Mal-treatment of German POWs

[bob lembke]

[Split from "Ambrose Attacks"]


Guys (and Gals);

I only have limited comments on this guy, as I will not read him. (I know, that sounds like an Ambrose trait.) I am a student of WW I, not WW II, and I do not want to waste my time reading him, and possibly poison my understanding of what he was writing about. Besides, I generally avoid secondary sources.

I noted the description of him as a "cheer-leader"; that is my term for him also.

A few notes, though:

I have interest in the mal-treatment of German POWs by the Americans and French after WW II in Europe. It seems that about one million to 1.1 million German POWs died in custody in the west in about a year. The orders (unwritten, as far as can be determined; they learned from the German experience) seemed to come from Eisenhower. The death rate in the American and French camps seem to have been 100-150 times as high as the rate in German POW camps for western Allied troops (where the overall rate was a bit lower than in the US Army of the period in peace-time), 10 times as high as in the post-war Russian camps, and about 150% as that in Andersonville.

I am not trying to start a new topic; I am getting to a point re: Ambrose. However, I have strong unpublished collaboration; my cousin Siegfried, a Wehrmacht Leutnant, was in those camps, almost dying, but saved in his last camp by the commandant, a French major who was a POW of the Germans for 5 years, and had been correctly treated, and told his POWs that a war crime was being inflicted on them. Also, I have a couple of sources who were in US Military Intelligence, one very highly placed.

The French demanded 1.25 million slave laborers, were shipped 900,000 POWs, got almost no use out of them, but managed to kill about 300,000 in a year.

When a Canadian journalist came across this and researched and wrote a couple of books about this, Ambrose, I think then still head of the Eisenhower Center, wrote a book refuting this. I skimmed through it in a Borders, and he did not have any hard refutation of the supposed facts, just a froth of blabber, and I think it was a paste-up job of pieces from others, none of which seemed to make any relevance. That was when I decided that he was a propagandist and a cheer-leader.

I also peeked into another book by him in a Borders, and saw a passage where, post-war, a Brit officer, a brigadier, I think, offered to introduce him to a friend who had been a high-ranking German officer; Ambrose wrote that he thought to himself: "Why on earth would I ever want to talk to a German officer!" He also mentioned, if I remember correctly, that he also never wanted to visit Germany. I may be off on the second statement. (He ended up meeting the German and found him interesting and very pleasant.)

So a guy and his factory of say 700 books on WW II "history" never wanted to meet or speak to a German officer, clearly stating that he never had? What a historian!

He did hire an ex-German POW who had been held in a war-time American camp, where the POWs were well-treated, to work on his project to refute the allegations of POW murder seemingly ordered by Eisenhower.

I also noted him saying one thing, and then the exact opposite a few pages on. It was on killing German POWs; one statement said that we never killed prisoners; a few pages later he wrote that a German prisoner had about a 50% chance of being killed before being handed over to the MPs.

It is interesting to read the other comments, they reinforce my first impression. The guy is (or was) toxic.

Bob Lembke

[Virgil Hiltz]

Guys (and Gals);

I only have limited comments on this guy, as I will not read him. (I know, that sounds like an Ambrose trait.) I am a student of WW I, not WW II, and I do not want to waste my time reading him, and possibly poison my understanding of what he was writing about. Besides, I generally avoid secondary sources.

I noted the description of him as a "cheer-leader"; that is my term for him also.

A few notes, though:

I have interest in the mal-treatment of German POWs by the Americans and French after WW II in Europe. It seems that about one million to 1.1 million German POWs died in custody in the west in about a year. The orders (unwritten, as far as can be determined; they learned from the German experience) seemed to come from Eisenhower. The death rate in the American and French camps seem to have been 100-150 times as high as the rate in German POW camps for western Allied troops (where the overall rate was a bit lower than in the US Army of the period in peace-time), 10 times as high as in the post-war Russian camps, and about 150% as that in Andersonville.

I am not trying to start a new topic; I am getting to a point re: Ambrose. However, I have strong unpublished collaboration; my cousin Siegfried, a Wehrmacht Leutnant, was in those camps, almost dying, but saved in his last camp by the commandant, a French major who was a POW of the Germans for 5 years, and had been correctly treated, and told his POWs that a war crime was being inflicted on them. Also, I have a couple of sources who were in US Military Intelligence, one very highly placed.

The French demanded 1.25 million slave laborers, were shipped 900,000 POWs, got almost no use out of them, but managed to kill about 300,000 in a year.

