September 1, 2024

Anniversary of the Second Quebec Conference: September 1944

Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt met in Quebec for the second time during the war in September 1944. Canadian Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King acted as host. With the war in Europe proceeding well following the D-Day invasion the previous June, there was much discussion about how Britain would expand its role in the war against Japan following German defeat. To watch a short newsreel made at the conference, please CLICK HERE.

President Roosevelt was accompanied by his Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, who introduced a plan, Churchill wrote in his memoirs, “to restrict German industry and encourage German agriculture. At first I violently opposed this idea. But the President, with Mr. Morgenthau—from whom we had much to ask—were so insistent that in the end we agreed to consider it.”

After the war Churchill reflected on the Morgenthau Plan: “Even if it had been practicable, I do not think it would have been right to depress Germany’s standard of life in such a way….in the event, with my full accord, the idea of ‘pastoralizing’ Germany did not survive.”