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Winston Churchill's CRAZY Post-War Plan For Germany
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Mar 31, 2025
Play Enlisted now with my link, and get a free bonus pack including soldiers, weapons, and premium account: https://playen.link/generalknowledge Thanks to Enlisted for sponsoring this video. Support me on Patreon & get exclusive / ahead of time content! https://www.patreon.com/generalknowledge In this video I talk about Winston's Churchill proposed division plan for Germany after WW2. In the context of the three main conferences that took place at the end of the conflict; beginning in Tehran, continuing in Yalta and culminating in Potsdam, the Allied Powers were decided that a separation of Germany into various independent countries might be necessary to guarantee there would be no future German aggression. Despite agreeing on this principle, the three main Allied Powers of the United States, Soviet Union and United Kingdom disagreed on how Germany should be divided - how many countries should be created, and which ones. Because of this they decided to create a 'Committee on the Dismemberment of Germany' to determine whether de-industrialization and demilitarization were enough, or if this separation was effectively needed, and if yes, how it should be done. Various proposals were considered by the Committee, although it's uncertain which. Some reports point to a potential list of 6 countries being created from the territory of pre-war Germany. However, two main proposals for the division of Germany come across: first, a proposal by Winston Churchill to create a Protestant North German state (with little territorial loss) and a Catholic South German state which would be united with Austria, Hungary and Carpatho Ukraine, being named 'The Confederation of the Danube'; in addition to a third German state in the West, called the 'International Zone'. The second proposal was that of US Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, who proposed a division of Germany in similar fashion, except ceding more territory in the Saar basin to France, leaving out Austria and Hungary from the South German state, and expanding the International Zone to all of the North-West, reaching into Kiel. In either case, Poland would gain much less territory that it ended up gaining. Both of these proposals were refused, and the (almost unknown) work of the Committee was pointless due to the development of circumstances after German surrender and the beginning of the Cold War. An effective (temporary) division of Germany took place between East and West, resulting of the temporary occupation areas. But a further separation of the country was avoided by the Allies who seemed to prefer to have a solid post-war Germany as their ally against an ever-growing Soviet Union. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 01:11 The initial idea 01:22 The Yalta Conference 03:02 Enlisted 04:21 The decision to break Germany apart 06:04 The Saar Protectorate 06:48 The Committee on the 'Dismemberment' of Germany 07:31 How did this Committee work? 07:52 The main proposals considered 08:19 The objectives of the Committee 09:32 Winston Churchill's plan for separating Germany
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0:00
It's 1945, February to be more precise, and a bunch of political and military leaders
0:06
have secretly travelled thousands of kilometers to meet in the region of Yalta in Crimea
0:11
at the time part of the Soviet Union. The Yalta Conference, also known as the Crimea Conference
0:17
and which had the codename Argonaut, took place in the Levadia Palace and saw extremely important
0:23
participants such as Field Martian Sir Alan Brooke of the United Kingdom, Fleet Admiral
0:28
William Leahy of the United States, or General Alexei Antonov of the Soviet Union. The conference
0:35
was one of three major conferences of the Allied powers that took place at the final stages of World
0:41
War II to define the future of the world after it, preceded by the Tehran Conference in 1943
0:46
and the Potsdam Conference in August of 1945. Yesterday morning at 2.41am, the representative of the German High Command signed the act of unconditional surrender
1:05
We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing. As early as the Tehran meeting, there was a shared view among the participants that a post-war division of Germany was necessary
1:18
although disagreeing on the number and type of division needed. But let's get back to Yalta
1:24
Above all, the conference had three distinguished guests. President Roosevelt of the US, Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, and Winston Churchill
1:32
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I'm going to provide a brief amount of historical context for the conference and its goals here
1:39
If you want to skip to the Winston Churchill proposal, you can use the timestamps to find it
1:45
A fun fact, Roosevelt initially wanted this meeting to take place at a neutral location
1:49
in the Mediterranean, such as Malta, Cyprus, Sicily, Athens, or even Jerusalem
1:54
But Stalin insisted that his doctors opposed any long trips, proposing instead for them
2:00
to meet at the Black Sea resort of Yalta. Apparently his fear of flying was one of the major contributing factors in this decision
2:08
These three leaders represented the three major states involved in the conflict at that point
2:13
A point which, by the way, was very close to the end of the war. By then, the Western Allies had liberated all of France and Belgium and were fighting
2:20
on the western border of Germany. In the east, Soviet forces were a mere 65km from Berlin, having already pushed back the
2:28
Germans from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. The question at this point wasn't if Germany was going to lose, it was when and what to
2:35
do with it when the time came. Oh, and also, France was oddly left out of the conference
2:41
General de Gaulle wasn't invited and was pretty offended by it, saying it was because
2:45
Roosevelt hated him, but apparently the Soviets also didn't want him there
2:49
Anyway, the conference discussed various important topics and paved the way for the future of
2:54
a lot of territories, such as Poland, Eastern Europe in general, Japan, Korea, the importance
3:00
