Mal-treatment of German POWs

[Annelie]

Bob Lembke

Durand, it is great that you actually read Bacque. Anyone else? Fess up!

Yes, I confess that I read the book and even own a copy.

Thanks for the interesting thread gentlemen.

Annelie

[David Thompson]

I have already posted four previous warnings in this thread about staying on topic:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 724#708724
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 627#717627
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 087#719087
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 490#719490

This is a research section of the forum; not a chat room. If there isn't going to be a serious, fact-based discussion of the topic, there's no point in keeping it open.

[Samuel]

I also have to mention that none of the eight or nine Maschke volumes I found in the state library or in abebook's 65 million volumes for sale seemed to have any mention of the Maschke or any other commission in the listings and descriptions. My German is hardly perfect, but I often read it five hours a day, 98% in Fraktur, and I think I would have noticed, especially the glaring word "Kommission".
So this all raises an interesting question; why are these materials either missing from the state libraries, or not cataloged, or cataloged so badly that they are not easily found? If one volume was cataloged listing Maschke as "Author/Editor", why not the others, if they are held? I have no idea, but any reasonable (to me) explaination does not reflect well on the materials.
Samuel, where where these volumes, generally? University libraries? Regional public libraries? Since you used a different search engine, did you find others in the State Libraries? (And if so, why does the state library search engine not find these volumes? (We are probably getting into another whirlpool of minutia, thankfully one that is not likely to raise emotions like mention of the "B" (Bacque) word.

The search engine covers:
- TIB, the German National Library of Science and Technology
- BSZ (Baden-Württemberg catalogue)
- HeBIS library network (Hess)
- Die Deutsche Bibliothek
- HBZ-Verbundkatalog (Nordrhein-Westfalens)
- Zeitschriftendatenbank (ZDB)
- Bavarian Library Network
- Berlin State library
- Berlin-Brandenburg Library Network
- Bibliography of German Imprints in the 17th Century
- Common Union Catalogue (from seven German states)

I made a search at the Deutsche Bibliothek:
http://www.ddb.de/
I search for Maschke, Erich [und] as Author.
I got 61 results. Result 58 to 60 are:
58.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges
59.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges
60.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges
München : Wissenschaftl. Kommission f. Dt. Kriegsgefangenengeschichte

if you look at the result 60.- more in detail you can click on "zugehörige Publikationen".
You will get a list of 12 books:
1.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges
2.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges / Beih. 1. Tagebuch aus sowjetischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1945 - 1949
3.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges / Bd. 5,3. Deutsche in Straflagern und Gefängnissen der Sowjetunion Bd. 3
4.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges / Bd. 5,2. Deutsche in Straflagern und Gefängnissen der Sowjetunion Bd. 2
5.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges / Bd. 14. Geist und Kultur der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen im Westen
6.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges / Bd. 12. Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen im Gewahrsam Belgiens, der Niederlande und Luxemburgs
7.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges / Bd. 7. Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in sowjetischer Hand
8.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges / Bd. 6. Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in der Sowjetunion
9.- Deutsche in Straflagern und Gefängnissen der Sowjetunion
10.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges / Bd. 3. Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in der Sowjetunion
11.- Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges / Bd. 2. Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in der Sowjetunion
12.- Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in Jugoslawien

If you search for example for "Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in der Sowjetunion : der Faktor Hunger" in the Baden-Württemberg catalogue you will find that you can get this book at the following libraries:

Chemnitz, Technische Universität Chemnitz - Universitätsbibliothek -
Dresden, Hannah-Arendt-Institut für Totalitarismusforschung an der TU Dresden e.V. - Bibliothek -
Freiburg, Universität Freiburg - Universitätsbibliothek -
Freiburg, Universität Freiburg Historisches Seminar Abteilung Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte - Verbundbibliothek
Gundelsheim, Siebenbürgische Bibliothek Archiv Landeskundliches Dokumentationszentrum - Bibliothek -
Heidelberg, Max-Planck-Inst. für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, HD
Heidelberg, Universität Heidelberg - Universitätsbibliothek -
Karlsruhe, Bundesverfassungsgericht - Bibliothek -
Karlsruhe, Universität Karlsruhe - Universitätsbibliothek -
Karlsruhe, Universität Karlsruhe Institut für Geschichte - Bibliothek -
Konstanz, Bibliothek der Universität Konstanz
Mannheim, Universität Mannheim - Universitätsbibliothek -
Mannheim, Universität Mannheim Bereichsbibliothek Geschichte
Mannheim, Universität Mannheim, Bereichsbibl. VWL und Statistik /Seminar für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte - Bibliothek
Saarbrücken, Universität des Saarlandes Historisches Institut - Bibliothek
Saarbrücken, Universität des Saarlandes Saarländische Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek
Speyer, Pfälzische Landesbibliothek
Stuttgart, Universität Stuttgart - Universitätsbibliothek -
Stuttgart, Universität Stuttgart Historisches Institut - Bibliothek -
Tübingen, Universität Tübingen - Universitätsbibliothek -

You would get similar result for other books of the series and other catalogues.

