This subject has been discussed in the H&WC section of the forum on many occasions. For multiple debunkings of Bacque's bogus claims see:
Eisenhower's guilt?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=10112
50,000 Germans died in US captivity in one small area??
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=12779
James Bacque's work on the deliberate starvation
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=49317
USA dismissed Switzerland as protecting power of German POWS
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=48193
Guess who’s Bacque
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=43792
One million German POWs killed by US/UK?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=27723
Chock Full of Death; German POWs by James Baque
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=17360
American and Franch (post) war crimes
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=8288
German POW treatment by Americans
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=8614
German POWs
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=141
Newspaper clipping file on postwar POW release controversy, beginning at:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 904#602904
Mal-treatment of German POWs
Sorry, that is not how it works. You make a claim, you back it up. Not with someone who has been so thoroughly debunked as Bacque either.DIREWOLF75 wrote:From what i have read, 3500 dead POWs is HARDLY all of it.
OTOH, i also doubt 1.1M being correct, although id still say that being more likely than 3500.
Im not dismissing any numbers at all here, you other fellows are doing that very well with your "just conspiracy theories" and "you aint got no proof" arguments. Try to find out the numbers instead of just kneejerking saying "cant have happened".
The specific claims were:
- 1.1m German POW killed by the western allies
- Eisenhower ordered this to happen
- Today's Germany imprisons people for 'thought crimes'
- A few years ago the number of these people in prison was higher than that of people imprisoned by the GDR
- You get a standard sentence of 9 month if you are guilty of a thought crime, and that can be extended based on what you write in your letters
- A farmer found a mass-grave and was threatened with a 100,000DM fine if he did anything about it by the police
I see no reason to waste my time going out to debunk any of these. I think they are all nonsense, unless someone comes with a credible source to back them up. I see a lot of reason though to challenge posters who claim such things to back up their claims.
So far, in the backup department, there has been nada. If these sources are as easy to find as you claim, you will certainly be able to post them here without too much effort, instead of telling the forum repeatedly that all nations did bad things, and making up strawman arguments about someone here in this thread saying they did not.
All the best
Andreas
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David Thompson
- Forum Staff
- Posts: 23724
- Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
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H&WC Section RulesIf a poster raises a question about the events, other posters may answer the question with evidence. If a poster stops asking questions and begins to express a point of view, he then becomes an advocate for that viewpoint. When a person becomes an advocate, he has the burden of providing evidence for his point of view. If he has no evidence, or doesn't provide it when asked, it is reasonable for the reader to conclude that his opinion or viewpoint is uninformed and may fairly be discounted or rejected.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962
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DIREWOLF75
- Member
- Posts: 169
- Joined: 04 Jan 2003, 14:48
- Location: Sweden
Well excuse me Andreas, but if you actually cared to read the thread, i claimed NONE of those things.
My "claim" was that western allies DID directly or indirectly get an undetermined number of German POWs killed.
And that aint news.
Sources, yeah sure, ill travel 300km down to where i lived until 7 years ago right away and expect the library there still has the books i read 10-15 years ago, im SO certain i can still find them even though i havent a clue of their names any longer. Just because you ask so nicely... Right...
:roll:
I also wasnt the one talking about "Bacque" either, since i havent a clue who he is. Never read anything of him AFAIK.
If you cant keep apart who you are responding to and who actually said something, that sure is NOT my problem.
My "claim" was that western allies DID directly or indirectly get an undetermined number of German POWs killed.
And that aint news.
Sources, yeah sure, ill travel 300km down to where i lived until 7 years ago right away and expect the library there still has the books i read 10-15 years ago, im SO certain i can still find them even though i havent a clue of their names any longer. Just because you ask so nicely... Right...
:roll:
I also wasnt the one talking about "Bacque" either, since i havent a clue who he is. Never read anything of him AFAIK.
If you cant keep apart who you are responding to and who actually said something, that sure is NOT my problem.
I did not say you did. You did however call on those questioning the statements about killed POWs to go and look up their truthfulness, when according to the rules of the forum it is the one making the statements who has to provide proof.DIREWOLF75 wrote:Well excuse me Andreas, but if you actually cared to read the thread, i claimed NONE of those things.
I am also not asking you to go anywhere to proof anything. I am just pointing out that without verification beyond 'from what I have read' from you, your support for any number is really not more than an opinion with no apparent basis in fact.DIREWOLF75 wrote:
From what i have read, 3500 dead POWs is HARDLY all of it.
OTOH, i also doubt 1.1M being correct, although id still say that being more likely than 3500.
Im not dismissing any numbers at all here, you other fellows are doing that very well with your "just conspiracy theories" and "you aint got no proof" arguments. Try to find out the numbers instead of just kneejerking saying "cant have happened".
