ABSTRACT

The soldiers came to save the United States (US), Europe, and even Germany itself from a scourge that Germany had embraced in one crisis only to see it plunge both Europe and much of the world into an even deeper crisis and horror. The soldiers' instructions reflected the depths to which Germany had sunk as well as the classic American tendency to divide nations into good and evil. A number of American officials, led by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., favored de-industrialization and other stern measures to make certain that Germany would never again be a threat. Washington frustrated its allies by refusing to agree about the outlines of the postwar world even as the victorious armies were entering Germany from east and west, creating their own realities as they advanced. The US favored the creation of a new German regime that would be neither authoritarian nor so finely representative that it could become as paralyzed as Weimar had been.