The Jew Who Defeated Hitler Read online

  But in October 1944, Kung had begun to demand an additional $20 million in gold to soak up the additional fapi that was stoking inflation. Kung said it was part of a $500 million loan approved in 1942. White advised against it because Chiang Kai-shek and his in-laws, the Soongs, could end up pocketing profits from the deal. Patrick Hurley, the US ambassador to Chungking, warned Morgenthau that Chinese officials thought the American taxpayer was “a sucker” and added that T. V. Soong was “a crook.” Early in 1945, the Chinese increased the request to $180 million in gold and gave notice that they wanted an additional $100 million in the near future. Morgenthau delayed. He didn't want to deprive an ally, but he was worried about being swindled and agreed that even $200 million in gold would be insufficient to halt Chinese inflation. In the end, Morgenthau approved a shipment of $7 million in gold and said all future shipments would need the approval of Hurley.25

  John Pehle and his War Refugee Board continued to work with partners to find homes for the displaced Jews, and Morgenthau continued to take an active interest. In April 1944, three rabbis visited the Treasury to complain that the State Department refused to help 240 French Jews who had been given permission to leave France but whose passports the United States didn't recognize. DuBois leaked the story to Drew Pearson at the Washington Post, and the State Department was forced to act. Though Hull bawled out the rabbis afterward, Morgenthau silently approved of DuBois’s actions. On another occasion, some Polish Jews came in to ask Morgenthau to free funds needed to liberate Jews from Poland. The rabbis knew Morgenthau didn't speak Yiddish. What they didn't know was that Henrietta Klotz could understand it. She sat silently as they stage-managed the presentation in Yiddish, with one demanding of the other to make his pleading more hysterical. One worked himself into such a frenzy that he collapsed. As he was helped up, he asked in the ancient language if he had cried well enough. Klotz revealed none of this to her boss because she wanted him to act.26

  The War Refugee Board is estimated to have saved the lives of about 200,000 Jews. It was created tragically late in the war, but it is impossible to overstate in human terms the good it performed. As well as allowing these people to survive the horrors of Nazi Germany, it preserved to some extent the honor of the United States, which had been shamed by its immigration policy, the St. Louis affair, and the conduct of the State Department. And Morgenthau was instrumental in creating the board. As historian Robert N. Rosen has written, “Had Morgenthau not taken the lead when he did, it is doubtful the rescue agency proponents would have succeeded.”27

  Disagreements on the policy for postwar Germany persisted into 1945, focusing on whether to fire or retain German officials who had worked for the Nazis. Morgenthau’s position that they must be fired was supported by such groups as the Senate Subcommittee on War Mobilization. But the State Department warned that the British and Soviets would likely want to retain existing administrators, and the United States would jeopardize tripartite cooperation by opposing such a plan. Stimson had distanced himself from the debate, disgusted that the president had even considered the Morgenthau Plan. Now representing the War Department, McCloy sought a magnanimous policy mainly because the army wanted something that it could implement with the resources available. The key decision was Franklin Roosevelt's, and his mental faculties were diminishing rapidly. He privately let both Stettinius and Morgenthau believe he supported them. He told all of the cabinet he would make no decision on the big questions until Germany was defeated, leaving them months to quarrel.28

  Soon the debate focused on JCS 1067, a War Department document overseen by McCloy to guide the operations of the US occupation forces. Morgenthau contributed liberally to the document, which was shaped largely by Roosevelt’s desire for a tough policy on Germany. It stated Germany was a defeated power, and there would be no effort to resurrect the nation. Though his efforts to fire all government employees failed, Morgenthau ensured JCS 1067 stated that even low-level officials must be assumed to be Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. Roosevelt asked his friend Samuel Rosenman to script a policy on war criminals. Morgenthau would later tell historian John Morton Blum that he would have preferred to see them simply shot, but he realized they needed to be tried. The Treasury secretary and DuBois drafted a memo advocating that all members of organizations like the SS should be considered guilty of crimes against humanity.29