I am perfectly capable of keeping apart who I am talking to. I am first and foremost talking to Mr. Lemke, who after his first appearances seems to have decided that he can not back up his claims. Hardly a surprise.
Then I am talking to you about your statements regarding '3,500 is HARDLY all of it'. Well maybe. Maybe not. If you choose not to back that one up either, fine.
If you can not keep these two conversations apart, that sure is NOT my problem.
All the best
Andreas
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Klaus Yurk
- Member
- Posts: 1373
- Joined: 15 May 2004, 04:15
- Location: Lincoln, Ne.
I agree very much with Andreas.
My own father was a POW in France. Depot number 114. Lost almost half of his body weight. He also suffered from dysentery and the pain of his wounds. But it was due to neglect and starvation, rather than mistreatment, per se. And to be fair, France had problems feeding its own population, far less over a million German POWs.
Now, I do know personally of some murders of German POWs. But it was in the 100s, not millions. I know the son of the US Army CID General who resigned his commission over this affair. He was told by the "higest authority" in the Allied Command to drop the case and destroy all evidence. (I've seen his papers.) Because all evidence pointed to the direct involvement of the French Army. And the case was becoming a political embarassment. My friend, who now teaches at a small Kansas college, said his father resigned rather than whitewash this affair. But I imagine the next person assigned to that position did as he was told. So this is nothing more than what in a court of law would be called "hearsay."
But as I stated, this was in the 100s, not millions. Neither I, nor my father, nor my Friend's father know of any mass (hundreds of thousands) killing of German POWs. Perhaps on the Eastern Front, but not by the Western Allies.
Klaus
My own father was a POW in France. Depot number 114. Lost almost half of his body weight. He also suffered from dysentery and the pain of his wounds. But it was due to neglect and starvation, rather than mistreatment, per se. And to be fair, France had problems feeding its own population, far less over a million German POWs.
Now, I do know personally of some murders of German POWs. But it was in the 100s, not millions. I know the son of the US Army CID General who resigned his commission over this affair. He was told by the "higest authority" in the Allied Command to drop the case and destroy all evidence. (I've seen his papers.) Because all evidence pointed to the direct involvement of the French Army. And the case was becoming a political embarassment. My friend, who now teaches at a small Kansas college, said his father resigned rather than whitewash this affair. But I imagine the next person assigned to that position did as he was told. So this is nothing more than what in a court of law would be called "hearsay."
But as I stated, this was in the 100s, not millions. Neither I, nor my father, nor my Friend's father know of any mass (hundreds of thousands) killing of German POWs. Perhaps on the Eastern Front, but not by the Western Allies.
Klaus
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bob lembke
- In memoriam
- Posts: 774
- Joined: 31 Oct 2004, 19:53
- Location: Philadelphia, PA
POW Question
Andreas;
I have not stopped defending my position. I have just come back from Wisconsin, where I spent four days visiting my cousin, who was in many of those camps. (He has no computer, so I could not see my e-mail, etc.) He refuses to discuss these matters, and is very scared of the US government. When Bacque came out, I sent it to him, and he read half of it. I then (figuratively) beat him over the head and shoulders, and he read the rest, reluctantly, and said that he was in some of the camps mentioned, and that everything he read in Bacque was accurate, as far as he witnessed, except that some of the death rates were actually higher, as far as he could see. That is the last thing he would mention about it to me, to this date, except for one or two criptic comments on this visit. However, on this trip his wife took me to visit some friends for coffee and cake, a couple in which the man was a prisoner of the Brits (who did not generally kill their prisoners), and the third person was a woman whose husband, now dead, was a POW. They have never heard of Bacque, but said a lot about the topic, and everything was consistant with Bacque.
Here is what I know and am influenced by:
1. I have read Bacque; Other Losses. Less than 200 pages of text, supported with 100 pages of footnotes, bibliography, a list of the archives he visited, etc. Have I looked up all of these sources? No. But I was trained in historical research 50 years ago by a historian with several degrees from Columbia University in history, and I have done a lot of research since them, a lot of it under his supervision. The book seems sound, very well researched and laid out. But it could be an enormous fabrication.
2. However, I have read (more correctly, skimmed for an hour) Ambrose's book, produced with the resources of the Eisenhower Center, and it did not score any points at all, as far as I could see. It was full of stuff that did not address Bacque at all. It did include the argument that the alleged events could not have happened, as it is well known that the German POWs held in the US were well treated. Of course the US Army did not kill hundreds of thousands of POWs in front of the American public. If Bacque's sources were fabricated, or misquoted, etc., Ambrose, with an entire historical institute focused on WW II at his beck and call, would have exposed it. Instead, he had a collection of articles that barely seemed to address the question.
