German POW treatment by Americans

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Ezboard

German POW treatment by Americans

#1

Post by Ezboard » 29 Sep 2002, 16:22

J Dave Price
Visitor
(2/18/01 7:46:46 pm)
Reply German POW treatment by Americans
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Subject: Re: German POWS

All Interested, I am trying to defend a position, maybe you can help. I would like to know about the treatment, mistreatament or deaths of German POWs
Americans towards the end of the WWII. I have a
british aquaintance that says nearly 17,000 died at American hands due to starvation. Any idea where I can
find more info like this.

Marcus Wendal says 'according to "Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg" by Rüdiger Overmans 22.000 German soldiers died in American POW-camps.

If anyone has more information, please fill me in. Thanks, J. Dave Price

Marcus Wendel
Webmaster
Posts: 1036
(2/18/01 7:49:33 pm)
Reply !
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The above message was originally posted in the History forum.
(It is at pub11.ezboard.com/bskalmanmessageforum )

/Marcus

pdhinkle
Visitor
(2/19/01 4:51:42 pm)
Reply POW deaths under American care
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The vast majority of POWs were treated well.The incedent referred to was the POW pens along the Rhine, after April 1st,1945. The exact number will never be known. While it was the US Army job to feed the POWs, there was fights among themselves for the food provided to them, similiar to the camps of DPs after the fighting was over.

When the situation is that each prisoner should get 800 calories of food, there was little internal control over how it was given to each POW. The blame can be shared by the camp controller and the POWs.

Allen Milcic
Member
Posts: 25
(2/19/01 5:44:05 pm)
Reply German Prisoners of War
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Try James Bacque: "Other Losses". Might give you a bit of a shock. I also cannot support the suposition that prisoners can be blamed for pathetic camp organization. The fault clearly and completely lies with camp commander, his superior, and, ultimately, with the US armed forces. It's called vicarious liability.

Roberto Muehlenkamp
Visitor
(2/19/01 6:24:24 pm)
Reply German POW treatment by Americans
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Allen,

I read Bacque's "Other Losses" a few years ago, and it utterly failed to convince me. On the basis of little more than the dubious interpretation of the term "Other Losses" in American POW records by a retired American officer (who apparently withdrew his statement later on, at least Bacque complains about that in the book), eyewitness accounts of the conditions in the Rheinwiesenlager (which were appalling at the beginning, but not representative of all American prison camps), and the fact that more than one million German World War II combatants remain missing to this day, Bacque concludes that about a million German POW's must have died in American or French captivity. What he basically does is shift dead bodies from East to West. The West German Maschke Commission of 1974 considered that most of those missing had died in Soviet prison camps, whereas German historian Rüdiger Overmans, in his recent book "Deutsche Militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg", assumes that a large portion of those still missing actually died on the battlefields of the Eastern Front, and not in prison camps. Overmans' estimate of 22,000 German soldiers who died in American prison camps is probably the most accurate you will ever find. As to Bacque's nonsense, please consider the following:

"This [the bombing of Germany and Japan] is not the only American democide during the war. After an intensive study of American documents and interviews with survivors and perpetrators, the Canadian writer and former publisher James Bacque concluded that just before and after the end of the war German POWs and civilians in American detention camps in Europe died from hunger, exposure, and disease causing conditions as bad as the worse of gulag, and for which General Eisenhower was directly responsible. Bacque's figures are stunning: "undoubtedly . . . over 800,000, almost certainly over 900,000, and quite likely over a million died."5

Basque's statistics, arguments, and documentation were subjected to careful and detailed study by a conference of historians (including Germans) organized by Stephen Ambrose, the director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans. Papers from the conference have been published6 and show that Basque misread, misinterpreted, or ignored the relevant documents and that his mortality statistics are simply impossible. However, the papers do show that some of the camps, particularly the transit camps that became known as the Rheinwiesenlager,7 were initially lethal, with thousands of German POWs dying, and that these deaths were the responsibility of the American government. While the final toll of the American transit camps was far from that alleged by Bacque, it still could have reached 56,000 dead (lines 232 and 233). Detailed statistical studies by the German Maschke Commission set up to determine the fate of German POWs arrived at a figure of 4,537 dead for the most deadly Rheinwiesenlager camps (line 229). Other estimates in this range are also available (lines 228, 230 to 231). As a result of all this, I ignore Bacque's estimates and consolidate the others as shown (line 237)

