The Morgenthau Plan made political sense before its human costs were counted

Did Roosevelt support the Morgenthau Plan, or was he unaware of its likely consequences?

Both, in the panel's memory-based account: he supported industrial disarmament without fully confronting the mass deprivation it could cause.

Roosevelt is described as both supporting the Morgenthau Plan and failing to grasp all of its consequences. After two German-led wars within a generation, preventing another conflict through industrial disarmament had an understandable political appeal. The proposal went far beyond removing arms factories and would have stripped Germany of civilian industry as well. Herbert Hoover is recalled as estimating that implementation could leave roughly 25 million Germans facing starvation, which made the plan impractical as well as destructive. The panel gives this account explicitly from memory, so its figures and attribution remain qualified.