You will not get all the titels in the serie if your seach for Maschke as author because he is the author of only one of the volumes.

[Larry D.]

Deutsche Bibliothek

Excellent site. I have used it before, and prior to that I used their printed "A" series publishing catalogs that are on file in the libraries at most large U.S. universities (for me: the Univ. of Florida at Gainesville). This is the equivalent of the OCLC in the U.S., and to a lesser extent, the Library of Congress catalog (http://www.loc.gov).

[bob lembke]

Guys;

I have tried to respond to this excellent info from Samuel, but for days I have not been able to post or even preview anything on the Forum, except the shortest note. I will see if this posts, and see if I can PM my response to Samuel.

Bob L.

[bob lembke]

My post posted! I have not been able to post even a post of 2-3 paragraphs. I cleverly copied my response; I will try again.

Bob

[bob lembke]

Samuel;

Excellent results! I am massively corrected.

I use the state library search engines a lot, and I am familiar with them, and found rather exotic materials.

I had assumed that a search on Maschke on "Author/Editor" (not simply on "Author") would have hit on his materials in this series of 22 volumes. After all, I got multiple hits in abebooks.com in German Antikvariaten using a search criterion of Maschke as "Author". Why did they describe him as the author? Or, possibly, they have hundreds of volumes for sale, and only a few were mis-described as books he authored. But this is unlikely, as supposedly only 431 sets were ever sold. In the state library system I did get a hit on one volume, which must have been the one that he was the author of. What was his role in the research project, if not editor as well as not being an author? I have always found the state library cataloging accurate.

My wife (the super-librarian, "able to leap tall buildings") has told me that publications in series often have what seems to be incomplete cataloging, but I understood that that is especially true of things like series of professional journals, magazines, etc.

If I had more interest in this area I might actually buy the volume on POWs of the Americans volume. Again, I don't think I have read a single book on WW II in 10 years, versus perhaps 300 sources on WW I in the last three years, mostly in German and French.

The info about the search engine will be carefully studied and folded into my research weaponry. Many thanks for this lead, Samuel.

Bob Lembke

[bob lembke]

Great! my first successful post over two lines in length in days, in other areas of the Forum as well as this sub-forum. Good thing I don't believe in conspiracies.

Samuel, again thanks for the detailed lead to the powerful search tool.

Bob Lembke

[walterkaschner]

Bob Lembke wrote:

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

and:

Why don't you guys scratch up Other Losses and read it; possibly track down a few of his sources? How can you attack his work, and anyone (me) who cites him, without reading a word of him.

Fair enough, I thought, and so I ordered the book, paid for it with hard earned money and took it along to read over a week's vacation. Before I got into the book I thought this was a radical departure from my usual practice of only taking along junk paperback fiction to read on vacation, but about 1/3 of the way through Other Losses it became clear that the only departure in my prior practice was that the Bacque book was in hardback rather than paperback.

Apart from his sensationalist and self congratulatory style, the real nonsense begins on p.64 with Bracque's assertions as to the German POW death rate in the US camps, which he calculates as 30% per annum. He attempts in his Appendix 2 to explain how he arrived at this conclusion by purporting to analyze two tables contained in a survey conducted by the U.S. Medical Corps in May-June 1945, which he says were based on a group of 80,583 POWs held in camps during the 6 weeks ending June 15, 1945. Although Bracque states that the text preceding the tables relates that the survey covered 70,000 POWs, he does not provide the text itself and instead goes into a series of complicated and incomprehensible computations to show that the real number was 80,583. Well again, fair enough I thought - the higher the number in the group the lower the death rate. But when I took the trouble to look at the tables themselves I found that they show on their face an annual death rate from disease of 34.2 per 1,000 !, which works out to only 3.42 deaths per hundred and thus to an annual death rate of only 3.42% - a very far cry indeed from Bacque's 30%.

Moreover, a little simple arithmetic based on the figures shown on the Table will demonstrate that Bacques' computation of 80,583 POWs as the number included in the survey is completely off the mark. His Table IX shows that over a six weeks' period there were 2,754 POW deaths from disease in the measured group. This comes to an average of 459 deaths per week, or 23,868 per annum (assuming the death rate for the 1st 6 months of captivity will continue throughout). But if the annual death rate from disease, as stated by Table IX, is 34.2 per thousand, then the average composition of the group over the course of the year must number 697,895 - again far and away from Bacque's figure of 80,583.

