudicate charges of “claim jumping”, hence the kangaroo aspect. But if the generally accepted meaning today is a court which has no authorized status or procedures, I don’t believe the Nuremberg Tribunals qualify. Clearly the four power London Charter and the Constitution of the IMT set out a basis and detailed procedures for the Tribunal’s operations, and those procedures were, as far as I am aware, pretty closely followed.

8. I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to persuade you, or others of your persuasion, that under the circumstances and passions then prevailing the Nuremberg Trials were the most decent and judicious means of dealing with the Nazi war criminals, as I am now personally convinced they were (I wasn’t always!). But I sincerely think that to complain that the judges were not neutral, or that the Allies had committed crimes themselves, or that some of the evidence offered was tainted, etc. etc. simply blinks at the hard practical reality of the time.

Smith’s knowledge on the implementation of directive JCS 1067 seems to be unsurprisingly deficient.

And you didn't even know what JCS 1067 was until I gave you the little eye-opener.

Now what gave you that idea, my poor pissed-as-hell friend? The usual combination of wishful thinking and an overblown ego (or the pretension thereof masking a deeply rooted inferiority complex), perhaps?

Oh, Roberto. Just admit it. You resisted the idea with all fours when I introduced it. But the boy will get to the barber chair just the same.

I’m sure the bitching fish-woman (Smith) can show us that and in what terms exactly I denied the existence of directive JCS 1067.

This is what you wrote after I posted the Murphy quote:

What a shame we cannot look at this “top-secret directive JCS 1067” and are thus asked to rely on what Mr. Murphy tells us about it.

Does Murphy, who claims to have seen the document himself, at least get more specific anywhere in his book about the directive’s provisions that allegedly reflected “the spirit-and sometimes the letter-of the Morgenthau Plan” ?

Churchill and Unconditional Surrender

clearly Roberto didn't even believe in JCS 1067 or that it said what Murphy claims; he and General Clay must have been Deniers.

Clearly Roberto said that he would prefer to have a look at JCS 1067 itself instead of having to rely on a secondary source’s rendering thereof, as should be obvious to anyone with less trash inside his skull than Mr. Smith.

Btw, here is what I posted on that day in entirety:

Thanks for posting it again, Smith, though readers who followed the link in my post of Mon May 05, 2003 1:44 pm on this thread probably read it already, together with the ensuing discussion.

And your source is Zimmerman.

Don’t know what’s wrong with Zimmerman as a source, and Smith should be careful with bitching about sources anyway considering the "Revisionist" crap that often sources his ramblings. Anyway, Zimmerman is my source on the genocidal Jew Kaufman, not on Morgenthau or JCS 1067. Smith seems to have been so out of control that he didn’t even read the quote.

Why don't you go to Kaufman himself?

Just paraphrasing Smith’s thinking, as he well knows.

Theodore Kaufman's, Germany Must Perish!

Assuming Smith’s stinking "Revisionist" source provided an accurate rendering of Kaufman’s ramblings, can Smith show us in what respect Zimmerman is supposed to have misrepresented the utterances of the fellow that Time magazine derisively called "Sterilizer Kaufman" ?

recommends that you read Lucius Clay's memoirs as well as diplomat Robert Murphy.

Thanks for the recommendation. From what Smith has shown me of both, they seem to confirm Mausbach’s assertion that the negative elements of JCS 1067 were deliberately postponed, and thereby in effect dismissed, by Military Government officers in the field.

No, it was implemented in full force as the law of the land but Clay and some others did their best to obstruct it.

Wasn’t that exactly what Mausbach said, Smith? Read again.

Snip. (Stay with me, Corty. I'm almost done with this guy.)

I love to make this madman raving mad.

(Kaufman’s plan would certainly have qualified, had it ever gone beyond the lonely ramblings of a lonely, ridiculed madman).

Kaufman's plans were taken seriously by the "media elite," as I said. The New York Times and others liked the idea,

Say Smith’s gurus. I’d rather rely on Zimmerman.

