P r a i s e for OTHER LOSSES 'A brave book which ferrets out one of the war's least welcome secrets... [It] provokes bewilderment, anger and dismay' J U L I A N B A R N E S 'I was wrong to dismiss this book unseen as a pack of revisionist lies. In fact, the author has conducted painstaking and valuable research, and revealed much about the conduct of senior American and French leaders which is unflattering' Daily Mail 'There seems ample evidence that there was large-scale neglect of the huge mass of German troops who gave themselves up to the Americans because they feared the Russians more' G u a r d i a n This is a great and grim masterpiece of investigative journalism, unmasking one of the most successful cover-ups in modern history' I n d e p t n d t n t on S u n d a y ISBN 0-П16-64070-0 jacket photograph: tlldiicli I r t > i ■ 1* c I • i littirkitlli uui Muut d 11 o nt I r a n i liant However, while this titanic revenge was taking place, Western leaders strongly opposed to the betrayal of Christian ideals were desperately seeking to bring help to the Germans, as part of a policy to aid starving people around the world, Herbert Hoover, US Secretary of War Robert Patterson, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King and his assistant Norman Robertson together created the largest chanty in history, a food-aid program that saved hundreds of millions of lives around the world during three years of struggle against famine. Never before had such revenge been known. Never before had such c o m p a s s i o n been shown. Crimes and Mercies is the extraordinary story of what happened to these people and why: a book that rips the mask from a suppressed atrocity and exposes our breathtaking capacity for kindness and cruelty. JAMES BACQUE is a former 9 book editor and reporter. He is now a successful novelist and lives in Toronto. It was in 1986, while researching a book on Raoul Laporierie, a French Resistance hero, that he stumbled on evidence of Allied death camps. Other Losses, bis highly acclaimed investigation into the deaths of German prisoners of war after 1945, was the product of that discovery. Crimes and Mercies, which expands upon this earlier book, is his third work of non- fiction. More than nine million Germans died as a result of Allied starvation and expulsion policies in the first five years after the Second World War - a total far in excess of the figures actually reported. That these deaths occurred at all is stii! being concealed and denied, especially by Western governments. Following the world-wide success of his earlier book, Other Losses, which documented the deaths of about one million Axis prisoners in Allied camps after the war, James Bacque flew to Moscow to work in the newly opened KGB archives. The first English-speaking writer to gain access to these files, he found new proof of the mass deaths of prisoners. He is also the first writer to publish recently declassified information from the renowned Hoover Institution in California. Some other important American papers were specially declassified for this book. Under the Morgenthau Plan and its successors, Germans were prevented from growing sufficient food to feed themselves, goods were stolen from them at levels far beyond the war reparations agreed between the Allies, and private charity was forbidden. And in May 1945, US General Eisenhower -who had publicly promised to abide by the Geneva Convention - illegally forbade German civilians to take food to prisoners starving to death in American camps. He threatened the death penalty for anyone found feeding prisoners. One quarter of the country was annexed, and about fifteen million people expelled in the largest act of ethnic cleansing the world has ever known. Over two million of these people died either on the road or in concentration camps in Poland and elsewhere, Children were enslaved for years in these camps, and the majority of them also died. (ciillinl ■■ ticl HЬ) UK Ј18.99 CAN S29.95 RECOMMENDED RETAIL PRICE Also by James Bacque FICTION The Lonely Ones Creation (with Kroetsch and Gravel) A Man of Talent The Queen Comes to Minnicog BIOGRAPHY Just Raoul HISTORY Other Losses DRAMA Judgement Day CRIMES AND MERCIES The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation 1944-1950 JAMES BACQUE LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY (CANADA) LIMITED Boston • New York • Toronto • London First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Little, Brown and Company This Canadian edition published by Little, Brown and Company (Canada) Limited in 1997 148 Yorkville Avenue Toronto, ON MSRK Copyright © 1997 hy James Bacque The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Bacque, James, 1929— Crimes and mercies ISBN 0 316 64070 0 1. Germany - History - 1945-1955. 