When a Canadian journalist came across this and researched and wrote a couple of books about this, Ambrose, I think then still head of the Eisenhower Center, wrote a book refuting this. I skimmed through it in a Borders, and he did not have any hard refutation of the supposed facts, just a froth of blabber, and I think it was a paste-up job of pieces from others, none of which seemed to make any relevance. That was when I decided that he was a propagandist and a cheer-leader.

I also peeked into another book by him in a Borders, and saw a passage where, post-war, a Brit officer, a brigadier, I think, offered to introduce him to a friend who had been a high-ranking German officer; Ambrose wrote that he thought to himself: "Why on earth would I ever want to talk to a German officer!" He also mentioned, if I remember correctly, that he also never wanted to visit Germany. I may be off on the second statement. (He ended up meeting the German and found him interesting and very pleasant.)

So a guy and his factory of say 700 books on WW II "history" never wanted to meet or speak to a German officer, clearly stating that he never had? What a historian!

He did hire an ex-German POW who had been held in a war-time American camp, where the POWs were well-treated, to work on his project to refute the allegations of POW murder seemingly ordered by Eisenhower.

I also noted him saying one thing, and then the exact opposite a few pages on. It was on killing German POWs; one statement said that we never killed prisoners; a few pages later he wrote that a German prisoner had about a 50% chance of being killed before being handed over to the MPs.

It is interesting to read the other comments, they reinforce my first impression. The guy is (or was) toxic.

Bob Lembke

Bob,

This is very interesting. Could you cite some specific publications and other sources where the treatment of the POWs is discussed?

[Goldfish]

I would like to see these sources too. I have heard this accusation before, but never seen any reliable evidence of it. Especially strange since news stories with similar content (murder of South Korea citizens during Korean War, Abu Ghraib, etc.) always seem to get a lot of media attention. Also strange that no one in Germany (I am am assuming that 1.1 million soldiers would have at least 5-10 million relatives-and they would have millions more descendants by this time) would mention this until about 50 years had passed, and very few have said anything since. It sounds very fishy to me.

[Andreas]

Also strange that no one in Germany (I am am assuming that 1.1 million soldiers would have at least 5-10 million relatives-and they would have millions more descendants by this time) would mention this until about 50 years had passed, and very few have said anything since.

That's because they are imaginary dead, so nobody missed them. There is a long and in-depth discussion on this in the Holocaust & Warcrimes forum. Do a search for 'Rheinwiesenlager' or 'Bascque', that should find it.

The conditions in the camp were horrible, and thousands, maybe tens of thousands died there due to neglect, administrative chaos, call it what you will. Not 1.1m though.

[Virgil Hiltz]

Also strange that no one in Germany (I am am assuming that 1.1 million soldiers would have at least 5-10 million relatives-and they would have millions more descendants by this time) would mention this until about 50 years had passed, and very few have said anything since.

That's because they are imaginary dead, so nobody missed them. There is a long and in-depth discussion on this in the Holocaust & Warcrimes forum. Do a search for 'Rheinwiesenlager' or 'Bascque', that should find it.

The conditions in the camp were horrible, and thousands, maybe tens of thousands died there due to neglect, administrative chaos, call it what you will. Not 1.1m though.

A basic search will lead to one highly controversal author who uses highly questionable "ESTIMATING METHODS" to arrive at his figures. 1.1 million would stand out too highly to have been ignored by the media for over 60 years. The number is between 1500 and 3500 who passed of starvation or exposure. According to a vet I know , many were already suffering when captured. They had been fleeing westward from the Soviets and were malnourished , sickly and suffering from exposure before they surrendered. I hope this author does't start with UFO Research.

[DIREWOLF75]

I read somewhere that the 1.1M was the number of German POWs severly mistreated in the hands of western allies (during?/)after WWII, not the number of actual dead.
Seen several different claims on the number of dead POWs resulting from the above, anywhere from ~100K to 700K.
There should be reliable numbers somewhere but i aint found them yet.

[bob lembke]

Guys;

As I said, I did not mention that stuff with the POWs to start a debate, but to give one of the reasons I found Ambrose a jerk and unscrupulous flag-waver.

This is a topic I have been away from for several years. I can't go on for long, as I am going on a trip and am horribly behind on what I have to do. So I will say a few things from memory. My stuff on this is in my other office.