3. I mentioned my friend of 30 years. I will say more than I should. He was a colonel in the Defense Intelligence Agency. As I said, he spent a couple of years trying to tell me that Bacque's allegations were nonsense, and then, in a moment of great anger, he admitted they were true. Then he spent a couple of years attempting to, in effect, deny what he said to me and my wife.
4. A mutual friend, now in her 90's, was in Military Intelligence at the end of the war in Austria and Germany. Her companion of many years was an Austrian woman who experienced many of the "difficulties" of the period and whose brother, I believe, was a POW. She had information on this corroboration the "alleged events" and tried to send it to me thru my friend of "3." above, but I never got it, so she later got me a second set of the info.
5. Growing up as a German-American youth in New York City, almost all of the German male immigrants my family knew had been POWs, and you could taste that very bad things had happened, but they generally not shared with me, at, say, 12 years old. My father did tell me the things that my cousin (who I just visited) told him. But the picture was not pulled together, focused.
6. My cousin, although silent, is consistant with the "alleged events", and what he told my father corroborates Bacque, and he told me that when he reluctantly read Bacque that it was true, as far as he experienced. He is scared to death of the US government, is a radical pasifist (sp.?), is a farmer in the middle of nowhere, does not have a firearm (there are cyotese (again, sp.?) about, rabbits eat up the vegetables, he would not harm a hair on their heads. I have known him for over 50 years, and he is not a liar or exaggerator.
7. What about the US colonel with a Ph. D. in history, a Senior Historian in the US Army, who supports Bacque, wrote his forward, and helped him? Other US retired officers and soldiers helped him with his research and book. All some sort of anti-American manics?
I would venture that Andreas and the several others who have attacked Bacque, and me for citing him, have never looked at a word Bacque has written, and certainly have never gone to his sources to check them out. Have you guys read Bacque? Anyone?
Klaus - You father lost half his body weight, due to "starvation", as you said, in a French camp, but he was not "mistreated"? Really? The rules of war state that the POWs are to receive the same rations as the soldiers of the army holding those POWs. My cousin told my father that every POW who smoked died. The former POW that I spoke to yesterday said that he was relatively well taken care of by the Brits (as Bacque said), but that for a good while they had a loaf of bread a day for 19 men, plus a bit of "soup" that, if you were lucky, had a few bits of sugar beet in it.
Why don't you guys scratch up Other Losses and read it; possibly track down a few of his sources? How can you attack his work, and anyone (me) who cites him, without reading a word of him. I know that I said I don't read Ambrose; I actually have some read some, and it is instantly clear that it is junk. He says one thing on one page, the opposite two pages later, something else in the next book. He got caught in serious plagarism with one of his most recent books, and he defended himself saying in effect it is not plagarism since he never read (his) book, it is a product of his giant ghost writer factory that he did not bother to supervise.
I for my part will look at some of sites cited that supposedly refute Bacque. Everything I have seen to date that perports to do so has seemed to be nonsense, like Ambrose. But there may be something there.
This all emotion is one reason why I do not study or write about WW II. In my area, WW I, it is only in the last 10-15 years that some US and Brit writers are really getting thru the nonsense and are discovering what really happened in that war, after all the participants are dead. With all of the emotion about WW II, it will be at least 100 more years before a lot of its history can be sorted out.
Andreas - Do you really think that you can go to Germany, stand on a soap-box, and say anything you want? I know of a 79 year old American citizen from Florida who visited Germany on vacation and was arrested and imprisoned, based on something he wrote in the US. You can't be serious to say that you can literally say anything you want, write anything you want, and get away with it. Even some things that are historically correct, or are probably historically correct. Happily, this is not the case in the US, except possibly for narrow and extreme things, like clear and creditable threats of violence. (Having said this, I think that the present US administration is a disaster, a nightmare, but they have made only limited progress in their attempts to strip us of our political and legal rights.)
Bob Lembke
All of the
I have not stopped defending my position. I have just come back from Wisconsin, where I spent four days visiting my cousin, who was in many of those camps. (He has no computer, so I could not see my e-mail, etc.) He refuses to discuss these matters, and is very scared of the US government. When Bacque came out, I sent it to him, and he read half of it. I then (figuratively) beat him over the head and shoulders, and he read the rest, reluctantly, and said that he was in some of the camps mentioned, and that everything he read in Bacque was accurate, as far as he witnessed, except that some of the death rates were actually higher, as far as he could see. That is the last thing he would mention about it to me, to this date, except for one or two criptic comments on this visit. However, on this trip his wife took me to visit some friends for coffee and cake, a couple in which the man was a prisoner of the Brits (who did not generally kill their prisoners), and the third person was a woman whose husband, now dead, was a POW. They have never heard of Bacque, but said a lot about the topic, and everything was consistant with Bacque.