[…]The so-called endorsement from the New York Times is non-existent.[my emphasis] The back cover of the Liberty Bell edition of the book cites the Times as calling Kaufman’s idea "A plan for Permanent Peace Among Civilized Nations"! However, the New York Times only discusses Kaufman twice in 1941 and neither article speaks favorably of the book.[my emphasis] As for the Washington Post "endorsement", it is as apocryphal as that of the New York Times. Using the methodology of Liberty Bell and Irving one could argue that Irving endorsed the book because he calls it "extraordinary."[…]

If Smith can show me a favorable endorsement of Kaufman’s screed by the New York Times, however, I’ll tell Mr. Zimmerman to revise his assertions.

but there is no evidence that anyone from the Roosevelt administration (including Morgenthau) ever took it seriously,

I’d say there’s no evidence that anyone from the Roosevelt administration (including Morgenthau) even read that shit in the first place.

and I'm never said otherwise,

If so, Smith’s mention of Kaufman’s suggestions and the Morgenthau Plan in the same sentence was rather misleading:

The Morgenthau Plan was less Genocidal than the plans of Kaufmann and Schmitt, but the source of German power came from unification and industrialization in the latter 19th century.

although there are key simularities if one compares the two plans.

Let’s have an assessment of those similarities, Smith. I didn’t know that Morgenthau intended to sterilize anybody.

Smith, on the other hand, shuns the term whenever it goes against his articles of faith (i.e. whenever applied to the crimes of his beloved Nazis) but bleats it out when his "ox" is being "gored", even if the "goring" goes no further than the ramblings of a lonely moron in a self-edited book ridiculed by its reviewers.

I didn't realize that Raphael Lemkin was a lonely moron and that his book Axis Rule in Europe was ridiculed by its reviewers.

I was obviously referring to Kaufman, and poor Smith obviously thinks he’s being funny.

Certainly his views carried political aspects and not just the austere majesty of "the law." But then all non-members of the priesthood-of-the-legal-bar already know that the law is to politics as prostitution is to vice.

As usual in such cases, Smith is trying to cover up his blunder with some of his staple platitudes.

Oh, and enlighten me about Professor Bernadotte Schmitt's plan, Roberto.

I have a better idea. Smith is invited to show us that the genocidal ideas of Mr. Schmitt got any closer to becoming a government-supported genocidal intention than Kaufman’s dreams of sterilization.

I never said anything about sterilization.

Don’t try to run away from the question, Smith.

But if you say that Nazi plans to requisition grain from Ukraine in spite of starvation was Genocide then so was the expulsion and deaths of millions of ethnic Germans after the war, and so would have been any kind of postwar economic terrorism that resulted in millions of deaths from starvation.

As Smith well knows, I would have no problem – compliance with the criteria of the UN definition provided – in applying the term to either the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe (even though Smith’s reference to the death toll seems to be somewhat hyperbolic in the light of recent research) or to the hypothetical application against Germany of the kind of "economic terrorism" that his beloved Nazis put into practice in the occupied regions of the Soviet Union.

Smith, on the other hand, seems to have a problem with the term being applied to what his beloved Nazis did, which makes it all the more interesting how eagerly he uses it in regard to the crimes or criminal intentions of their opponents, even where the latter never underwent a government decision process or were merely the weird ideas of lonely, ridiculed morons.

A few other points, federalization and balkanization are completely different concepts.

Why, I didn’t know that, teach. Thanks for enlightening me.

Was Germany divided into federal states, or was it split up into small units often hostile towards each other?

Evidently you still don't get it because the Allied occupation into zones and JCS 1067 was intended to balkanize Germany economically and politically.

Says Smith. As "balkanizing", according to the definition he kindly provided, would have meant breaking up Germany into small units independent of and with a tendency to being hostile to each other, I’ll have to see more of or on JCS 1067 than Smith’s ramblings to be convinced of this.

The purpose of JCS 1067 was economic disintegration, although not pastoralization.

