EVERYBODY WANTS TO KILL SOMEBODY:

Remembering a dark chapter in Turkish history (Peter S. Canellos, March 29, 2005, Boston Globe)

Henry Morgenthau III sits in his living room, surrounded by mementos of his family, and speaks of the great goal of his grandfather's life: ''He wanted to think of himself as fully American."

Morgenthau's immigrant grandfather, who served as US ambassador to Turkey between 1913 and 1916, strived to establish the German-Jewish Morgenthaus in the American aristocracy almost as assiduously as Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. strived to establish his Irish-Catholic family in the American pantheon. The Morgenthaus acquired top-notch educations, a grand home in the Hudson Valley near the Roosevelts, and a seemingly permanent seat at the tables of power.

The Morgenthaus ascended the way most immigrants did, by assimilation. Henry III still remembers his grandfather reciting rhymes to try to rid himself of the last vestige of a German accent -- his difficulty pronouncing the letters ''th." The first Henry Morgenthau distanced himself from Zionism, fearful that it would prompt suspicions of dual loyalties among American Jews.

But while assuming the posture of the Protestant Yankee elites, the Morgenthaus never forgot their shared ancestry with the refugees, displaced peoples, and immigrants of the world. That is why they occupy a unique niche among America's self-made aristocracy: Both Henry Morgenthau Sr. and his son Henry Morgenthau Jr. are heroes to millions overseas for trying to intervene in the first two genocides of the 20th century, the Turkish slaughter of Armenians in 1915 and the Nazi extermination of European Jews.

The irony is that Henry Morgenthau Jr. planned with FDR to impose reprisals on a defeated Germany that would have likewise been genocidal:

TERENCE SMITH: A central character in your book is Henry Morgenthau, President Roosevelt's secretary of treasury and friend, close friend.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Indeed.

TERENCE SMITH: And he had a vision for postwar Germany. Tell us about that and what he did to try to forward it.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Morgenthau was only the second Jew in American history to be in a President's cabinet, his Hudson... Roosevelt's Hudson Valley friend and neighbor. He was horrified by what he learned about the Holocaust, and he went to Roosevelt and confronted him. He had been told that they were making lampshades out of the skins of the Jews, and he said to Roosevelt, "you have to stop this." Roosevelt began to act, but Morgenthau went further. He said, "not only do you have to try to stop the Holocaust, you have to make sure that Germany will never threaten the world again," came up with something called the Morgenthau Plan, and went to Roosevelt and said, "After this war is won by the United States and our allies, we should take apart the factories of Germany, flood the mines, make sure that there's no industry in Germany, even if the Germans starve, to teach them a lesson."

TERENCE SMITH: Of course, after Roosevelt died and Truman became President, he saw it differently.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Truman turned it around, because after Roosevelt died, Truman said, "yes, we have to eliminate Nazism, but if you make Germany that weak, not only will the Germans be resentful and perhaps start another world war, but also you'll leave Europe open to the Soviet Union." So Truman, after World War II and after Roosevelt's death, he was the one who presided over the big effort to build democratic institutions in Germany-- schools, newspapers, all those things that we now see today-- and the result is that Germany is one of the strongest democracies on earth.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 30, 2005 11:04 AM