On Monday, April 2, a thunderstorm kept Roosevelt awake for much of the night. That day, General Marshall sent him an Army intelligence estimate on Adolf Hitler and the impending defeat of Germany. “Any cowardice, faltering or negotiating with the Allies in this last hour would destroy the great tragic myth he was seeking to create,” it said. Hitler was likely to end his life “bravely and dramatically and thus remain a psychological force for his enemies to reckon with for decades.”
Marshall’s men did not know that in his underground bunker in Berlin, Hitler had secretly decreed his own version of the Morgenthau Plan. As Allied troops conquered Germany, mines should be flooded, power and telephone plants destroyed. No large installations used for rebuilding Germany should be left. If the Führer did not rule the Germans, no one should.
Source:
Beschloss, Michael R. “No Earthly Powers Can Keep Him Here.” The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2007. 203. Print.
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