Harry Hopkins himself joined this protest; Roosevelt and Morgenthau therefore had to shelve indefinitely the plan so accurately described by General Eisenhower. Moreover in London, the Treasury informed the Prime Minister that if German productivity were completely destroyed, she would no longer be able to pay for her imports, and England would therefore lose an important market as soon as peace came. The argument with which Morgenthau had won over Lord Cherwell was therefore entirely refuted. In these circumstances, Churchill made no bones about going back on his agreement, and was quite ready, when he wrote the penultimate volume of his war memoirs, to forget that he had given it, even in writing: he had in fact contributed to drawing up the resolution that had been formulated. The Morgenthau plan was a dead letter.
World History
