Mal-treatment of German POWs

Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Hosted by David Thompson.
Post Reply
David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#46

Post by David Thompson » 17 Jun 2005, 23:50

For Bob and WalterS -- Well, as it says in the H&WC section rules:
I. Policy and Purpose

The policy and general purpose of the forum is to provide for an exchange of views and facts on the topic, and to allow discussion of the different points of view. The viewpoints expressed by contributors to this forum are so divergent that general agreement on almost any aspect of the holocaust is unlikely and disagreement will be the rule.

Under these circumstances, in my opinion the best policy is to provide as many facts on the issue as possible, allow the contributors to state their point of view in a civil manner, and let the readers make up their own minds.

walterkaschner
In memoriam
Posts: 1588
Joined: 13 Mar 2002, 02:17
Location: Houston, Texas

#47

Post by walterkaschner » 18 Jun 2005, 09:14

Tonyh asked:
As for Baques refuters, Ambrose et al, one must ask the question, why they are so eager to refute the books findings at all.
It's simple - because Baque's findings are garbage! The real question is: why do certain individuals still attempt to give them credence when they they have been demonstated beyond any reasonable doubt to be bogus?

Bob Lembke wrote:
I have spoken of these events repeatedly with participants over the last 50 years, and I have never heard anything that was inconsistent with what Bacque claims. My cousin, whom I have known for 50 years, is totally creditable to me. He is now 80, and with a damaged pelvis and knee, still runs a tractor 10 hours a day, and missed 1 1/2 days of milking in 20 years. He is the kind of straight-forward, honest person that I rarely expect to meet in the governmental, corporate, and urban life I have inhabited most of my life.
Bob, with all respect, anecdotal recollections are always interesting, but IMHO do little to sustain general conclusions. For example, I can offer the recollections of my father-in-law, a German General who was an American POW for over 2 years. He felt he was exceedingly well treated, as were in his opinion the German troops from his division (actually they were mostly Austrians) who were captured along with him, and whom he tried as best he could to keep track of. He was exceedingly grateful to have ended up on the Western Front instead of being captured by the Russians, and although food rations were skimpy, even for general officers, they were as good or better than German civilians - and that included members of his own family, who were going hungry, -were able to obtain, and the Americans doled out cigarettes - two packs a week! - which were better currency than Marks or even Dollars, and which helped immensely to keep his family from starving. Of course he was a general officer, and undoubtedly received far better treatment than the ordinary Landser, but yet he was extremely concerned about the treatment of his own troops as POWs and, I believe, was in a position after the war to know if anything approaching Bacques' casualty claims were credible. Given his nature, and his overall reluctance to see his daughter marry an American, I'm pretty sure that if he felt any animus against the US on account of its mistreatment of German POWs he would have let me know about it in no uncertain terms. But to the contrary, he was reluctantly complementary, believing that the Yanks did a far better job at it than the Brits - and 1,000 times better than the French, whose treatment he believed was execrable.

But so what? An anecdotal recollection is no more than one person's impressions, probably dimly recalled over the passage of decades. I'm sorry, but I'm unable to give them much credence as proof of a general proposition one way or another.

Regards, Kaschner


Andreas
Member
Posts: 6938
Joined: 10 Nov 2002, 15:12
Location: Europe

Re: POWs

#48

Post by Andreas » 18 Jun 2005, 10:14

Andreas wrote:
bob lembke wrote:Why has no one in Germany talked about this, one says? Where are the bodies? Until recently, one could end up in jail in Germany for talking about a lot of topics. I have heard of a farmer who found a mass grave on his land, and the police told him to cover the site or a 100,000 DM administrative fine would be levied.

I don't know the numbers for the last year or two, but a few years ago Germany had more people in jail for thought crimes than the DDR imprisoned in its last years. Usually you get a short initial sentence, say 9 months, a year, but the jail administration can extend your sentence adminstatively, say, for what you write in letters while in the can.

I was shocked when I heard of this stuff some years ago.
I am too. I am sure you will have no trouble providing some sort of evidence other than 'I have heard' and 'I can't remember the numbers' for this? Both of those claims.
Oh, Bob is back.

Maybe you can finally give some answers, with documentation please?

bob lembke
In memoriam
Posts: 774
Joined: 31 Oct 2004, 19:53
Location: Philadelphia, PA

More, hopefully final stuff

#49

Post by bob lembke » 18 Jun 2005, 21:46

Guys;

Like a moth attracted to the fatal flame, I have fluttered back to this sub-fora, hopefully for the last time. ("The spirit is strong, but the flesh is weak.")

I don't think that anyone knows what happened to the POWs held by the western Allies. We certainly will not settle it in this forum (no pun intended), especially considering the general tone.

I have received PMs from three forum members, all of whose fathers were in these camps. Two clearly do not wish to be publicly identified. All indicate that their fathers were severely mistreated in the camps and forced labor situations. One's father was released from forced labor in the Suez region in September 1948. (I understand that most POWs detained in England for forced labor were released in 1947.) Such retentions of course extended the average period that the POWs were held, but admittedly, except for France and the USSR, the bulk of their POWs were not retained for forced labor.

David wonders if anyone will translate the "Maschke Commission" findings. (I have not found anything in German that refers to a "Maschke Commission". I hope it did not sit for 20 years.) I said that I found six volumes and a related two-volume set (seemingly not part of the series) among abebooks.com 's 65,000,000 books for sale. I then did three separate searches in the on-line catalogs of the two largest German State Libraries, separately, and then on the data-base covering the combined catalogs covering, seemingly, all German state libraries. I hit a lot of history written by Erich Maschke in the period, or earlier, seemingly dozens of books. I only got two hits on this series or related material. One was a copy of Volume 15, published in 1974, in the state library in Frankfurt am Main. That library also has a publication published by him on this topic in 1960. Unfortunately it is only 15 pages long.

I use these catalogs frequently, and since I found one volume I should have found them all, I would think. I have found many extremely rare materials working with these catalogs. I am not sure what the absence of these books in the catalog means, but it suggests that it is possible that there is a collective opinion that they are not the "cat's meow" of historical documentation. It would also suggest that it is unlikely that someone is about to spend ten years translating this enormous set of stuff.

David, seriously, if anyone worked 20 years and wrote 10,000 finished pages on the fate of German POWs and concluded that of several million initially taken in by the Brits, of whom perhaps one or two hundred thousand (how many? - any reliable data?) were kept at forced labor for two or even over more than three years, including places like the Egyptian desert, and over the period only 1900 died of all causes, which is a lower death rate than in the Royal Family, one should not waste your time trying to study the methodology. However, if you are interested, run a search in abebooks.com on Maschke (I don't remember if I added Eric, I think I did), hit # 53 was Volume X / 2, 1973, 330 pages, roughly entitled from my sketchy notes, "POWs in American hands", for about $31 and Porto, cheap for an official history. (Another source for suspicion, these books seem exceedingly rare, only 431 sets ever put out, supposedly, but the few available are cheap. Not a good sign.)

David, if this interests you, consider learning German. I taught myself to read it three years ago, at age 62, when I found my father's and grand-father's Feldpost from their respective fronts. I also learned the Sütterlin and Kurrent scripts, and have done translations of hand-written inscriptions in Sütterlin in German, Czech (with my wife's help), and Slovene for a leading German dealer in postcards and documents. My wife, of the superior female gender, reads 11 languages well (9 modern and two ancient), dozens badly, and is working on Arabic. English is a Germanic language, if the one furthest from German itself. (Unfortunately German picked up the complex Latin grammar, from the Romans, I guess.)

Walter, thank you for your well laid out and presented opinions and information. I always find your input, on any topic, useful. I must say that what you have added has probably impressed me more than any other anti-Bacque statement, and perhaps more than all of them put together. I have some questions about what your father-in-law said, etc., but I am given great pause by it. I must respectfully disagree that anecdotal evidence is not very useful. In a highly charged topic like this, with a lot at stake, possibly, the polished document or history is likely to have been "cooked". However, one, or two, or three anecdotal accounts is statistically meaningless. There were hundreds and hundreds of camps. My cousin and his mates survived because of one French major, a prisoner of the Germans for five years, who turned his camp practically into a "Camp Sunshine", who nursed the POWs back to health and took them on health-building marches to build them up after they could tolerate them. An anecdotal sampling of this camp would make you think you were in Club Med, which, of course, were originally set up to rehabilitate camp survivors, I believe.

But at this stage of the game a systematic collection of witness accounts might be the only way to see through this stuff.

In my opinion certainly no existant written work will answer these questions. There must be 2 million or a few more of the over 6 million original POWs still alive, and a scientific survey of about 10,000 or so selected from this pool of people could get to the bottom of this. But this, of course, will never happen. A survey of camp guards would also say a lot, but that idea is even more far-fetched. I am quite interested in the Middle East, and it is interesting to see what some people are coming forth now and admitting on this topic, after say 50 years of secrecy, now that the Grim Reaper is just about the corner.

Here are my suggestions on further study of this question, in case anyone is interested.

1. Toss Maschke.

2. Actually read Basque (all three of his related books). I get the impression that few of us have actually done so.

3. As I have previously said, this is probably the most heavily foot-noted book I have come across in 40 years of serious historical research. (About 100 pages of notes and appendices for 195 pages of large-print text.) He seems to footnote everything he says. A lot of the stuff is from various archives, and would be hard to check, but I would spot-check some of the sources. Does the source actually say what he said it said? This book (Other Losses) has been out for 14 years, and I cannot remember anyone actually contradicting anything that he wrote! If he has correctly cited his sources this is on the face of it a rather damning book. If he is a cheat, it could be easily proven. (I would actually love to hear that this stuff did not happen, by the way.)