The same result occurs if one considers the figures given in the Table for admissions for medical treatment for disease. Over a 6 weeks' period there were 345,324 admissions, which averages 57,554 per week or about 2,992,800 per year (again assuming the same rate for the 1st 6 months continues throughout the year). But the table states that the annual admission rate is 4,285 per thousand, which means that the average composition of the group must calculate out to 698,438, which essentially agrees with computation based on the death rate figures - which again is nowhere near Bacques' figure.

Now I am myself a long long way from being a mathematical genius, but it only takes a basic 6th grade education to see that Bacque's calculations are sheer baloney, no matter how you slice them. There is certainly no need to "track down other sources". His error here is painfully apparent on the very face of the document he relies on. And indeed, Bacques' assertion of a 30% death rate is so patently contrived and oblivious to the obvious that I can't help but seriously question his motives.

Moreover, the figures in the report dealt with the experience with POWs captured and held in the 6 weeks prior to June 15, 1945, who, as Bacque himself points out, were as young as 15 and as old as over 50, many of whom were in an exhausted state, and some of whom were already hospitalized. Their numbers far exceeded Allied expectations, and there is no question but that there was insufficient shelter, food, sanitary and medical facilities for far too many of them. And I have no doubt that the treatment many of them received at the hands of GIs who may have witnessed or had fresh in their minds stories of the conditions discovered in German Concentration camps was something far less than gentle. Thus it seems at least conceivable that the initial death rate for this group of some 700,000 and for subsequent additions may have substantially declined with the passage of time, but Bacque does not - at least that I perceived in my brief skim of the remainder of his book - even recognize that possibility, or attempt to deal with it.

I confess that at this point I more or less skimmed through the rest of the book, and for the balance of my vacation turned my attention to equally fanciful but vastly more entertaining novels of international intrigue, of the adventures of private detectives and of police procedurals.

Since getting back home a couple of days ago, however, I did do some Googling, and find that the 70,000 POW basis stated in the survey that Bacque hung his hat on was a stenographer's typo in the text of the report - it should have been 700,000, as I have indicated the simple arithmetic from the numbers on the Table IX demonstrate. Moreover, the "other losses" reported periodically on the US Army's POW totals, which Bacque attributed to deaths on the sole basis of one interview with a superannuated US Army Colonel, turned out to be primarily attributable to members of the Volksturm who due to their advanced age or extreme youth were released and sent home without being required to go through the process for a formal discharge. Not only did the Colonel in question subsequently twice repudiate his statement, but the explanation appears clearly in haec verba in the Monthly Reports of the Military Governor for the US Zone, which are held and freely accessible in the National Archives in Washington, DC, and elsewhere, and which Bacque gives no indication of having consulted or even being aware of.

For these and other points see Ambrose' review of Bacque's book at:

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/b/bac ... e-001.html

I shan't bother to pursue James Bacques' other contentions further, in the conviction that I've already wasted more than enough time and money on them. There can be no question but that in far, far too many cases German POWs in US hands were treated neglectfully, badly, shamefully, even brutally. But Bacques' outrageous exaggerations, baseless conclusions, and either egregious carelessness, stupidity or [as I prefer to believe] cunning manipulation of evidence and documents to arrive at a sensational - and potentially lucrative - piece of work serves only to diminish or repel interest in assessing the true nature and extent of the problem and in devising means to avoid or at least ameliorate it in the future.

Sorry, but IMHO as history Other Losses is, most charitably viewed, simply garbage.

Regards, Kaschner

Edited to correct my own typo in the reported number of the group of POWs surveyed! WK

[Larry D.]

Thanks for that, W.K. Your review and comments were sufficiently comprehensive to warrant being preserved for future reference by all of us on this web site.

Bracque is of little consequence since he for years has been the poster boy of the Canadian Hate Amerika academic clique. I blame his publisher. That's where the real responsibility lies. Once a big lie gets into print and is widely distributed, it is almost impossible to repair the damage done. Each new reader that comes along, be they ignorant or innocent, absorbs, carries and spreads the lie anew. So the fire is continually breaking out and doing damage. For that the media carries the main weight of responsibility. But in current Western society where there is no personal responsibility, erring publishers and other media fast-buckers never or rarely have to pay for their acts of arson. The recent "Koran-down-the-toilet" fiasco is another good example.