Here is what I know and am influenced by:
1. I have read Bacque; Other Losses. Less than 200 pages of text, supported with 100 pages of footnotes, bibliography, a list of the archives he visited, etc. Have I looked up all of these sources? No. But I was trained in historical research 50 years ago by a historian with several degrees from Columbia University in history, and I have done a lot of research since them, a lot of it under his supervision. The book seems sound, very well researched and laid out. But it could be an enormous fabrication.
2. However, I have read (more correctly, skimmed for an hour) Ambrose's book, produced with the resources of the Eisenhower Center, and it did not score any points at all, as far as I could see. It was full of stuff that did not address Bacque at all. It did include the argument that the alleged events could not have happened, as it is well known that the German POWs held in the US were well treated. Of course the US Army did not kill hundreds of thousands of POWs in front of the American public. If Bacque's sources were fabricated, or misquoted, etc., Ambrose, with an entire historical institute focused on WW II at his beck and call, would have exposed it. Instead, he had a collection of articles that barely seemed to address the question.
3. I mentioned my friend of 30 years. I will say more than I should. He was a colonel in the Defense Intelligence Agency. As I said, he spent a couple of years trying to tell me that Bacque's allegations were nonsense, and then, in a moment of great anger, he admitted they were true. Then he spent a couple of years attempting to, in effect, deny what he said to me and my wife.
4. A mutual friend, now in her 90's, was in Military Intelligence at the end of the war in Austria and Germany. Her companion of many years was an Austrian woman who experienced many of the "difficulties" of the period and whose brother, I believe, was a POW. She had information on this corroboration the "alleged events" and tried to send it to me thru my friend of "3." above, but I never got it, so she later got me a second set of the info.
5. Growing up as a German-American youth in New York City, almost all of the German male immigrants my family knew had been POWs, and you could taste that very bad things had happened, but they generally not shared with me, at, say, 12 years old. My father did tell me the things that my cousin (who I just visited) told him. But the picture was not pulled together, focused.
6. My cousin, although silent, is consistant with the "alleged events", and what he told my father corroborates Bacque, and he told me that when he reluctantly read Bacque that it was true, as far as he experienced. He is scared to death of the US government, is a radical pasifist (sp.?), is a farmer in the middle of nowhere, does not have a firearm (there are cyotese (again, sp.?) about, rabbits eat up the vegetables, he would not harm a hair on their heads. I have known him for over 50 years, and he is not a liar or exaggerator.
7. What about the US colonel with a Ph. D. in history, a Senior Historian in the US Army, who supports Bacque, wrote his forward, and helped him? Other US retired officers and soldiers helped him with his research and book. All some sort of anti-American manics?
I would venture that Andreas and the several others who have attacked Bacque, and me for citing him, have never looked at a word Bacque has written, and certainly have never gone to his sources to check them out. Have you guys read Bacque? Anyone?
Klaus - You father lost half his body weight, due to "starvation", as you said, in a French camp, but he was not "mistreated"? Really? The rules of war state that the POWs are to receive the same rations as the soldiers of the army holding those POWs. My cousin told my father that every POW who smoked died. The former POW that I spoke to yesterday said that he was relatively well taken care of by the Brits (as Bacque said), but that for a good while they had a loaf of bread a day for 19 men, plus a bit of "soup" that, if you were lucky, had a few bits of sugar beet in it.
Why don't you guys scratch up Other Losses and read it; possibly track down a few of his sources? How can you attack his work, and anyone (me) who cites him, without reading a word of him. I know that I said I don't read Ambrose; I actually have some read some, and it is instantly clear that it is junk. He says one thing on one page, the opposite two pages later, something else in the next book. He got caught in serious plagarism with one of his most recent books, and he defended himself saying in effect it is not plagarism since he never read (his) book, it is a product of his giant ghost writer factory that he did not bother to supervise.
I for my part will look at some of sites cited that supposedly refute Bacque. Everything I have seen to date that perports to do so has seemed to be nonsense, like Ambrose. But there may be something there.
This all emotion is one reason why I do not study or write about WW II. In my area, WW I, it is only in the last 10-15 years that some US and Brit writers are really getting thru the nonsense and are discovering what really happened in that war, after all the participants are dead. With all of the emotion about WW II, it will be at least 100 more years before a lot of its history can be sorted out.
Andreas - Do you really think that you can go to Germany, stand on a soap-box, and say anything you want? I know of a 79 year old American citizen from Florida who visited Germany on vacation and was arrested and imprisoned, based on something he wrote in the US. You can't be serious to say that you can literally say anything you want, write anything you want, and get away with it. Even some things that are historically correct, or are probably historically correct. Happily, this is not the case in the US, except possibly for narrow and extreme things, like clear and creditable threats of violence. (Having said this, I think that the present US administration is a disaster, a nightmare, but they have made only limited progress in their attempts to strip us of our political and legal rights.)
