Moderator: Commissar D, the Evil
So ARE you realy saying you think the wilfully neglient deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilians caused by the Good Guys should be compared to the German Bad Guys' killing of Soviet POWs?I was contrasting how the Western Allies failed in their plan to ruralise Germany compared to German thoroughness in carrying out its plans to kill all its Soviet POWs
I wonder about THAT defense tactic myself...I mean they WERE the good guys fighting to make sure the bad guys can't do anything like that anymore right?So ARE you realy saying you think the wilfully neglient deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilians caused by the Good Guys should be compared to the German Bad Guys' killing of Soviet POWs?
so its "revisionist" to acknowledge the historical record about Allied treatment of postwar Germans?This is boring now. I must find another dog to kick. I leave you to your revisionist view about the terrible Western Allies raping and pillaging a blameless Germany for no good reason.
to help you here is the figure Bacque fabricated-sorry I mean calculated
haen2 wrote:Hi Pzermeyer,
I think personally that it is time to close the thread.I have been through this several times before on other, some no longer exixting forums, and it ALWAYS ends up with ""your dog was meaner than my dog".
Keep in mind that the "allies= good guys, and Axis = bad guys" stories have been pumped into the mainstream news for over 60 years.
There is now third generation who only know history from what they "heard" and "read". most of it parotted from faulty information.
The old folks who know the truth are dying off, and the legacy is determined by what they told, or wrote.
I think it will take another 50 years, before ALL records are opened and REAL science writers can determine who spoke the truth, and who did not.
Perhaps you will live that long ! so good reading !.
HN.
Overmans provides no independent figures for German POW deaths, he just quotes Ratza and the Maschke commission.Overmans gives the highest figures for German POW/ deaths/Missing so here is a paper that casts doubt on his methods and totals.
http://web.telia.com/~u18313395/overmans.pdf
Phylo,phylo_roadking wrote:Andre, just for you - and the record....
I firmly believe that The United States of America had a concrete policy in place, presented to FDR, and approved by him and actively supported by him that the post-war Germany should be reduced sharply to the level of a "pastoral existence" - and MUCH more importantly for the purposes of this discussion that he firmly accepted that THIS would entail the death by starvation and disease of hundreds of thousands if not millions of citizens of the former Nazi Germany - whether they were POWs, Disarmed Enemy Forces, Civilians, and displaced Ethnic Germans from former countries that made up the Third Reich. I firmly believe that for a time this POLICY was supported by Winston Churchill - for gross monetary reasons - but he was foremost among the opponents of it later. I don't need to pass comment on what the opinions of the new French Government would have been!
I do NOT believe that it was American policy to actively KILL either POWS or German civilians - but that it WAS policy to deny them ALL the essentials of life so that their population "naturally" reduced to the level supportable by the new pastoral economy.
Yet again you are claiming something I have never stated or even inferred. Just because I have pressed you on PoW deaths, why does that make me not care about civilians? It is a dishonest tactic which you have adopted throughout this debate and it must stop. I will pull you up on it every time you employ it and challenge you to back up your accusations.....we are NOT just talking about POW deaths. Only YOU and MICHAEL are - the rest of us think that civilian deaths are worthy of the same consideration - in my case, maybe MORE so.
Again, double standards. It is fine for you to refer to German deaths in Soviet captivity but I am “sick” when I point out that Soviet deaths in German camps were far, far higher than German PoWs in Soviet captivity.phylo_roadking wrote: ... and I've given you the death rate for those poor b*ggers who ended up in Soviet labour camps.
Haen,haen2 wrote:Hi Pzermeyer,
Keep in mind that the "allies= good guys, and Axis = bad guys" stories have been pumped into the mainstream news for over 60 years.
There is now third generation who only know history from what they "heard" and "read". most of it parotted from faulty information.
The old folks who know the truth are dying off, and the legacy is determined by what they told, or wrote.
I think it will take another 50 years, before ALL records are opened and REAL science writers can determine who spoke the truth, and who did not.
Gerhard,First off let me say I don't particular enjoy these exchanges as they only awake hatred (just look at some of the posts in this topic) and in my case painful memories. The only reason I join in is to add a little honesty. All of us have been subjected to propaganda designed to hate our enemy. Hitler was good at it but make no mistake so were the Allies.
This exactly what constitutes Bacque’s argument though, Gerhard, not mine. Bacque claimed that over a million men were systematically murdered in death camps by the Western Allies in the immediate aftermath of WWII. This, according to Bacque, was the deliberate policy of mass starvation by Eisenhower and the Americans.The term "death camps" and "systematically murder you and your comrades" is in my mind a exaggeration to make a point. And what you call "deliberate policy of trying to kill you" I would rather think was indifference because the thinking was we deserved it.
I simply don’t understand how you can come to that conclusion if you (understandably) have absolutely no idea how many people were in your camp or have no idea what the death rate was in your camp.Now this was my camp and my experience, multiply this by the many thousands of camps and even if you subtract 10 -20 percent for better or OK camps you will still get a pretty high number where the 800,000 - 1,000,000 as Bacque claims is possible
I appreciate what you are saying, but it cannot be denied that the death rate for Soviets in German camps was far, far HIGHER than for German PoWs in Soviet camps.And for Russian prisoners, the ones I saw I felt sorry for, by the same token a few times I saw what happened to my comrades taken by Ivan. We did not strangle them with barbed wire or booby trap their wounded as was done to us.
I think it is grossly unfair, inaccurate, and actually quite distasteful to compare a WWII Luftwaffe, RAF or USAF bomber pilot with a modern day Islamic fundamentalist suicide bomber.Like the hatred we have for a suicide bomber. A guy where I think the only difference between him and a bomber pilot is, with the former it is a one shot deal and the latter after dropping his bomb it's mission accomplished and home to a meal and comfortable quarters and the good fortune not having to see the faces of his victims.