The Canadian who went into this is named, I believe, Bacque. His first book was published by a small, respected, profitable Canadian publishing house, which was, unfortunately, a subsidiary of Random House (I believe - again, from memory; 95% it is the right US house) Immediately after publication the publishing house was closed and staff laid off. The locals were shocked, as it was profitable. Random House issued a statement that said "yes, it was profitable, but not up to their standards." I contacted a friend who is an importer, dealer, and publisher of military history, and he said that the buzz in publishing that the closing was a message.

Get one or another of the books (the second covers a lot of the same ground but goes farther with the topic) and get your own sense of it. 1.8 million German soldiers survived the war with their units, but somehow never got home alive. The Allies always said that yes, a lot of people disappeared, but the Russians did it. However, after the fall of the USSR their records became available. They had 4,000,000 prisoners, and they created a file of 20 to 200 pages for each one. But they had a lot of experience with slave labor, and knew that you do not get a lot of work out of a corpse. They especially valued the German slave labor, who often had high skill levels, so many were kept for as much as 10 years, but taken fairly good care of, especially by Soviet standards; two expert estimates of how many of their own people they killed were 82 million (Solsinitzyn, the first serious scholar of the Gulag) and 95 million more recently. Amazing!!!

The US literally kept no records on who they had; they were just like cattle in a pen.

In that vein, 30,000 POWs were kept on a piece of ground a few hundred yards on a side, and had one pipe for drinking water. The POWs had to wait in line for 10 hours for a drink, in sight of the Rhine, at a major camp.

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.

The US declared that 2,400,000 POWs were now DEPs (Disarmed Enemy Personnel), and that they did not have to be fed, as the Geneva Convention said nothing about DEPs, only POWs.

I will visit my cousin Siegfried for the first time in years, though we talk on the phone all the time. He does not like to talk about this stuff; his daughter, a woman in her 40's, burst into tears when I mentioned the topic. Siegfried's wife's father died in one of the camps, and he supposedly was as strong as a bear.

My cousin (and Bacque's books) said that the mal-treatment started the day the war was one and Allied prisoners safe. There was absolutely no shelter for millions of prisoners, what they had in fall 1945 was destroyed, and my cousin had one of his two blankets taken. That winter was a historically bitter winter.

Bacque was writing a book about a wonderful French mayor who saved about 1600 Jews, one or two at a time. Bacque was going thru his papers and found a bunch of postcards from two Germans. Mayor Raoul (forgot last name-his book is very good) had, it turned out, saved 1600 Jews and two German POW/slaves. Raoul was 94, a Resistance hero, saviour of 1600 Jews, awarded the Legion d'Honor, and the French secret service went to him and gave him a rough time.

I have a friend, one of my closest, a high-ranking officer, worked in the most significant military intelligence functions (no initials here, sorry). I mentioned this stuff a few times, and he went to great lengths to assure me that it was not true. One day he wanted me to tape a documentary about Andersonville, he was at my house, and I mentioned that the statistics there were very similar, but somewhat worse for the German POWs. My friend of 25-30 years flew into a rage, the only time I have ever seen it, ran to my door, and shouted: "Do you know why we murdered those prisoners!!? Because they lost the war!!!" He ran out and slammed the door. I had never seen him behave like that.

He spent the next two years trying to disavow what he had told me. But no sale here.

The suppression of a lot of stuff in Germany is beginning to change, interestingly usually initiated by left-wing intellectuals.

I said that I would not write much. "Liar, liar, pants on fire!!!" But I could write ten times as much, including additional adventures in prison camps by other relatives and a close family friend. But I have lost my appetite for the topic. Read Bacque and form your own opinion. I got my cousin to read it, very reluctantly, I practically had to beat him with a stick, and he said that her was in a number of the camps mentioned, everything he could witness in the book was correct, except that the estimated death rates were generally too low for the places where he was.

He has been a US citizen for 35 or more years, and he is still afraid of the US government.

Bob Lembke

PS: If I seem a bit cranky, in 1942 my mother and I were almost thrown in a camp here; she had been in the US since 1927, my father was a citizen and was working for the US Navy in a war zone, and I was three. A drunken wife-beater had denounced us to the FBI after he attempted to assault my father (WW I flame thrower operator, four wounds, and Freikorps veteran), who predictably kicked the s--t out of him.