  On December 19, McCloy sent Major John Boettiger to Morgenthau’s office to explain what he had witnessed during a recent trip to Aachen, the first German city occupied by the Americans. Boettiger said the city had been 70 percent destroyed by aerial bombing and no building still had the roof on it. The Germans were utterly hostile to the Allies. He believed the Allies would have to control administration of such cities and use local production facilities to supply such areas and other parts of Europe. Otherwise, he warned, the entire continent could erupt in revolution. “You can tell McCloy I will be delighted to see him, but as of today my position hasn't changed one iota,” Morgenthau responded. “I don't want to destroy Germany, I want them to take care of themselves as we leave it.”30

  When Morgenthau told his staff of the meeting, the pragmatic Daniel Bell suggested the Treasury position might be too extreme. Morgenthau rejected the statement, saying the State and War Departments were being too soft. In January 1945, a group of Treasury men, including the closet Communist White and the fervent anti-Nazi DuBois, tried again to persuade him to dilute his position. White suggested he be vague on the fate of German coal mines, as his opponents’ harshest criticism was his plan to close down mines and industry. “I am not going to change on that,” snapped Morgenthau. “There is no use pounding me on it.”31

  The stress of his professional and family problems was mounting, and Morgenthau sought more medical attention for his migraine headaches than ever before. On December 12, he asked Klotz to find the name of a Philadelphia doctor he'd heard of who specialized in headaches, and on Sunday, February 17, he took a train to Philly to meet Dr. Harold Palmer. The doctor prescribed pills of potassium chloride and calcium lactate that Morgenthau found helpful. Later that month, he also corresponded with Dr. Harold Hyman of New York, who also suffered from migraine headaches. He recommended Morgenthau each morning take a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and two glasses of hot water. “I regulate the bicarbonate dose so that I take enough to give me one or two fluid evacuations immediately after my breakfast,” Hyman wrote the secretary. “I think this morning emptying out of the cesspool has been a factor in the reduction of my headaches and in giving me a sense of well-being.” (He also sent congratulations on the birth of Robert Morgenthau’s first child, the first grandchild for Elinor and Henry. “Did it come with or without a tassel?” he asked of the child, who happened to be a girl.) Morgenthau preferred the advice of Palmer, continuing the consultations and, in June, ordering five hundred more of his pills.32

  From February 4 to 11, Roosevelt met with Churchill and Stalin at the Crimean resort city of Yalta to finalize plans for Europe after the inevitable surrender of Germany. Roosevelt wanted support for the war on Japan and for the new United Nations, and he was now more interested in ties to the Soviet Union than bankrupt Britain. Churchill was intent on preserving Britain’s empire and standing in the world. Stalin was determined to make sure he held sway over Eastern Europe in general and Poland in particular to provide a buffer between Germany and the Soviet Union in the future. They agreed to partition Germany into four zones—one administered by each of the three great powers and a fourth by France. Their communiqué was vague, and it said their inalterable goal was to destroy German militarism and Nazism, but not to destroy the German people.

  Roosevelt returned to Washington in early March as the Allies were inching toward Berlin in the face of savage German resistance. The president then made his most decisive move in the debate over postwar Germany by secretly asking Stettinius to prepare a report in keeping with the decisions reached at Yalta. He also appointed a working group called the Informal
Policy Committee on Germany, or IPCOG, which comprised representatives from several departments, including White from the Treasury. It set in train two weeks of double-dealing and intrigue, in which the competing factions tried to impose their views on the final policy.

  Stettinius handed the “Draft Directive for the Treatment of Germany” to Roosevelt on March 10, which FDR signed. He told Stimson and Morgenthau two days later only that Stettinius was working on the matter. McCloy was infuriated to learn not only that the draft directive had been submitted and signed but also that Stettinius told the president that the War Department supported it. McCloy and Morgenthau—who generally liked and respected each other—kept in touch with one another, though they both had different priorities. Morgenthau was actually encouraged that John and Anna Boettiger also opposed the draft directive. With Roosevelt so weak, one or both of them attended virtually all of the president’s meetings, and Morgenthau was pleased they were going “to go to work on this with the President.”33 Such feelings faded quickly, and Morgenthau grew annoyed that the pair kept insisting that the Allies manage every aspect of the German economy.

