Germany faces a looming threat of deindustrialisation

from 1945 entitled “Germany Is Our Problem”, Henry Morgenthau, America’s treasury secretary, presented a proposal to strip post-war Germany of its industry and turn it into an agricultural economy. Though his radical proposal had some influence on Allied plans for the occupation of Germany after Hitler’s defeat, it was never implemented. Almost 80 years later Vladimir Putin might achieve some of what Morgenthau, whose parents were both born in Germany, had in mind. By on which Germany’s mighty industrial base relies, the Russian president is weakening the world’s fourth-biggest economy and its third-biggest exporter of goods. It doesn’t help that at the same time, Germany’s largest trading partner, China, which bought €100bn ($101bn) of German goods last year, including cars, medical equipment and chemicals, is in the midst of a , too. A national business model built in part on cheap energy from one autocracy and abundant demand from another faces a severe test.