Bob Lembke
All of the
Re: POW Question
No I don't, but that is a red herring, since I never claimed you could get on your soap-box and say anything you want.bob lembke wrote:Andreas - Do you really think that you can go to Germany, stand on a soap-box, and say anything you want? I know of a 79 year old American citizen from Florida who visited Germany on vacation and was arrested and imprisoned, based on something he wrote in the US. You can't be serious to say that you can literally say anything you want, write anything you want, and get away with it. Even some things that are historically correct, or are probably historically correct. Happily, this is not the case in the US, except possibly for narrow and extreme things, like clear and creditable threats of violence. (Having said this, I think that the present US administration is a disaster, a nightmare, but they have made only limited progress in their attempts to strip us of our political and legal rights.)
Bob Lembke
All of the
Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany - if you want to do it, don't travel to Germany. Last I checked the holocaust did happen, so it is not included in your list of 'historically correct' or 'probably historically correct'. What things that are 'historically correct' or 'probably historically correct' are likely to lead to criminal sentencing? Please state this very clearly, including examples of people imprisoned, the relevant Paragraphen in the Strafgesetzbuch, and the sentences handed down.
Having a radical agenda that could threaten the state will likely lead to observation by the Verfassungsschutz. This is an element of what is called 'Wehrhafte Demokratie', a concept under which those who threaten the continued existence of democracy in Germany are not given its protection. There is a very very broad consensus in German society backing this, following the experience of the Weimar Republic.
Of course, we don't actually know what kind of 'thought crimes' you maybe thinking of, since you don't tell us. Same for your 79 year old chap from Florida - it would be more convincing if you had some more info (name, type of crime he was convicted for, title of book/article/letter/whatever he wrote, sentence, place of judgement etc. - even a link to CNN would be nice; it must have registered in the US?).
Regardless, you have not shown any proof for your claims about Germans being imprisoned for 'thought crimes', these numbers being higher than those in the former GDR, and what kind of specific Straftatbestand would underly convictions for nine months, with extension based on what people write in their letters. You have used some fairly specifc claims in your previous posts - surely it will not be difficult to back them up?
Regarding Bacque.
Your points:
1) Your opinion
2) Your opinion
3) - 7) You are asking us to trust you that all this is right. Provide some support for the claims you made regarding thought crimes, and you may earn some credibility with me.
Regardless of that
3) one man's opinion.
4) you have lost me there, what are you trying to say?
5) Yes, bad things happened. There is no argument about that. The argument is about 1.1m German POW being killed on the orders of Eisenhower. I somehow doubt that former German POWs in New York can materially assist this argument being resolved any more than my grandfather can help us to figure out whether Barbarossa was a preventive war, even though he participated in it as a senior private.
6) See 5)
7) What about him? What about the USMC general who believed that he fought all the wars in the 1930s as a mercenary for big capital? What about John Kerry who turned against the Vietnam War regardless of his decorations? What about Robert McNamara's conversion regarding the bombing of North Vietnam. All very interesting from a psychological point of view, but hardly proof for any historical thesis.
Your points:
1) Your opinion
2) Your opinion
3) - 7) You are asking us to trust you that all this is right. Provide some support for the claims you made regarding thought crimes, and you may earn some credibility with me.
Regardless of that
3) one man's opinion.
4) you have lost me there, what are you trying to say?
5) Yes, bad things happened. There is no argument about that. The argument is about 1.1m German POW being killed on the orders of Eisenhower. I somehow doubt that former German POWs in New York can materially assist this argument being resolved any more than my grandfather can help us to figure out whether Barbarossa was a preventive war, even though he participated in it as a senior private.
6) See 5)
7) What about him? What about the USMC general who believed that he fought all the wars in the 1930s as a mercenary for big capital? What about John Kerry who turned against the Vietnam War regardless of his decorations? What about Robert McNamara's conversion regarding the bombing of North Vietnam. All very interesting from a psychological point of view, but hardly proof for any historical thesis.
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Klaus Yurk
- Member
- Posts: 1373
- Joined: 15 May 2004, 04:15
- Location: Lincoln, Ne.
Well, in that regarded, he certainly was mistreated. But it was more "passive" mistreatment, than "active." The local guards didn't treat them that badly....they just had no food to give to the German POWs. And the guards themselves were not eating very well.Klaus - You father lost half his body weight, due to "starvation", as you said, in a French camp, but he was not "mistreated"? Really?
This was a fault of the politicians, rather than the local people or guards. France was in absolutely no condition to feed 1.2 million German POWs in 1945 and 1946. Yet the politicians insisted that they get these men to help rebuild France. I think it was not until 1947 that the Red Cross was satisfied that the POWs were getting a satisfactory diet, ie 1,500 calories per day or something like that. Was there a lot of human suffering and misery among the German POWs in those years? Absolutely!