Not that I consider this assertion to be necessarily wrong, but a verbatim quote of the pertinent provisions of the document or of statements by Clay, Murphy or another critic in this sense would be appreciated.

I've already posted more than you deserve. Time to do your own reading and not just what Zimmerman or somebody at Nizkor says is okay.

The angry bitching fish-woman is becoming silly even beyond her usual measure. Who as Smith relies on "Revisionist" gurus should be careful lecturing anybody on what to read, by the way.

I agree with his viewpoint on Morgenthau's agricultural romanticism, however.

That was not Zimmerman, but German historian Wolfgang Benz, whose writings I translated. I don’t mind if Smith relies on his "Revisionist" gurus instead of doing his own reading, but can’t he at least read my posts?

FDR was an agricultural romantic himself. Morgenthau's plan was still Genocidal just the same.

It’s outcome may have been disastrous had the plan been implemented, but I still have to see evidence that Morgenthau expected such an outcome. Genocide, you see, requires the intent "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", according to the 1948 UN convention transcribed i.a. under

http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html

The "draconian" (Murphy's terminology) plans of Hull and Stimson did not favor pastoralization because they wanted to milk German productive capacity for reparations.

Did Murphy say that?

Seek, ye shall find...

[…]These policy disputes encompassed much more than the fate of Germany alone; the future of the entire continent of Europe was involved. Hull and Stimson and Morgenthau were in agreement that the Germans must be made to pay for Nazi crimes, and no one in Washington was recommending any "soft" occupation. But opponents of the Morgenthau Plan believed that the postwar reconstruction of all Europe depended on utilizing Germany's resources and skilled workmen[my emphasis], and they were aghast when the President became so impressed with the Treasury Department's proposal that he wrote on a preliminary draft of it: "O.K. FDR." Stimson soon persuaded Roosevelt to withdraw his unqualified approval of the Morgenthau Plan, and a Joint Committee representing the White House and the three departments tried to reach a compromise which would satisfy the President. (pp. 226-227)[…]

Hey Smith, I quoted that passage, because "utilizing Germany’s resources and skilled workmen" for the "postwar reconstruction of Europe", see the passage I highlighted, is not necessarily the same to me as "milking" German productive capacity for reparations, as Smith would have it. It speaks for Smith’s intellectual dishonesty that he tries to claim my quote for himself.

The Soviets did, however, effectively deindustrialize since they carted off entire industrial plant not just goods. They scrapped everything and sent it to Russia. Working radio sets were smashed, turned into scrap metal, shovelled onto boxcars and sent East. The same with heavy machinery.

Why, looks like de-industrialization of Germany was related to Soviet reparation claims rather than to Morgenthau’s proposals, as I presumed.

If you read what I wrote, I said that JCS 1067 was no less draconian than Morgenthau but wasn't intended to pastoralize Germany like Morgenthau, or what initially happened when the Soviets hauled off industrial plant.

I understood that, my point being that such de-industrialization as actually occurred Germany was related to Soviet reparation claims rather than to Morgenthau’s proposals, as your statements seem to confirm. Again trying to misrepresent my statements, buddy?

JCS 1067 was intended to keep Germany economically and politically balkanized to keep her weak (even though this actually made occupation more difficult).

If was obviously a draconian directive, but speaking of "balkanization" as per the definition you kindly provided still smacks of Smithsonian hyperbole to me.

Both the French and the Soviets used German forced-labor well into the peace.

The Soviets I know about. As to the French, I asked POW to tell us more about their use of German forced labor in one of my last posts.

Now you're being coy but I agree that we need some more input for your education.

See, Smith, one of the differences between us is that I’m open to new knowledge, whereas you shut your brain to anything that doesn’t fit your pre-conceived notions. So cut out the crap and take the above as what it was meant to be, another hint that this discussion would be much more interesting without Smith’s bullshit in between.

He just meant that I should tease you about the conversation going on behind your back at another board.

Smith isn’t referring to anything I don’t know about already, and what cowardly true believers afraid of open debate speak behind the safe walls of their temples of faith bothers me little, while it says a lot about Smith that he associates with such scum.