4. Get hold of the Ambrose book whipped up to refute Bacque. I read it in Borders for 45 minutes, but did not want to buy it and enrichen that fraud. Probably should have. It was this book that, for me, convinced me that Bacque was likely to have been basically correct. I did not see a single square hit in it. In particular, I was (negatively) impressed by one or more articles that went on about the terrible conditions in the Nazi camps for the Jews, and did not say a word about the POWs. What was that all about? It seemed to me that such an inclusion was a left-handed admission of guilt, sort of establishing a second line of defense. ("Yes, things were bad in the POW camps, but look at the terrible things that the Germans did in their camps!") Sort of like the Russian strategy re: the Katyn Forest massacre: a) "Yes, the Germans did it!", and b) "But it was not that bad. Only 6000 were killed." The latter position was included in case the first line of defense crumbled.

If Bacque has serious holes in it I am sure the Ambrose/Eisenhower Center book would have found them. Perhaps they fatally holed Bacque on pages that I did not skim. This topic was a hot priority for Ambrose the Fraud. If that book is as bad as my impression was it would be a big leg up for the Bacque case.

5. An hour's skimming the many leads kindly put up (by David?) indicates that there was a great reliance by the anti-Bacqueians on some alleged conclave of historical grey-beards (I have a grey beard, but was not there, unfortunately) that met and conclusively determined that Bacque is Bunk. Was this the group of about seven who included one that I recognize, represented as a prof from Louisiana, but also was, undisclosed, the deputy director of the Eisenhower Center, an author of its "debunking" book, and a right-hand man and I believe literally an employee of the Sage of Ambrose. If this is the case, it would be interesting to spend an hour on the Internet and see who the rest of these guys also were. Are they a panel of recognized historians of a breath of opinion? Are they a collection of ghost hacks from Ambrose's book factory? (Wern't they turning out about six books a year at their peak, all attributed to Ambrose?)

You have to be sceptical if not suspicious of all historical sources. I myself very carefully try to vet the things my father told me, cross-check them, etc. In a charged topic like this it is likely that most things on the topic are unreliable in one or another way. Looking at the available material in the fashion I have laid out above would, in my humble opinion, bring one (or us) closer to what might have happened in the situations that Bacque wrote about. I don't have the time, or sufficient interest, to do these things myself.

Bob Lembke

Andreas
Member
Posts: 6938
Joined: 10 Nov 2002, 15:12
Location: Europe

#50

Post by Andreas » 18 Jun 2005, 23:17

Groundhog Day?

German Historical Institute Washington
"Fact or Fiction? The Historical Profession and James Bacque"

Roundtable discussion at the Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, Salt Lake City, October 8-11, 1998. Sponsored by the GHI. Participants: Günter Bischof (University of New Orleans), Dewey A. Browder (Austin Peay State University), Wilfried Mausbach (GHI), Hans-Jürgen Schröder (University of Giessen), Christof Strauß (University of Heidelberg), Richard D. Wiggers (Georgetown University).


The topic of discussion for this panel centered around James Bacque's allegation, made in his recent, controversial book Crimes and Mercies, that American authorities deliberately starved to death as many as nine million German civilians after World War II.

Wilfried Mausbach (GHI) challenged Bacque's contention that the infamous Morgenthau Plan informed American actions. He demonstrated first that the notion of turning Germany into a huge "farm" was never part of American postwar planning; second, that the United States's occupation directive (JCS 1067) was not cast in Morgenthau's mold; and third, that the negative elements of JCS 1067 were deliberately postponed, and thereby in effect dismissed, by Military Government officers in the field. Instead of evaluating the available evidence, James Bacque's dramaturgy pits villains against heroes and surrenders scholarly differentiation to populism.

Günter Bischof (University of New Orleans) viewed Bacque's thesis as part of the trend toward a "paranoid style" in writing recent history. This style is characterized by five elements: the image of a huge conspiracy, a self-bestowed duty to save civilization from apocalypse, a manichean worldview of absolute good versus absolute evil, the conviction that traitors make history, and the amassing of evidence to prove a preconceived thesis. Bischof found traces of all these elements in Bacque's writing, and he bemoaned the publishing industry's zest for "conspiracy history."

Christof Strauß (University of Heidelberg) examined Bacque's thesis that approximately one million German POWs perished in American and French camps by taking a close look at two Prisoner of War Temporary Enclosures (PWTEs) in Heilbronn. Strauß found that conditions in these camps indeed did not meet the requirements of the Geneva Convention of 1929. However, to interpret this as evidence of a centrally planned and implemented policy of starvation neglects overall conditions in Germany and Europe in the wake of the war and overestimates to a considerable extent the occupation authorities' scope of action. Strauß proved that, contrary to Bacque's assertion, the Americans did allow aid to be delivered to the inmates by representatives of the German churches, and the International Red Cross also was allowed to visit the camps. Moreover, between May and December 1945 some 300,000 POWs passed through the Heilbronn PWTEs, and death lists show that only 283 of them died. This seems to indicate not only that Bacque's research was poor but also that his overall estimates of deaths are way too high.

Dewey A. Browder (Austin Peay State University) corroborated this information. He showed that Bacque manipulated statistics by adding expellees and repatriated POWs to an early 1946 census that actually already included more than 1.5 million expellees and repatriates in addition to the unrepatriated POWs. In counting these people twice, Bacque finds that there should have been nearly 74 million people in Germany in 1950 and cries mass murder when that year's census falls short by 6 million. Professor Browder explained that he personally pointed out this mistake to Bacque while the Canadian author was revising his manuscript for publication in English. Bacque, however, failed to correct his information.

Finally, Richard D. Wiggers (Georgetown University) provided an analysis of eyewitness accounts by authors who were neither Germans nor U.S. Military Government employees. He found that these third-party observers reported and often criticized a stern allied policy toward the German people. Thus, if there was, as Bacque alleges, a conspiracy to hide the truth, it must have failed miserably. Moreover, a close, comprehensive, and unbiased reading of independent eyewitness accounts suggests that a mass death of millions of Germans by starvation did not occur in postwar Germany.

The lively discussion, moderated by Hans-Jürgen Schröder (University of Giessen), addressed James Bacque's motivation for writing fiction disguised as fact. It was pointed out that Bacque obviously really believes he has discovered something real and is encouraged by people in Germany who suffered after 1945 and who feel that their experience of victimization has gotten short shrift in the history of this period. However, his neglect of evidence suggests either that he is unable to acknowledge criticism or that he willfully ignores information in an effort to cash in on a sensationalist thesis. The latter supposition led participants to discuss the quixotic nature of efforts by professional historians to challenge populist histories promoted by a sensation-driven publishing industry. Some also wondered whether even the most ludicrous claims merit consideration. There seemed to be an overall agreement, however, that historians have a duty to correct gross distortions and refute wild allegations.

Wilfried Mausbach
A simple Google search will show who the participants of Ambrose's conference were.

Guenther Bischof's CV - seems like a serious academic to me.

Finally, Bob, if you ever feel like doing something for your credibility, how about providing some support for your wild claims about modern Germany?

Edit to fix the quote.
Last edited by Andreas on 19 Jun 2005, 08:48, edited 1 time in total.

bob lembke
In memoriam
Posts: 774
Joined: 31 Oct 2004, 19:53
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Et al

#51

Post by bob lembke » 19 Jun 2005, 01:53

Andreas;

Great! We have something of substance to get into. Am I correct that this Salt Lake City conference is the conference of greybeards that was repeatedly mentioned in the many prior posts on the topic of the maltreatment of POWs? The conference that supposedly conclusively proved that Bacque's assertions and research on POW abuse was not true?

If so, there is one problem here. This conference was not held on the topic of the allegations about the POWs that Bacque put forward in Other Losses, published in 1991. The conference was on the topic of Bacque's assertions that the Allied policy of keeping the German civilian population on a diet of between 900 and 1550 calories per day for at least two years after the war lead to the death on many German civilians, as he put forward in his later book Crimes and Mercies, published in 1997. Although I have read the book once some years ago, I do not have much to say about that situation, nor do I profess to know much about the topic.* So I doubt that this conference definitively solved the question of the treatment of the POWs, as that was not the topic of the conference.

Professor Bischof does indeed have an impressive CV. And he seemingly had left the Eisenhower Center the year before, so the fact that his role there was not mentioned is less suspicious. I simply broke out into a rash when I heard his name, since he was Steven Ambrose's right-hand-man for nine years. (Still gives me the creeps, despite the impressive CV, lots of Harvard, etc.) But I grant Bischof the right to have a Life after Ambrose.

I know I mentioned the topic in passing, but my "wild claims" about modern Germany are assertions that you have agreed are true. It is entirely possible that, in modern Germany, you can be heavily fined, or thrown in prison, soley on the basis of something that you say or write. You agreed to this. I am not an auithority on this, but I do know the details of several cases, mostly involving foreigners. One was a 79 year old US citizen, from Florida, who was arrested while on a visit to Germany, based on something he wrote in a letter in Florida. I think he was let out on bail, and he managed to flee to Denmark and got back to the US. The second was a British citizen who made an assertion while on a visit to Germany about, basicly, Polish architecture, one that he had irrefutable possession in his possession (a vidio-taped interview), he was charged, tried, convicted, and fined 2000 DM. He appealed, and was fined 10,000 DM. He appealed, and was fined 20,000 DM. At each trial he asked the judges to view his rather air-tight evidence, sitting in his briefcase; they refused. The third is a German citizen who has lived as a legal resident in Canada and the US for about 50 years and is married to a US citizen. He was arrested, held in a Canadian prison for about two years, and extradited to Germany, where he is in prison without charges. He is about 66 and has never been charged with any violent or physical act. The non-charges are based in things he stated and wrote in Canada. A fourth is a Geman citizen who is in hiding, in Syria, I believe, facing German prison time based on his statements and writings in Germany.

My understanding is that at least 4000 people a year are sent to prison, usually for a short vacation of a year or less, based on what generally are considered "thought crimes". I may be off on this number (I have seen higher figures), but you seemed to agree that these arrests do occur. I also understand that these sentences are sometimes arbitrarily extended by the prison administration, based partially on what they write to friends from prison. One case I heard about, a teacher, had a one year sentence extended to five years and counting, step by step.

