The Shocking Truth Behind the Mass Deaths of Disarmed German Soldiers and Civilians Under General Eisenhower's Command
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OTHER LOSSES Publisher's Note We caution the reader not to be so lost in the politics of horrors as to equate the brutal revenge described in this book with the much greater evil of a state-instigated campaign of hatred and systematic murder that was the singular legacy of Nazi Germany. There are those who would cynically use this work to fan hatreds in their attempt to flatten the differences in atrocities by equating, and thus nullifying, them. We have lived in the shadow of World War ll for so long that we've grown accustomed to seeing only the inhumanity of the enemy. Thus, we were able to live with the comforting idea that because our cause was noble, our actions, too, were largely beyond reproach. There is still no doubt in the mind of any but a tiny group of historical revisionists that the fight against Nazi Germany was, as Studs Terkel calls it, "the Good War". However, in this dark, brooding, and painstakingly well-researched book, you will discover that at the end of World War ll, when Germany was conclusively defeated, a policy of hatred deliberately and indifferently caused the death by disease, exposure, and starvation of massive numbers of disarmed' German soldiers and some civilians. Certainly, few books in recent memory have instigated as much controversy among scholars and other interested readers. And yet, James Bacque keeps ferreting out more information that makes his arguments more convincing all the time. (This edition contains a new epilogue and a new appendix not previously published in the original Canadian edition of this book). Furthermore, even Eisenhower apologists cannot deny the graphic descriptions of both American and German eyewitnesses, as well as the newly discovered document quoting Konrad Adenauer. In a free society, the truth must be exposed, regardless of the consequences-especially if we don't like to hear it. The Shocking Truth behind the Mass Deaths of Disarmed German Soldiers and Civilians under General Eisenhower's Command JAMES BACQUE Prima Publishing The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity. George Bernard Shaw, The Devil's Disciple To L'Abbé Franz Stock And Victor Gollancz The U.S. had about 200 camps in Germany. At least five were taken over by the French army when the French zone was set up in the summer of 1945. The French had more than 1,600 camps scattered across France and their zone of Germany. Many had been taken over from the U.S. Army after the war. Contents Principal Events Relating to This Book ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 03 Acronyms and Short Forms ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 06 Foreword by Dr. Ernest F. Fisher Jr. ………………………………………………………………………………… 10 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 12 1 Deciding Germany's Fate …………………………………………………………………………………………. 15 2 Without Shelter …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 23 3 No Public Declaration ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 32 4 The Cruelty of the Victor …………………………………………………………………………………………. 40 5 Summer of Starvation ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 50 6 Keeping Help Away …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 65 7 The Slow Death Camps …………………………………………………………………………………………… 78 8 Liming the Corpse ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 86 9 Inside the Greenhouse …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 98 10 The British and Canadians ……………………………………………………………………………………… 113 11* Myth, Lies and History ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 129 12 By Winks and Nods ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 143 13 Epilogue* …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 152 Appendices Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 169 Appendix 1 Other Losses in the American Camps ……………………………………………………. 171 Appendix 2 The ETO Medical History ……………………………………………………………………….. 187 Appendix 3 The Provost Marshal Reports …………………………………………………………………. 195 Appendix 4 The SHAEF-USFET Papers …………………………………………………………………….. 197 Appendix 5 The June 2 Discrepancy: SHAEF G3 and Generals Lee and Littlejohn ……………………………………………………………………… 198 Appendix 6 Discrepancy in Number of Captives, June 2 and September 8, 1945 ………………………………………………………………….. 199 Appendix 7 The Midnight Shift ……………………………………………………………………………………. 200 Appendix 8 The Prisoners in the Bremen Enclave (scofor Forces) ……………………….. 202 1 Appendix 9 The British Discrepancy …………………………………………………………………………. 203 Appendix 10 Escapees from French Camps ……………………………………………………………….. 205 Appendix 11* Other Glosses: How Some Critics Have Interpreted the Evidence ……………………………………………………………. 