Talk:Henry Morgenthau Jr.

Re: Fiscal conservative
"...at all times tried to inject...responsibility"... "He deeply believed"... "he managed to reverse the proposals"... "It was Morgenthau"...

Is this sourced from one or more of the available (cited) references, or simply subjective POV? --Sasoriza 07:28, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
 * it'sstraight from he important Zelizer 2000 article. Rjensen 07:31, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

yeah, Morgenthau as a FCINO (Fiscal Conservative In Name Only) - an evil fake sheep! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.29.225.160 (talk) 15:06, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Didn't the Morganthau Plan involve more imaginative aspects than some land and economic issues.
 * See "Morgenthau Plan" as a separate Wikipedia subject.

What a watered down, worthless piece of garbage this article is. The author says Morgenthau remained an active member of the campaign group for a harsh peace for Germany. As presented here, the Morgenthau Plan doesn't even sound harsh, although it would have destroyed all German industry, making Germany nothing but farms and resulted in millions of German deaths. The plan also called for killing entire classes of Germans who were suspected of being NAZI war criminals without even conducting a trial. The author says Germany would be "forced to return to an agrarian economy". He makes it sound like they were an agrarian economy a few years before the war. Germany had more Nobel Prize winners to its credit than any other country in the world in 1945. Who wrote this article?
 * See "Morgenthau Plan" as a separate Wikipedia subject.


 * Wikipedia article "Morgenthau Plan" indicates a future population of 66,5 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#Plans_for_German_industry without further explication. In particular, it does not explain the way the people were supposed to be killed according to "Morgenthau" and has no clear wording about homicide and ethnic cleansing. Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#Plans_for_German_industry for more information --178.10.67.207 (talk) 10:54, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

POV & speculation

 * What was the main cause for the creation of the WRB - the actions of Treasury, or the resolution in Congress? Those who claim that the congressional resolution was the decisive factor assert that Roosevelt feared a confrontation with Congress over this issue. However, there is no evidence that such was Roosevelt's reasoning. On the contrary, Congress in those years clearly was both anti-refugee and passive to the plight of European Jewry. Roosevelt's primary motivation must have come from the Treasury Department's prompting.

This should be reworded with speculation removed. Plus, POV refs.:
 * moved slowly to meet this unique tragedy
 * failed at times to measure up
 * lateness of the hour, ruthless determination

Copied from Hurwitz? Either way, should be reworded. --Sasoriza 23:06, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

New Deal
The Morgenthau portion w/quote: Burton Folsom quotes Morgenthau, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee in May 1939: "We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot."

How exactly can he--Folsom--have Morgenthau making this quote about "after eight years of this administration" when FDR had only been in office for six at that time. One would think a Treasury secretary dealing with a national budget would get his date correct or this has been misquoted somehow. Virgil61 (talk) 00:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I can't find this quote from any other scholar or site that doesn't lead back to Folsom. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.181.11.238 (talk) 00:50, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

New Deal
A review of the Congressional Record fails to reveal this quote; removed because it could not be verified with the official record.
 * Just my two cents... that certainly sounds like something Henry "The Morgue" would say. While many of the economist aides around him were Keynsians, Morgenthau was "conservative."  DEddy (talk) 00:04, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the quote:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.”

Morgenthau's very next words are :

And I have just one interest, and if I'm wrong, as far as I am concerned, somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. We have never taken care of them. We have never taken care of the people through your mountains and your mountains who get a $30.00 or $40.00 a year income. There are 4,000,000 who don't have that much income. We have never done anything for them.

We have never begun to tax the people in this country the way they should be. We took this program to the President showing how to raise another $2,000,000,000 and how to balance the budget, and we had it in October of this year. $2,000,000,000! WE HAVE NEVER BEGUN TO TAX THE PEOPLE. I DON'T PAY WHAT I SHOULD. PEOPLE OF MY CLASS DON'T. PEOPLE WHO HAVE IT SHOULD PAY.

04:38, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Morgenthau is not disavowing the New Deal. His complaint is that the stimulus was not large enough, and that taxes should be raised on the rich to close the budget gap (including addtional spending)

Don't take my word for it. You can find a full copy of the original letter on the Burt Folsum website. Folsum hates FDR, and it is his out of context quote from Morgenthau's letter that can be found all over the internet

http://www.burtfolsom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/Morgenthau.pdf

PAGES 3-4 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.250.191.172 (talk) 04:38, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

New Deal
The "never made good on our promises" quote is said to have come from Morgenthau's diary. See John Morton Blum, "From the Morgenthau Diaries." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.246.125.13 (talk) 18:22, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Ten Divisions
Surely one does not take a campaign jab ("worth ten divisions") as fact? Besides, FDR UNILATERALLY declared "unconditional surrender" at the 1943 Casablanca conference. Churchill was reportedly NOT pleased. DEddy (talk) 04:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Dubious sources
Much of this article seems to be based on a right-wing polemic by Amity Shlaes, which has been utterly dismissed by mainstream historians. It also contains a Morgenthau quote derived from the right-wing blogger Patterico. These are not appropriate sources for a wikipedia article. john k (talk) 15:56, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Fiscal responsibility
a large amount of text which seems to be inflammatory has just been added to this article under the "Fiscal Responsibility" section. Not being an expert in this area nor wishing to go edit-warring, I am asking that someone familiar with verifiable reliable secondary sources review the text of that section. Wickedjacob (talk) 02:05, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Disscussion about tax issues in defending the New Deal
I added text with two cites about his defending the New Deal using tax issues. Geraldshields11 (talk) 17:57, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Anti-Zionism
"Zionism is the most stupendous fallacy in Jewish history. I assert that it is wrong in principle, and impossible of realization; that it is unsound in its economics, fantastical in its politics, and sterile in its spiritual ideals." 90.244.26.91 (talk) 01:12, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 17:45, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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Line of Succession
The article says that Morgenthau was briefly first in the line of succession to the Presidency. Actually he was second. The line is: 1) Vice President 2) Speaker of the House 3) Cabinet secretaries in the order the department was created. So the Speaker would have been ahead of Morgenthau.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.251.68.246 (talk) 15:46, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * He was first in the line because the law in place at the time excluded the speaker of the House and the president pro tem of the Senate. See United_States_presidential_line_of_succession.  Calidum   15:51, 9 June 2020 (UTC)