Best of luck at the card table Gerhard, I wish you well.I am about to move back to the apartment with the former Lancaster pilot and the liberator of Caen, am I ever going to get my revenge during our weekly card games.
Yes I have - you've just missed my answer enitely. My position is quite simple, and comes in two partsI hate to be a stickler but you have, rather unsurprisingly, still not answered my main points on Bacque and the PoWs
Which is a VERY strange comment to make on your part, Andre, when if you set JCS 1067...and any of the several drafts of the Morgenthau Plan side by side....ALL the elements of the Morgenthau Plan are actually included within JCS1067 and in MUCH greater detail than the hi-level documents Henry Morgenthau first drew up. It was the Morgentau Plan AND MORE.Undeniably JCS 1067 derived some of it’s thinking from Morgenthau – but it was clearly not the Morgenthau Plan.
That's strange, you must have a problem with reading, Andre, because I have TWICE been VERY clear in saying that the U.S. did not plan genocide in post-war Germany, but rather planned a policy of economic resturcturing via the destruction of her industrial base that they knew would cause the deaths of 40% of the german people in the longer term, and that would require a reduction in the population in the medium and short term. I did NOT say that they planned genocide, but said that they planned and adopted and agreed with the other Allies policies that would have this effect by default - the "wilful negligence" element - AND I showed that many U.S. and British policymakers apart from Roosevelt and Morgenthau...people like Henry Stimson, Cordell Hull, and even Winston Churchill...knew what these policies would lead to.You have claimed to have presented enough evidence to prove that Britain and the US planned and implemented a genocide in post-war Germany
Strange. I wasn't providing evidence for a second holocaust having taken place. I was providing evidence for a governmental policy having been drawn up that all parties knew would cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Germans - future tense when the policy was established and agreed by ALL the Allies. As I said, policy comes down from above...you have presented no verifiable evidence whatsoever for this
Ah yes, the "critical food shortage"....So critical that American soildiers occupying Germany could and did continue to enjoy a calorie intake 3.5 times higher than ethnic Germans.... SO critical that populations displaced by the Germans an in transit camps could be supplied with a calorie intake twice that of ethnic Germans and POWS....and yes, you must be referring to that "critical and continuing food shortage" that SHAEF and OMGUS said was responsible for the low calorie intake still being supplied through 1946 into 1947 - in fact actually reducing further over that period from an average of 1500 to an average of 1050 calories per adult per day - WHEN THE REST OF EUROPE HAD RETURNED BY MID-1947 TO THE CALORIE INTAKE LEVELS IT HAD ENJOYED BEFORE 1939??? Medical facilities? I take it you're referring to the German wartime medical facilities under the German Red Cross that SHAEF intentionally closed down on June 5th, 1945?In all your posts you have not mentioned once, any (not even a single one) of the horrific difficulties faced by the Western Allies once hostilities came to an end. You don’t mention the critical food shortage, the total collapse of the German economy and food production, the lack of transportation, housing, medical facilities, and transportation, or the immense logistical problems the millions of refugees, DPs and freed slave labourers fleeing from the East.
Nope. Singular - one. And on the occasion of this being repeated by FDR he is recorded as being in deadly earnest.some of which you have stated were intended as jokes
Andre - unfortunately it IS legitimate. As of that date, an Occupying Powers the Allies were totally responsible for the adequate feeding and medical requirements of any citizens of any occupied territory under the Hague Convention. And in those days 2000 calories a day was thought the minimum "adequate" level.It is not a legitimate argument to simply state that the fate of every single German was the sole responsibility of the Allies after midnight on May 8th 1945.
No, the consequences didn't, of course...but the responsibility for dealing with them "adequately" became the Allies by default on that date, and legally on June 5th when they declared themsleves the government of Germany.Consequences that didn’t suddenly become null and void on May 8th 1945.
Andre, they were sold down the river by the Nazis into Roosevelt's, Chruchill's, Stalin's, and De Gaulle's arms. Slight but important difference in wording.The German people were sold down the river by the Nazi’s Phylo, not Churchill and Roosevelt.
Because you decree it so? Unfortunately that's not how it works, or how it did work in 1945. The Allies failed to respect their legal obligations to the conquered German people, AND instituted a series of policies that all parties knew were going to lead to starvation and death from disease. NOT just the inadequate feeding and the intetionally-witheld medical care...but also the long-term destruction of German industry that would be needed to support them.Hitler and the Nazi’s must take the lions share of the blame in what happened to it’s civilians in the immediate aftermath of the war.
Andre, three times in recent pages I asked both you and Michael to stop concentrating JUST on POWs, but to take on board the fact that German civilians also suffered and died. After each request you both had a chance to say something about German civilians but neither of you did. You continued to discuss the non-parity of treatment POWs and ignore both the comments made to you AND McDonogh's contention that POWs AND civilians suffered. On a matter as emotive as all this you were given these several occasions to take on board the suffering of ethnic Germans as a whole - given that that was what McDonogh was writing about - not just those in the remains of ragged uniforms in POW cages, but you saw fit not to. Each absence of consideration for civilians is evident in the pages above - when instead the two of you returned to the matter of Soviet POWs without any recognition for the suffering of German civilians alongside POWS.Yet again you are claiming something I have never stated or even inferred. Just because I have pressed you on PoW deaths, why does that make me not care about civilians? It is a dishonest tactic which you have adopted throughout this debate and it must stop. I will pull you up on it every time you employ it and challenge you to back up your accusations.
Hmm. Stating its revisionist claptrap doesn't make it so...It is revisionist claptrap