[Andreas]

Walter

Better you than me, is all I can say after reading your post, for which I am very grateful.

To somehow reward you for your sacrifice, drinks are on me should you ever come to Paris.

All the best

Andreas

[David Thompson]

Thank you, Walter, on behalf of the readers and myself, for having taken the time and trouble to analyze Bacque's screed.

[bob lembke]

Walter and the rest of the chorus;

Let me preceed my comments by basically repeating something I said before; I have seen Walter post before, in other vinyards, and I have always been impressed by what he said, and the gentlemanly and well-written manner in which he stated his posts.

However, here, Walter is full of beans. But it is largely not his fault.

We have a wonderful case study here. Walter has gone to the trouble of obtaining the book that the rest of you all have been savaging, and seemingly have never bothered to actually read. Walter has made an error, but it is mostly the fault of whoever wrote Table IX in 1945.

Table IX is not Bacque's figures or calculations, it, presumably, is a facsimile copy of a US Army document giving death rates in a sample of American POW camps holding, presumably, 80,583 POWs, over a six week period ending on 15 June 1945. The US Army Medical Corps (I guess) document states that over the six week period 2754 of the POWs died of disease. It also states supposed comparable deaths and death rates for US troops in the ETO (European Theater of Operations), although nowhere does it explicitly state the base number of US troops that experienced the cited deaths. (This is not very important.)

The 2754 deaths among 80,583 POWs work out to a death rate of 34.18 deaths per thousand over the six week period. The table rounds this rate to 34.2 deaths per 1000 POWs. It is not an annual rate, it clearly is the rate for the six week period. The body of the table simply cites this as a death rate per 1000; however, for some reason the table description above states "Death Rates per 1000 per Annum". This is clearly incorrect. One can only speculate why; probably it is either due to simple error, or someone wanted to soften the death rate for the casual reader who just thumbs over the document, but did not feel they could actually change the raw numbers.

To annualize this rate, 6 weeks = 42 days, there is 365.25 days in the "average" year (anyone have a 1945 calender?), so 34.18 x 365.25 / 42 = 297.21 deaths per 1000 POWs in a year.

Actually, both Bacque (Boo, Hiss!) and my cousin said that the s--t hit the fan the day that Germany surrendered. If the conditions that all accounts seem to suggest existed (little food, sometimes little water, supposedly no shelter at all, the 1945/46 winter being a record-setting bad winter, no clothes cleaning) the death rate would rise and rise as months went by. When my cousin would speak about this topic, he said that the death rates in the camps that he was in and that Bacque described was higher than Bacque suggests.

A document like this is telling. (It also indicates why I am suspicious of official figures.) However, expecting to find overall official data that proves or disproves Bacque is a fool's errand.

However, possibly the document is a Bacque forgery. If so, why would he create an erroneous death rate that cuts the death rate nine-fold?

Back to Table IX. The number of dead, based on the American doctors' study of the actual conditions in the camps that they were studying, on the spot, is the basic figure. The stupid statement of the annual death rate is both clearly in error, and is derivative from the number of dead.

That corrected estimated death rate, 297 deaths per 1000 per year, is damning.

Also note that, according to the US Army figures, the death rate for German POWs from disease was 57.00 times as high as that for American troops at the same time and general area. That also is damning.

Bob Lembke

[walterkaschner]

OK, "once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more" but I swear this is the last scintilla of time, effort or thought I intend to devote to Bracque's nonsense.

Bob Lembke wrote:

We have a wonderful case study here. Walter has gone to the trouble of obtaining the book that the rest of you all have been savaging, and seemingly have never bothered to actually read. Walter has made an error, but it is mostly the fault of whoever wrote Table IX in 1945.

Table IX is not Bacque's figures or calculations, it, presumably, is a facsimile copy of a US Army document giving death rates in a sample of American POW camps holding, presumably, 80,583 POWs, over a six week period ending on 15 June 1945. The US Army Medical Corps (I guess) document states that over the six week period 2754 of the POWs died of disease. It also states supposed comparable deaths and death rates for US troops in the ETO (European Theater of Operations), although nowhere does it explicitly state the base number of US troops that experienced the cited deaths. (This is not very important.)

The 2754 deaths among 80,583 POWs work out to a death rate of 34.18 deaths per thousand over the six week period. The table rounds this rate to 34.2 deaths per 1000 POWs. It is not an annual rate, it clearly is the rate for the six week period. The body of the table simply cites this as a death rate per 1000; however, for some reason the table description above states "Death Rates per 1000 per Annum". This is clearly incorrect. One can only speculate why; probably it is either due to simple error, or someone wanted to soften the death rate for the casual reader who just thumbs over the document, but did not feel they could actually change the raw numbers.