207 Notes ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 225 Archives Visited with Their Short Forms ………………………………………………………………………………………… 271 Selected Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 273 Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 276 Index ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 278 * Important: New material for the U.S. edition-not previously published in the UK or Canada. 2 Principal Events Relating to This Book 1939 September 1: Germany attacks Poland. September 3: Britain and France declare war on Germany September 10: Canada declares war on Germany September 17: Russia invades Poland Winter 1939-1940: Massacre of Polish army officers by Russians at Katyn. 1940 June 21: Defeat, surrender and partition of France. About 1,500,000 French soldiers held as rows in Germany. 1941 June: Germany attacks Russia. December: Japan attacks USA. Hitler declares war on USA. 1942 August: Dieppe raid by Canadians. Canadians accuse Germans of chaining prisoners taken at Dieppe; Germans accuse Canadians of similar atrocity. November: Allies land in North Africa. 1943 January: Churchill and Roosevelt meet at Casablanca and call for the unconditional surrender of Germany. May: Axis forces surrender at Tunis. Biggest prisoner round-up of war to date. Eisenhower complains to Marshall, '1t's a pity we could not have killed more". 3 November-December: Teheran Conference, Stalin and Roosevelt toast to the deaths of 50,000 German officers to be shot after the war; Elliott Roosevelt toasts to many more being shot, and says the U.S. Army will support this. Churchill storms out of the room. 1944 February: Eisenhower appoints General Everett S. Hughes as his special assistant. June 6, D-Day: Americans, British and Canadians invade Normand y. September: Quebec Conference; the Morgenthau Plan to destroy German industry is initialed by both Roosevelt and Churchill. The Allies reach the Rhineland. A newspaper furor breaks out over the Morgenthau Plan. October: Stalin agrees to the Morgenthau Plan with Churchill in Moscow. November 4: Hughes advises Eisenhower to keep secret all orders dealing with prisoner rations. 1945 February: Yalta Conference; Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin discuss dismemberment of Germany and reparations. March 10: Eisenhower initials and signs an order creating the lethal DEF status for prisoners, which breaks the Geneva Convention. He gives a speech in Paris saying that the U.S. obeys the Geneva Convention. April: The ccs approve the DEF status for some prisoners in U.S. hands, but the British refuse to go along. Littlejohn reduces prisoner rations. May 8: Germany surrenders. The U.S. removes Switzerland as the Protecting Power for German prisoners, contravening the Geneva Convention. Eisenhower tells Churchill he has reduced prisoner rations and may reduce them further. Patton releases captives rapidly. Eisenhower orders his generals to stop releasing prisoners. POW rations are reduced again. June: General Lee strongly disputes incorrect prisoner totals being given out by Eisenhower's HQ (June 2). Littlejohn complains that he cannot feed the prisoners, now about 4,000,000. Many prisoners are secretly transferred to the lethal DEF status without food or shelter. German civilians are prevented from feeding prisoners. Civilians themselves begin to starve. The ICRC attempts to send food into Germany, 4 but the trains are sent back by the U.S. Army. Prime Minister King of Canada complains about the removal of Geneva Convention protection from German prisoners. The British Foreign Office silences him. July: Many U.S. prisoners are transferred to the French army in dying condition. Captain Julien says one American camp looks like Buchenwald. August: An order signed by Eisenhower consigns all remaining rows to lethal DEF status. The death rate immediately shoots up. General Littlejohn complains in writing to Eisenhower that 1,550,000 people supposed to be getting U.S. Army rations are receiving nothing. The ICRC is forced to return food to donors because it is not allowed to send it to Germany. September: Jean-Pierre Pradervand of the ICRC tells de Gaulle that one-third of prisoners in French hands recently received from the U.S. Army will soon die unless help quickly arrives. French papers break the Pradervand story. Eisenhower and Gen. Smith deny U.S. guilt. The New York Times reports bad conditions in French camps, nothing about U.S. camps recently visited by star reporter Drew Middleton. October 10: Littlejohn writes a report to Eisenhower pointing out food surplus in U.S. Army and suggests sending food to U.S. 1945-6: The U.S. winds down prisoner holdings to almost zero by the end of 1946. The French continue holding hundreds of thousands through 1946, gradually reducing their holdings to nothing by about 1949. 1947-1950s: Most records of U.S. prison camps are destroyed. Germans determine that over 1,700,000 soldiers, alive