You seem to feel that I am required to provide you with specific citations of the sections of the German penal code to refute the charge of "wild charges". I disagree. I do not have access to a German legal library. You have agreed that these arrests and imprisonments occur. Our real disagreement is that I think that an advanced, liberal democracy like modern Germany does not need such midieval laws; and you feel that they are necessary and have broad support among Germany's citizens. If the latter is true, as it may be, it is truly regrettable. I also feel that further discussion of the modern Geman penal code is way off-forum, our positions are quite clear, and the differences are of political and philosophic opinion, not significant fact.

On a happier note, you seem to be an artillery enthusiast. My grand-father was a Feuerwerk=Hauptmann im WK I and was the "Id" or artillery and infantry ammunition supply commander in the Generalkommando of III. Reserve Korps, and as such was closely associated with the work of the 30.5 and 42 cm Morsern in Belgium and Russia. I have Feldpost written from the batteries of those guns as they were firing on the forts of Antwerp. Family oral history says that he later worked on the design of the ammunition of the Paris Gun. He hated the war from day one; my father, a Garde=Flamm=Pionier, wounded four times, having caught malaria in Turkey, loved it until October 1918. One of that crazy 2% who loved that terrible war.

Bob Lembke

* It does seem that the German civilians were kept on a ration of from 900 to 1550 calories a day for at least two years, based on the correspondence between the high American officials, as I previously cited. The ration for most of this period seems to have been 1275 calories. This is, I believe, fractionally higher than the standard diet in the camps like Aushwitz, and fractionally lower than the rations that the Germans imposed on the occupied countries in Europe. A reduced ration, especially less red meat, is actually beneficial to longjevity, although if imposed on one by others might induce one to blow bridges or ambush truck convoys. I understand that Norwegian life expectancy was increased by the sparse but life sustaining diet imposed in the war. Mice are known to have much longer life-spans if kept on very short rations. I have no idea if the 1275 calorie diet improved German health, or killed them off like flies. I do not think that the question, nor the conference so often cited, is germaine to the topic of this thread.

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#52

Post by David Thompson » 19 Jun 2005, 02:24

Let's stay on the topic in this discussion of WWII German POWs in US and UK custody. We have open threads on the "thought crimes" issue, should anyone wish to post to that topic. There are 58 threads which mention the topic. The most recent extended discussion is at:

Holocaust anti-denial laws
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=62509

Bob -- Is there any chance of getting your sources for these statements (my emphases, for clarity):

(1)
How could a commission, or even one grey-beard, research, toil and publish for say 20 years, evidentally about 10,000 pages of work, and come to such a ridiculous conclusion? Such a death-rate is consistent with a stay in the Plaza in New York, or the Kempinski in Berlin (if you exclude all guests over 60 years of ago; no strokes in the lobby, please), not in POW camps in which there were, by all accounts, even those of the apologists, severe conditions and a lack of food.
(2)
However, even adjusting for this, some of the alleged death rates are roughly one-tenth of what I understand was the peace-time rate in the US Army home-side at that time. They are again simply impossible, even if the treatment of the POWs was correct.
(3)
David, seriously, if anyone worked 20 years and wrote 10,000 finished pages on the fate of German POWs and concluded that of several million initially taken in by the Brits, of whom perhaps one or two hundred thousand (how many? - any reliable data?) were kept at forced labor for two or even over more than three years, including places like the Egyptian desert, and over the period only 1900 died of all causes, which is a lower death rate than in the Royal Family, one should not waste your time trying to study the methodology.
(4)
It does seem that the German civilians were kept on a ration of from 900 to 1550 calories a day for at least two years, based on the correspondence between the high American officials, as I previously cited. The ration for most of this period seems to have been 1275 calories. This is, I believe, fractionally higher than the standard diet in the camps like Aushwitz, and fractionally lower than the rations that the Germans imposed on the occupied countries in Europe.

bob lembke
In memoriam
Posts: 774
Joined: 31 Oct 2004, 19:53
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Sources

#53

Post by bob lembke » 19 Jun 2005, 06:12

David;

I totally agree to drive a stake in the heart of the discussion of the German penal code. As I cited in my last post:

"I also feel that further discussion of the modern Geman penal code is way off-forum, our positions are quite clear, and the differences are of political and philosophic opinion, not significant fact. "

I just came to my computer to PM Andreas and try to turn that topic off. It is something we should kick our feet back and discuss over some beers, not send verbal thunderbolts to each other via this forum.

Let me try to address the reference question. Most of the statements of mine you list are basically about death rates, and my off-the-cuff judgements on their reasonableness. I have to toot my horn. I spent most of my working life as an analyst, and managing large-scale economic and population forecasting econometric modeling projects. Two were world-class in size and sophistication, and in the one most heavily into demographic modeling, I did all the demographic work myself. (The project took 30 man-years of labor, half professional programmers, the other half Ivy League Ph. D. level analysts, either mathematical economists or regional planners and regional scientists. My studies were in mechanical and industrial engineering, regional planning, and regional science/mathematical economics.) We forcasted the population of Philadelphia and the surrounding eight counties from 1970 to 2000 (this was ca. 1975) and I forecasted that Philadelphia's population would drop from 1.95 million to 1.5 million. I was to be fired for that, before I (seemed to) lawyer up. We have reached 2000, and guess what; approx. 1.5 million. I also was the de facto state economist of Pennsylvania in the Governor's Office for two years. So I have both some experience and street sense in analysis.

I will try to give a basis for everything I said.

1. As for the amount of work that Eric Maschke did, it is hard to exactly know how much work he did, since the German state libraries seem to have little interest in having the damn thing on their shelves, so I can't find a complete listing of the series, but he was publishing on the question in 1960, and you cited a date of 1982, which I am assuming was the date of publication of something you saw. Most of his stuff that I found was published mid-1970s. So there is at least 22 years. there seem to be about 20 volumes in the series and in a couple of closely related works, like a two-volume set on POWs in Yugoslavia that he published in 1962 but that does not seem to be formally a part of the series. So there is 20 volumes; and they seem to average 500 pages per book, so we have about 10,000 pages of published material by him. (Incidentally, it seems that he turned out the first two volumes, and that the West German government then decided to financially support the work; I don't think it literally is a production of the government, a government commission, etc. But I would need a volume on the table before me to know for sure.)

As to my comment about the death rate, let me do a bit of thumbnail analysis. You state that the Brits, at one time, had 3,640,000 POWs. Elsewhere you state that they tended to shed them quickly. How quickly? I'm going to have to guess. What about the forced labor? I understand that the Germans working in England came back in 1947 (have read that, source unknown); the Forum member PMed me and said that their father was released in September 1948, and that the conditions were really bad. Maschke said that 1300 POWs died in their custody. Is that the figure from after the war? From 1940 to release? (The Germans held about 2,000,000 French and British from 1940 to 1945. I have read that 23,000 died.) When I read that also had access to the death rate in the stateside US Army of that period, and I did the numbers, and the death rate for the POWs in German hands was fractionally lower than in the US Army. That sounds odd, but is reasonable; the diet was lean but healthy (with their packages they often ate better than their guards), there was no going on leave, getting into bar-fights, no high-speed drunken crashes, no training accidents.

So 23,000 deaths (It doen't really matter if this is actually correct; it will get us back to the US Army rate) for 2,000,000 men for 5 years is 2.3 deaths per thousand men per year. So let us say that the US Army peacetime rate was 2.5 per thousand. This is a really low death rate.

How many POW man-years in Brit hands? With the little hard info at hand it is hard to estimate. Let us assume that we are not considering POWs in Brit hands earlier in the war, or not before 1945. Let's say that the bulk of the POWs were held till fall 1945 and gotten rid of in the next half year. Let's say that they held 200,000 relatively long-term; officers, suspected war criminals, but mostly the "forced" labor. So we have 3,640,000 for half a year, assume 3,440,000 discharged at an even rate for half a year, and 200,000 held on average till Spring 1947. (Remember that Walter's father-in-law was held longer.) We have: 3,640,000 for 1/2 year = 1,820,000 man-years; 3,440,000 discharged over the next half year = 860,000 man-years; and 200,000 held for another year and a half = 300,000 man-years, for a total of 2,980,000 man-years.

So, applying the US Army peace-time death rate, we have an expected 7450 deaths, so the peace-time US Army rate would be 5.73 times as high as for the supposed Maschke rate for the German POWs in Brit custody and part working as "forced" (can we use the S word?) labor. My demographic days are behind me, I don't have typical death rates for men 15-50 right at hand, but believe me, 2.5 per thousand is a low rate, at that rate, extended, a person would live for 400 years, on average. (Of course the rate would go up as the population would age.) With Maschke's nutty death figure the rate would be 0.436 per thousand per year, a figure that is totally nutty. No quibble about the number of POWs held by the Brits, about how quickly they were released, etc. would bring this figure into the realm of anything remotely like the possible. The POWs could be wrapped in cotton wool and looked over day and night by the best doctors in the world and they still could not have such a death rate. At the minimum, the rate is off by a factor of 10; my bet is that the actual figure is closer to 100. And, despite what Walter reported, the Brits were by most accounts far better than the French or the Americans. Two weeks ago I was talking to a POW of the Brits, he said that they were OK. At first they got one loaf of bread for 19 men, but when the Brits got organized a few months later they got one loaf for four men a day. Heaven!

2. The figure was totally off the top of my head. See above. The ratio is one / 5.73, not one / 10, but not bad for a off the top of the head figure.

3. Again, writing off the top of my head, I stated that the alleged Maschke number of POW deaths for the Brits was 1900, actually Maschke's figure was 1300, even crazier. Again, this is totally out of the realm of remote possibility.

4. I have cited the sources for the calorie figures before, correspondence between the US Secretaries of War (Patterson), State (Marshall), former President Hoover, famous for his relief work after both WW I and WW II, and General Clay, the Governor of Germany.