Source: www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/SOD.CHAP13.HTM

I don't exactly like Mr. Stephen Ambrose, the American "apple-pie" historian. Having been born and raised in Colombia, South America, I don't care too much about all other gringos either, which theoretically could have caused me to welcome Bacque's account. Being of German stock, however, I have relatives and friends in Germany, many of whom lived through the war or have relatives who did. Thus familiar with German oral history, I never heard anything that even remotely points in the direction of such an enormous tragedy as Bacque maintains occurred. Nor is there anything about it in written German history that I am familiar with.
I figure that, if a wrong of such dimensions had been inflicted on German prisoners by their American captors, we wouldn't have had to wait for Bacque's book to know about it.

Roberto



Allen Milcic
Member
Posts: 26
(2/20/01 12:33:56 am)
Reply Bacque etc.
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Mr. Muehlenkamp:

I definitely take Bacque with a grain of salt, specially his numbers of victims which seem to be highly over-inflated (I think you can see where I was coming from regarding the super-exaggerated numbers of victims of the Ustasa regime in Croatia '41-'45; same kind of dubious sources and impossible statistics). However, Ambrose is the mirror image of Bacque - the apple pie with ice-cream Yanks can do no wrong. He gives me the creeps, to be quite honest. The reason I recommend reading Bacque is that there might very well be some truth in his assertions, and it is a good starting point when considering the study of Allied war crimes during and post WW2. I do not believe there were 800,000 dead German prisoners of war in American POW camps, but 50,000 is a crime just the same, specially for a nation with the kinds of logistical support and supplies the US has. There can be NO excuse for the starvation of prisoners; if it did happen (and all indications are that something did), it was done ON PURPOSE, or due to criminal negligence.

Allen Milcic


Scott Smith
Member
Posts: 260
(2/20/01 12:45:18 am)
Reply Re: Bacque etc.
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Mr. Milcic,

I strongly agree with you. I don't trust Bacque's figures either but he is asking some good questions. I especially agree with both of you about Professor Ambrose, the "apple-pie historian," as I call him. This kind of flagwaving-moralism makes me nauseous, and that doesn't happen very often, as I'm fairly tolerant.
:-)
Scott

Mr L L
Visitor
(2/20/01 4:57:43 am)
Reply Personal to Mr. pdhinkle.
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Personal to Mr. pdhinkle.

Dear Sir:
You said:

"While it was the US Army job to feed the POWs, there was fights among themselves for the food provided to them, similar to the camps of DPs after the fighting was over. "

As I am somewhat familiar with DP Camps in Germany 1945-1957, I am curious about your comment about "camps of DP's".
I would appreciate any input pertaining to your statement - places, names, sources, hearsay, rumors, etc.
You may reply in any language of your choice (It helps if it is Germanic), and e-mail me, if you wish, at [email protected] or respond on this forum.
Thanks in advance.

Mr. L. L.


Nick
Visitor
(2/20/01 5:34:31 am)
Reply Ummmmmm.........
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"Having been born and raised in Colombia, South America, I don't care too much about all other gringos either, which theoretically could have caused me to welcome Bacque's account"

Off topic, I know, but just what the hell is that supposed to mean?

Nick

John Brown
Visitor
(2/20/01 7:55:50 am)
Reply James Bacque
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Hi Scott
In the Introduction to the 1999 edition of OTHER LOSSES,Bacque mentions that Ambrose at first looked favorable at the book and said on Dan Rather's CBS Evening News program in autumn 1989, "I think that Jim Bacque has made a major historical find...As an american historian,I'm ashamed." Bacque claims that after Ambrose took up a lectureship at the US Army War College at Carlisle Barracks he "suddenly started to contradict his earlier opinion about this book.He also began a personal smear campaign against me."
Bacque also states in this Introduction:
"The Germans of today subscribe to a cult of national guilt that is almost like a religion.In Paul Boytnick's striking phrase,Germany has become Die Canossa Republik the present penitent generation despise their ancestors,abhor Germany's recent history and coldly suppress most efforts to expand the range of received truth on the subjects of German postwar suffering or German war guilt."There is a lot more but I can't type as well and fast as you and some others here can.Besides the books is in libraries and available at chapters.ca and amazon.
In any event I had read the book when it first came out in 1989 and it made me think,even though I also don't believe that as many as 1 million died in French and American camps.When the 1999 edition came out I bought it mainly because of the new Introduction and also to support a Canadian author.