As Bob Lembke says, "Table IX is not Bacque's figures or calculations". But it is a key portion of a Report which Bracque relies on to support the very heart of his allegations. On page 64-5 of his Other Losses Bacque describes in approving but apparently exaggerated detail and lurid embellishment portions of the text of this Report, which is of a Survey made by the USA Medical Corps as to the sorry conditions in the US POW camps during the 6 week period between May 1 and June 15, 1945. The only source he cites for this description is his Appendix 2, and the only documents reproduced in Appendix 2 are Tables IX and X of this Report. Bacque then proceeds to assert on page 65 that:

.....it is plain that as early as May 1 the prisoners of war, who apparently were the best treated, were already exposed to conditions that killed them at the rate of over 30 per cent per year. FN 58.

He indicates (by his footnote 58) that his source for that assertion is also Appendix 2. But when one actually looks at Appendix 2, again one finds it's only documentation consists of facsimiles of two pages (Table IX and Table X) taken from the Medical Corps Survey which Bacque dwelt on with such approval a couple of paragraphs previously, together with a lengthy, complicated and totally incomprehensible series of calculations attempting to prove that the very document he is relying on is profoundly wrong!! Indeed, in Appendix 2 he accuses the author of the Report of "deception", of a "cover-up", and proclaims that " [t]he evidence is clear that the author of this History hid the death rate by suppressing information"!!! So we are left with Bacque himself condemning as bogus and corrupt the only source he offers for his allegation of a death rate of over 30% among the German POWs!!!

As shown in Bacque's Appendix 2, Table IX to the Study is captioned "Comparison of Number of Admissions and Death Rates per 1000 per Annum [my emphasis] For Prisoners of War in ASCZ Enclosures and ETO Troops (less UK) during Six Week Period Ending 15 June 1945". This is followed by 2 major Columns entitled "Admissions" and "Deaths", divided into 2 sub-columns each, entitled "POW" and "U.S. Troops", which themselves are each broken into sub-sub columns entitled "Number"and "Rate per 1,000". Then horizontaly each column is broken down by "Disease", "Injury" "Battle Casualty"and "Total".

Bob Lemke maintains that although Table IX states on its face that it compares Death Rates per Annum, the rates it shows are actually only applicable to the 6 week period - and speculates that the author of Table IX may have consciously intended to confuse a casual reader by so doing:

The 2754 deaths among 80,583 POWs work out to a death rate of 34.18 deaths per thousand over the six week period. The table rounds this rate to 34.2 deaths per 1000 POWs. It is not an annual rate, it clearly is the rate for the six week period. The body of the table simply cites this as a death rate per 1000; however, for some reason the table description above states "Death Rates per 1000 per Annum". This is clearly incorrect. One can only speculate why; probably it is either due to simple error, or someone wanted to soften the death rate for the casual reader who just thumbs over the document, but did not feel they could actually change the raw numbers. [My emphasis]

I submit there is nothing whatsoever clearly incorrect about it. The table says it's an annual rate; most rates are calculated on an annual basis; and why should this comparison be calculated any differently? Apart from their own conjecture, nowhere does Bacque or Bob Lembke offer any real evidence to the contrary. If anything is clear, it's that the notion that the table shows a 6 weeks rather than an annual death rate is a sheer fantasy. The only reason to insist it's a six weeks' rate is to cramp and compress it into Bracques' conclusion. And to suggest that the Report was contrived to deceive the reader is errant nonsense. The Report was written for an immediate official purpose, not for a "casual reader" who might come across it years later in a Government file. Nor, in the portions Bacque cites so approvingly, does the Report attempt to mask the lack of sufficient food and facilities for the maintenance and care of the POWs studied; according to Bacque it's tenor is quite to the contrary and tends to excoriate the Army for the regretable conditions in which the POWs were maintained.

Moreover, let's test the 6 weeks' rate theory another way. The total death rate for U.S. troops apart from battle casualties shown in Table IX is 3.9 per 1,000. If the rates shown in the Table were for 6 instead of 52 weeks, what would be the total annual death rate for US troops from non battle related causes? It would be 3.4%!!! (52/6= 8.67 x .39 = 3.4%) This is well over 10 times the annual death rate of 0.30% experienced by US troops for disease and injuries during the period 1941-45, as shown by David Thompson's post of Sunday, June 19, 2005 at 11:31 AM. Why in the name of God's sweet Heaven would the US troops' death rate for disease and injuries jump over 1,000 % during the 6 weeks between May 1 and June 15, 1945???? Sorry, as we like to say in Texas "that old dog just won't hunt!"