I like to think of it as similar to the confederate camp at Andersonville during the US Civil War. It has some similarities.
In my father's case, he lost half his body weight, he had a case of dysentry that nearly did him in, and his wounds from Russia hurt tremendously. The medical care left a lot to be desired. Again, pure neglect. Not taking men out and shooting them...but rather just ignoring them, and in some cases, ignoring them unto death. (On the other hand, the Russians would just outright have shot him.)
Later in life, Dad had to have all his teeth pulled because they had turned to chalk during this time.
Am I bitter at France for doing this? No. Neither was Dad. But what we both hate, in father's case past tense as he died in 1982, was hypocrisy (sp?). Those in the media and elsewhere who pretend that only the Germans did bad things in the 1939-1950 time period. And you find that cr*p everywhere. In the movies, TV, magazines, books,.... everywhere. And that is a pure, unadulterated lie. (What do you think are the chances we will ever see a Spielberg movie about German POWs purposely starved to death? Pretty close to nihl, I'd say.)
Oh, it also would also be nice if France were to pay Dad's family the 10 Franc's per day, plus interest, that was stolen from him for 2 and one half years of "voluntary servitude."
I only mention that because otherwise it becomes pretty much like slave labor....and people (Germans) were hanged after the war for having used slave labor. 
I'm not holding my breath until that check arrives
Just my experiences and thoughts on the subject.
Klaus
I've posted this before elsewhere:
The autobiography of SS veteran Hans Post was published in Australia in 2002.
http://www.thepaper.org.au/issues/040/0 ... e_out.html
Post was a captive of the French in 1945/46 and claims that Waffen SS Pows were deliberately victimised by the French,and quotes that only 1300 out of the 3600 SS prisoners at the Thoree-les-Pins camp survived their ordeal.Starvation and disease were the killers.
In constrast a Heer and Luftwaffe POW camp within sight of the SS compound,across the railroad tracks, only suffered mildy and Heer prisoners tried to pass on food parcels to the SS captives,unsuccessfully in most cases.Post says that the only thing that saved them from all dying was the intervention of an American passing convoy of doctors that alerted SHAEF command to the French mistreatment.
In this context, and accepting Post's view on things,select groups of German POWs in French hands could be subject to deliberate illtreatment by select camp authorities.
The autobiography of SS veteran Hans Post was published in Australia in 2002.
http://www.thepaper.org.au/issues/040/0 ... e_out.html
Post was a captive of the French in 1945/46 and claims that Waffen SS Pows were deliberately victimised by the French,and quotes that only 1300 out of the 3600 SS prisoners at the Thoree-les-Pins camp survived their ordeal.Starvation and disease were the killers.
In constrast a Heer and Luftwaffe POW camp within sight of the SS compound,across the railroad tracks, only suffered mildy and Heer prisoners tried to pass on food parcels to the SS captives,unsuccessfully in most cases.Post says that the only thing that saved them from all dying was the intervention of an American passing convoy of doctors that alerted SHAEF command to the French mistreatment.
In this context, and accepting Post's view on things,select groups of German POWs in French hands could be subject to deliberate illtreatment by select camp authorities.
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David Thompson
- Forum Staff
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- Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
- Location: USA
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Klaus Yurk
- Member
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Do you really think that there will be "productive discussion?"
I certainly do not want to add any more to this. I've said everything I know of personally. To beat it to death serves little to no point at this juncture of time and space. My father found God in a trench in the bloody snow of Russia and forgave everyone that did "things" to him. How can I do less?
But you are certainly welcome to move it anywhere you like.
Just my opinion.
Klaus
I certainly do not want to add any more to this. I've said everything I know of personally. To beat it to death serves little to no point at this juncture of time and space. My father found God in a trench in the bloody snow of Russia and forgave everyone that did "things" to him. How can I do less?
But you are certainly welcome to move it anywhere you like.
Just my opinion.
Klaus
I agree with Klaus. I do not think that another thread on this topic can add much. I am just interested in the (in my view completely unfounded) claims that were made about the current Germany here. I realise these are probably only tenously connected to the topic of Holocaust and War Crimes (we are still waiting to hear more about the 'thought crimes' though), but still...
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bob lembke
- In memoriam
- Posts: 774
- Joined: 31 Oct 2004, 19:53
- Location: Philadelphia, PA
POWs
David;
Thanks for trying to create some order in this awful mess. I agree with Klaus that it is unlikely that any productive discussion is possible on this topic. I want to make a few observations and probably bow out. I will then read the list of sites that supposedly refute Bacque, and if I find some of it creditable I will come back and give my opinion and admit anything that seems creditable.