Zapfenstreich
Visitor
(2/20/01 8:01:39 am)
Reply German POW Treatment
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Gentlemen, one minor footnote, if you will. After Germany surrendered, the status of German soldiers in American hands changed from "Prisoners of War" to "Disarmed Enemy Soldiers".

This might have had some bearing on their treatment re the issuing of rations.

Roberto Muehlenkamp
Visitor
(2/20/01 1:01:06 pm)
Reply German POW treatment by Americans
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Hi Nick,

The statement you quoted means that my lack of sympathy for Americans doesn't make me embrace an account of alleged American war crimes or keep me from making a fair assessment of that account.


Roberto Muehlenkamp
Visitor
(2/20/01 1:24:27 pm)
Reply German POW treatment by Americans
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Mr. Brown:

Does Mr. Bacque, or do you, really believe that "Germans of today subscribe to a cult of national guilt" to such an extent that it would keep them from at least expressing their outrage at a crime of such magnitude committed against German soldiers by the US Army? Soviet atrocities on German soil and the treatment of German prisoners by their Soviet captors are a topic in Germany to this day (not only in neo-nazi and/or revisionist circles). The fate of prisoners in Soviet camps was a key political issue in the Adenauer era, Adenauer's obtaining the release of the last prisoners by the Soviet Union an achievement that made him very popular in Germany. Why would Germans have made such a big deal of the Soviet's wrongs while completely overlooking those of the Americans? Why is there not even a hint at a tragedy of the magnitude maintained by Bacque in German oral history? And why did no German historian - Maschke, Overmans or even Paul Carell - ever mention a crime of such magnitude in his writings about German prisoners of war?

HarryA
Visitor
(2/20/01 2:22:31 pm)
Reply German POWs and Bacque
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The question of the mistreatment of German POWs after WW2 by the U.S. (and other Allies) is an important issue and, therefor, not one that should be treated casually. It is an issue that has been around for a long time. I am fairly certain that the then West German government conducted an investigation of the allegations in the early 1960s. However, I don't know what conclusion they reached. I do know that a Canadian writer by the name of James Bacque wrote a highly controversial book called "Other Losses" in 1989 that gave new life to the issue.
When James Bacque wrote "Other Losses" he had no experience as an historian and was actually working out of his home. Immediately after his book was excerpted in a Canadian magazine Bacque was interviewed on CFRB, a Toronto radio station. The interviewer was a man named Andy Barrie who now works for CBC radio in Toronto. During the interview a man called into the show to say that he had worked at a prisoner of war camp in Germany immediately after the war and his personal experience was different from what James Bacque was saying. Bacque responded by saying that he questioned the caller's "veracity" - in other words Bacque called the man a liar simply for stating that his experience at a particular prisoner of war camp was not at all like what Bacque was saying. I thought at the time, and still do, that Bacque's demonstration of intolerance to anyone who contradicted him was highly revealing.
James Bacque's distortions of the comments by Stephen Ambrose about his book are disturbing not only for his disregard of the truth, but the fact that a number of people have simply accepted his distortions without bothering to check their veracity. Stephen Ambrose is an internationally respected historian and the fact that he gives, and has always given, James Bacque credit for some of his findings clearly shows that he is no apple pie, flag-waiver. The problem with James Bacque is that his legitimate findings are buried beneath a mountain of distortions, and a complete disregard of honest and sincere scholarship.
Stephen Ambrose wrote review of Bacque's book on February 24, 1991 for the New York Times. It can be found on a number of sites including: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/...ties.html.
I believe it is worth pointing out that David Irving has publicly stated that James Bacque is a personal friend of his, and that he, David Irving, reviewed Bacque's work on "Other Losses" before it was printed. David Irving, of course, is the highly controversial person who sued an American professor in a British court for saying that he denies the Holocaust. Irving not only lost the case, but the presiding judge gave a devastating and scathing judgment against Irving and pointed that he is indeed a Holocaust-denier

Roberto Muehlenkamp
Visitor
(2/20/01 3:20:12 pm)
Reply German POW treatment by Americans
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Hi Harry,

Whether or not you are a "gringo" (that's no insult, believe me), I say: "Give me five, buddy!".

Your post is excellent. I couldn't have done better. Want to join the anti-revisionist club?

