Hi LindyBill; Re the German War attrocities. It was originally claimed by James Bacque, a Canadian. Stephen E. Ambrose denied the story in this interesting article, which nevertheless does admit more than I was aware of. For example, German PoWs were reclassified so that their food rations could be reduced. (By the Geneva Convention, it's against the rules to give enemy PoWs less food than your own soldiers. Since there wasn't enough food, German PoWs were reclassified.)
James Bacque's 'Other Losses'
A Review by Stephen E. Ambrose
NY Times Book Review, February 24, 1991
...
Mr. Bacque, a Canadian novelist with no previous historical research or writing experience, says in his introduction: "Doubtless many scholars will find faults in this book, which are only mine. I welcome their criticism and their further research, which may help to restore to us the truth after a long night of lies." Last December, the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans invited some leading experts on the period to examine the charges. The conference participants, including me, plan to publish the papers in book form.
Our first conclusion was that Mr. Bacque had made a major historical discovery. There _was_ widespread mistreatment of German prisoners in the spring and summer of 1945. Men were beaten, denied water, forced to live in open camps without shelter, given inadequate food rations and inadequate medical care. Their mail was withheld. In some cases prisoners made a "soup" of water and grass in order to deal with their hunger. Men did die needlessly and inexcusably. This must be confronted, and it is to Mr. Bacque's credit that he forces us to do so.
Our second conclusion was that when scholars do the necessary research, they will find Mr. Bacque's work to be worse than worthless. It is seriously - nay, spectacularly - flawed in its most fundamental aspects. Mr. Bacque misuses documents; he misreads documents; he ignores contrary evidence; his statistical methodology is hopelessly compromised; he makes no attempt to look at comparative contexts; he puts words into the mouth of his principal source; he ignores a readily available and absolutely critical source that decisively deals with his central accusation; and, as a consequence of these and and other shortcomings, he reaches conclusions and makes charges that are demonstrably absurd.
...
What happened is simple enough: the Allies could not afford to feed the millions of German prisoners at the same level at which they were able to feed German civilians, not to mention the civilians of the liberated countries of Western Europe, and not to mention as well the displaced persons. But the United States and other Allied nations had signed the Geneva Convention, which had the force of a treaty. They did not wish to violate it, so they used the new designation of "Disarmed Enemy Forces." The orders to the field commanders were straighforward: do not feed the DEF's at a higher scale than German civilians.
...
Mr. Cowdrey's conclusion, strongly supported by another conference participant, Maj. Ruediger Overmans of the German Office of Military History in Freiburg (who is writing the final volume of the official Germany history of the war), is that the total death by all causes of German prisoners in American hands could not have been greater than 56,000.
...
In short, Mr. Bacque is wrong on every major charge and nearly all his minor ones. Eisenhower was not a Hitler, he did not run death camps, German prisoners did not die by the hundreds of thousands, there was a severe food shortage in 1945, there was nothing sinister or secret about the "disarmed enemy forces" designation or about the column "other losses." Mr. Bacque's "missing million" were old men and young boys in the militia.
...
nizkor.org
-- Carl |
