Smith’s Report, no. 178

The Morgenthau Plan in the Holocaust Myth

How the Psychological Warfare Department promoted German
de-industrialization with a “factory of death” motif

By Dean Hierbud

The Morgenthau Plan significantly influenced the content of the holocaust myth. This article explains how and why, and gives six examples.

At the end of WWII in Europe, the Allied Psychological Warfare Department was given the task of changing two German viewpoints believed to be in the way of post-war peace:

1. Many Germans still liked Hitler and Nazism.
2. The Germans didn't like the idea of their nation being converted into an agricultural country via deindustrialization as set forth in the Morgenthau Plan. The German public widely knew about the plan because the Nazi government, before its collapse, had publicized it.

So Psychological Warfare changed its name to “Information Control” and pushed the holocaust myth with a “factory of death” twist as a way to take on these two problems. As seen in a film they made for the West German population called Todesmuehlen (1946), the personal message to an individual German went something like this:

“Hitler did a terrible thing you didn't know about, but you should have known about it. If you'd only opened your eyes it was obvious and now you should feel ashamed. Hitler used German industry to kill the Jews and others, as factories can be easily converted to evil pur-poses.” (1)

Information Control's “factory of death” conception of the holo-caust also resonated well with the narrative of communism defeating Nazism. Communists saw Nazism as capitalism on steroids, and the communist ideal of a worker's pa-radise contrasted nicely with a fac-tory of death. (2)…

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