Free Krueger's Men by Lawrence Malkin

servant, could be blunt when the occasion called for it, and knew America well from his position as interwar secretary of the trusts administering the Rhodes scholarships. Morgenthau and Lothian went to see Roosevelt, and by late in the day the ambassador had forwarded to Morgenthau an unsigned memorandum prepared by Gerald Pinsent, the British Treasury’s man at the embassy. It was brief, and its salient arguments, totally new to Washington, were probably heightened by Pinsent as he realized that two Americans even as worldly and widely traveled as Steinbeck and Knisely seemed to have no conception of life under the totalitarian regimes of Europe.
    MEMORANDUM
    The suggestion that counterfeit Reichsmark notes should be dropped from aeroplanes over Germany was exhaustively considered by the British Government some time ago. At that time it was thought that this would be regarded by the world at large as a particularly odious and dishonest method of warfare, and if this argument has to any extent lost its force since then there are other arguments which seem decisive.
    The fact that such notes were being dropped would certainly be known without delay to the German authorities. In a country ruled the way Germany is ruled, it would not be difficult for the authorities to organize collection by Party or official organisations of the notes dropped, and to frighten the population so that they would not dare to collect these notes and retain and use them themselves. Precautions have probably been taken already by the German Government.
    Even insofar as the population were able to retain and use such notes the effect would probably be disproportionately small. In Germany nearly all goods are either rationed or are simply not obtainable; the holders of these counterfeit notes would not be able to spend them to more than a limited extent and it is probable that they would flow to a considerable extent into savings bank accounts, etc. The German government could increase their borrowing accordingly from these banks, and decrease their borrowing on the markets.
    To overcome these objections in such a way as to cause a substantially increased demand for goods which would endanger the German price control, or as to create distrust among the population in the currency, would require a scattering of notes on such a large scale as might be beyond the capacity of the Royal Air Force if it is not to limit its attacks on military objectives to an undesirable degree.
    Lastly, if Great Britain started this method of warfare and Germany retaliated in kind, it is not improbable that the effect on Great Britain, where we have not the same totalitarian methods of government, might be greater than the effect on Germany.
    12th September, 1940
    Morgenthau quickly wrote to thank Lothian: “Mr. John Steinbeck put the proposal up to me. I told him I was absolutely opposed to it as I thought it was crooked and I am delighted to learn that the British government agrees with me.” In a letter to Archibald MacLeish, Steinbeck was contemptuous: “A friend and I took a deadly little plan to Washington and the President liked it but the money men didn’t. That is, Lothian and Morgenthau. It would have worked, too, and would work most particularly in Italy.” This tribune of the oppressed had devised a way to use the capitalists’ own weapons against the fascists, and the capitalists had rebuffed him.
    The rejection still rankled years later when Steinbeck’s memory dimmed in retelling the story: he mixed up Lord Lothian with his successor Lord Halifax and dismissed him as a “spluttering” moneybags. Steinbeck also wrote: “Much later, when I sat with the President, he said ruefully, ‘Killing is all right, and you could attack religion with some impunity, but you [Steinbeck] were threatening something dearer than life to many people.’” The author would later encounter the president when he helped draft the passages on minority rights in FDR’s 1944