While we are revealing dirty linen, do you know that during the war the US strong-armed Central and South American countries to turn their recent German immigrants over to us; we locked them up and used them as barter with the Nazis for interned Americans. We were very fair, non-judgemental, and even-handed; we also sent Jews that had excaped Europe back to the Nazis. Amazing, again. After a lot of lobbying, Congress was going to conduct hearings on this and some related topics; then 9/11 happened, and the topic was off the plate.

[Andreas]

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.

[Virgil Hiltz]

So this conspiracy has been sucessfully covered up and no other evidence exists other than some unknown book and your memory.

How long were the prisoners held in that pen on the Rhine? Can you come up with the multi page documents that the Soviets (who were the model for prison reform by the way)produced? You say that the prisoners were kept in the open, suggest where housing could be found for them after a world war ? I think that the ramblings and imaginary tales of one author do not substantiate a hidden genocide agenda. Unfounded and non supported statements are not enough to convince anyone that this was true. get some hard facts and quotes.

[Goldfish]

bob lembke wrote:

The Canadian who went into this is named, I believe, Bacque. His first book was published by a small, respected, profitable Canadian publishing house, which was, unfortunately, a subsidiary of Random House (I believe - again, from memory; 95% it is the right US house) Immediately after publication the publishing house was closed and staff laid off. The locals were shocked, as it was profitable. Random House issued a statement that said "yes, it was profitable, but not up to their standards." I contacted a friend who is an importer, dealer, and publisher of military history, and he said that the buzz in publishing that the closing was a message

Oh, now I get it! It's a conspiracy! That explains the lack of evidence, witnesses, etc. Those damned Illuminati are at it again. Maybe that's why Ambrose died! He had found secret hidden info and was going to take it public. First they tried to smear his reputation and when that wasn't enough, they gave him the old cancer injection (they got Jack Ruby the same way!). I hope Edwin P. Hoyt is safe. Say, is that a helicopter I hear?

[DIREWOLF75]

:roll:

While the numbers are very uncertain, it happened, and anyone who wants CAN find literature on the subject. Its not like its extremely hard to find or anything.
Sheesh...

No, none of the allies were perfectly wonderful and honorable all the time, get over it.

[Andreas]

:roll:

While the numbers are very uncertain, it happened, and anyone who wants CAN find literature on the subject. Its not like its extremely hard to find or anything.
Sheesh...

No, none of the allies were perfectly wonderful and honorable all the time, get over it.

I do not think anyone doubts that a number of German POWs died in western allied captivity. The range from 3,500 to 1.1m is however rather large and can not be dismissed with 'very uncertain', and claims of 1.1m German POW being murdered on an order of Eisenhower also deserve a slightly different response than 'Sheesh, get over it'.

I have not seen anyone here claiming the allies were 'prefectly wonderful and honourable all the time', so how about you take that strawman argument and put it where it belongs?

[bob lembke]

Guys;

Well, I lifted the lid on Pandora's box. This is something that I have avoided for years.

I don't think I am a "conspiracy theorist", and I generally find them to be jerks.

I ventured into my other office, which is so full of books, documents, etc. that it is dangerous; my wife, who has lived here for five years, has never dared entering the room. So I have more specifics.

Have any of you guys actually read Bacque's books? By the way, I was alerted to this matter (from my family I knew that the POW situation had been bad, but I didn't have a grasp of the larger picture) by an interview on network TV with the guy who assisted Bacque, and who wrote the Forward, Dr. Ernest F. Fischer, Colonel (Ret.), US Army; former Senior Historian, US Army. Another wild-eyed American-hating nut, I assume.

Bacque's first book, Other Losses, a phrase taken from a US Army document written by another colonel, who also helped Bacque, is less than 200 pages long, and has an additional approx. 100 pages of Appendices, footnotes, Bibliography, list of archives visited, etc., etc. Bacque was able to get affidavits from former US archivists that, after the war, were assigned to go thru 17 miles of files brought back to the US and pull all relevant documents for destruction. No records were ever kept on the number who died. Incidentally, Patton and Mark Clark refused to go along with Eisenhower's program, the former simply releasing the POWs in his area, Mark Clark kept his POWs but ignored the starvation guidelines.

Let me quote from a letter sent to the NY Times Book Review, in response to a letter from Ambrose.

"I witnessed the atrocities Stephen Ambrose tries to deny or gloss over in his article 'Ike and the Disappering Atrocities'. In the spring of 1945 I was a U.S. Army prison guard at Andernach on the Rhine.