I picked up my copy of Other Losses and looked in it again. The text is 195 pages long. There are, in addition, 101 pages in total of the sum of appendices (50 pages, footnoted, and presenting a great deal of cited statistics), footnotes (553 footnotes in all), a list of 19 archives that Bacque used, and a Select Bibliography of 53 books that he referenced and found particularily important. I have not seen such a thuroughly footnoted book in 50 years of serious historical research. Of course Bacque must have known that his work would be attacked and denied, and it seems that he gives a citation for every single thing he stated. I am tempted to put all 101 pages of sources given by Bacque in the Forum, but promise not to, although there seem to be calls for me to do so.
As I said, when this book was published by a small Canadian subsidary of Random House, and I heard about it from an interview with the US colonel and Senior Historian who assisted Bacque, the profitable publisher was suddenly closed. I then reached a Canadian book wholesaler who admitted to having a stock of this book, but when I attempted to order a copy, they told me that they could not send it to the US. (Any other book, seemingly, would be fine.) I then ordered a book from them and had it mailed to the parents of a young Canadian woman who was a medical student in the US and rented an apartment from me. Some months later she went to Canada to see her parents, and brought the book across the border to me. It took me 8 months to get the book. I buy hundreds of books abroad, and I have never heard of such a thing.
Is the book even for sale in Germany? I will look in amazon.de when I get off.
I am currently reading a book entitled Back to the Front, by a Canadian named, I believe, O'Shea. Both of his grand-fathers were Irish but had to fight for the Brits in WW I. He is quite a pacifist and dwells at length on the old adage that "The truth is the first casualty of war." In the book that I am currently trying to get to the press a central theme is the way that two generals, one American and one Brit, worked tirelessly for 20 years to (very successfully) to totally screw up the history of the use of flame throwers in WW I. Most stuff written about WW I is partially or almost entirely biased, cooked over, or flat wrong.
But in WW II, it seems, the situation is totally over the top. I have learned my lesson and will retreat to the comparative calm of WW I.
I am quite interested in the politics and legality of free speech. In the US certain groups and individuals say: "Oh, only if the US could have excellent laws on speech, like Canada and Germany". What they are actually saying that they want a legal situation where someone can be thrown into jail or endlessly sued and financially ruined if they say somethng, true or not, that they don't want uttered.
I could give endless examples of how history is massaged by governments or interest groups.
In WW II (1942, possibly 1943) my mother, in the US for 16 years, but still a German citizen, and I, a 2-3 year old US citizen, were almost taken from my father, a citizen and employee of the US Navy in a war zone, and sent 1000 miles away, which probably would have landed us in a camp, where the wife of our family doctor was already locked up. We were saved by the naval base commander, who valued my father as a valuable worker, and told the Naval Intelligence officer: "Yes, you have the right to send Mrs. Lembke away. But I have the right to move you off the base, into a tent in the jungle outside the camp gates, which you can share with the giant posionous centipedes."
I mention this as Congress recently passed a law making information on the German-American and Italian-American detainees unlawful to display, while publicising the detaining of Japanese-Americans in the same camps. It is part of what I call the "Victimization Olympics". For example, the Holocaust of the Jewish people is constantly (and correctly) brought up, but the "Terror Famine" of the Ukrainians in 1932-33, in which more people were murdered on the basis of their ethnic identity in a much shorter period, is not only ignored but active efforts are made to prevent it from being mentioned or discussed.
Andreas;
The core of this squabble is whether or not Bacque's allegations of the deadly mistreatment of the German POWs after the war, allegedly largely by the US and the French, is true. You ignored my question, probably for good reason. Have you ever read any of Bacque's books, especially Other Losses? Have you ever seen it? Have you been in the same room with it?
You know (and have admitted) and I know that Germans can be fined or thrown in jail soley for things they have stated or have written. So I do not have to cite the exact law that is used to prosecute these unfortunates. I have studied a lot of law, including military law, courtesy of my training as a US Army officer, but I have not studied German law, nor do I have access to a German law library.
I consider German democracy, on the whole, superior to the current state of US democracy, where the influence of money is overwhelming the system, despite excellent demcratic forms. It is a shame that it is felt that it is still necessary to fine people or jam them in prison for simply uttering non-PC speech, without a violent threat. I can give you specific cases of named people who have had this done to them soley for stating things that are either certainly or most likely true. I shudder at the thought of the US having such laws while we are burdened with the radical, ideological, possibly criminal bunch that we now have in Washington.
But I am sick of this whole business, and will drag my carcass off to my WW I lair. I have posted over 220 posts in that corner of the Forum and been received and engaged with in an amiable and collegial manner. I am sure that I will be long dead before some of these issues can be discussed in a reasonable fashion.
Bob Lembke
Thanks for trying to create some order in this awful mess. I agree with Klaus that it is unlikely that any productive discussion is possible on this topic. I want to make a few observations and probably bow out. I will then read the list of sites that supposedly refute Bacque, and if I find some of it creditable I will come back and give my opinion and admit anything that seems creditable.
