In
the Spring of 1945, Germany collapsed and millions
of men in the German army surrendered to the
Americans, British, Canadians, French and Russians.
They included not only conscripted regular soldiers.
but also young teenagers and men in their sixties
and seventies pressed into service in the desperate
last days of the war as well as a small number of
women. Given the huge numbers involved, it should be
fairly easy to establish what happened to them and
that should not only be a clear part of the public
record, but common knowledge among the general
public. However, this is not the case. No films, TV
programmes or newspaper articles deal with the
topic. Mere discovery of the basic and undisputed
facts requires deliberate searching and comes as a
shock.
This short article is intended simply to introduce
the issue and not to seek conclusions or form
judgments. Since my intention is not to write
anything original, I will draw on, and refer you to,
relevant articles in Wikipedia. Unlike many
Wikipedia articles on topics relating to the period,
and especially Holocaust-related topics, these
articles appear to conform to Wikipedia's stated
aims, presenting a balanced picture of both sides of
the issue and using reliable references for those
opposing views. That I have used the expression
"both sides" implies that the issue has become one
of emotion and polemic. In practice it consists of
some powerful and apparently extreme accusations
brought by the the Canadian writer James Bacque in
his book Other Losses, and of several works
which appear to have been written with the expressed
intention of debunking Bacque. Neither approach can
fairly be said to comply with the principles of
objective historical investigation, but,
unfortunately, such prejudice (in the etymological
sense of "pre-judging") seems to be the basis of
most historical writing on this period, with those
who most loudly hurl this accusation at their
opponents being often the most guilty of it
themselves. That is a personal view which I will ask
you to keep in mind and to form your own judgments
on.
Although the greater part of the German army had
fought on the Eastern front, large numbers of them
made every effort to surrender to the Western Allies
rather than the Soviets, with the result that by
June 1945 more than seven and a half million men
were in American and British custody.The Geneva
Convention required that Prisoners of War receive
the same treatment, rations and accommodation as
soldiers of the nation holding them: a clearly
untenable position when Europe, especially Germany,
was hungry and strict rationing was in force even in
Britain; civilian rations in Europe as a whole were
far inferior to what American troops received.
Germany was in a state of chaos, with its population
swollen by millions of displaced persons from
Eastern Europe, soon to be followed by millions more
expelled Eastern Germans. For this and other
reasons, prisoners taken after the war's end, along
with POWs already held, were redesignated Disarmed
Enemy Forces, a procedure that had already been
followed by Germany for Italian prisoners in 1943.
While this was clearly in breach of the Geneva
Convention, it has to be recognised that application
of that Convention was quite impossible. The
disputes we are discussing in this article revolve
mainly around whether the Allies, and the Americans
in particular, made every effort to handle the
situation as humanely as the circumstances permitted
or whether there was deliberate vindictiveness
leading to large scale avoidable deaths and
suffering, with, of course, the possibility that
that the reality was a mixture of the two, with
mistreatment of prisoners at field level not
necessarilly condoned by the high command. It is
generally thought that prisoners of the British and
Canadians fared somewhat better than those held by
the Americans and the French.
The Rhine Meadow Camps
The millions of surrendered troops were initially
confined in large barbed-wire enclosures in open
fields without shelter or access to food,
water, medication, disinfection,
washing facilities or latrines. One area of dispute
is how quickly and efficiently these basic resources
were organised and provided. Common sense would
appear to indicate that even with the best will in
the world this was a herculean task and large-scale
suffering, including deaths, from thirst,
starvation, disease and exposure were inevitable. (A
similar situation had faced the Germans when
millions of Soviet prisoners were taken in 1941. The
position of the Soviet prisoners was far worse
because their German captors were involved in a war
of national life or death and resources were simply
not available to house, clothe and feed them. Losses
were horrendous - though the numbers are disputed -
but any discussion of the issue today seems
routinely to assume that the Germans deliberately
murdered their Soviet prisoners.)
James Bacque: Other
Losses
In 1989, the Canadian writer, James Bacque,
published Other
Losses. Whatever the criticisms of this
work, it can at least be credited with bringing the
issue to public attention. He accused Eisenhower of
knowingly and deliberately allowing conditions in
which hundreds of thousands, possibly as many as a
million, died and of covering up these deaths.
Several refutations of Bacque's work have been
published, but all seem to be driven by agenda at
least as much as Bacque's original work.
I have not read the book, nor its refutations, and I
can only keep an open mind on the subject. It is
interesting that the arguments brought by Bacque's
critics reflect those brought by Holocaust
Revisionists: lack of bodies, reliance on
eye-witness testimony, poor methodology, emotional
manipulation, etc. It does seem to me though, that
while Bacque's figures may be too high, and the
criticisms of his methodology may be valid, the
figures accepted by his opponents, particularly the
0.15% death-rate of German prisoners held by the
Americans cited by Niall Ferguson, defy common
sense, the latter being a fraction of the
contemporary civilian death rate in the United
States.
Of the two Wikipedia articles on James
Bacque and
Other Losses, the former seems to take a
balanced view and quotes critics of Bacque who
nevertheless concede that, while overstating his
case, he raised valid issues:
[from Wikipedia article "James Bacque")
Despite
the criticisms of Bacque's methodology, Stephen
Ambrose and Brian Loring Villa, the authors of
the chapter on German POW deaths, conceded the
Allies were motivated in their treatment of
captured Germans by disgust and revenge for
German atrocities. They did, however, argue
Bacque's casualty figures are far too high, and
that policy was set by Allied politicians, not
by Eisenhower. Nevertheless, Stephen Ambrose conceded,
"we as Americans can't duck the fact that
terrible things happened. And they happened at
the end of a war we fought for decency and
freedom, and they are not excusable." Jonathan Osmond, writing in the Journal of
the Royal Institute of International Affairs,
said: "Bacque has published a corrective to the
impression that the Western allies after the
Second World War behaved in a civilised manner
to the conquered Germans. It is clear that he
has opened up once more a serious subject
dominated by the explanations of those in power.
Even if two-thirds of the statistical
discrepancies exposed by Bacque could be
accounted for by the chaos of the situation,
there would still be a case to answer." Osmond also called the book "emotive and
journalistic". One of the historians in support of Bacque
was Colonel Ernest F. Fisher, 101st Airborne
Division, who in 1945 took part in
investigations into allegations of misconduct by
U.S. troops in Germany and later became a Senior
Historian with the United States Army. In the
foreword to the book he states:
"More
than five million German soldiers in the
American and French zones were crowded into
barbed wire cages, many of them literally
shoulder to shoulder. The ground beneath them
soon became a quagmire of filth and disease.
Open to the weather, lacking even primitive
sanitary facilities, underfed, the prisoners
soon began dying of starvation and disease.
Starting in April 1945, the United States Army
and the French Army casually annihilated about
one million men, most of them in American
camps."
The
Wikipedia article on Other Losses seems less
balanced and more a hatchet job.
Below are some links to other relevant items. As
always, our linking does not imply support for views
expressed in any of them. We encourage you to
investigate for yourself.