If one applies Occam's time honored razor to the issue and just accepts the simple fact that the typist of the Report made a typographical error - as many of us are unfortunately wont to do - and typed 70,000 instead of 700,000 as the number of POWs covered by the study - all falls neatly and logically into place. No conspiracy, no cover-up, no illicit but inexplicable motive, no need to twist, turn and torture the figures - just a simple slip of the finger. Then the annual death rate for POWs shrinks to 3.42 %, which is regretable and perhaps reprehensible, but at least understandable under the circumstances. The annual death rate for U.S. Troops shrinks to 0.39%, which is generally in line with other published figures. And James Bacque's Other Losses is unmasked as the sheer clap-trap and hokum that it truly is.

By this I in no wise mean to denigrate the suffering which far too many of the German POWs undoubtedly underwent at the hands of their U.S. captors. I accept without question the anecdotal testimony of Bob Lembke's relatives and acquaintances as to the horrors they suffered as POWs of the U.S. But one swallow - or even a half dozen - does not a summer make. The Ruhrwiesen Camps were clearly shameful, and some, even many, of Bracques' criticisms are undoubtedly well founded. But again, the hyperinflated and sensational garbage spewed out by Bacque and his ilk tends to incite a reaction even among the most thoughtful which can lead to a complete denial that anything at all wrong took place - wherein IMHO the real harm of his (and his publisher's) greed-driven nonsense lies.

Regards, Kaschner

[bob lembke]

Guys;

Let's try to look at this Table IX systematically. First of all, it is either a) completely bogus, a Bacque fabrication; b) an actual document, but Bacque has used white-out and a xerox machine to cleverly fudge some of the numbers; c) it is totally correct, the Revealed Word of God, like the Qur'aan, revealed to man through the Prophet Mohhamed (Blessed be His name); or any one of the fifty contradictory translations of the Old and New Testaments; or d) a deeply flawed document that still might have something to tell us.

I doubt a) or b). I actually read this book in 1992, I believe, and have been mildly interested since then. I did spend about 45 minutes poking thru the Ambrose "refutation book", and an hour poking thru the hundreds of past posts on Bacque which I think David usefully provided. In this poking about or in my 13 years of mild attention I cannot recall anyone actually stating: "Well, I looked in that box in the National Archives, and it contains studies on rancid cooking oil in military kitchens on Iceland, not a medical history dated 1945 by the US Army Medical Corps." I am sure that someone, over the years, certainly in the Pentagon or the Ambrose's Eisenhower Center, has actually checked some of these references, and we would have heard about it. (Or has someone done this, and I have somehow missed it?)

If 25% of the items Bacque posts, statements from US leaders and foreign observers, statistics, etc., etc. ar actually accurate quotes, and 75% prove to be actually Bacquian fabrications, it would be a very damning book, and Bacque would also stand disgraced.

As to c), Table IX being the Revealed Word of God, it certainly is not that, on the face of it there are problems with it, internal contradictions, although what they are seems to depend on the "politics" of the observer.

So I think we are stuck with d).

So how can we figure out what parts of it seem to be valid, and what parts of it seem to be incorrect? Also, what is important, and what is really fluff?

We have to consider the process that produced this report. Evidentally, someone decided that the mortality of the POWs should be looked at, or possibly it was part of a larger study, mortality and some other demographics. Seemingly a task force was sent out. Let's hypothosize that there was a few doctors, some drivers and "go-fers", some clerks, etc. They went out and staked out a few of the literally hundreds, probably a few thousands of POW facilities that existed across Europe. I assume that the study was observing a few US facilities, not Brit, French, etc facilities. They established contact with the camp commanders, showed their orders, hooked up with the local medical people, if any. Obviously the dead were examined in some fashion and sorted out in some detail as to presumed cause of death. (Note the preposterous rate of death from "cardiac disease" in Table X. Over 1% of the entire study population of men between 15 and 60 years supposedly died of "cardiac disease" in six weeks. Where was the German Army recruited? In cardiac intensive care units? One can draw a parallel with the diagnoses produced in Abu Girhab (sp?) Prison at Baghdad, where in one case a 26 year old was tortured for 2-3 hours, died, and the death certificate stated "cardiac arrest" as the cause of death. Sure, the heart stopped. No surprise. But if you look at the photos, there was a big hole in his face, under his eye. Ouch! But I digress.)