Roberto


Nick
Visitor
(2/20/01 5:01:22 pm)
Reply Roberto
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Hi Roberto,
Thanks for clearing that up, after your explanation, I can see that the intentions of your comment were harmless. (I'm half American, half Canadian...does that make me a gringo?hehe)
While I don't entrirely agree with some of your postings/comments (heck, some of them even make me a bit mad!), I admire anyone who sticks to his guns the way you do under all this fire. You're alright.
Cheers,

Nick

Allen Milcic
Member
Posts: 27
(2/20/01 8:34:12 pm)
Reply Ambrose
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Ambrose is hardly a "highly respected historian worldwide". In fact, most of his work is as historically even-handed as that pathetic joke of a Mel Gibson movie called "The Patriot". As one of the contributors pointed out earlier, flag-waving purporting to be history is nauseating, and Ambrose is as guilty of that as Bacque is guilty over over-inflating his findings (he's kind of like the fisherman who catches a Minnow, and by the time a week has passed, the Minnow has grown into a Swordfish in his stories).

I'm also curious who the members of the "Revisionist Group" are??

One more comment on the "Gringo" bit - how exactly do you define an "American"? Juan Rodriguez from Dallas, Nguyen Tho from Los Angeles, Kiritharakumar Paramananthan from Buffalo, Mustafa Said from New York, etc etc etc are just as "American" as John Smith from Washington DC or Ian McNabb from Boston. So, do you "dislike" them as well, or do you only dislike Caucasian Americans? Or White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans? How hypocritical, specially from a man purporting to be a defender of lofty moral highgrounds.

Roberto Muehlenkamp
Visitor
(2/20/01 9:36:42 pm)
Reply German POW treatment by Americans
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Allen,

The term "gringo", as I explained on the "Comment" section, refers to the Latin American caricature of what you call the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. That stereotype is what South Americans usually get to see of America. The term, as I understand it, has nothing to do with racism, but is the expression of the discomfort of the underdog trying to make the great white hunter look a little less menacing. I'm not too fond of WASP Americans due to that background of mine, but I'm also aware that they make up only a part of the American population. Hypocritical is the last thing I am, believe me.

Roberto Muehlenkamp
Visitor
(2/20/01 9:54:59 pm)
Reply German POW treatment by Americans
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So much for the WASP (of whom Ambrose seems to be representative), now back to our friend Bacque:
Ambrose may not be a genius, but Bacque is a revisionist, which strongly affects his credibility right away. If a businessman is judged by the company he keeps, so should be a historian, and David Irving is not exactly the best company imaginable. I consider Bacque's figures to be wildly exaggerated not because Ambrose said so, but because there is no other source of written or oral history, especially German, that even hints at a crime of such magnitude. I consider that the most significant indication that Bacque is, to put it plainly, a liar. Bacque himself, as I remember having read, has an explanation for that silence of German history. He suggests that German chancellor Willi Brandt, the father of the "Ostverträge" and the man who knelt down before the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial (for both of which German conservatives claimed his head), was a submissive ass-kisser of the Americans who ordered the Maschke commission to fix its report so as to place all German soldiers still missing in the mass graves of Siberian prison camps. Whoever knows but a little about Willi Brandt can only laugh out loud at such nonsense.

Chris
Visitor
(2/21/01 7:43:08 am)
Reply POW's
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I have heard that the French (of all people.You know,because of invasion and all.)put up complaints and a huge stink because of the way the Americans were treating the POW's.