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Now, let's get back to the video. I won't get into the other topics of the conference
4:23
If you want, I can make a full video on it. Here I will focus on one thing Germany Like I mentioned before the post division of Germany was seen as key since the first conference of Tehran and it was in this meeting in Yalta that the way was paved
4:37
for the effective separation of Germany after the war. This was a key difference. Not only was
4:42
Germany forced to unconditionally surrender, as had been decided by the Allies already
4:47
but they were also to be dismembered. We can actually read a telegram sent by the US ambassador
4:52
in the UK to the American Secretary of State on April 12, 1945, stating
4:58
At my request, Mr. Eden called a meeting late Wednesday of the Committee on Dismemberment
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of Germany. I raised the question of informing the French, who, remember, hadn't been a
5:08
part of the conference, of the inclusion of the word dismemberment in Article 12 of the
5:14
Instrument of Unconditional Surrender for Germany and of French participation in the
5:19
discussions on said dismemberment. This dismemberment, or to use a simpler word, separation, as it ended up actually happening, initially consisted of Polish annexation and Soviet occupation in the east, and French, British, and American occupation in the west, along with the temporary creation of the Tsar Protectorate near the French border, with Berlin itself also being divided in four
5:41
Eventually, these occupation zones were transformed into East and West Germany, the first being a Soviet puppet state until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
5:49
However, this division wasn't set in stone in Yalta, and only the occupied division of
5:55
Berlin was agreed upon. For Germany as a whole, the door was still open, regarding the type of division that would
6:01
take place and whether or not it would be temporary or permanent
6:04
The Saar Protectorate itself could have been permanent too, it existed from 1946 to 1956
6:10
In that year, they voted on whether to be independent or to effectively reincorporate
6:15
with West Germany, with the latter winning with 67% of the vote
6:19
An interesting fact was that German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer actually campaigned for independence
6:24
of the region, something the French wanted. In fact, after World War I, the Sarbazen Protectorate was also created after the war, being ruled
6:32
by France and the British from 1920 to 1935, also reuniting with Germany after a referendum
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The prosperity of the region really made the French want it, or at least want the Germans
6:43
not to have it. safeguarding more of their border from being in direct contact with Germany
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But anyway, this was another tangent, let's get back to Yalta. Because of this desire to separate Germany and the disagreement between the Allies on
6:56
how to do it, a decision was taken to create a Committee on the Dismemberment of Germany
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the one mentioned in that earlier telegram. Within the actions of that committee were the considerations of various proposals for
7:07
the separation of Germany into various nations. Among them, one that actually took place, but also one, the point of this video, proposed
7:15
by Winston Churchill at that same Yalta conference, at least arguably. What we're going to do now is go through very briefly the way the committee worked
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what it stated, and what the main options for the vision were, focusing on the Churchill
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one given its audacity and difference from the rest. So what did this committee actually do
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Its purpose was to decide whether Germany was to be divided into several nations, and
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And if so, what borders and interrelationships the new German states were to have
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Up to 6 German nations were considered being created by the committee, although I only
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found this in text sources and no maps or descriptions of which these nations would be
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and where and only 3 main proposals for the division are commonly registered
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The Churchill plan, the Morgenthau plan and the effective division plan that took place
8:01
We'll go through each of these in a minute. Although to be honest, the division plan seems to have been based solely on the separately
8:08
decided upon occupation plan, then transforming into East and West Germany due to that occupation
8:14
more than any other plan for division. It seems, perhaps, that the point of the committee was not fulfilled
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In fact, there's very little to be found about the proceedings of the committee
8:23
All I could come across on my research were these telegraphs, seemingly sent to the Secretary
8:28
of State of the US by the same US ambassador to the UK, John Winnant
8:33
In one from March 29th, 1945, he states that he attended the first meeting of the committee
8:38
and that they outlined their main considerations in fulfilling their task. First, how to prevent future German aggression
8:45
Second, how to achieve this goal, considering the destruction of German industry as an aid
8:50
to demilitarization and the armament. And third, if for this first consideration to be fulfilled, the division of Germany was
8:57
needed and how Further on he also states that the Soviet government understands the Crimea conference decision in respect to Germany dismemberment not as an obligatory plan for dismemberment
9:09
but as a possibility in exercising pressure on Germany with an aim of rendering it harmless
9:14
in case other means should prove inadequate. So perhaps the role of the committee was more to allow a threat by the allies towards defeated
9:22