"Mr. Ambrose mentions in passing that '(German POWs) were beaten, denied water, forced to live .... without shelter, given inadequate food .... and inadequate medical care ...', then focuses on the alleged food shortage. He doesn't address the other deprivations; was there also a tent, blanket, clothing, and medical shortage? There certainly was no water shortage; we were right on the Rhine, yet we denied the P.O.W.s sufficient water. Maddened with thirst, some of them crawled under the wires and ran toward the river in open fields in broad daylight while American guards machine-gunned them.... I protested to my officers and they said the starvation diet was ordered by 'higher ups' and was general policy...

"The silence about this atrocity has pained me for forty-five years and I'm deeply grateful that James Bacque's Other Losses has at last brought the truth to light."

Martin Brech, Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Religion (Ret.), Mercy College, New York.

Brech's house was vandalized after the Times printed his letter.

Bacque's other books touching this topic are Crimes and Mercies, which goes beyond Other Losses, using newly released materials, and an inspiring book, Just Raoul, about the French small-town mayor, Raoul Laporterie, who saved over 1600 Jews (and two POWs), one or two people at a time.

I found the material to be quite creditable, and fitting into information I developed from about ten other sources, including a woman, now 94, who was in US Army Military Intelligence in Germany and Austria after the war. She tried to give me some information, giving it to my other MI friend that I mentioned, but he threw it away and never mentioned it to me, but she was able to later get copies to me directly.

I am quite fussy about sources, reliability, etc., I am writing a book on WW I, and am working almost entirely from primary sources and documents, mostly in German and French, taught myself to read the Sütterlin and Kurrent handwriting scripts to read letters from the front and military documents, and have recently done research in Vienna (amazingly, reading a book in Italian at the National Library, a language that I didn't think I knew), Slovenija, Croatia, and London.

I will be visiting my cousin in a couple of days, with a tape recorder, to get oral history on my family in WW I, but I don't think he will talk about the POW business. It was very hard to get him to read Bacque. He is intensly pacificist and, as I said, scared to death of the US government. A really nice guy, a dairy farmer, now mostly retired.

If you are interested in this, get Other Losses, and come to your own conclusion re: creditability.

Incidentally, it is telling that Ambrose's book, supposedly intended to refute Bacque, seems to wander all over and not address the core questions. But the guy always was a light-weight. It is interesting to hear that he was already a plagarist in graduate school.

Bob Lembke

[Andreas]

I am quite fussy about sources, reliability, etc., I am writing a book on WW I, and am working almost entirely from primary sources and documents, mostly in German and French, taught myself to read the Sütterlin and Kurrent handwriting scripts to read letters from the front and military documents, and have recently done research in Vienna (amazingly, reading a book in Italian at the National Library, a language that I didn't think I knew), Slovenija, Croatia, and London.

That's great. So you will presumably have no problems backing up your claims about the numbers of Germans imprisoned for 'thought crimes', and comparable numbers of people imprisoned in the GDR.

Also, the incident with the farmer contains so many details that it will no doubt be easy for you to furnish others, such as name, place and time.

Finally, maybe you can enlighten us as to the Straftatbestand under which these numerous people are imprisoned, and on which basis their sentences are prolonged.

Fascinating stuff.

[DIREWOLF75]

:roll:

While the numbers are very uncertain, it happened, and anyone who wants CAN find literature on the subject. Its not like its extremely hard to find or anything.
Sheesh...

No, none of the allies were perfectly wonderful and honorable all the time, get over it.

I do not think anyone doubts that a number of German POWs died in western allied captivity. The range from 3,500 to 1.1m is however rather large and can not be dismissed with 'very uncertain', and claims of 1.1m German POW being murdered on an order of Eisenhower also deserve a slightly different response than 'Sheesh, get over it'.

I have not seen anyone here claiming the allies were 'prefectly wonderful and honourable all the time', so how about you take that strawman argument and put it where it belongs?

Did you read what i responded to? "Conspiracy!" and the similar exclamations, when at least some information on this can be very easily found.

To those posts, my response is quite proper, since they were little more than "its a lie! that could never have happened!" rather than anything serious.

From what i have read, 3500 dead POWs is HARDLY all of it.
OTOH, i also doubt 1.1M being correct, although id still say that being more likely than 3500.
Im not dismissing any numbers at all here, you other fellows are doing that very well with your "just conspiracy theories" and "you aint got no proof" arguments. Try to find out the numbers instead of just kneejerking saying "cant have happened".

As i said, get over the fact that bad things wasnt just done by this or that nations forces.