[The following takes place during the famous Tehran Conference.]
After Roosevelt’s departure, Stalin sat down on a sofa with Churchill and warned him that Germany had “every possibility of recovering from this war.” The Germans were “talented people” and “could easily threaten the world again in fifteen or twenty years.”
Churchill agreed. If that happened, “we would have betrayed our soldiers.” Why not strip postwar Germany of all aviation and arms-related industries?
Not enough, said Stalin. “Furniture factories could be transformed into airplane factories. Watch factories could make fuses for shells.” Churchill must remember that the Germans had used “toy rifles” to teach thousands of their people how to shoot in the 1930s. Staling said he had ordered German prisoners of war called into his presence to explain why they had rampaged into Russian homes and raped Russian women. They replied that Hitler had told them to. Stalin said he had had them executed.
Source:
Beschloss, Michael R. “Fifty Thousand Germans Must Be Shot!” The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2007. 25. Print.
Further Reading:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt / FDR
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, PCc, DL, FRS, RA
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