  When Morgenthau pressed his concerns about the directive over lunch on March 21, the president had “absolutely no recollection of having seen it or signed it.”34 He now demanded that IPCOG prepare a new document to take the place of the draft directive. Morgenthau phoned the State Department as soon as he left the lunch to relay the president’s decision.

  When the committee met the next day, the State Department tried to simply rework the draft directive, but McCloy, the strongest voice at the meeting, insisted they start over and adopt a flexible, centralized policy that the military could implement. Morgenthau was satisfied with the report, surprising his own staff, who thought he opposed a centralized authority. He explained that the generals in the central council would include Soviet, American, and French generals, who would override any British attempt to build up the German economy.

  The State Department—possibly with the concurrence of the Boettigers—had Morgenthau excluded from other meetings in the next few days. “The cards are stacked against us,” Morgenthau said to White. Finally, Joseph Grew of the State Department went behind Morgenthau’s back to try again to get the president at a private meeting to sign a rewritten draft directive. What they were not expecting was that the president had invited McCloy to attend. Roosevelt told Grew he'd been sold a bill of goods and added that the new paper placed too much emphasis on centralization. Then he rambled on, discussing his boyhood visits to Germany and the need for public services in Germany and to change the character of German industry. He agreed there may be some need for centralized authority, but they would have to see how much.

  “Well, then I think…we're very close,” said Grew, according to McCloy’s account later. He added: “You agree generally with the paper that Mr. Stettinius submitted to you.”

  “Why yes, I guess so,” said the president. Then he caught himself and asked: “Oh, you mean the March 10 paper?” Yes, Grew said, that paper. “No, that will have to be rewritten.”

  Roosevelt agreed to take a look at the new paper the State Department had penned, but the meeting adjourned without him signing it. Morgenthau was delighted to hear the news when McCloy phoned him later. “It may sound silly to say thank you because when I'm treated squarely it is so unusual that I have to say thank you,” he said. “It has happened so rarely in Washington.”35

  All the parties were tired of the intrigue, so officials from the three departments gathered at the corner office of the Treasury Building to reach a final agreement on March 23. They quickly agreed on a War Department document called “Summary of U.S. Initial Post-Defeat Policy Relating to Germany.” It said a central council would formulate broad policies, but local governments in the various zones would interpret and apply the policies. The economic policy was to prevent starvation, but it should not raise the German standards of living above its neighbors. As well as outlawing the Nazi party, the policy included vague calls for demilitarization and disarmament of Germany and controls to prevent her from “developing a war potential” again.36

  Stimson was pleased the zone commanders would have the flexibility to administer their regions. Morgenthau was willing to tolerate the central authority given the other demands of the document. They all knew JCS 1067 was still the document that would govern the occupation troops, and the parties would still have to negotiate to ensure that document adhered to the one Roosevelt had just signed. Morgenthau also believed the American people needed more information on Germany and why the United States had adopted its policy. He proposed writing a book on the matter. Roosevelt at first approved, as long as publication was withheld until after the war. But then he told Morgenthau he would have to give the subject more thought.37