I understand that the typical rations in the Holocaust camps was 800 calories per day, but of course there must be a lot of variation. I have read that the official ration at Belsen was 900 calories a day. (I can dig up a source with some work. The rates must have been about these, sub-long-term survival, but enough to have some people live several years.) I have read that the ration for Holland was 1775 calories (cpi) in 1943, in 1944 it was 1397 cpi, and 1556 in 1945. (The source is Captain Albert R. Behnke, USN MC, whose papers are at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and who studied this situation in detail.) The standard US Army ration is, I believe, 4000 calories.

David, my point is that if someone with half a brain and some education (I think Maschke went to Göttingen) works for 22 or more years and comes out with such a rediculous, unworldly summary figure for the bottom line of the whole project, than it is a waste of time to even consider looking in it. And the fact that the state libraries either will not keep it, (for example, one of them has a book written by a German officer, my father's CO, in about 1910 on the subject of fire-fighting in at least 11 editions, all cataloged) or that books from this exceedingly rare series is for sale for a really low price (in 6 weeks last year I bought 43 books in Germany on the Internet; I know a bit about book prices over there) indicates that almost no one who can read German has any use for this set of books.

The other book seems to be swinging into the possible zone, if you totally discount the Bacque assertions.

Bob Lembke

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#54

Post by David Thompson » 19 Jun 2005, 07:10

I'll take this point-by point, from the above. I'll start by saying that Bacque's figures seem preposterous to me. Like you, I have a fair amount of experience with anecdotal evidence. In many conversations about WWII with retired US Army officers since my youth, I have never heard anything even remotely corroborative of M. Bacque's contentions. When Bacque's works aroused my interest, I tried to find out if official records or the personal experience of others verified his theories. They didn't. For those reasons, I think it that generalizations from the personal experiences of isolated individuals is unlikely to be helpful in discussing this issue. I can discuss your faith in Bacque's beliefs, but I don't share it. I also don't share your distrust of records. If anything, my experience has been that it is even easier to detect and prove a cover-up than to prove the crime itself.

As for my request for sources (at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 627#717627 ), let's look at my requests (1) through (3), dealing with death statistics you used by way of analogy to debunk the Maschke figures on German POWs deaths. (1) and (3) aren't critical, though I'd still like to see the bases for your statements. Focusing on (2), you said:
However, even adjusting for this, some of the alleged death rates are roughly one-tenth of what I understand was the peace-time rate in the US Army home-side at that time. They are again simply impossible, even if the treatment of the POWs was correct.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 086#717086

In the post above, you adjusted that statement to make the proportion only 1:5.73, rather than 1:10:
"So, applying the US Army peace-time death rate, we have an expected 7450 deaths, so the peace-time US Army rate would be 5.73 times as high as for the supposed Maschke rate for the German POWs in Brit custody and part working as "forced" (can we use the S word?) labor."

The "S word," as you put it, only applies to conscripted civilian labor forbidden by the 1907 Hague IV Convention, since the Geneva Convention of 1929 permits and provides for the use of POW labor. See Section III of the 1929 Convention Between the United States of America and Other Powers, Relating to Prisoners of War; July 27 at:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/geneva02.htm

Now let's get back to the issue under discussion. For POWs held in US custody, my calculations, based on the Overmans and Maschke figures of total German POWs held, were:
Death rates for German POWs

USA 0.7% (Overmans) or 0.16% (Maschke Commission)

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 238#709238

Let's look at the comparable statistics for US Army noncombat fatalities:

From US Army Medical Department, Preventive Medicine in WWII, vol. III, Personal Health Measures and Immunization, Office of the Surgeon General, Washington DC: 1955, p. 233
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs ... fault1.htm
There were 61,640 deaths due to nonbattle injury, a rate of 2.40 per thousand per annum for the period December 1941 through 1945. (My note: = .24% death rate per year. Note that this is an average of 15,410 per year, not 7,450)
See, in particular, Chapter VII: Accidental Trauma: Nonbattle Injury at:
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs ... apter7.htm
and
US nonbattle injury death rates 1940-1945
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs ... chart3.pdf

For the 1941-1945 period, Overmans' estimate on German POW deaths is three times greater (3:1) than the death rate for nonbattle US casualties. The Maschke estimate of German POW deaths in US captivity is more than half that of US nonbattle deaths. This is a far cry from German POW casualties having a ratio of 1:5.73 to US nonbattle deaths. In neither case are Overmans' or the Maschke figures even remotely as absurd as those fronted by Bacque (20%-30% mortality rate). If you disbelieve the Maschke figures, fine. That circumstance, however, hardly establishes Bacque's figures as accurate.

For recent death figures, we can see that it's become more risky since WWII to serve in the US military, even outside a combat zone:

US Military Active Duty Deaths Per 100,000 Serving 1980-2002 (range of .9 to 2.4% per year)
http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/casualty/Death_Rates1.pdf

The topic of this thread, however, is not the accuracy of Maschke's calculations, but those proposed by Bacque. No other serious researchers appear to agree with Bacque's calculations, and his extrapolative errors have been noted by many critics. There is no indication that POW deaths occurred on the scale Bacque envisioned (a million or so). The issues raised about Stephen Ambrose are essentially in the nature of a diversion, since he is not the only critic Bacque has attracted. The two German studies (Overmans and Maschke) have no particular connection to Ambrose, and both studies are incompatible with Bacque's findings. Neither of these two studies reveal German POW deaths on anywhere remotely near the scale Bacque claims took place in US custody. Dark hints about cover-ups, German "thought-crime" laws and "whitewashing", without solid evidence to support Bacque's claims, don't turn the trick either.

The "missing POWs" problem in WWII, as I have pointed out, was not exclusive to Germany, but was shared by the Axis allies. The common element in the "missing POWs" problem in WWII were discrepancies in various sets of captured, held and released figures issued by the USSR. From the beginning the governments of Germany and these former Axis countries which were not under communist control, pointed their collective fingers at the USSR, not at the US, UK or France. For these reasons, if any study is to be junked, my choice is that of Bacque.

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#55

Post by David Thompson » 19 Jun 2005, 14:46

(cont.)

As for the figures for daily rations (in calories) for Germans during the US occupation, you calculated:
It does seem that the German civilians were kept on a ration of from 900 to 1550 calories a day for at least two years, based on the correspondence between the high American officials, as I previously cited. The ration for most of this period seems to have been 1275 calories. This is, I believe, fractionally higher than the standard diet in the camps like Aushwitz, and fractionally lower than the rations that the Germans imposed on the occupied countries in Europe.
I am interested as to where you got your information on the duration of this short ration diet. The figures I have seen indicate that the diet was in the 1250-1500 calories a day range, and that for the first year of the occupation the lower rate lasted for only a few months and was not the average. Thus we see figures like this (my emphases):
c. War Criminals were not segregated from other security suspects. All civilian internees were kept in enclosures, the population of which was constantly changing as new suspects were added and others released or brought to trial. The camp occupants were inconvenienced by serious overcrowding, unsatisfactory sanitary conditions,

- 139 -

and lack of educational, religious, and recreational facilities. The war criminals, security suspects, automatic arrestees, and other internees received a basic food ration of 1,700 calories per day -- a ration decidedly above that of the German civil population, which was first 1,500 then 1,250 calories per day. Workers in internment camps received an extra allowance of 700 calories per day, while a hospital ration of between 2,300 and 3,000 calories was provided. In the spring of 1946 Theater Headquarters began preparations for transferring civilian internment enclosures to German authorities.
Documents on the US Occupation of Germany 1945
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 078#628078
and this:
The Season of Despair

From the first sight in the spring of unplowed fields, shutdown coal mines, and ruined cities, the winter to come had loomed ominously in the minds of those who would be responsible for administering the occupied country. In June, predicting a barren winter for Europe, the Potter-Hyndley Mission contemplated a possible need "to preserve order by shooting" in Germany.1 When he talked to the Germans in August, Eisenhower warned them of the hardships in the months to come. By early autumn, the U.S. and British newspapers were printing stories about the approaching "Battle of the Winter," a battle against sickness, starvation, and cold. The occupation forces figured in some accounts as semiallies, in others as dispassionate observers of a people enduring the consequences of aggression, and not infrequently as the potential target of the unregenerate and the desperate. The third possibility occurred also to the US command, and in October Eisenhower and Smith decided there was "a strong likelihood of incidents . . . in the winter" that would require "strong retaliation." At the end of the month, they instructed military government to warn German officials, from the minister presidents on down, that they and their communities would be held accountable for acts against the occupation forces.2

At first the Germans seemed too stunned and, as the summer wore on, too preoccupied with day-to-day existence to think about the future. When the harvest was in and the daily ration barely above 1,200 calories, when the weather turned cold and there was no coal, when the farmers and other producers became increasingly unwilling to part with their products for money, the people, as the Wuerttemberg-Baden Office of Military Government reported, sank "deeper and deeper into despair as they saw a cruel, cold, hungry winter ahead." 3 The harvest, all things considered, had been a good one but could not under any circumstances have been good enough to feed the zone population throughout the winter. Coal output in the British and French zones had increased, but the rail and water transport systems were only able to move about 60 percent of the coal away from the mines. The US zone received half a million tons in August but only 150,000 tons more in December, just enough to run the railroads and essential public utilities. When cold weather came, military government in Stuttgart and other places requisitioned all coal supplies over a quarter ton, and throughout the zone children were required to bring a piece of firewood with them to school each day to heat the classrooms. To the excessive

[407]

amounts of paper Reichsmarks already in circulation the Allied military marks had added billions more and raised the fear of an uncontrollable inflation like that of 1923. Hardly able to buy with money anything that was not rationed, some people were investing in postage stamps; and in the cities, many workers reported for work only often enough to get their ration cards.

