In a book from 1945 entitled “Germany Is Our Problem”, Henry Morgenthau, America’s treasury secretary, presented a proposal to strip post-war Germany of its industry and turn it into an agricultural economy. Though his radical proposal had some influence on Allied plans for the occupation of Germany after Hitler’s defeat, it was never implemented.
Almost 80 years later Vladimir Putin might achieve some of what Morgenthau, whose parents were both born in Germany, had in mind. By weaponising the natural gas on which Germany’s mighty industrial base relies, the Russian president is eating away at the world’s fourth-biggest economy and its third-biggest exporter of goods.
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