  After Roosevelt signed the War Department paper, Morgenthau and his enfeebled wife took a much-needed vacation in Florida. They attended a seder, a ritual feast that marks the beginning of Passover. It was the first time that Henry Morgenthau Jr. had ever attended such a ceremony. The calm of the holiday was shattered on April 5 when Elinor suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. After Morgenthau phoned the First Lady, she immediately wrote, urging Elinor to rest. “I know that in spite of the brave front you put up that there is constant anxiety in your heart and the long strain wears on your whole physical condition,” wrote Eleanor Roosevelt. “All the operations have taken their toll and the mental anxiety when you cannot be active is always harder to bear. Henry has the satisfaction of his accomplishments in his work but I know that you've grieved that your physical strength did not permit you to do more.”38 Eleanor Roosevelt checked regularly with Klotz to see how Elinor was doing, and the president, vacationing in the resort he frequented in Warm Springs, Georgia, sent Morgenthau a note asking to be kept up to date on Elinor’s condition. A few days later, in a barely legible hand, he wrote:

  Ellie Dear,

  It’s great that all is getting along so well—See you very soon. Affec. FDR.39

  Morgenthau was at his wife’s bedside for six days as she convalesced in an oxygen tent, and she gradually showed signs of improvement. So he left her in the care of trusted servants and doctors and took the train north. On the evening of April 11, he stopped by Warm Springs to talk with the president about the proposed book on Germany.

  He found the president enjoying his evening drink with a small group of women that included Anna Boettiger and Lucy Rutherford, the true love of Roosevelt’s life, with whom he'd carried on an affair of sorts for years. Morgenthau was shocked at how terribly his friend, propped up in a chair with his feet on a large footstool, had aged. But the old man was charming, joking that he was going to pinch the candies Morgenthau had brought and asking after Elinor. At a dinner of veal and noodles, the two men sat at opposite ends of the table, and Morgenthau noticed that the president’s hearing was so bad that he couldn't hear what the Treasury secretary was saying.

  After dinner, Morgenthau took the president aside and explained his book would educate the American people on Germany. For example, he said sixty million Germans could feed themselves from their own produce. Now Roosevelt said he thought it was a grand idea, and he rambled on, telling Morgenthau about the time Hjalmar Schacht, the former German central banker, came to the White House and cried on the presidential desk because of the poverty in Germany. “This is a story that I have heard the President tell about three different times, but he seems to enjoy telling it,” said Morgenthau in his diary. He warned the president about the misconduct and incompetence of a few men working on the German matter and was glad when the president said he was pleased with McCloy. When Morgenthau asked whether he should be involved in the German matter, Roosevelt was noncommittal.

  When the four ladies joined them, Morgenthau excused himself to make a phone call. “Then I came back and said good-bye to the President and his company, and when I left them they were sitting around laughing and chatting, and I must say the Presiden
t seemed to be happy and enjoying himself,” dictated Morgenthau.40

  Morgenthau caught the next train to Washington, arriving early in the morning of April 12. He dictated a lengthy description of his evening with the president (never naming Lucy Rutherford). He was at work early that morning, writing to the president about Bretton Woods and to H. H. Kung about a gold shipment. In the late morning, the First Lady summoned him to the White House. He went immediately, and she told him the president had died. It turned out he had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Eleanor Roosevelt said her husband had known he was weakening, but he had acted as a good soldier and he should serve as an example to them all. Morgenthau was the first person she had called to tell the news so that he could tell his ailing wife and make sure she received the news gently. She didn't want the shock to cause a setback in Elinor’s recovery.41

  Morgenthau was already exhausted from more than eleven years in cabinet, the bruising battle over the Morgenthau Plan, and worrying about his sons and ailing wife. And now he had lost the one man to whom he had devoted his career. “For Henry Morgenthau Jr., the President’s death was a catastrophe,” wrote Blum. “He had lost his sponsor, his chief, his closest friend.”42

  The president of the United States called a cabinet meeting that afternoon, and all the secretaries, recovering from their shock, had to realize that the president was now Harry S. Truman, a man they barely knew. “I want every one of you to stay and carry on, and I want to do everything just the way President Roosevelt wanted it,” he told them. There was an uncomfortable silence, and then Stettinius said they would all back the president. Then Morgenthau spoke: “Mr. Truman, I will do all I can do to help, but I want you to be free to call on anyone else in my place.” He obviously could not bring himself to call the new chief “Mr. President.”43