I didn't want to rub it in but since you must know... And you will note that I didn't participate in talking about you since you can't reply (having been banned and all). I told Andrew that it was like an itch that the doctor says not to scratch. Unfortunately Corty really wanted to tease his namesake but I insisted that we don't.


No, need to get all paranoid--this is all we were talking about:

Not Banned

Thanks for that one, Smith.

A look at the Avatars will be enough to make our readers suspect that a bunch of sorry idiots is chatting over there, and the writings and pictures in their posts will confirm this suspicion.

Hebden’s bitching was already brought to my attention by another fellow poster, and I wanted to post a link to it on this forum but our moderator Marcus, who is the target of this cheap talk (while in regard to me the disappointing Mr. Hebden, who strangely seems to believe I’m interested in Hargis’ stinkhole in general and what Hebden writes there in particular, merely complains that I didn’t campaign for his being unbanned) very coherently stuck to his principle that this forum is not the place to talk about what happens on other forums, never minding that "Hannover" Hargis et al (not surprisingly) seem to care little for such elementary decency.

Now, however, Marcus may feel compelled to tell our audience what he thinks of the company Smith keeps.

[Roberto]

Roberto asked:

Was Germany divided into federal states, or was it split up into small units often hostile towards each other?

Apart from the lost territories, Germany was divided in 3 countries, one of them made neutral - Austria -, another made a Soviet satelite, the GDR and another an US satelite, the BRD.

I see you're again referring to Germany in a broader sense. Nothing against that, but for the purpose of the discussion, however, I think it would be more appropriate to consider Germany as the German state within the borders of 1937.

And yes the BRD and the GDR were quite hostile to each other.

Certainly so, but that hostility was related to the Cold War, not a consequence of directive JCS 1067.

[David Thompson]

I have scanned and posted John F. Kennedy's synopsis of Sen. Robert Taft's opposition to the Nuernberg trials on a separate thread, to keep this one on topic. You can find it at:

http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopi ... 518#186518

[David Thompson]

For those readers who may not have access to maps, but want to follow Scott's Smith's arguments on the "balkanization" of Germany following WWII, these may help. #1a and #1b show the "balkanization" of the German states in the 1815-1866 period, before the unification of Germany in 1871. #2 shows the "balkanization" of Germany into 4 zones of allied occupation in 1945-1949. #3 shows the "balkanization" of Germany during the 1949-1990 period, before the country was re-unified.

[David Thompson]

Part 2:

[David Thompson]

Just for purposes of comparison, here is a map showing Germany's efforts at "balkanizing" its neighbors in the 1939-1945 period.

[witness]

Thanks David. Very self-explanatory.
Poor Scott. Whipped again.

[David Thompson]

I found a copy of the much-discussed JCS 1067 and have posted in in a separate thread, so it will be easy to find, at:

http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopi ... 737#186737

[Scott Smith]

Thanks David. Very self-explanatory.
Poor Scott. Whipped again.

How so? Don't David's maps confirm what I said? Although my point was that under JCS 1067 Germany was subject to economic balkanization or "trust busting" to ensure that Germany remained economically prostrate. This only ended when the three Western Allied occupation zones were combined as a unit to create the Bundestablishment in order to create a bullwark to contain Communism. This enabled the "German economic miracle."

Now, the reunification of Germany (except for Austria, the Sudetenland, and the areas east of the Oder-Neisse line, allowed Germany to emerge as a superpower again--at least in concert with France. This explains why France was (surprisingly among Germanophobic pundits who remember the Holocaust) remarkably supporting of German reunification once the Berlin Wall came down.

Finally, the territories under German hegemony during the war is not exactly the same as balkanization but satellites. And especially if given the choice between German hegemony and Soviet Communism, they will choose Germany. The British strategy would be to have all the states of Europe at each other's throats (balkanized) so that she can discount Europe states and coalitions altogether and concentrate on her global empire (with Americn Interventionism as a trump card).