Germany of abide by our rules or we'll split you up. Now let's effectively take a look at the two main proposals for separation other than
9:30
the one that ended up taking place. What was Winston Churchill's plan
9:34
Some people claim the plan had been abandoned by 1944 already and so he couldn't have presented
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it in Yalta, but still it existed. Churchill's plan was odd especially when compared to other ones
9:44
He only attributed land lost to Germany's pre-war borders in eastern Prussia, the territorially
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disconnected territory, which would be attributed to an independent Poland. Although allowing the Soviets to keep eastern Polish territories, they had gotten through
9:59
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. A north German state would therefore exist. In the Tsar Basin, a West German state, which would separate part of the main industrial
10:08
area from the rest of the Germans, stopping them from firing up their war machine in the
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future, being an international zone controlled by allied powers, taking away Germany's coal
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steel and industry. an oddest of all, a South German state, composed of Bavadia, Baden and Wuttenberg, but also
10:25
including Austria, Hungary and Karpatho Ukraine. Austria would be reasonably understandable, they have a Germanic culture and even share
10:32
a Roman Catholic religion with southern Germany, but why Hungary and Karpatho Ukraine
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Regions that aren't necessarily very culturally different. Perhaps he thought Austria-Hungary worked well together, their empire was chaotic, but
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but in reality more because of their Balkan territories and not necessarily the Austro-Hungarian
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Union itself. It's said that his goals were to divide Germany into a monarchist Catholic and a Protestant
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state, cementing their division and avoiding future reunification by drawing the borderline here
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Second, spare southern Germany given that historically militarism had emanated from Prussia in the north
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And third, protect Hungary and Karpato-Ukraine from falling under the Soviet and Communist
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sphere of influence that came from Eastern Europe. Oddly enough, it wasn't the first
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time in history that a confederation of the Danube was proposed, although with a different
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territory. In 1850, Hungarian statesman Lajos Kossuth proposed the creation of the state
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following the Hungarian War of Independence in 1848 against Austria. It's interesting to mention that Austria itself was also the subject of a divided occupation
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by the Allies and the Soviet Union after the war exactly in the same manner, but I feel
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like this isn't really talked about. They had four areas, three belonging to the Allies
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in the West, and Vienna also being divided within the Soviet area. This lasted from 1945
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to 1955. Being occupied and divided, it is reasonable that it would be included in a
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post-war territorial reorganization plan for Central Europe. The plan was eventually abandoned
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arguably by Churchill himself, but above all, by the circumstances which took place in the
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post-war period. The only other mainly known plan considered by this committee, contrasting to the one presented
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by the UK, was one presented by US Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau
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In another telegram, from January 10, 1945, Morgenthau addresses President Roosevelt about this
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It becomes clear that his goal above the division of Germany was the destruction of its industry
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and the division was merely a means to achieve that. In the Morgenthau plan, some land losses would take place in the east to Poland, although
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not as many as there ended up being in reality. In the north, some land would also be given to Denmark and France would annex the Sarbasin area
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Then three, not two German states would be created, North Germany, South Germany and
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an international zone in the Ruhr area, Germany's most industrialized zone. South Germany would also enter a customs union with Austria, who would regain its pre-war
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While North and South would be independent, the war would be controlled by a UN organization
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that would oversee the complete destruction of all industrial equipment. Similar to Churchill's idea, but with an expanded zone that reached up to the northern
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coast and the important Kiel port and c. An investigation concluded the plan was unworkable and would result in up to 25 million Germans
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dying from starvation although Morgenthau disputed the claim Without support from his own government there was no real consideration for this plan to take place It very interesting to also see FDR position on these For instance on a telegraph from
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April 6, 1945, he states, I've just read Special German Series number 2 from Winnend. I think our attitude should