The news in November that the US zone would receive two and a quarter million Germans expelled from eastern Europe between December 1945 and July 1946 deepened the despair. On instructions from the Potsdam Conference, the Control Council had worked out procedures for taking into the occupied territory 6,650,000 racial Germans who were to be expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Austria.4 The US zone's share was 1,750,000 from the Sudetenland and 500,000 from Hungary. They were scheduled to come at a rate of a quarter million a month in December, January, and February and in larger numbers in the spring.5

[408]

* * *

By the first week in October, Clay knew almost for certain that he was not going to get enough food imports to raise the ration for the winter to 2,000 calories per day.9 In the 28-day ration period beginning on 15 October, the scale would barely reach 1,250 calories; and he knew that in

[409]

unheated dwellings this ration level would not be enough to sustain life through the winter.
In the middle of the month, probably more to raise the Germans' spirits than in the belief that the few hundred extra calories would make any real difference, and not at all certain yet that he would have the imports to support the increase, he announced a zonewide 1,500-calorie ration to begin on 12 November, with 50 calories more to be added after 10 December.10 A 1,500-calorie ration worked out daily to 5 1/2 slices of bread, 3 medium-size potatoes, 3 tablespoons of oatmeal or other cereal, 1 teaspoon of fat, and 1 teaspoon of sugar. Of the total 1,500 calories, 1,200 were in the bread and potatoes. USFET authorized adding, when available-which no one expected to happen very often-a piece of meat or fish "one half the size of an egg" and three tablespoons of vegetables other than potatoes.11 To conserve precious calories and provide hot meals for those who would be without fuel to cook their own, the offices of military government, sometimes using Army equipment, began setting up community kitchens. The kitchens in Bavaria alone were able to serve 4 1/2 million meals a month. Except in Berlin, where the school children received 190 calorie hot noon meals, recipients were required to turn in ration coupons and, if they were not on relief, pay for the meals.12 In the first week of December, the State Department authorized private US agencies to ship relief supplies to Germany, provided the supplies were distributed impartially in the areas of greatest need.13

* * *

Three days after Christmas, damp warm winds swept across the zone. In Frankfurt they reached gale force, blowing off roofing paper and temporary roofs and blowing down walls of damaged buildings. The next morning some streets were covered with as much rubble as if there had been an air raid. The weather stayed warm into the new year, however; and because it did and military government was able to maintain a 1,550-calorie ration, the Germans began to recover their spirit. The Frankfurter Rundschau reported on "a milliner who bathes in the kitchen serially, as, of course, everyone now does." The report concluded that several such baths taken in various standing, sitting, and reclining positions were in all respects as effective as one "general" bath.18 The Rhein-Neckar Zeitung gave its readers directions for making briquettes out of industrial ash and clay, which when soaked in pitch or tar could be burned to give off "a noticeable amount of heat, approximately equivalent to not quite dry wood." The drawback was, the paper admitted, that the briquettes did not lose volume in burning, so the stove had to be emptied after each charge. In Stuttgart, students in the audience threw little potatoes at the actors in Georg Buechner's Woyzeck. The theater manager said they would have thrown rotten eggs, but they did not have any.19

In its most crucial aspects, the battle of the winter never quite materialized. Because the US command insisted on heated trains for cold-weather transport of Germans expelled from other countries, the expected flood of people from eastern Europe was held to a trickle. The first trainload from Hungary did not arrive until 10 January, and the first load from Czechoslovakia was delayed until the 25th.20 During January, USFET discharged almost a hundred thousand prisoners of war but, at the end of the month, having secured assurances the prisoners would be adequately cared for, resumed prisoner of war transfers to the French.21 Above all, the winter was one of the mildest on record and the 1,550 calorie ration held firm. The quality of the ration even improved somewhat after rye flour ran low and had to be mixed half and half with wheat for baking bread. The best fed were the DPs, who averaged 2,600 calories a day, and the interned Nazis, who were getting 2,200. Both groups were somewhat overweight. The normal German consumers, who with black market purchases were thought to be actually getting about 1,900 calories a day, were underweight by as much as 20 percent and showing signs of malnutrition; however, they were not in such bad shape as they would have been had the weather been colder. In Berlin, where the food and fuel shortages had been expected to be the most severe, the death rate of children under one year dropped

[412]

to 100 per 1,000 in December. It had been 660 in July and 162 in December 1944. 22

Probably, the rise in the food ration was more responsible than anything else for dispelling the fear of what the winter would bring. What the average German did not know was that the increase bore no relationship to the actual adequacy of the food supply in the zone. Supplies were obtained by drawing heavily on US imports and could only be sustained by continued and increased imports. Fundamentally the food situation had grown worse, not better. By early March, the imported stocks were depleted to the point where, used at the rate required to support a 1,550-calorie diet, they would barely last another sixty days.23

For the average German, however, the most pressing concern in the spring of 1946 was food. The daily ration for the normal consumer in the British zone dropped to 1,042 calories a day in March and in the French zone to 980 calories; the newspapers predicted a cut by as much as 50 percent in the U.S. zone. Grain imports for the zone, which at 100,000 tons a month in the last quarter of 1945 had not been enough to support the 1,550-calorie ration indefinitely, fell below 50,000 tons in February 1946. 39 Germany was feeling the impact not only of its own but of a worldwide food shortage. The war had converted large areas in Asia and the Pacific, which had been self-sufficient and had exported vegetable fats and oils to Europe, into food deficiency areas and had reduced European production by an estimated 25 percent. 40 With almost the whole world waiting in line, the Germans could easily guess that they would not be at the head. On 21 March Brig. Gen. Hugh B. Hester of OMGUS went to Paris to see former President Herbert C. Hoover who was in Europe on the first of his postwar relief missions for President Truman. Hoover said he felt as he had in 1918, that "We will have to feed the Germans"; but he would not go to Germany or make any commitments for it until he had visited the liberated countries. Asked how he would stretch out feeding the Germans, Hoover replied: "General, I would give as much

[435]

as I could in April, a little less in May, a little less in June and hope the sunshine and flowers would keep you up through June. And maybe by that time we could do something for you." 41

Clay had no other choice than to do as Hoover advised. Accordingly, he reduced the ration in the U.S. zone on 1 April to 1,275 calories, which was still about a third more than the indigenous supplies could sustain. In the fourth week of May he had to reduce again to 1,180 calories. To meet these levels the Army in April and May released from its own stocks over 30,000 tons of cereals, canned goods (corn, peas, and tomatoes), dried skim milk, dehydrated potatoes, and dessert powder. 42 The introduction of corn and corn flour beginning in June into the German diet was taken by many Germans as a form of reprisal, since until then corn had been con-

[436]

sidered in Germany only suitable as feed for chickens. Many of the released Army supplies were, in fact, low in caloric value. When McNarney talked to Hoover in Frankfurt late in April he pleaded for shipments of wheat, arguing that Germany could not be democratized and would remain politically unstable as long as the people were forced to devote all their thought and effort to the daily search for food.43 Earlier in the month, after small disturbances had been reported in the British zone, Clay and McNarney had issued a press statement warning that the food crisis might "lead to unrest which may necessitate a larger army of occupation for a longer period of time." 44

After 83,000 tons of food arrived from the United States in the first three weeks of June and an almost equal amount was en route, Clay raised the ration to 1,330 calories per day on 24 June. Close to half the tonnage, however, was Army surplus food scoured out of depots around the world which, while helping to fill stomachs, could not increase the caloric value of the diet as much as an equal amount of grain would have. The crisis in any case was far from over. In Bavaria the bakers mixed 10 percent raw potatoes into the bread dough, and without continuing imports from the United States, there would be no bread at all in four to six weeks.45 Short on fertilizer, machinery, and labor, the zone's agriculture was not likely to produce as good a crop in 1946 as it had a year earlier. To make matters worse, farmers were hoarding thousands of tons of food to sell on the black market, and the unemployed, many of them former white collar workers who feared a loss of social status, were refusing jobs as farm laborers. Meanwhile health checks, such as the one in Mannheim in which 60 percent of the infants showed signs of rickets, revealed increasing evidence of malnutrition among the city populations.46
The US Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-46
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/O ... h23.htm#b1
By way of contrast, there are many documents posted in this section of the forum on food rationing during the occupation by German armed forces, but few give a caloric level. Here is one document which does, for Nazi-occupied Poland in September 1941:

Document 2233-P-PS: Frank Diary 1941 Part III: 9 September 1941 in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Volume IV, US Government Printing Office, District of Columbia: 1947. p. 909.
Obermedizinalrat Dr. Walbaum expresses his opinion of the health condition of the Polish population. Investigations which were carried out by his department proved that the majority of Poles eat only about 600 calories, whereas the normal requirement for a human being is 2200 calories.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 187#493187
This document, from the Nazi-occupied USSR, gives an idea of the conditions there (without, however, giving a coloric level:
The following regulations are decreed for food supplies for the civilian population in the occupied Eastern territories, with the exception of the three former Baltic states. The regulations replace special decree, No. 31 issued by Wi Stab Ost/Fue/La No. 3584/41 of 4 September 1941.

The Reich Commissars for the Ukraine and Ostland will act upon these regulations, the latter only in the old Russian and former Polish territories.

Food Supplies for the Civilian Population

Ruthless looting and destruction by the Bolsheviks have most seriously dislocated economic life and transportation in the occupied Eastern territories. Misery and distress have been the inevitable consequence for the population, especially in the large cities. Responsibility for this rests exclusively with the Soviet rulers who gave the orders for senseless destruction.

It is nevertheless the task of the economic agencies in the zone of operations to safeguard the feeding of the population, insofar as this is possible without prejudice to German interests.

No special food supply regulations are required for the rural population, since it will be in a position, in general, to supply itself. The food supply of the urban population must definitely take second place after the requirements of the Wehrmacht and German agencies, and the delivery quotas for the Reich.