John Brown
Visitor
(2/21/01 9:56:25 am)
Reply german pows
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Bacque makes the point that from the total German POWs held by the Allies at the end of the war 800,000 to 1 Million were not accounted for.The Americans and French have always insisted that they must have died in soviet captivity.When Bacque was allowed to check soviet archives in 1992 he found that the Russians never held as many POW's as had been claimed by the west.Well what happened to these men?
German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer said in his book "MEMOIRS 1945-1953" on page 148:
Quote:
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According to American figures a total of 13.3 million germans were expelled from the Eastern parts of Germany,from Poland,Czechoslovakia,Hungary,and so on.7.3 million arrived in the Eastern zone and the three Western zones,most of these in the latter.Six million Germans have vanished from yhe earth.They are dead,gone.Most of the 7.3 who stayed alive are women,children and old people.A large proportion of able-bodied men and women were deported to Soviet Russia to do forced labor.The expulsion of these 13 to 14 million from their homes,partly from regions inhabited for centuries by their forebears,has entailed untold misery.Atrocities were committed that are worthy of being put beside those perpetrated by the German National Socialists.The expulsion resulted from the Potsdam Agreement of 2 August 1945.I am convinced that one day world history will pronounce a very harsh verdict on this document.
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As one can see he went "according to American figures" and since he admired and liked the Amis he probably believed these numbers.Notice how he dared to say that soviet atrocities were equal to nazi ones.
As far as eyewitnesses Bacque interviewed many German POW's and used their diaries some published most not. His other sources were American and French soldiers who ran these camps and saw what was going on.
One former Remagen prisoner Franz-Josef Plember described how the Americans bulldozed living men under the earth in their foxholes.
Quote:
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One night in April 1945,I was startled out of my stupor in the rain and the mud by piercing screams and loud groans.I jumped up and saw in the distance(about 30 to 50 metres) the searchlight of a bulldozer.Then I saw this bulldozer moving forward through the crowd of prisoners who lay there.in the front it had a blade making a pathway.how many of the prisoners were buried alive in their earthholes I do not know.It was no longer possible to ascertain.I heard clearly cries of "You murderer".
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Why should one believe one bunch of numbers and eyewitnesses and not others?
Forum members should read the book (1999 edition preferably)and then make up their own mind wether they think Bacque speaks the truth.

Ezboard

#2

Post by Ezboard » 29 Sep 2002, 16:23

Roberto Muehlenkamp
Visitor
(2/21/01 11:02:27 am)
Reply German POW treatment by Americans
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Mr. Brown,

1. What Adenauer writes in his memoirs about the losses of Germans expelled from Eastern Europe in the wake of the Potsdam conference is not in line with the findings of a detailed study published in 1958 by the West German Statistischer Bundesamt, which are given by Gunnar Heinsohn in his "Lexikon der Völkermorde":

Baltic Countries and Memel Territory
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Ethnic German population 1944/45: 256,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 256,000
Thereof killed during flight
or expulsion: 66,000

Yugoslavia
----------
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 550,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 523,000
Thereof killed during flight
or expulsion: 135,000

German Eastern territories (East Prussia, East Pomerania, East Brandenburg, Silesia, Danzig)
----------------------------------------------
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 10,000,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 7,400,000
Thereof killed during flight or
expulsion: 1,225,000

Poland
------
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 1,400,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 675,000
Thereof killed during flight
or expulsion: 263,000

Romania
-------
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 785,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 347,000
Thereof killed during flight
or expulsion: 101,000

Checoslovaquia
--------------
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 3,274,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 2,921,000
Thereof killed during flight
or expulsion: 238,000

Hungary
-------
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 597,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 259,000
Thereof killed during flight
or expulsion: 53,000

Total German Eastern territories and Eastern Europe
---------------------------------------------------
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 16,862,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 12,381,000
Thereof killed during flight
or expulsion: 2,081,000

2. Adenauer's memoirs show a genuine indignation at atrocities committed against the German people, for which he also blames the Western Allies (Potsdam Conference). Why, then, would Adenauer have failed to address the death of hundreds of thousands of POW's in American camps, if it had occurred? Did his indignation work only one way?

3. Recent German publications, namely Rüdiger Overmans "Deutsche Militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg", have questioned the accuracy of the figures produced by the Maschke commission about German POW's who died in Soviet camps. Their conclusion, however, is not that the prisoners died in American or French camps instead, but that they died on the Eastern Front battlefield in the last months of the war. Overmans counts as died in captivity only those who are confirmed to have died in prison camps, not those whose fate has not been established to date (as I said, he considers that the larger part of the latter died on the battlefield, and not in prison camps). His figures are the following:

POW Dead %
France 34.033 3,6
UK 21.033 0,5
US 22.000 0,7
USSR 363.343 11,8
Yugoslavia 11.000 5,8
Various 8.066 4,7
Total 459.475
(% of number imprisoned)
Source: http://www.skalman.nu/third-reic...heater.htm

4. Bacque's eyewitness accounts, if authentic, refer to the so-called "Rheinwiesenlager" near Remagen in 1945. Even Ambrose acknowledges that initial conditions in these camps were abominable. However, they are not representative of all American prison camps, as Bacque would have it.




pdhinkle
Visitor
(2/22/01 2:03:21 am)
Reply pdhinkle/reply
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L L :: the message is in the e-mail, I don,t want to give to much of my personal life on a forum!