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be one of study and postponement of final decision. My original thought, which I still
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maintain, is with the purpose of elimination of the word Reich, making it clear that regardless
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of the choice of separation, this was a key point for a future Germany
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However, an earlier telegram from January that year forwards a memorandum which states
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that, to prevent WW3, the Allied powers must avoid an enforced partition of Germany into
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two or three autonomous states, unless they result from a referendum by the German people
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It therefore seems that, despite the wish for a separated Germany by all Allied powers
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during the war, this wish ended up not taking place after the war was done
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Sure, East and West Germany were divided, first in their occupation zones and then in
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the two Germanys, but I believe this was more a direct consequence of that occupation policy
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rather than a plan for the division of Germany itself as a result of the work of the committee
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In fact, I would argue that the creation of those two states is itself directly related
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to the reason why a further division of Germany into several independent states didn't take
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place, which is the beginning of the Cold War. For the Western Allies, it suddenly became more important to have a resilient post-war
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West Germany that would stop Soviet advances into Western Europe. Even though the initial occupation plan presented the option for Britain to release a Northern
15:08
German state and the US to release a Southern German state, instead of unifying it into the
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Federal Republic as they ended up doing. As well as the Soviets could have done in the East instead of keeping a puppet state
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This alone would have created a set of three German countries. In addition, it seems that the demilitarization of Germany had been enough to remove the danger
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of future conflict, at least considering the new emergent threat of the Soviet Union at
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the time. In fact, there was even another unfollowed Churchill plan called Operation Unthinkable
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which would see an attack on the Soviet Union in 1945 with British, American and German soldiers
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Despite this not taking place, I believe it proves the point of how the Soviets were suddenly
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seen as the major threat, even leading them to consider the post-war Germans as possible allies
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I think it was this evolution and the growing Soviet threat that, above all, rendered the
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work of the committee irrelevant and allowed for them to ignore not necessarily Churchill
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or Morgenthau's proposals, which were refused for being too harsh or unrealistic, but other
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options for the division of Germany into several sovereign states. Furthermore, it's arguable that this new scenario also paved the way for European internal cooperation
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perhaps paving the way for the European Coal and Steel community and even the modern European Union
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So, that was a brief overview of the crazy plan by Winston Churchill to divide Germany
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as well as Austria and Hungary into various states, providing some historical context
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as to when this proposal came up, the Yalta Conference being preceded by the conference
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in Tehran and followed by the one in Potsdam, understanding how from the Yalta Conference
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came the creation of a committee on the dismemberment of Germany, even getting to look at some historical telegrams that speak of these matters
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and learning about at least one other proposal for German separation, the Morgenthau plan
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Then concluding how this committee's plans were not really fulfilled, and the only effective division of Germany was one that happened as a consequence
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of the separately decided occupation zones, with the issue of further separation being abandoned
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likely due to the new threat of a Cold War with the Soviets. Again, there were limited sources on this
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so leave a comment below with any additional information you may have or any corrections if you notice mistakes on my part
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Do you think the Allies should have pursued this war objective and pushed for an effective division of Germany into various states
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perhaps even including neighboring nations, and what do you think that the vision should have been
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Or was the temporary East-West split, along with the significant loss of territories, enough to, along with the militarization, achieve the same goal
17:41
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