The following maximum ration scales, which can only be applied under the above qualifications, will provide the basis for urban food supplies:

Weekly Maximum Ration Scales (in grams)

a. For consumers not engaged in any significant work:

Meat and meat products: none
Fat: 70
Bread: 1500
Potatoes: 2000

b. For consumers performing useful work:

Meat and meat products: 100
Fat: 100

In area of Army Groups, North and Center:

Bread: 1500
Potatoes: 4000

In area of Army Group, South:

Bread: 2000
Potatoes: 2500

c. For consumers permanently engaged on heavy manual work: (Supplements additional to b):

Meat and meat products: 100
Fat: 50
Bread: 500
Potatoes: 1000

d. For children under 14 and Jews:

(50% of the maxima as under a)

Other products than those listed above may only be allocated to the urban population after other requirements have been satisfied.

It has to be particularly taken into account that:

a. The food and transport situation does not permit a generous treatment of the civilians, and any allocations in excess of the maxima fixed above would result in unbearable disadvantages for food supplies to Germany.

b. Wehrmacht stocks or those earmarked for Wehrmacht or Reich consumption must on no account be drawn upon for feeding the civilian population.

c. The population itself in many cases still disposes of hoards, since, during the evacuation of the Russian forces, existing food stocks were distributed to, or looted by, the population. Therefore, genuine distress will in general only occur later on.

The following specific rules are laid down in agreement with the OKH (Quartermaster-General):

1. The Commandants or other agencies concerned determine as quickly as possible the number of inhabitants and report it to the local Economic Commands or Agricultural Leaders. A percentage of the population, which will depend on local conditions but is not to exceed 20%, is to be recommended for the highest ration scales as under b) above. Supplements as under c) may only be granted to the staff of enterprises which continue operations for German benefit (e.g. armaments plants).

2. Responsibility for procuring food supplies for the civilian population rests with the Economic Commands (Groups La) and their subordinate local Agricultural Leaders.

3. The Economic Commands (Groups La) determine the weekly ration scales which can be made available after provision has been made for other requirements (Wehrmacht, Reich delivery quotas, etc.), within the maximum scales fixed above. They also determine the percentage of the population which is to qualify for the increased maximum scales according to b). Finally, as soon as the necessary data can be obtained, they will limit supplementary rations as under c) exclusively to those workers of plants operating for German benefit who, according to German domestic regulations, would qualify for heaviest workers' supplements. In determining the weekly rations, the following has to be observed:

For the initial period, the rations are to be kept as low as possible, in order to force the population to use up its own hoarded food supplies and to prevent encroachments upon Wehrmacht requirements, which are difficult to meet in any case because of the transport situation.

Meat and fat are not to be issued at all for the time being. Potatoes, as far as possible, are to be replaced by beets of all kinds, bread by buckwheat and millet. Gradually the rations can then be raised up to the maximum scales fixed above.

4. The quantities of foodstuffs calculated on the basis of the population figures determined as under 3) will then be released for civilian consumption. The distribution of released food to the population will take place exclusively through the native administrative agencies and distributive services.

For a better utilization of the food allocated, essential plants, if at all possible, will institute factory canteen feeding. In other cases too, when circumstances permit, communal feeding will be given preference.

5. Transportation needed for civilian food supplies is to be taken from local resources. Motor vehicles of the Economic Commands, local Agricultural Leaders or military vehicles may not be used for this purpose.

6. The population is to be instructed by suitable propaganda media (wall posters, etc.), that the blame for the food supply difficulties is to be found entirely in the destruction and dissipation of food stocks and equipment by their own compatriots.

7. Exceptional provisions for the feeding of Russian workers and employees are contained in the decree OKH/Gen St d.H/Gen Qu Az.l/833/41 IVa (IV, 1) of 23 August 1941; and for the feeding of Soviet prisoners of war in the decree OKH/Gen St d.H/ GenQu/IVa (III, 2) Az. 960 Nr. I/23 738/41 geh. of 10/21/1941.

The additional food requirements under these regulations are to be balanced by a corresponding reduction in the general rations within the areas of the Economic Commands.

(signed) DR. MUSSET
The caloric figures I have for conditions in the camps are:

[Krupp Industries Forced labor camps]:
Conditions in all of these camps were extremely bad. The camps were greatly overcrowded. In some camps there were twice as many people in a barrack as health conditions permitted. At Kramerplatz, the inhabitants slept in treble tiered bunks, and in the other camps they slept in double tiered bunks. The health authorities prescribed a minimum space between beds of 50 cm, but the bunks in these camps were separated by a maximum of 20-30 cm.

The diet prescribed for the eastern workers was altogether insufficient. They were given 1000 calories a day less than the minimum prescribed for any German. Moreover, while German workers engaged in the heaviest work received 5000 calories a day, the eastern workers in comparable jobs received only 2000 calories. The eastern workers were given only 2 meals a day and their bread ration. One of these two meals consisted of a thin, watery soup. I had no assurance that the eastern workers, in fact, received the minimum which was prescribed. Subsequently in 1943, when I undertook to inspect the food prepared by the cooks, I discovered a number of instances in which food was withheld from the workers.

The plan for food distribution called for a small quantity of meat per week. Only inferior meats, rejected by the veterinary such as horse meat or tuberculin infested was permitted for this purpose. This meat was usually cooked into a soup.
Slave labor in the Krupp industrial combine
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 031#576031
[Forced labor camp at Dora-Nordhausen]
The diet at the camps varied. At Dora the daily diet consisted of one litre of very thin soup, 400 grams of bread, 50 grams of margarine, and three times a week one slice of horse (hard) sausage or beef jelly, the equivalent of 70 grams of meat. One spoonful of marmalade and one spoonful of cream cheese once a week, and irregularly one canteen cup of black, ersatz coffee (Exhibits GG, HH, RR, SS, TT, UU, & EEE). This

862

2222-PS

diet contained 1100 calories per day per man (Exhibit 0). Deaths from starvation were numerous (Exhibits MM, UU, & JJJ).
KL Nordhausen complex -- War Crimes Report
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 976#568976
[KL Buchenwald]
At Buchenwald the ration allowance amounted to between 600 and 700 calories per day and consisted generally of a weak soup made from cabbage and other vegetables and a small piece of bread, 3 inches square. This meal was distributed once a day in the morning, and in the evening another small piece of bread was distributed. The diet was very deficient in animal fats and vitamins, and contained no meat. The U.S. Congressional Committee, examining this camp on 24 April 1945 reported:

"Available records at the time of liberation had been examined by the prisoners engaged in the administration of the camp, and the record revealed that 51,000 persons had died in the camp. At the time of our arrival the prisoners, in a pathetic gesture, had erected, of flimsy materials, a memorial to the dead of Buchenwald. Pictures and descriptions of the conditions at this camp cannot adequately portray what we saw there, and it is only when the stench of the camp is smelled that anyone can have complete appreciation of the depths of degradation to which the German Nazi Government and those responsible for it and its agencies, organizations, and practices had dropped in their treatment of those who had failed to embrace the doctrines of the ‘master race’." (VI/74-75, Doc. L-159.)
The Nazi Concentration Camp System and the SS-WVHA
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 329#143329
Of course, there are also some important factors to be considered in comparing the caloric level of the rations -- The camp prisoners were being worked 12-14 hours a day under brutal conditions, the food ranged from unwholesome to rotting, and there was no food shortage in 1941-1944 comparable to that which prevailed in Europe in 1945-1946.

For working hours, see:
The working day in the Reich 1938-1945
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=64192

Your statement was:
It does seem that the German civilians were kept on a ration of from 900 to 1550 calories a day for at least two years, based on the correspondence between the high American officials, as I previously cited. The ration for most of this period seems to have been 1275 calories. This is, I believe, fractionally higher than the standard diet in the camps like Aushwitz, and fractionally lower than the rations that the Germans imposed on the occupied countries in Europe.
Based on the foregoing information, I think that you have underestimated the average rations afforded the German civilian population during the US occupation. I think that it is doubtful that those conditions described in July 1945-July 1946 prevailed for at least two years, and you have provided no evidence to support the "short ration" diet for this duration. In the expression "fractionally higher than the standard diet in the camps like Aushwitz," the fraction is 100% higher -- German civilians received twice as much in 1945-1946 as inmates at KL Buchenwald got while the war was going on. The inmates in forced labor camps got slightly less than German civilians in 1945-1946, but it was very poor fare at best and the laborers were worked brutally for 12-14 hours a day. The effect of these conditions can be seen in the nearly 10% per month mortality rate reported in the concentration camps by the SS-WVHA in April 1943. (See http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 275#573275 ) The rations imposed by the Germans on occupied countries -- at least in Poland in 1941 -- were less than half of those allotted to German civilians in the US Zone of Germany in 1945-1946.

bob lembke
In memoriam
Posts: 774
Joined: 31 Oct 2004, 19:53
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Response

#56

Post by bob lembke » 19 Jun 2005, 16:05

David;

I will address one or two things, and probably have to break off. I will focus first on Maschke, as you seem intent to come back to it. Incidentally, where do you get this "Maschke Commission" stuff? I have read about twelve examples of the cataloging of about eight volumes of the Maschke series, done by three expert entities (two Antikvariaten, or "rare/old book dealerships", and the German State Library on Frankfurt am Main), and I did not see one word that suggests any commission. I sometimes read German five hours a day, 98% in Fraktur, and I think I would recognize a mention of a commission. However, as I said, I would have to have a copy on the table to be sure.Germans love commissions, etc, and I would think that such an attribution would be made. In the Reichsarchiv official histories that I have (about 60 copies of 40 books; different editions) in one series when the book has a single author one has to hunt for his name in small print, in the other series no authors are given, nor editors. I believe that after Maschke put out his first two volumes the West German government decided to bankroll his work, and also in the process control what he put out.

I am assuming that by " death rate" you mean "deaths per year", and not an implied "deaths during the term of the period of captivity". I will use the death rates that you dug up.