2. Food supply - Germany. 3. Deportation - Germany. 4. Economic assistance - Germany. DD2257.B32 1997 943.087'4 C97-931419-4 Typeset in Goudy by M Rules Printed and bound in Great Britain by Creative Print and Design (Wales), Ebbw Vale 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Herbert Hoover and Reverend John F. Davidson CD SSL \ CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix FOREWORD BY DR ALFRED DE ZAYAS xiv INTRODUCTION xxi I A PIRATICAL STATE 1 II THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM? 16 III 'FROM THERE No PRISONER RETURNED' 41 IV A HOLIDAY IN HELL 64 V AND THE CHURCHES FLEW BLACK FLAGS 89 VI DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION 112 VII THE VICTORY OF THE MERCIFUL 142 VIII HISTORY AND FORGETTING 183 APPENDICES 199 NOTES 225 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 270 INDEX 278 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS p. xxviii Map showing the division and control of Germany immediately after the Second World War. Source: The Oder-Neisse Problem by Friedrich von Wilpert (Bonn, Atlantic-Forum, 1962). p. xxix Map showing the expulsion of Germans from their eastern homelands. Source: The Oder-Neisse Problem by Friedrich von Wilpert (Bonn, Atlantic-Forum, 1962). p. 42-3 German local governments were ordered by the US Army to warn citizens that feeding prisoners was a crime punishable by death. This order was found in the 1980s in the archives of the village of Langenlonsheim by Jakob Zacher. p. 98-9 Printed notice for Germans to be expelled from Kraslice, in the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. Source: Sudetendeutsches Bild- archiv, Munich. CRIMES AND MERCIES p. 127 This memorandum by Robert Murphy, Chief Political adviser to US Military Governor of Germany from 1945, was kept secret until the 1990s. Murphy predicts an excess of deaths over births of at least 2,000,000. Source: Hoover Institution, Stanford. Plate section 1. Henry Morgenthau, US Secretary of the Treasury. His Morgenthau Plan for the destruction of German industry led to the deaths of millions of Germans years after the war's end. (US Army) 2. The Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945, where the transfers of millions of Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were approved. Truman is in the foreground, with his back to camera; Stalin is seated further to the right and Churchill is across the table on the left. (US Army) 3. US President Harry Truman (left) greets Herbert Hoover on 28 May 1945, before a 45-minute meeting during which they discussed world food relief. (Acme Inter- national/Bettman Archive) 4. In September 1945, US Secretary of War Robert Patterson and President Harry Truman controlled the most powerful military machine in human history. They soon used it for a huge food-relief campaign. (US Library of Congress) 5. Norman Robertson, Under-Secretary of External Affairs for Canada, led the Canadian food aid programme from 1945. Later he became Ambassador to the United States. (Herb Nott/Ontario Archive) 6. William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada. X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS He worked with Norman Robertson and Herbert Hoover to bring Canadian wheat to starving people around the world. (Gilbert Milne/Ontario Archive) 7. Painting by prisoner Kurt Spillman of the French camp at Thorйe-les-Pins, near La Flиche, in early spring 1945. 'We arrived about 6 A.M. in a snowstorm. The dead lying on the right are comrades who suffocated during the journey. US soldiers look on as we are beaten by the French support troops.' (Kurt Spillman) 8. US Army camp at Sinzig, on the Rhine near Remagen, spring 1945. Millions of Axis prisoners were herded into open fields and kept for months without sufficient food, water or shelter. (US Army) 9. Aerial view of the infamous Russian camp at Vorkuta, two thousand miles north-east of Moscow, between the Barents Sea and the northern peaks of the Urals. (Hoover Institution) 10. On these tiny pages (shown actual size) the names of dead Austrian prisoners were written. Rudolf Haberfellner (now of Toronto) risked his life to smuggle this notebook out of his camp at Novo Troitsk, USSR. (Rudolf Haberfellner) 11. The Allies deprived Germany of chemical fertilizers, so this farmer near Bamburg uses liquid manure. The cows drawing the wooden tanks also provided milk and, when too old to work, meat for the hungry.