HENRY MORGENTHAU’S REVENGE: De-Industrializing Germany.

So it’s goodbye, manufacturing. No more German automobiles, among other products. Of course, the issue isn’t whether the government should subsidize energy prices on behalf of the manufacturing sector. The issue is whether the government should continue to intentionally and catastrophically drive energy prices higher.

But Ms. Schnitzer says we should resist pessimism about her country:

However, she rejected the idea that Germany is again the sick man of Europe.

She says Germany needs to “embrace change.” Unfortunately, the change she proposes is de-industrialization and a resultant sharp decline in Germans’ standard of living. I’m not sure that is a good idea. The world still remembers what happened the last time Germany suffered an economic collapse.

Yes, and one proposal for Germany’s post-war future: The Morgenthau Plan of 1944.

A plan drawn up by the US Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr (b. 1891, d. 1967) which envisaged a postwar Germany as an agricultural, deindustrialized country which would be divided into a northern and a southern half, with the Rhineland, the North Sea coast, and other important strategic or industrial areas coming under international control. After initial acceptance by Roosevelt, it was quickly withdrawn as completely impractical, as such a Germany would continue to be reliant on foreign finance. The plan was used extensively by Goebbels in his Nazi propaganda to strengthen German resolve towards the end of World War II.

So, deindustrialization was too radical for even FDR, but considered a viable plan by today’s German Greens.  Progress!