ABSTRACT
The policy of implementing a "Carthaginian peace" was neither caused by a lapse of judgment and economic "idiocy", nor a strategic calculation designed to aid the spread of global communism but by a desire, shared by Henry Morgenthau Jr and Roosevelt, to see Germans suffer a just punishment. Germans would have to accept "the program for their future" as a permanent fact, not some short period of punishment. The American revenge was to return Germany to the 19th century. The military government (MG) acknowledged the right of Germans to voice their resentment because it was done in a way that did not undermine the security of the American occupation; in other words, it was viewed as within the confines of the occupation nomos. The MG's drive for democratization meant that the city's century-old governance structure was being dissolved and that every layer of the city's administration would be opened to fair and just elections.