You cite: "There were 61,640 deaths due to nonbattle injury, a rate of 2.40 per thousand per annum for the period December 1941 through 1945. (My note: = .24% death rate per year. Note that this is an average of 15,410 per year, not 7,450)"

Here you have fallen into a favorite trap of the insurance industry, where people consider accidental deaths a leading cause of death, or even confuse it with a total death rate. That is the basis of the Accidental Death and Dismemberment Policy swindle. In civilian life accidental deaths are a minor cause of death. In non-combat military life it is more important, but the causes of those deaths, like training accidents, should not apply to POWs. You go on with multiple citations for non-battle injury rates, all really irrelevant, except as a guide to a portion of the overall death rate.

You prove this point yourself. you then go on to cite:

"For recent death figures, we can see that it's become more risky since WWII to serve in the US military, even outside a combat zone:

US Military Active Duty Deaths Per 100,000 Serving 1980-2002 (range of .9 to 2.4% per year)
http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/casualty/Death_Rates1.pdf"

Here you are looking at the actual death rate, not the much smaller accidental death rate. That is why you come to the erroneous conclusion that rates have gone up; I am sure that they are down by a factor of three or four, perhaps. Most of these deaths are probably from desease, and modern medicine, and its application to the military is much better now.

So let's take the average of the range of death rates you cite. Using recent figures biases them probably by a factor of three. Your figures for the recent picture gives a death rate in the US military of 16.5 per thousand per year. So I am sure that the 1945 figure for the US Army was at least double that, or 33 per 1000 per year.

Maschke's death rate for POWs in their control, assuming that those held before early 1945 are left out, was 0.436 per thousand per year. This is based on your figures and my required assumptions.

Therefore, based on your numbers, Maschke's figure for the death rate for POWs is:

75.688 times below the probable non-combat death rate in the US Army at that time. That is why Maschke's figure is totally, impossibly absurd, and that single figure, to my mind, makes giving his work another second of thought a complete waste of time.

I have to go, or I risk an immediate divorce. But I have pasted in something from the Geneva Convention, and I don't want to lose it, and I will return to it.



"When belligerents conclude a t convention of armistice, they h must, in principle, have appear therein stipulations regarding the repatriation of prisoners of war. If it has not been possible to insert stipulations in this regard in such convention, belligerents shall nevertheless come to an agreement in this regard as soon as possible. In any case, repatriation of prisoners shall be effected with the least possible delay after the conclusion of peace."

Bob Lembke

PS: I only noticed your second part of your post a few seconds ago.

Andreas
Member
Posts: 6938
Joined: 10 Nov 2002, 15:12
Location: Europe

Re: Response

#57

Post by Andreas » 19 Jun 2005, 18:22

bob lembke wrote:Incidentally, where do you get this "Maschke Commission" stuff? I have read about twelve examples of the cataloging of about eight volumes of the Maschke series, done by three expert entities (two Antikvariaten, or "rare/old book dealerships", and the German State Library on Frankfurt am Main), and I did not see one word that suggests any commission. I sometimes read German five hours a day, 98% in Fraktur, and I think I would recognize a mention of a commission. However, as I said, I would have to have a copy on the table to be sure.Germans love commissions, etc, and I would think that such an attribution would be made. In the Reichsarchiv official histories that I have (about 60 copies of 40 books; different editions) in one series when the book has a single author one has to hunt for his name in small print, in the other series no authors are given, nor editors. I believe that after Maschke put out his first two volumes the West German government decided to bankroll his work, and also in the process control what he put out.
Unsurprisingly, your belief is totally and utterly wrong. Below are the results of one google search based on the information in this thread.

Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in Jugoslawien 1941 - 1949.
Band I/1. und I/2. der Reihe: Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Herausgegeben von Professor Dr. Erich Maschke, Leiter der Wissenschaftlichen Kommission für deutsche Kriegsgefangenengeschichte. Verlag Ernst und Werner Gieseking. Bielefeld 1962 und 1964.
1957 installierte das deutsche Bundesministerium für Vertriebene, Flüchtlinge und Kriegsgeschädigte die Wissenschaftliche Kommission für deutsche Kriegsgefangenengeschichte, zu deren Leiter Dr. Erich Maschke bestimmt wurde. Die Arbeit der Kommission dauerte 16 Jahre und mündete in einer 22 Bände umfassenden Publikation. Aus Angst vor einer Gefährdung der Ost-West-Beziehungen wurde nach Veröffentlichung der ersten beiden Bände die weitere Veröffentlichung von der deutschen Regierung eingestellt, und statt dessen wurden die übrigen Bände nur einem eingeschränkten Personenkreis zugänglich gemacht, neben Regierungsstellen auch Universitätsbibliotheken innerhalb und außerhalb Deutschlands, so daß das interessierte Fachpublikum stets über die Möglichkeit zur Nutzung dieser wertvollen Dokumentation verfügte. Seit den siebziger Jahren ist der Kommissionsbericht frei zugänglich. Die von rechtsextremer Seite und auch von Bacque immer wieder aufgestellte Behauptung von einer "Geheimhaltung" der Kommissionsergebnisse entbehrt daher jeder Grundlage, wie Rolf Steininger nachweist. Rüdiger Overmans stellt in seinem Aufsatz die Zahlenangaben der Kommission anderen verfügbaren statistischen Quellen (Volkszählungsergebnisse, Angaben des Roten Kreuzes, alliierte Angaben u. a.) gegenüber und kommt zum Schluß, daß die Ergebnisse der Kommission als zuverlässig angenommen werden können, daß also von einer Vertuschung einer "verschwundenen Million" durch Politiker und Historiker, wie sie Bacque postuliert, nicht die Rede sein kann.
Eisenhower und die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen

Henry FAULK: Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in Großbritannien. Re-education (Wissenschaftliche Kommission für deutsche Kriegsgefangenengeschichte unter der Leitung von Erich Maschke [Hrsg.]: Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Bd. XI/2), München 1970.
Als im September 1955 Bundeskanzler Konrad Adenauer mit dem sowjetischen Ministerpräsidenten Nikolai Bulganin in Moskau zusammentraf, war die Problematik deutscher Kriegsgefangener in der Sowjetunion ein zentraler Punkt der Gespräche und sollte maßgeblich zur Normalisierung der deutsch-russischen Beziehung beitragen.
In Deutschland wurde 1957 die wissenschaftliche Kommission für Kriegsgefangengeschichte gegründet. Seit 1959 entstand unter Leitung von Prof.Dr. E. Maschke das 15 bändige Werk ,,Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des zweiten Weltkrieges", dass immer noch ein zentrales Werk der deutschen Kriegsgefangenengeschichte darstellt.3 Sieben Bände der Gesamtdarstellung widmen sich den deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in der Sowjetunion. Da zu diesem Zeitpunkt, wie schon erwähnt, die sowjetischen Archive für Historiker unzugänglich waren, stützt sich das Gesamtwerk hauptsächlich auf Erlebnisberichte heimgekehrter Kriegsgefangener sowie Feldpost und Unterlagen verschiedener deutscher Hilfsdienste4, wie etwa die Aufzeichnungen des Leiters des evangelischen Hilfswerks für Kriegsgefangene, Bischof Theodor Heckel (1945-1955).5
Mehr als 20.000 solcher Dokumente wurden als Quellengrundlage für dieses Werk benutzt.
Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in der Sowjetunion

I could not be bothered to link the other references that the search turned up.

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#58

Post by David Thompson » 19 Jun 2005, 18:31

Bob -- You asked:
Incidentally, where do you get this "Maschke Commission" stuff? I have read about twelve examples of the cataloging of about eight volumes of the Maschke series, done by three expert entities (two Antikvariaten, or "rare/old book dealerships", and the German State Library on Frankfurt am Main), and I did not see one word that suggests any commission.
The term was used in Overmans' study, and appears in Roberto Muehlenkamp's translation from Rüdiger Overmans, Deutsche Militarische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg (1999) at
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 327#112327
as I pointed out in my original post introducing the figures at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 238#709238

In your post you say (of me):
You cite:
"There were 61,640 deaths due to nonbattle injury, a rate of 2.40 per thousand per annum for the period December 1941 through 1945. (My note: = .24% death rate per year. Note that this is an average of 15,410 per year, not 7,450)"


Here you have fallen into a favorite trap of the insurance industry, where people consider accidental deaths a leading cause of death, or even confuse it with a total death rate. That is the basis of the Accidental Death and Dismemberment Policy swindle. In civilian life accidental deaths are a minor cause of death. In non-combat military life it is more important, but the causes of those deaths, like training accidents, should not apply to POWs. You go on with multiple citations for non-battle injury rates, all really irrelevant, except as a guide to a portion of the overall death rate.

You prove this point yourself. you then go on to cite:
"For recent death figures, we can see that it's become more risky since WWII to serve in the US military, even outside a combat zone:

US Military Active Duty Deaths Per 100,000 Serving 1980-2002 (range of .9 to 2.4% per year)
http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/casualty/Death_Rates1.pdf"


Here you are looking at the actual death rate, not the much smaller accidental death rate. That is why you come to the erroneous conclusion that rates have gone up; I am sure that they are down by a factor of three or four, perhaps. Most of these deaths are probably from desease, and modern medicine, and its application to the military is much better now.
You are basing your figures on false premises again. Had you checked the reference I gave for the quote in the first place, you would not have made the mistake.
The Wartime Problem

During World War II every 5th notification of the death of a member of the United States Army sent to American families was caused by nonbattle trauma, and every 20th was due to disease. In the past the problem of disease was more important than that of nonbattle trauma, but due to modern advances in prevention and treatment of infections there has been a relative change in position especially when mortality is used as the index. The effect of epidemics of infectious disease which rendered whole armies ineffective has been well documented in history. The relative importance of mortality from disease and nonbattle trauma in wars in which the United States has participated, and for which data are available, is presented in Chart 1.

In the Mexican War, 1846 to 1848, there were 28 deaths due to disease for each death due to nonbattle trauma. In the Civil War (Union Troops), the ratio was 9 to 1; Spanish-American War, 16 to 1; World War I, 12 to 1. In World War II the ratio was reversed for the first time with nonbattle injury deaths exceeding disease deaths. During this war there were 4 deaths from nonbattle injury to every death from disease. There were 61,640 deaths due to nonbattle injury, a rate of 2.40 per thousand per annum for the period December 1941 through 1945. For the same period, there were 15,779 deaths due to disease, a rate of 0.61 per thousand per annum. Thus, with death as the measure, one of the important mass health problems of a modern army is nonbattle injury.

