U.S. (and French) abuse of German PoWs, 1945-1948

file added 20040121
Latest minor change 2008/1221

Copyright © 2004 by Hugo S. Cunningham

Overview

Source:
edited by Günter Bischof and Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower and the German PoWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London, 1992; cloth, 258 pp.

1. Hunger and excess deaths of German PoWs

2. James Bacque's worst charges rebutted by Bischof, Ambrose, et al.

Appendices: Sources

1 . Hunger and excess deaths of German PoWs

2. James Bacque's worst charges rebutted by Bischof, Ambrose, et al.

(Closing note) So how wicked was this mistreatment of German PoWs?

Appendix: Sources

On 2004/02, I found a summary of Bischof and Ambrose's refutation of Bacque posted on the web at URL:
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/b/bacque-james/ambrose-001.html

Some sources cited by Bischof and Ambrose

The table of contents of Bischof and Ambrose's collection of essays:

Table of contents copyright (c) 1992 by Lousiana State University Press.

Sectiontitleauthorpage number
Introduction Günter Bischof and Stephen E. Ambrose1
IThe United States and the German PoWs
Eisenhower and the Germans Stephen E. Ambrose29
The Diplomatic and Political Context of the PoW Camps TragedyBrian Loring Villa52
A Question of Numbers Albert E. Cowdrey78
IIGermany in 1945 and German POW Historiography
Food Shortages in Germany and Europe, 1945-1948 James F. Tent95
German Historiography, the War Losses, and the Prisoners of War Rüdiger Overmans127
Some Reflections on the Maschke Commission Rolf Steininger170
IIIConspiratorial History
A British Variety of Pseudohistory
HSC note: Analogy to Bacque's attack on Eisenhower? Nikolai Dmitrievich Tolstoy-Miloslavsky (aka Count Nikolai Tolstoy), in The Minister and the Massacres (1986), exaggerated the guilt in "Operation Keelhaul" of Brigadier A. R. W. "Toby" Low (later Lord Aldington), General Sir Charles Keightley, and Harold Macmillan. ("Operation Keelhaul" was the forcible deportation of Slavic DPs and PoWs to Communist territory.)
Low/Aldington successfully sued Tolstoy for libel in a British court (1989), not defending "Operation Keelhaul," but disputing that it was a secretive plot by Macmillan, Keightley, and himself. Some on the Right still dispute the verdict, noting that British courts are far more accommodating to libel plaintiffs than US courts.
Thomas M. Barker183
Bacque and Historical Evidence Günter Bischof199
Appendices
AReport on the Food Situation in Western Germany, 1945 (Official report to SHAEF)235
BVolumes of the Maschke Commission [reports] 241

Footnotes

(incomplete)

"BA" ("Bischof and Ambrose") refers to:
edited by Günter Bischof and Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower and the German PoWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London, 1992; cloth, 258 pp.

p-1: BA, pp. 5, 145.

p-2: BA, p. 92.

p-3: BA, p. 155.

p-4: BA, p. 19.

p-5: BA, p. 18.

p-6: BA, p. 19.

p-7:
See, for example,
Van der Zee, Henri A. (Antony), The Hunger Winter: Occupied Holland 1944-1945, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln NE and London (UK), 1998.
The worst of the famine was in the densely populated coastal area around Amsterdam (about 4 million inhabitants), as declining Nazi military fortunes (and Nazi indifference) cut the urban Dutch off from agricultural areas in eastern Netherlands. According to Van der Zee (p. 304), the famine winter of 1945 saw an increase in the death rate from 1944's normal 10 per 1000 to 15.3 per 1000, meaning 18,000 excess deaths.

Further information:

On 2008/1221, I noticed extensive references in a Wikipedia article about "disarmed enemy forces.":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disarmed_Enemy_Forces


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