# At What Point Did The US/UK Decide on What To Save (Post WWII) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 13, 2010, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-point-did-the-us-uk-decide-on-what-to-save-post-wwii/532392 "2010-03-13T20:33:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2011, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-point-did-the-us-uk-decide-on-what-to-save-post-wwii/532392/21 "2011-09-12T20:13:57Z")
The Morganthau Plan envisaged Germany being completely de-industrialised and reduced to an agricultural and pastoral country. This was not to become policy, at any rate in its purest version, but it was quite widely publicised during the war, not least because Goebbels grasped it’s implications much quicker than the Allied leaders did - several million Germans would have to starve, because they couldn’t all sit down and support themselves growing potatoes. The fact that Morganthau was a Jew only bolstered the Party’s propaganda line, that Germans could expect no better from the Jewish-controlled Western Allies than the Bolshevik Russians As late as 1947 parts of the British Zone were still having viable factories blown up or dismantled, despite critical shortages of consumer goods and means of making a living for German civilians. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2011, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-point-did-the-us-uk-decide-on-what-to-save-post-wwii/532392/22 "2011-09-12T20:19:28Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > …And it point[s] out something that kind of negates the supposition of the OP. Weather was a big player in the air war game, and assigned targets were were often clouded over… Indeed. Nagasaki was actually the secondary target on Aug. 9, 1945, but Kokura had too much cloud cover at the time: [Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Nagasaki#The_bombing_2) ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2011, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-point-did-the-us-uk-decide-on-what-to-save-post-wwii/532392/23 "2011-09-12T22:25:25Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > [http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=906](http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=906) search on 50,000 to find the relevant entry in the minutes of the Tripartite Dinner Meeting at the Tehran Conference. I’m sure the same story is related in the unabridged edition of Churchill’s _Second World War_, but I don’t have it to hand. I remember it from \* The Second World War\* but more as officers than officials. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2011, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-point-did-the-us-uk-decide-on-what-to-save-post-wwii/532392/24 "2011-09-12T23:52:11Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > Eisenhower for example was all for rushing toward Berlin, while FDR, was correct in holding him off saying "Why bother taking Berlin, when we’ve already agreed it’s going to be in the Soviet Zone, just let them deal with it. Missed this before but Eisenhower was adamantly opposed to racing for Berlin. Throughout the European campaign, Eisenhower had always turned down any general who argued for a single penetrating advance into enemy territory. Eisenhower recognized that while such an advance might win the war, it would also be a risk - a single advance would allow the Germans to concentrate their forces against it and would leave the advancing force with exposed flanks. Instead, Eisenhower stuck with the broad front strategy. He wanted to advance along the entire front. This meant the Germans had to spread out and defend everywhere. And if the Germans wanted to attack they’d have to do so by penetrating the Allied front line and exposing themselves to the kind of counterattack Eisenhower wanted to avoid for the Allies. In addition, Eisenhower didn’t see Berlin as the target of the Allied advance. He knew that the smartest thing the Germans could do was fall back towards the south as the Allies advanced. That would bring the Germans into the mountainous regions of Austria and Bavaria. This was the best defensive terrain in Germany and Eisenhower was worried the Germans could hold out for another year or two if they were able to get large forces into the mountains. So Eisenhower made the main direction of his advance through central Germany, cutting off the Germans fighting in the north from any possible retreat to the south. ---
**Author:** ![HubZilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@HubZilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HubZilla)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-point-did-the-us-uk-decide-on-what-to-save-post-wwii/532392/25 "2011-09-13T01:53:30Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > SecWar Henry Stimson removed the former Imperial capital of Kyoto from the A-bomb potential targeting list because of its ancient cultural, religious and political importance to the Japanese. See his June 1, 1945 diary entry here: [Hiroshima: The Henry Stimson Diary and Papers (part 5)](http://www.doug-long.com/stimson5.htm) > > Of course the Allied bombing of Dresden is still controversial: [Was the bombing of Dresden a war crime? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=589621) I read that Stimson wanted it spared because he had spent his honeymoon there. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-point-did-the-us-uk-decide-on-what-to-save-post-wwii/532392/26 "2011-09-13T12:00:33Z")
> [@Mr\_Downtown](#): > > The Cologne Cathedral was (almost) unscathed. The apocryphal story is that it was what the bombardiers _aimed_ for. If you mean aim = they tried to hit it and missed, then no. If you mean aim = they used it for navigation, then yes, that is the reason. That it was an important historical and cultural object didn’t matter to the Allies, just that it was a convenient navigational aid. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-point-did-the-us-uk-decide-on-what-to-save-post-wwii/532392/27 "2011-09-13T12:03:49Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > Probably you were only on business in the large cities. Many smaller cities, villages, and towns were mostly or completely spared from bombing. Even large sections of larger cities had little or no damage. What larger cities do you mean? The cities in the Ruhr region - the most heavily industrialized and densely populated part of Germany - had light damage of 70%, severe damage of 90% and above. Have you ever looked at pictures of the rubble heaps after the war? One house in a whole street might have been standing at this level of devastation. Bigger cities outside the Ruhr region were heavily bombed, too - the firestorm of Hamburg was terrible for the citizens. The smaller cities and villages only escaped because they were not worth it for the Allies to make a detour and waste bombs on a 1 000 inhabitant town somewhere, when bigger cities or industries were still better targets. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-point-did-the-us-uk-decide-on-what-to-save-post-wwii/532392/28 "2011-09-13T12:05:47Z")
> [@code\_grey](#): > > story floating around in Russian popular culture is that the valuable iron works factories in the Ruhr in West Germany got miraculously preserved from bombing. I don’t know if that is true or if that is Soviet propaganda. > > One way or the other, the “reparations” destroyed a lot of German industry that survived the bombing. My father says that he saw some of the German equipment looted back in late 40s still running in the 80s. > > Of course, after the Russians looted the equipment, the Germans got loans from America and modernized. Whereas Britain did not get its equipment replaced in the same way and that may have contributed to their industrial decline 🙂 True to a degree: while immediately after the war, it was not good for German industry trying to rebuild that whole factories were dismantled and shipped of to Russia or Britain, in the long run it was an advantage to invest the money directly into modern factories and modern machines. ---
**Author:** ![Walther\_Ego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8dc957/32.png) [@Walther\_Ego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walther_Ego)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-point-did-the-us-uk-decide-on-what-to-save-post-wwii/532392/29 "2011-09-13T13:01:14Z")
The destruction of Dresden is often cited as proof that the allied were already running out of targets. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-point-did-the-us-uk-decide-on-what-to-save-post-wwii/532392.md?page=1)