I picked up my copy of Other Losses and looked in it again. The text is 195 pages long. There are, in addition, 101 pages in total of the sum of appendices (50 pages, footnoted, and presenting a great deal of cited statistics), footnotes (553 footnotes in all), a list of 19 archives that Bacque used, and a Select Bibliography of 53 books that he referenced and found particularily important. I have not seen such a thuroughly footnoted book in 50 years of serious historical research. Of course Bacque must have known that his work would be attacked and denied, and it seems that he gives a citation for every single thing he stated. I am tempted to put all 101 pages of sources given by Bacque in the Forum, but promise not to, although there seem to be calls for me to do so.
As I said, when this book was published by a small Canadian subsidary of Random House, and I heard about it from an interview with the US colonel and Senior Historian who assisted Bacque, the profitable publisher was suddenly closed. I then reached a Canadian book wholesaler who admitted to having a stock of this book, but when I attempted to order a copy, they told me that they could not send it to the US. (Any other book, seemingly, would be fine.) I then ordered a book from them and had it mailed to the parents of a young Canadian woman who was a medical student in the US and rented an apartment from me. Some months later she went to Canada to see her parents, and brought the book across the border to me. It took me 8 months to get the book. I buy hundreds of books abroad, and I have never heard of such a thing.
Is the book even for sale in Germany? I will look in amazon.de when I get off.
I am currently reading a book entitled Back to the Front, by a Canadian named, I believe, O'Shea. Both of his grand-fathers were Irish but had to fight for the Brits in WW I. He is quite a pacifist and dwells at length on the old adage that "The truth is the first casualty of war." In the book that I am currently trying to get to the press a central theme is the way that two generals, one American and one Brit, worked tirelessly for 20 years to (very successfully) to totally screw up the history of the use of flame throwers in WW I. Most stuff written about WW I is partially or almost entirely biased, cooked over, or flat wrong.
But in WW II, it seems, the situation is totally over the top. I have learned my lesson and will retreat to the comparative calm of WW I.
I am quite interested in the politics and legality of free speech. In the US certain groups and individuals say: "Oh, only if the US could have excellent laws on speech, like Canada and Germany". What they are actually saying that they want a legal situation where someone can be thrown into jail or endlessly sued and financially ruined if they say somethng, true or not, that they don't want uttered.
I could give endless examples of how history is massaged by governments or interest groups.
In WW II (1942, possibly 1943) my mother, in the US for 16 years, but still a German citizen, and I, a 2-3 year old US citizen, were almost taken from my father, a citizen and employee of the US Navy in a war zone, and sent 1000 miles away, which probably would have landed us in a camp, where the wife of our family doctor was already locked up. We were saved by the naval base commander, who valued my father as a valuable worker, and told the Naval Intelligence officer: "Yes, you have the right to send Mrs. Lembke away. But I have the right to move you off the base, into a tent in the jungle outside the camp gates, which you can share with the giant posionous centipedes."
I mention this as Congress recently passed a law making information on the German-American and Italian-American detainees unlawful to display, while publicising the detaining of Japanese-Americans in the same camps. It is part of what I call the "Victimization Olympics". For example, the Holocaust of the Jewish people is constantly (and correctly) brought up, but the "Terror Famine" of the Ukrainians in 1932-33, in which more people were murdered on the basis of their ethnic identity in a much shorter period, is not only ignored but active efforts are made to prevent it from being mentioned or discussed.
Andreas;
The core of this squabble is whether or not Bacque's allegations of the deadly mistreatment of the German POWs after the war, allegedly largely by the US and the French, is true. You ignored my question, probably for good reason. Have you ever read any of Bacque's books, especially Other Losses? Have you ever seen it? Have you been in the same room with it?
You know (and have admitted) and I know that Germans can be fined or thrown in jail soley for things they have stated or have written. So I do not have to cite the exact law that is used to prosecute these unfortunates. I have studied a lot of law, including military law, courtesy of my training as a US Army officer, but I have not studied German law, nor do I have access to a German law library.
I consider German democracy, on the whole, superior to the current state of US democracy, where the influence of money is overwhelming the system, despite excellent demcratic forms. It is a shame that it is felt that it is still necessary to fine people or jam them in prison for simply uttering non-PC speech, without a violent threat. I can give you specific cases of named people who have had this done to them soley for stating things that are either certainly or most likely true. I shudder at the thought of the US having such laws while we are burdened with the radical, ideological, possibly criminal bunch that we now have in Washington.
But I am sick of this whole business, and will drag my carcass off to my WW I lair. I have posted over 220 posts in that corner of the Forum and been received and engaged with in an amiable and collegial manner. I am sure that I will be long dead before some of these issues can be discussed in a reasonable fashion.
Bob Lembke