Back to our camps. The commission menbers and assigned local personnel came up with a number of dead, sorted out by presumed cause of death, and presumably with an estimate of the study population, which of course must have fluctuated, if for no other reason than that almost three men were dying, on average, every hour. You observe the dead, study them to some degree, pick a cause of death for each, and you come out with a number of dead for the study population over that six week period. You do not come out with a "death rate", for either six week, or for a year. The actual basic statistics produced by this study is the number of dead, and the breakdown by cause: the number of "admissions", which is not of particular interest to us, I believe; and an estimate of the size of the subject population. All of the other figures were either calculated from these basic statistics, or obtained from other sources.

Half of the statistics on Table IX are comparative rates for US troops in the ETO. These were clearly not produced by this commission, but obtained from other sources. There is no way that this commission could have collected mortality statistics from the thousands of US medical facilities and tens of thousands of US military units spread about Europe. The US figures in Table IX actually seem to be very close to the figures provided by David, and cited by Walter; that source gives a 1945 disease total annual death rate of 0.62 per 1000, as compared to Table IX's 0.6 per 1000, and an non-battle injury rate of 2.47 per 1000, as compared to Table IX's 3.2 per 1000. (As long as conditions like food, medical care, shelter, etc. are good and stable, it would be expected that the death from disease rate to be more stable than the death by injury rate.)

Clearly the total POW deaths from disease figure of 2754 is the result of the study. Then someone figured out a rate per 1000, (Guys; please dump the use of percentage figures, which no one in the field uses, you have screwed up your calculations before by using the two different systems.) They did this correctly, and came out with the correct rate of 34.2 per 1000; to more decimal places 34.176 per 1000. But this is the rate over the six week study period, not an annual rate. Period. The titling above the body of statistics is screwy. some of the rates in the body of the table per thousand are annual rates (the US troop figures) the POW rates per thousand are figures over the six week study period, but the table title only mentions annual rates. My guess is that it was simply a stupid mistake, perhaps the company clerk was drunk when he re-typed it, but I did mention the possibility that someone involved might have wanted to lessen the impact of the table on the casual reader, without taking the drastic step of actually changing the numbers. (I would think that this is the less likely possibility. But the proof-reading must have been really sloppy.)

Walter, my dear e-friend, you seem to have created two alternative reasons for this data seemingly indicating an enormous death rate among the POWs. First of all, you state that the base study population must have been 700,000, not 80,583. What is this based on? How could this commission have been monitoring and determining the cause of death of all of the deaths occurring over such a population, hundreds of camps, spread over thousands of square miles? Did they empty Walter Reed to assemble the staff for such a gigantic operation? Going from a sample population of 80,583 to 700,000 would not increase the theoretical statistical reliability more than a bit, but the practical problems with such a large study population would clearly produce, overall, much worse results.

The other theory you have seems to be that the POW figures per 1000 deaths have to be annual rates, because that is how such things are stated. The annual rates appear as Revealed Truth (although the study period was only six weeks, and the POWs were mostly in our hands a short while), and then magically the actual numbers of dead conjure up out of the rates per thousand. But the numbers do not compute in this way. You do not look at a corpse, or ten, or twenty, and have an annual rate pop up in your head. A number of dead for several reasons appear; you compute the rates later fom the raw data.

Let me do a little calculation of my own. As I said, the 34.2 per 1000 death rate for the six week period, extrapolated to a one year period, is 297 per 1000. (This calculation requires a number of assumptions, but they are not really terrible.) We previously noted that the table gives an annual figure for US Troop death from disease of 0.6, and David's US Army source for 1945 disease rates gave 0.62. Using the latter, this US Army Medical Corps table (once the mis-titling is figured out) states that the disease death rate for the POWs was 479 times as high as among US troops in Europe during this period. Period.

This, of course, seems amazing, impossible. But these rates are not impossible, they are Andersonville. My calculations that I did years ago put the rates, overall, in the American and French camps only a bit higher than Andersonville's death rates. Same medical conditions, same medical results. This is the point that I made to my lieutenant colonel of military intelligence friend when he went bonkers, ran to my door, shouted: "Do you know why we killed those prisoners? Because they lost the war!!!", ran out, and slammed the door.

The answers here are not going to be found in the numbers. There does not seem to be much good data. Bacque is not much of an analyst, and/or his exposition of his analysis is rather turgid, it gives me a headache to even read it.

However, let me rudely point out that you guys are not analysts. (Being a good analyst is not simply being able to do sixth-grade arithmatic, although it helps.) Allow me to pompously point out that I have done four degree programs, all professional programs (mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, operations research, regional planning, and regional science), a total equivilant of 9 1/2 full-time years of study (my masters in regional science, really mathematical economics, mostly, at the Wharton School, was done part time while I was working as an Operations Research Specialist in a research office in Philadelphia's government), all at Ivy League universities (Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania). (Have I annoyed you guys enough on this point?) I have worked as an analyst for decades, and as a professional demographer for years. But we don't need a rocket scientist here. But in this long discussion I can't recall seeing you guys put your hand to some figures or a table and not screw it up in some way, either making errors in your arithmatic, or conceptually screwing up the analysis.

