Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

by Jared Diamond

As for West Germany just after World War Two, one policy considered by the victorious Western Allies was to prevent it from ever rebuilding its industries, to force its economy to revert just to agriculture under the so-called Morgenthau Plan, and to extract war reparations as the Allies had done after World War One and as the Soviets were now doing in East Germany. That strategy stemmed from the widespread Allied view that Germany had been responsible not only for instigating World War Two under Hitler (as is widely agreed) but also for instigating World War One under Kaiser Wilhelm II (a much-debated historical question), and that permitting Germany to re-industrialize could lead to yet another world war. What caused that Allied view to change was the development of the Cold War, and the resulting realization that the real risk of another world war came not from Germany but from the Soviet Union.