No. 178 Challenging the Holocaust Taboo Since 1990 January 2011 The Morgenthau Plan in the Holocaust Myth How the Psychological Warfare Department promoted German deindustrialization with a "factory of death" motif by Dean Hierbud (Maker of the video One Third of the Holocaust) The Morgenthau Plan signifi- as a way to take on these two prob- and now you should feel ashamed. cantly influenced the content of the lems. As seen in a film they made Hitler used German industry to kill holocaust myth. This article ex- for the West German population the Jews and others, as factories plains how and why, and gives six called Todesmuehlen (1946), the can be easily converted to evil pur- examples. personal message to an individual poses." (1) German went something like this: Information Control's "factory t the end of WWII in of death" conception of the holo- Europe, the Allied Psy- caust also resonated well with the A chological Warfare De- narrative of communism defeating partment was given the task of Nazism. Communists saw Nazism changing two German viewpoints as capitalism on steroids, and the believed to be in the way of post- communist ideal of a worker's pa- war peace: radise contrasted nicely with a fac- A) Many Germans still liked tory of death. (2) Hitler and Nazism. It was widely believed that the B) The Germans didn't like the Morgenthau Plan was a fluky idea idea of their nation being converted that was not implemented because into an agricultural country via it was too harsh and extreme. But deindustrialization as set forth in in fact a disguised version of the the Morgenthau Plan. The German Morgenthau Plan was put into ef- public widely knew about the plan Han Morgenthau fect in April 1945 as "Joint Chiefs because the Nazi government, be- of Staff Directive 1067" (JCS fore its collapse, had publicized it. "Hitler did a terrible thing you 1067) which American military So Psychological Warfare didn't know about, but you should governors were obligated to follow changed its name to "Information have known about it. If you'd only starting with Eisenhower, and Control" and pushed the holocaust opened your eyes it was obvious which the American public initially myth with a "factory of death" twist didn't know about because it was 1 secret. It had many features de- Nazi Death Factory [in Bu- "In the crematory itself were signed to keep the German people chenwald] Shocks Germans on a two batteries of three ovens, each miserable. Besides limiting factory Forced Tour. New York Times. prominently marked with the mak- production and in some cases or- The problem is that in standard ers' name—J. A. Topf & Sohne, dering the dismantling of factories holocaust history today, there is Erfurt. This concern customarily which had not been bombed, it "cut nothing about a "factory of death" manufactured baking ovens. These from underneath" the economic and at Buchenwald. It isn't considered a ovens were of extremely modern financial underpinnings needed for place where the genocide of the design and heated by coke." large-scale rebuilding projects. (10) Jews took place. For one, because it As the Cold War came into ex- was comprised of mainly ethnic Example 2: Why Germany istence, the Morgenthau Plan even- Germans: German communists and can't have factories: because a tually lost out to an opposing phi- baking-oven manufacturer can losophy represented by the Mar- turn into a cremation-oven man- shall Plan of 1947: 13 billion in aid ufacturer. for rebuilding Western Europe's war-torn industry and economy, in In the film "Nazi Concentration part to help as a bulwark against Camps," shown at the Nuremberg communism. West Germany, Trial on Nov. 29, 1945, the narrator though not the primary beneficiary, states: was included. NYT, Front Page, April 18, "The ovens of extremely mod- It was a policy change from a 1945, by Gene Currivan. ern design and heated by coke, program of suppressing the West were made by a concern which cus- German economy to one of actively German criminals. The day-to-day tomarily manufactures baking trying to promote it. But there were operations of the camp were run by ovens. The firm's name is clearly two miserable postwar years for the the inmates themselves, not the inscribed."