Morgenthau certainly envisioned a Carthaginian peace, designed to ensure a permanently deindustrialized, unarmed, and pastoral Germany.
Postwar Germany would have resembled something akin to the ancient, pre-civilized frontier that the first-century AD historian Tacitus wrote about in his Germania.
The plan would have ensured that within six months of Germany’s surrender, all of its industrial plants and equipment were to be dismantled.
The Ruhr, the renowned center of European industrial strength, was to be permanently neutered, starved of its energy, raw materials, and infrastructure.
After the war, the plan demanded virtual complete disarmament of Germany. Its once-feared armed forces were to be rendered nonexistent.
The author argues that the Germain state and the people are doing to themselves what Morgenthau wanted to do with them after WWII. They are willfully committing suicide in all their industrial and population. Who in Germany is doing this? How do they get the permission to do it?