NOTE:: I had to change my e-mail address, another name for my ISP, 4th time in 2 years. new: [email protected]

pdhinkle
Visitor
(2/22/01 2:05:23 am)
Reply pdhinkle/reply
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L L :: the message is in the e-mail, I don,t want to give to much of my personal life on a forum!

NOTE:: I had to change my e-mail address, another name for my ISP, 4th time in 2 years. new: [email protected]

Nick
Visitor
(2/22/01 2:17:34 am)
Reply A contribution
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Hi all,
I feel I have something valuable I can contribute to this topic. I have in my possession a copy of a book called "Wie Ein Fels Im Meer" which is about the 3rd SS Panzer Div. Totenkopf.
It is mostly a pictorial history but has accompanying text, some if which is both quite interesting and relevent to this debate. I will post a brief excerpt from the book under a new topic called "American Treatment 2" (for lack of imagination, sorry!) but will leave you with a quote from a noted American General regarding the subject.
"Hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war we have handed over to the Soviets without any protests as slave-workers under violation of every human principle and every tradition. We have failed to resent the massacres."
Gen. MacArthur, July 8th 1952

Nick

MadJim
Visitor
(3/25/01 4:23:35 am)
Reply pows
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Let me start of by saying that as soon as someone starts dealing with generalities - inaccuracy is always the result. I am an American. I do not believe for a minute that every American was an angel in uniform. Nor do I believe every SS man was a criminal simply because of his uniform. Anyone that thinks that one side or another is 100% right or wrong is either a fanatic, naive or terribly deceived.
All of the major combatants mistreated prisoners to some extent. That is an undeniable fact. American propaganda fed to Americans in WW2 of course made the naive public believe we were 100% right and the others 100% wrong. This silliness even caught up to Geo Patton who was in deep trouble over the murder of German POWs in Italy. The fact it was done by a Sgt that he had never set eyes on didn't matter. Fortunately the people that did it were later KIA and so the whole thing blew over.

madJim
Visitor
(3/25/01 4:36:19 am)
Reply pows
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After Germany surrendered the Allies were in an awful fix. They were presented with a devastated country with a wrecked infrastructure. Countless thousands of Axis troops, Dps, POWs many of which were sick and needed medical attention. Who gets help first? Your former enemy? Their civilians? Displaced persons? Your own Pows? How do sort the draftees from the REAL Nazis?
Lets face it folks, into this mix must also go the experience of liberating places like Dachau. (please no denial)this did not put the Allies in a generous mood. Did some axis pows die from neglect? Yes. Would some have died anyway? Yes. Was there a widescale program to murder Axis Pows in Western Allied hands? No.

MadJim
Visitor
(3/25/01 4:44:44 am)
Reply Pows/Ambrose
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I think that Bacques book is junk. Ironically, he is able to bash Americans all he wants, but if he preached Holocaust revisionism he would be put in jail in Canada. So much for Canadian free speech.
I am quite curious about the attacks on Ambrose. He is an American, writing for a mainstream American audience, what do you expect? Like him or not, he is internationally recognized.
Roberto: I am somewhat surprised at your Gringo remark. I always considered you one of the more level headed and scholarly writers in this forum. How would you like it if I referred to you as a "Spic"?

Roberto Muehlenkamp
Visitor
(3/25/01 8:28:03 pm)
Reply German POW treatment by Americans
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MadJim:

I promised George not to use that term anymore, but I don't think it is nearly as perjorative as "Spic". It sounds more like "Kraut" or "Limey" to me. But if you felt offended, I'm sorry for that.


Scott Smith
Veteran Member
Posts: 314
(3/26/01 2:36:39 am)
Reply Ambrose & Others
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Hi MadJim,

I don't really care for Ambrose myself, but he is a good and well-respected historian. It takes all opinions to make a whole.

I don't really care for Shirer either. I do think he was more of a journalist than a historian but I would never call for his censure because his opinions differ from my own. This happened to David Irving and it is wrong.

As far as Bacque, I don't put much faith in his numbers but I do think that Eisenhower was guilty of a warcrime by changing the status of German POWs to Disarmed Enemy Forces (i.e., civilian political prisoners) so that they would have no protection of the military uniform under international agreements. The Allies condemned the Germans for using forced labor, yet these hypocrites did that same thing to German soldiers by calling it "reparations" or punishment for vague "warcrimes." Another legal fiction is that some have tried to argue that the Waffen-SS were not German soldiers but a political militia and therefore did not deserve the protection of military uniform or military benefits from their national government. Pretty sad, I think.

Best Regards,
Scott


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