(16) Germans during which time the German SS—a situation that could The film then shows a close-up Nuremberg Trials happened, and be seen as "progressive camp ad- of the nameplate on the incinerator: Information Control ran all media ministration." "J.A. Topf und Soehne, Erfurt." in West Germany. One primary The alleged gruesome raw ma- It is the disturbing notion that a point of this article is to demon- terial from this factory of death: a company that helps the German strate that the holocaust myth was supposed human-skin lampshade, Hausfrau bake Apfelstrudel can, consolidated during the Morgen- was a Psychological Warfare ploy, with a little modification, help the thau Plan period, before the Mar- and a problem for that ploy is that SS at Auschwitz. The problem is shall Plan period. In the Morgen- the woman supposedly responsible that it is not true. The history of the thau period, Information Control for it, Ilse Koch, hadn't been at the company Topf and Sons has been worked "industrial horror" into the camp for years. (3) And from a ho- extensively researched and they myth as a way to convince the locaust literacy angle, the camp never made baking ovens or any Germans to accept German deindu- was located in Germany, whereas kitchen or household products. The strialization. the standard holocaust story is that Buchenwald Memorial has an on- Weird features of the still- the Jewish genocidal killing opera- line exhibit on the company, Topf existing holocaust myth can be tion happened at camps in Poland. and Sons. In a timeline there, we found to have originated during the It's not a camp thought of today as read: Morgenthau period. part of the holocaust, and yet the 1914: The company employs a Here are six examples of the New York Times, due to Psych workforce of more than five hun- Morgenthau Plan still featured in Warfare's influence, is telling dred. It establishes a small depart- the holocaust myth: America that it is a factory of ment for the construction of incine- death. This article (the first 1945 ration ovens for crematoria and Example 1: Discovering a Facto- front-page NYT article on a concen- becomes the market leader in this ry of Death tration camp) contained passages field in the 1920s.(4) like this: Continued on page 7 2 Julian Assange: Revisionist of the Still-Living and the Powerful by Jett Rucker hrough his Wikileaks, Governments are another mat- sals of all the fiefdoms of the world Julian Assange is the ter: almost every human on earth that call themselves governments, revisionist nonpareil. Of has his relationship to one or more freely elected and otherwise. T course, he counters lies governments ordained by the acci- The reaction to Wikileaks’s with his leaks. But most of the lies dents of his birth—if not the place publication of “their mail” asserts he counters are of the most insi- of his birth, then the place(s) of his that governments consider them- dious kind: the lies of silence— parents’ births, with religious herit- selves entitled to the benefits of the concealment, behind the shroud of age providing a further relationship dictum, “Gentlemen do not read official secrecy. Unlike most revi- in the case of only one country, each other’s mail.” But govern- sionists, he inserts none of his own Israel. It is possible, of course, to ments are no gentlemen; quite the words, thoughts, or conclusions. He renounce one’s country(ies), but opposite: they are precisely those uses the words—and only the anyone who does this without who (or which) are alone legally words—of his subjects, the people permitted to employ violence. En- who write the communications he joying that exception as they do, publishes, along with the people they forfeit the claim to being any- who receive those communications, thing “gentle” whatsoever, and and the institutions within which therefore also forfeit any claim to those people compose, send, re- protection by any dictum pertaining ceive, and comprehend those com- to “gentlemen, -women,” or similar munications. He provides the ulti- appellation. As such, they enjoy no mate answer to the question: who right to secrecy whatsoever in their knew (or heard) what, when, and own rights. from whom? Characteristically, a number of His process puts a “microscope” governments, led, as usual, by the to previously confidential dealings US government, propose to employ that the dealings of most people, Julian Assange the violence of apprehension and companies, and governments, (again) and extradition against Wi- could not sustain without severe another country into whose em- kileaks’s Assange. Assange has damage to their reputations. But brace to escape faces, if not impri- already submitted to incarceration people and companies, after all, sonment, then the official, global by the British government, at the deal mostly with people who have ostracism in which all countries behest of another “useful idiot,” the “opted in,” wittingly or otherwise, conspire against each other’s citi- government of Sweden, which ex- to their relationships with those zens: statelessness. tends across national borders the people and companies. As for those So, one might argue, govern- tentacles of its laws ostensibly pro- who inherited their relationships ments are properly held to a higher tecting the sanctity of women’s with said people and companies, all standard of behavior—one, As- (and perhaps men’s) rights to go- who have attained majority are free sange might assert, that could with- vern the behaviors of others with to renounce and sever those rela- stand the scrutiny, as it were, of its respect to their bodies.