You guys are desperate for Bacque to be totally, totally wrong. It is completely impossible for you to accept that anything that he said could possibly be true. Walter at least bothered to actually get and read the book, and push some numbers about.

This will never be resolved with numbers, unless some amazing stuff pops up at some time. Bacque's analysis never did a lot for me. But I think that he felt he had to try to do it; what would people say if he did not trot out a lot of numbers? The conditions themselves really tell the story. If they were like I understood them to be, the result would have to be hundreds of thousands of "excessive" deaths.

One could do a large-scale survey of the witnesses, both the POW survivors and the guards. But the odds of this being done is zero to zilch. We are doing enough at present to disgrace ourselves in the world's eyes without a project to determine how many POWs we murdered way back when.

I can honestly say that I have been active on this Forum (the overall forum), spending several hours most days, for a year, without ever having peeked into this sub-forum. This thread was hijacked here (quite correctly, I might add.) Happily, I do not have much interest in the topic. (I am passionately interested in, for example, the various nozzles that Flammenwerfer=Träger carried, and the various spanners that they carried to change them for different tactical situations.)

But there is a certain intensity, a nuttiness of sorts, that hangs over this stuff. A couple of anecdotes.

In Switzerland recently a major newspaper published a very dramatic large photo of three Swiss soldiers talking with two tattered, gaunt men, seemingly on the border in 1945. The caption said something like: "Two concentration camp survivors being turned away at the border." A reader wrote in, and said that he remembered the incident; he was one of the three soldiers. The men were not concentration camp survivors, they were foreign forced or contract laborers who had been working in Germany (I think there were millions), and after being questioned they were admitted. The veteran added that at that time their orders were to admit everyone who turned up at the border, except SS or other obvious Nazis.

There was a hue and cry that arose to have the old gentleman prosecuted for "Holocaust denial." Amazing!

Also, recently, someone wrote a very dramatic account about himself, a Jew, surviving the Holocaust as a child, surviving awful experiences, including having his father shot before his eyes. Then it came out that he was not a Jew, but a Swiss christian, that he spent the war years in a Swiss bording school, in short, his best-selling book was a total fabrication. And then, some self-appointed "Holocaust educators said publicly: "Wait a minute. It really is a valuable book for our work. If he feels it strongly, (what, the urge for royalties?) it has a certain reality. Let's continue using it." Amazing!

(I don't tune in on weird web-sites for this stuff. I read the world press for hours every day on the Internet. I read the Israeli press daily, sometimes three times a day. They are much more candid about a lot of things that are sacred cows and would not be published in the US mainstream press, for example, in a million years. They often puncture Holocaust foolishness. I follow this press as it is a great balanced source on what is going on in the Middle East, which I have followed closely since 1956.)

The passions in this area will probably require at least another 75 years before there is objective analysis. We are talking about the POWs in Europe in 1945-46, but the Holocaust hangs heavily over the whole business. That is what struck me when I skimmed through Ambrose's "rebuttal book", articles on the Holocaust, no concrete rebuttals that I noticed.

I am sure that I have now given you guys great ammo for ad hominum attacks. But I am quite proof to them by now.

We are all formed by our experiences. Part of mine was being dragged in front of the class in kindergarten and first grade to be knocked about by the teacher as some sort of minature Nazi, although we had lived in New York for 20 years. Or to come close to being chucked into a camp with my mother when I was three, where our family doctor's wife was. (Only about five years ago Congress passed some legistation to further obscure these matters.) Perhaps I have been made overly sensitive to injustice.

Possibly David marched his company about too much in the noon-day sun. (I only marched a company about for one day, and I was able to wear my steel pot, and I think it was cloudy. The next morning I remember standing in a forest at 6 AM in a rainstorm, eating SOS (s--t on a shingle, remember it, David?) in my poncho, M-1 reversed.) Andreas probably has been subverted by the Parisians, who are a breed apart. Walter is the big puzzle.

I really don't want to post here anymore, with possibly one exception. If I get my 93 year old intelligence agent friend, who was in Germany and Austria in 1945, to talk more, possibly into the tape recorder I had to hide from my cousin, I will let you guys know what she said. Her girl-friend's brother was in the camps. I also have some unfinished conversations with forum members who are afraid to publically support Bacque, but PMed me. One even sent me a manuscript.

Bob Lembke