@rallymodeller
Thank you for your point. The Morgenthau Plan, which did have the stated support of a number of Allied leaders, was never instituted because all it really did was provide fodder for the Nazi last-stand types, not to mention the sheer impossibility of carrying it out (can you imagine telling Allied troops that they had to stay in Europe another decade or so it order to ensure the Plan was instituted completely? It would have triggered mass mutinies).
I always thought the Morgenthau Plan may have been a bit of a "false flag." Consider, you have vast populations of Jews, Russians, Poles, Rom, Americans, Brits & Commonwealth, all calling for Germany to be reduced to rubble and decimated (I mean that last in the old Roman sense). Roosevelt could wave around the Plan to placate the kill-em-all crowd, but then tell them, "No, it''s too gruesome. We Americans and our allies will instead use the War Crime Trial system as a symbol of our dedication to the rule of law."
Patton, on the other hand, wanted to take the top three layers of the Nazi Party, put them before a firing squad, and then use the remaining German army as cannon fodder for the upcoming invasion of the USSR.
Still, the point remains that the U.S. was essentially carrying Germany and the other European nations (except the Warsaw Pact nations, of course) for the first decade after the war.