In World War II the ratio was reversed for the first time with nonbattle injury deaths exceeding disease deaths. During this war there were 4 deaths from nonbattle injury to every death from disease. There were 61,640 deaths due to nonbattle injury, a rate of 2.40 per thousand per annum for the period December 1941 through 1945. For the same period, there were 15,779 deaths due to disease, a rate of 0.61 per thousand per annum. Thus, with death as the measure, one of the important mass health problems of a modern army is nonbattle injury.
From this and the chart which accompanies the text at p. 235, the range between 1940 and 1945 for deaths due to disease was .55-.62 per thousand (= .055% to .062%), which is three to four times less than the .24% death rate due to injury.

US Army Medical Department, Preventive Medicine in WWII, vol. III, Personal Health Measures and Immunization, Office of the Surgeon General, Washington DC: 1955, pp. 233, 235
Chapter VII: Accidental Trauma: Nonbattle Injury at:
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs ... apter7.htm

So looking at your statement:
Here you are looking at the actual death rate, not the much smaller accidental death rate. That is why you come to the erroneous conclusion that rates have gone up; I am sure that they are down by a factor of three or four, perhaps. Most of these deaths are probably from desease, and modern medicine, and its application to the military is much better now.
we see that it is incorrect in almost every regard. The accidental death rate in WWII is not much smaller than the death rate due to disease; instead it is much larger -- .24% for accidents and only .061% due to disease. We see that most of the nonbattle WWII deaths of American troops were not from disease, but from injury. We also see that more recent death rates are not down by a factor of 3-4; instead they have increased by a factor of 3 to 8 from .301% [.24% deaths from injury + .061% due to disease] in 1941-1945 to a range of .9 to 2.4% per year in the period 1980-2002.

User avatar
Andy H
Forum Staff
Posts: 15326
Joined: 12 Mar 2002, 21:51
Location: UK and USA

#59

Post by Andy H » 19 Jun 2005, 18:58

Another strange aspect of life in a British prison camp was the fact that prisoners received the same amount of daily rations as British servicemen, which turned out to be more than the civilian population received. So in effect the German POWs were better fed than the civilian population of Britain! The German working prisoner recieved weekly: 42ozs of meat, 8ozs of bacon, 5½ lbs of bread, 10½ ozs of margarine as well as vegetables, cheese, cake, jam and tea. These amounts were increased slightly in June 1945. A typical daily menu (this one came from camp 197) consisted of the following:
Breakfast: A quarter of bread, margarine and tea.
Dinner: Pork with potatoes
Supper: Milk, Soup and a fifth of bread.
Pamela Taylor "Enemies Become Freinds" which details the everyday lives of German POWs in Northern England after WWII

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#60

Post by David Thompson » 19 Jun 2005, 20:07

It does seem that the German civilians were kept on a ration of from 900 to 1550 calories a day for at least two years, based on the correspondence between the high American officials, as I previously cited. The ration for most of this period seems to have been 1275 calories. This is, I believe, fractionally higher than the standard diet in the camps like Aushwitz, and fractionally lower than the rations that the Germans imposed on the occupied countries in Europe.
Here is what I have on the daily caloric rations for the Nazi-occupied Netherlands in late 1944-1945:
SLOW PROGRESS IN LIBERATED AREA BODES ILL FOR UNLIBERATED HOLLAND
[Copy of Ltr, P. S. Gerbrandy, Netherlands Prime Minister, to Eisenhower, 16 Dec 44, an. 41, SHAEF files, G-5, 60, Hist Rpt, Relief to Holland]

During my trip through liberated Holland I found many problems which have to be solved. There are other problems besides those connected with food, and I need not burden you with the details of them. But I reached one frightening conclusion, of which I think you should know. It is this: if the now occupied part of the Netherlands has to go through the same process as the liberated part, we shall witness a calamity as has not been seen in Europe for centuries, if at all. This calamity would be comparable only with those that have sometimes fallen upon the people of China.

In the liberated Netherlands the means of transport have been taken away by the Germans, in many regions few livestock are left, communications have been destroyed, power stations have been demolished, many little towns are nothing but ruin, larger towns like 's Hertogenbosch, Nijmegen, Flushing, are severely damaged, tens of thousands of houses have disappeared, the fuel situation is nearly everywhere heartrendingly bad, clothing is lacking. With the help of your men and of your Mission, and in collaboration With the Netherlands Military Administration, if we all exert our best efforts, these difficulties can be overcome.

The matter is quite different for the occupied Netherlands. There all the disasters mentioned above will be ten times as horrible as in the southern liberated part of the country. I need not enlarge on this matter. You already know something of it. You can imagine the desert that will be left by the Germans in North-Western Holland with its population of over four millions: no stores of food, no livestock. . . . And to this must be added the fact that the population of this part of the Netherlands is less tractable than the people of Brabant, Zeeland, Limburg, and Gelderland.

On 26 October 1943, 2 President Roosevelt decided that the responsibility for the relief of the

[827]

liberated populations would be with the military authorities. From that moment we have had to depend on what these authorities think and do. Our stores remain in the United States of America, our ships are still playing their part in the Allied scheme, our skill is unused, and for the most part we remain onlookers. We were obliged to accept that state of affairs, and we have confidence in your management. But at the same time, after my journey, during which I have seen how slowly progress is being made, what difficulties have still to be overcome, what dangers still threaten us, my conviction that everything will come right in the end is gone.

I should like therefore to discuss with you the situation that will arise and the special measures to be taken.
I have in mind three measures:
1. Relief for the occupied Netherlands at the time of the liberation must have priority above everything, even above the slogan: first of all defeat the Germans. The Netherlands Government cannot accept the liberation of corpses.
2. In the preparation of the relief planning of the 21st Army Group we should be consulted....
3. Those things which can best be done by the Netherlands Government itself should be done by me. The military authorities should provide us with the means we need, no matter whether they are owned by us or by our Allies. 3 ♦ ♦ ♦
* * *
BAD CONDITIONS MAKE THE DUTCH QUEEN APPEAL FOR RELIEF AHEAD OF LIBERATION
[Copy of Ltr, Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina to President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, 15 Jan 45, an. 43, SHAEF files, G-5, 60, Hist Rpt, Relief to Holland]

.... The discussions both with General Eisenhower personally and the next day with General Bedell Smith, Chief of Staff to General Eisenhower and Lt. General Grasett, Assistant Chief of Staff for Civil Affairs were, to the minds of the Netherlands Cabinet Ministers, quite satisfactory and they received the very definite impression that everything humanly possible would be done by SHAEF, not only in the planning itself but also in view of the timely execution of the relief operation provided there does not result from this action undue prejudice to military operations, a notion which, it was agreed, was to be defined further, if possible.

It is not, therefore, because the Netherlands Government feel disappointed or discouraged in consequence of their latest talks with SHAEF that I have decided to make this personnal appeal to you. It is because the situation in my country has become so critical that I feel that it is no longer sufficient to plan for immediate relief

[828]


after liberation, even if the plans devised are the best possible plans and their timely execution assured, but that action of an entirely different nature will have to be taken now. Conditions in the still occupied part of Holland .. . have at present become so desperate, that it is abundantly clear that, if a major catastrophe, the like of which has not been seen in Western Europe since the Middle Ages, is to be avoided in Holland, something drastic has to be done now, that is to say before and not after the liberation of the rest of the country.

The situation is precarious enough in the Northern and Eastern provinces, where the Germans have carried off great quantities of foodstuffs and cattle and where they may be counted upon with certainty to carry off or destroy whatever remains when the time comes for them to retreat. But it is especially in North Western Holland, the section comprising the provinces of North Holland, South Holland and Utrecht where by far the worst conditions prevail. Four and a half million people, or half the total population of the Netherlands, live in this densely populated area....

According to the latest figures available, the average rations in the cities just mentioned had gradually dropped to 630 calories per day (the minimum number of calories a person, doing very light work, can normally live on, is put at 2000 calories per day; the British rations, which admittedly are not luxurious, are calculated to represent 2500-3000 calories per day). Seyss Inquart, German Governor of the Netherlands, in a recent broadcast to the people of Holland (on January 7th, 1945) admitted with cynical frankness that "nobody could or should contend that the present rations were even approximately sufficient." ♦ ♦ ♦

Hunger, cold, darkness, dirt, disease and floods, is it any wonder that Seyss Inquart with unparalleled cynicism ironically wished the people of Netherlands good luck this year, "for otherwise the situation which to-day is characterized by hunger, cold and misery, might unexpectedly grow into a catastrophe . . ." ?

All this is appalling, but to make matters infinitely worse the Germans have officially called up all men between the ages of 17 and 40 (born between the years of 1905 and 1928) to work in Germany. ♦ ♦ ♦

It is, that goes without saying, necessary that this war be won, but I assert that it is not necessary for winning the war that conditions are allowed to spread and develop, whatever duties our ruthless enemy may have to provide for the feeding of the population of the Northwestern part of the Netherlands, which will inevitably result in its total or partial ruin and extinction. On the contrary, it is precisely because there is no need to sacrifice these unfortunate people that help should be brought to them without delay. It is now the duty of the Netherlands Government to ask for urgent military action for the purpose of driving the Germans out of Holland. They feel that this is a reasonable and necessary request, and they would be grateful for an assurance that nothing will be left undone to this end.

Should, contrary to the hopes of the Netherlands Government, immediate military help be out of the question, then immediate relief in the form either of mass evacuation or in that of food, clothing, fuel and medical supplies is an imperative necessity.
The US Army in WWII: Special Studies, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors, Center of Military History, Washington DC: 1992, pp. 827-828, 829.
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/c ... m#Contents

Post Reply

Return to “Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes”