In a discussion on Facebook about the film Hellstorm, a skeptic claimed “there were no Eisenhower death camps,” so I decided to investigate, and am posting here what I’ve found.
Many of us are accustomed to go to Wikipedia for the bottom line, but I’ve been warned that Wikipedia cannot be trusted when it comes to WWII real-history truth. Posts really are carefully monitored by “Jews” to show the Allies in the best light and the Germans in the worst.
(video) Wikipedia – Jewish Biased Website — Most articles having anything to do with Jews or Israel exhibit Jewish bias • Type in the word ‘Bolsheviks,’ and the first entry is Wikipedia, and you won’t find the slightest mention of the fact that it was a Jewish led bloodbath, responsible for the death of countless millions • Moderators openly admit to pro-Jewish bias • Founder & head Jimmy Wales is Jewish
(video) Proof that Zionist Jews Manipulate Wikipedia (Jews admit to it)
The book that makes the claim for “Eisenhower’s death camps” is Other Losses: An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans after World War II. Wikipedia’s article on Other Losses appears to me to intentionally minimize in every way possible this major atrocity committed against the German POWs by US. Compared to what clearly really happened, which is shameful to America, Wikipedia’s article presents the Germans’ experience in the camps as walk in the park.
This quote is an example, of which much evidence not mentioned in the article does seem to contradict:
While harsh treatment of prisoners occurred, no evidence exists that it was part of an organized systematic effort.[95]
The book claims about 1 million German POWs died, most by intentional neglect in the American and French camps, but there could have been as few as 800,000:
Other Losses claimed that “The victims undoubtedly number over 800,000, almost certainly over 900,000 and quite likely over a million. Their deaths were knowingly caused by army officers who had sufficient resources to keep the prisoners alive.”[1]
Wikipedia’s first paragraph that discusses the Soviet POW evidence does seem to indicate that Other Losses author, James Bacques’ numbers may be too high, so perhaps a figure such as 500,000 is possible. But given Wikipedia’s extreme, one-sided bias in this article, I’d like to see a discussion elsewhere in which this is discussed.
Below, I include commentary that gives the other perspective, which actually shows compassion for what the German POWs did experience in these death camps. I still see no reason not to call them that, considering the evidence shown below.
What I did find surprising is the low volume of research done on this topic. If these POWs had been Jewish instead of German, no doubt the information on the subject would be one hundred times as much! Something is seriously wrong when an entire people group is hated and universally maligned, while another is almost worshiped; though, we now know the gas chambers didn’t even exist. Their deaths were not intentional, unlike what too many Americans did here. [From the quotes below, it looks like a couple of Generals did do the right thing once they finally found out.]
Was Eisenhower directly responsible? Evidence in the commentary below points to Ike’s direct involvement, and this article claims General Patton was going to tell Americans about his death camps, and that’s why Ike relieved him of his command. This is serious! [Note the 1.7 million number here]:
Another motive for Patton’s murder was his rather public statements that he was going to report directly to the American people Eisenhower’s murder of what would become 1.7 million men, women, and children in Allied death camps administered by Eisenhower and Smith. Patton had defied the death orders and treated his POWs humanely and quickly released them until Eisenhower stripped him of his command.
Our sanitized version of what our leaders have done is so far from the truth. Michael Rivero said this, yesterday, on What Really Happened:
“At this point, we don’t really know what was going on in WWII. We don’t really know anything that was going on before we were born. We have been lied to that much!”
What follows is detailed analysis by someone who does have a heart for the German people during WWII, as he wrote in his comments here. Thank you, John Wear! [I add some formatting and comments in blue.]
From: Amazon.com…
Other Losses: An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans after World War II
by James Bacque
Customer Reviews
Showing 1-8 of 8 reviews (1 star)
This book is an adventure in revisionist falsehoods
By M.Rich on December 18, 2014
46 comments
John Wear 1 year ago
M. Rich,
You state:
“John, Ambrose and Bacque aren’t on trial here and trust in the individual is irrelevant.
The facts as presented are on trial, so far what Ambrose and the New Orleans panel [After the publication of Bacque’s book (1st Edition), a panel of eight historians gathered for a symposium in the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans from December 7–8, 1990 to review Bacque’s work.] put together meet the criteria of certifiable facts, Bacque’s theory is not based on certifiable fact but instead theory, rhetorical questions and faulty accounting methodology. …”
The information in “Eisenhower and the German POWs” [Copyright Nov. 1992] does not meet the criteria of certifiable facts. They never tell us how they got their numbers of dead in the Allied POW camps. They ignore all of the eyewitness testimony. Günter Bischof states on page 201 that the use of common sense provides one of the best ways to refute Bacque’s claim that the Western Allies mass murdered approximately one million German prisoners of war (POWs). Bischof asks: “How could the bodies disappear without one soldier’s coming forward in nearly fifty years to relieve his conscience?” Bischof then contradicts himself on page 224 by saying that American soldier Martin Brech has come forward to bear witness to the intentional starvation of German POWs. Today numerous American soldiers and officers have testified to the mass murder of Germans in the American and French POW camps. From low-ranking soldiers such as Martin Brech, Daniel McConnell, and Merrill W. Campbell, through middle-rank officers such as Ben H. Jackson, Frederick Siegfriedt, and Lee Berwick, to high-ranking officers such as Richard Steinbach, Henry W. Allard, James B. Mason, Charles H. Beasley, Mark Clark, and Herbert Pollack, Americans have described the lethal conditions in the American and French POW camps.
At the time they did not have access to information Bacque later got in the Soviet archives. They thus provide no information to disprove his findings in the Soviet archives. As of 2011, more than 300,000 copies of “Other Losses” in 12 languages have been sold. That is pretty good for a book you say has “never gained popular support aside from a fringe of Nazi sympathizers or American haters.”
[…]
John Wear 1 year ago
M. Rich,
In regard to what James Tent wrote, how do you explain all of the eyewitnesses who say the Allies burned and destroyed food rather than give it to the German POWs? These eyewitnesses include:
1. U.S. Private Martin Brech, who writes: “Even more shocking was to see the prisoners throwing grass and weeds into a tin can containing a thin soup. They told me they did this to help ease their hunger pains. Quickly, they grew emaciated. Dysentery raged, and soon they were sleeping in their own excrement, too weak and crowded to reach the slit trenches. Many were begging for food, sickening and dying before our eyes. We had ample food and supplies, but did nothing to help them, including no medical assistance.
Outraged, I protested to my officers and was met with hostility or bland indifference. When pressed, they explained they were under strict orders from “higher up.” No officer would dare do this to 50,000 men if he felt that it was “out of line,” leaving him open to charges. Realizing my protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too said they were under strict orders to severely ration the prisoners’ food and that these orders came from “higher up.” But he said they had more food than they knew what to do with and would sneak me some.
When I threw this food over the barbed wire to the prisoners, I was caught and threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the “offense,” and one officer angrily threatened to shoot me. I assumed this was a bluff until I encountered a captain on the hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, “Why?” he mumbled, “Target practice,” and fired until his pistol was empty. I saw the women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn’t tell if any had been hit.
This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded killers filled with moralistic hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination; another expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars and Stripes, played up the German concentration camps, complete with photos of emaciated bodies; this amplified our self-righteous cruelty and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians.”
2. Maj. Gen. Richard Steinbach (then a colonel), who was ordered to take over administration of several U.S. Army prison camps near Heilbronn. In his memoirs, Steinbach says that on an inspection tour he found that the conditions in the American camps were terrible. The great majority of the prisoners had no shelter. Most of the prisoners had lost weight, some were suffering from illness, and some were slowly losing their minds. Often far less than the official food allotment of 1,000 calories per day was given to the prisoners, even though Steinbach soon found that sufficient food was available.
Steinbach knew what had caused the terrible conditions in the American POW camps: “This was caused by the Morgenthau Plan…Morgenthau was venting his pent-up feelings on Germany by starving these men…[His] objective was vengeance rather than promoting U.S. national objectives. Of course, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president who approved this plan, was also responsible. Worse even than the starvation was the idleness enforced on these people. I was amazed and disgusted at the same time. Was this the American way to treat people, even though some might be criminals?…Obviously it was not. I directed the U.S. camp commander to send to the railhead and draw supplementary rations.” Steinbach said that the food and tents were delivered immediately from supplies nearby.
3. Gen. Withers Alexander Burress, like Steinbach a member of the Sixth Army command, found the same conditions in his camps. Steinbach says he saw the same things elsewhere: “I inspected other camps and found the same situation, ordering the same remedial action…As soon as I returned to our headquarters, I met with General Burress. He said that the German POW camp was something beyond his comprehension.”
4. Gen. Mark Clark, who wrote: “When I first came to Austria from Italy, General Keyes told me of the deplorable conditions which existed in the Ebensee Camp, mostly due to over-crowding and to lack of proper nourishment. He told me he was taking corrective steps…I…sent for Colonel Lloyd, my Inspector-General, and told him to make an inspection at this camp. Later General Hume came in with a detailed report showing the critical situation which exists there. I immediately directed the overcrowding be released, and that the caloric value of the ration be increased to approximately 2800 calories. I am not sure that I have the authority to do this, but will do it anyway because some immediate action must be taken. What astounds me is my lack of information on this camp from my staff officers.”
5. Ernst Kraemer, a prisoner at Büderich and Rheinberg, states: “At first, the women from the nearby town brought food into the camp. The American soldiers took everything away from the women, threw it in a heap and poured gasoline [benzine] over it and burned it.” Writer Karl Vogel, the German camp commander appointed by the Americans in Camp 8 at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, says that Eisenhower himself ordered the food to be destroyed. The Americans were destroying food outside the gate even though the prisoners were getting only 800 calories per day.
6. German prisoner Herbert Peters states concerning conditions at the huge U.S. camp at Rheinberg: “Even when there was little for us to eat, the provisions enclosure was enormous. Piles of cartons like bungalows with intersecting streets throughout.”
7. The official U.S. Army ration book shows that the prisoners at Bretzenheim received 600 to 850 calories per day. According to Capt. Lee Berwick of the 424th Infantry Regiment, the prisoners at Bretzenheim starved even though food was piled up all along the camp fence. Capt. Berwick could not explain why the prisoners got only 600 to 850 calories per day. During the camp’s worst period of about 16 days, Berwick estimates that three to five bodies a day at Bretzenheim were taken from each of 20 cages within the larger enclosure.
In addition to thee eyewitness accounts, there is plenty of additional information that the Allies intentionally starved German POWs. One of the first signs of the Allies’ starvation policy came from North America, where the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] delegation reported that the German prisoners’ rations had been cut as soon as Germany released its Allied POWs. Then, in late May or early June 1945, the ICRC loaded two freight trains with food from their warehouses in Switzerland, where they had over 100,000 tons of food in storage. The trains traveled to their destination in the American sector via the normal route prescribed by the German government during the war. When the trains reached their destinations, the U.S. Army informed the ICRC officials accompanying the trains that the warehouses were full. The trains were forced to return to Switzerland.
Max Huber, the head of the ICRC, began inquiries into the U.S. Army’s actions. After a long investigation, Huber wrote a letter to the U.S. State Department. Huber referred to the Red Cross food trains that were returned full to Switzerland in the spring of 1945. The United States Force, European Theater (USFET), over Eisenhower’s signature, calmly ignored everything Huber said in his letter. Huber was forced to return the food to its original donors because the army refused to distribute it. There was so much food to return that it took thousands of train cars to return the food to its sources in Paris and Brussels. Huber apologized for clogging the rail system in France with this unnecessary work. Huber also had to obtain extra trucks beyond the 500 belonging to the ICRC in Geneva to return over 30,000 tons of food to the original donors.
Relief agencies such as the YMCA, the Unitarians, the American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers), and various other church groups were also attempting to send aid into Germany. For the crucial months until November 1945, while Eisenhower was military governor of the U.S. zone of Germany, the army made it difficult if not impossible for welfare from relief agencies to reach Germans. For example, the American Quakers were ordered to keep out of the U.S. zone. Also, the YMCA was refused permission by the U.S. Army to feed German prisoners in U.S. camps in France even though the YMCA offered to pay for all goods received from the army. The general attitude of the U.S. Army towards civilian relief agencies is clear from the opinion expressed by Stephen Cary, European Commissioner of the American Friends Service Committee, who said, “We were very unhappy with their heavy-handed and restrictive treatment”
Why would these relief agencies not be allowed to send food to the German POWs? The fact that there was a food shortage in Europe is not an adequate excuse. I can send you more information if you want me to.
[…]
John Wear 1 year ago
M. Rich,
[…]
Since you have added a review of “Other Losses,” I will ask for a third time how do you explain away the following evidence presented in James Bacque’s book:
[…]
2. Many thousands of Germans have testified to the mass murder of German POWs by the Western Allies. Bacque states: “Most gratifying has been the huge response from thousands of ex-prisoners who have written to me, or telephoned, sent faxes or e-mail, or even called at my door, to thank me for telling a story they feared would die with them. They continue to send me diaries, letters, Tagebücher, self-published books, typescripts of memoirs, in three or four languages, along with photographs, maps, drawings, paintings and even a few artifacts.” Is Bacque lying here? Is he and the German witnesses making this up?
[…]
5. I have mentioned at length in previous posts that the International Red Cross (ICRC) and various relief agencies were prevented from sending food to the German POWs. The United States government also refused to allow the ICRC to visit the German POWs in direct defiance of American obligations under the Geneva Convention. The ICRC under the Geneva Convention was supposed to visit the POWs in the camps and then report in secret to the Holding Power and the Protecting Power. On May 8, 1945, VE day, the U.S. State Department informed the Swiss government that its role as Protecting Power for the disintegrated German government was abolished. With this done, the U.S. State Department informed the ICRC that there was no need to continue visits in Germany as the Protecting Power had been abolished. While ignoring the requirements of the Geneva Convention, the U.S. State Department informed the Swiss that the U.S. would continue to treat the prisoners “in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Convention.”
The elimination of the ICRC and the Swiss government had disastrous consequences for the German POWs. The German POWs lost the right to tell impartial observers in private what was happening to them. The right to send and receive mail also disappeared with the Swiss. The U.S. War Department imposed the most damaging ban of all, covering all the U.S. camps, when it disallowed the mailing of Red Cross parcels to the prisoners. This eliminated the ability of German POWs to get sufficient food as well as to send news of their treatment to others and to receive news from home. No news from the camps would leak out to impartial observers. This allowed the treatment of the German POWs to be conducted for many years in a secrecy that was maintained against all but the victims.
The letters and appeals by ICRC officials Max Huber, Jean-Pierre Pradervand, and Henry W. Dunning were all ignored.
[…]
Garbage
By sking500 on February 16, 2014
28 comments
[…]
John Wear 1 year ago
M. Rich,
The following is how James Bacque computes his estimate of one million POWs who died in American and French POW camps after World War II:
The (West German) Government Ministry of Refugees, under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, had the Germans complete a survey. The survey was about 94% complete in the three Western zones, but only about 30% complete in the Soviet zone. The survey announced on March 31, 1950, that there were still missing, their fate unknown, about 1,407,000 persons. There were believed to be 69,000 ex-soldiers still in prison, 1,148,000 soldiers reported missing, and 190,000 missing civilians. If everyone had completed the survey, it is estimated that the missing POWs would total about 1.7 million.
Since the Soviet archives prove that approximately 517,000 German POWs died in Soviet captivity, we can get a reasonable approximation of the German POW deaths in French and U.S. camps. If we subtract the 517,000 German prisoners who died in Soviet captivity from the 1,407,000 total German prisoners missing in the survey, we have a total missing prisoner amount of 890,000. If we then subtract 100,000 from this total to account for the estimated number of German POWs who died in Yugoslavia, Poland, and other countries, the German POW deaths in American and French captivity amount to 790,000. If the more realistic total of 1.7 million is used as the estimate of total German POW deaths, the total deaths of German POWs in French and American captivity would be 1,083,000. These amounts confirm James Bacque’s original estimate of German POW deaths in 1989 before the Soviets opened their archives.
So where is the flaw in Bacque’s computation? The 517,000 comes straight from the Soviet archives and constitutes excellent documentation. The 100,000 who died in Yugoslavia, Poland, and other countries is a rough estimate but is not a huge swing factor. The German survey is the major swing factor in the computation, but it is an official German survey and I see no reason to doubt its accuracy. A range of approximately 790,000 to 1,083,000 German POWs who died in American and French POW camps seems like a reasonable estimate to me. Where do you think Bacque is making his mistake?
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