Engineered Famine
Steven Ambrose attributed the critical food situation in postwar Germany to a worldwide food shortage. Yet he quotes President Truman’s Secretary of Agriculture, Clinton P. Anderson, as saying, “Fortunately for this country and for the world American farmers produced record crops of both wheat and corn again in 1946.” Senator Eastland of Mississippi testified before the Senate, “We have surplus foods in this country, but there is no effort made to send the food abroad, where it is so urgently needed. I know that the control commission is withholding food at this time.” Robert Dallek attributed the fact that Europe was on the verge of total collapse in 1947 to "droughts, unprecedented cold and crop failures." Undoubtedly the world food situation and the chaotic economic situation in postwar Europe contributed to the deplorable shortage of food. However, these problems were not the entire reason for the critical food shortage. American and British occupation policies also had a considerable impact on the famine conditions that existed in Europe following the Second World War. Could this possibly be an example of an engineered famine? Senator Eastland concluded, “There is mass starvation, and, solely as a result of the policies of our Government, women and helpless little babies are starving.”
In January 1946 34 U.S. senators petitioned that private relief organizations be allowed to help Germany and Austria. They stated that the desperate food situation in occupied Germany "presents a picture of such frightful horror as to stagger the imagination, evidence which increasingly marks the United States as an accomplice in a terrible crime against humanity."
In 1947 President Truman enlisted former president Herbert Hoover, who had a long history in relief operations, to assist in trying to solve the crisis in Germany. Not everyone appreciated his assistance. Charles P. Kindleberger, Chief of the Division of economic Affairs of Germany and Austria, told a colleague, “We were trying to feed Germany. We were trying very hard to feed Germany. We didn't want any help from Mr. Hoover or from his admirers like Tracy Voorhees.” Apparently Kindleberger believed he was doing such a great job that he did not need any help. His major concern was to increase coal production. He talked about extra rations for coal miners and “how do you prevent them from taking them home to their families.”
In June General Clay raised the ration to 1,330 calories per day. However, the reduced ration had already taken its toll. In August the USFET [US Forces, European Theater] Chief Surgeon, Maj. Gen. Morrison C. Stayer, reported that nutritional survey teams had found that 60 percent of the Germans were living on a diet that would inevitably lead to diseases caused by malnutrition. Surveys, he said, already showed vitamin deficiencies and weight loss in both adults and children. Because the issued ration, which varied downward from 1,150 calories per day, was not enough to sustain life, Stayer recommended raising the ration to 2,000 calories per day. Health checks, such as the one in Mannheim revealed that 60 percent of the infants showed signs of rickets, and showed increasing evidence of malnutrition among the city populations. Victor Gollancz claimed, “tuberculosis … is increasing hideously, and that unless decisive measures are taken there will be such a plague of deaths from this cause in a few years' time as will shock the conscience of what is called the civilized world.”
Senator Langer quotes a report by the German Central Administration for Health which gave an Infant mortality of 90 percent. Earlier in the fall, when General Eisenhower was touring the American zone, he stopped at the blasted city of Mannheim and looked into the cellars and rubble-built shelters in which people were living. When his medical officers told him that six hundred out of every thousand children born in Mannheim would die before they were three months old he was shocked and was said to have remarked, "My God, has it come to this?"
It is not surprising to learn that in the United States sector of Berlin in the first quarter of 1947 the death rate [28.5] was almost three times as high as the birth rate, 10.7 per 1000 population per annum, and that infant mortality soared from 70.9 in the third quarter of 1946 to 116.2 in the first quarter of 1947 [it had already been 135.4 in the second quarter of 1946].
Bacque commented on army warehouses in Europe containing 13,500,000 high protein Red Cross food parcels taken over from the ICRC in May, but never distributed. He stated that in November 1945, the Army was still wondering what to do with them. He stated that so much food was confiscated that Max Huber of the International Red Cross complained about it in August 1945 in a letter to the U.S. State Department. Col. Stanley Andrews, an agricultural officer with the American Military Government, commented on “several hundred thousand tons of U.S. and Canadian grain stored in France” which were not being distributed.
The British were draining the barrel at home to supply their zone, where the deficit in food was in the millions of tons. Even the French were screaming that they were in trouble, especially in their zone in Berlin — yet there existed several hundred thousand tons of U.S. and Canadian grain in France upon which to draw.
Senator Kenneth Wherry complained that, "The truth is that there are thousands upon thousands of tons of military rations in our surplus stock piles that have been spoiling right in the midst of starving populations." Steven Ambrose quoted James Tent of the University of Alabama who claimed that this food was stockpiled in warehouses because of fear of famine in the winter of 1945-46. He claimed that, "Even with the reserve, they barely got through the winter."
German POWs suffered grievously, but so did German civilians, especially babies, during the severe food shortages of 1945 to 1947. Here seven German infants picked at random from sixty such cases at the Catholic Children's hospital in Berlin show malnutrition in various stages. October 25, 1947National Archives photo no. 111-SC-292762
Military Government border control also played a role in contributing to the famine conditions. Col Stanley Andrews relates how in the summer of 1945 nothing passed through the Italian-Austrian border without “the most elaborate set of permits.” In mid-July he learned that an estimated 300,000 head of sheep moving toward the Austrian border had been stopped at the border. “The dry grass and even water on the Italian side was soon gone and here were sheep likely to die of starvation. Some shepherd families had passbooks showing that some member of that family had moved sheep into Austria each summer for centuries. Nevertheless, under the allied rule these passbooks were useless and considerable chaos among sheep and people was rapidly developing.”
All of the occupation policies can be rationalized to one extent or another. However, there is one policy that cannot be justified under any circumstance. It is alluded to by General Clay, "Hunger was to be seen everywhere and even the refuse pails from our messes, from which everything of value had been removed, were gone over time and time again in a search for the last scrap of nourishment." The question is, who removed "everything of value" from the refuse pails? Was it removed by the starving or was it removed by military personnel in order to keep it out of the hands of those starving individuals? Giles MacDonogh claims, “It was American policy that nothing should be given away and everything should be thrown away.” He states that when the Americans discovered that someone had raided their refuse they “were more careful after that.” Charles Lindbergh recorded, "German children look in through the window. We have more food than we need, but regulations prevent giving it to them. I feel ashamed of myself, of my people, as I eat and watch those children. They are not to blame for the war. They are hungry children. What right have we to stuff ourselves while they look on - well-fed men eating, leaving unwanted food on plates, while hungry children look on. What right have we to damn the Nazi and the Jap while we carry on with such callousness and hatred in our hearts.”
It was not only the military that was well fed. James L. Payne reported that German taxpayers were paying for “one ton of water bugs to feed a U.S. general’s pet fish.” While there is no written record of an order prohibiting the feeding of Germans the policy is often alluded to. Col. Francis Miller, an intelligence officer serving in Berlin, records his meeting with an old acquaintance. This man weighed over two hundred pounds. When Miller met him next he weighed less than one hundred pounds. Miller recorded, “Against orders, I supplied him with some nourishing food.”
The results of Morgenthau's proposed occupation policies were foreseen long before they were put into practice. An early State Department memo of September 1, 1944 concluded, "Germany is a deficit country in foodstuffs, and it is doubtful if a plan of making Germany predominantly agricultural can be put into effect without the liquidation or emigration of x millions of Germans." Three years later, Herbert Hoover reported, "There is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a 'pastoral state.' It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it." Occupation forces did make some provisions for the impending disaster. Victor Gollancz quoted Norman Clark of the News Chronicle writing on September 10th:
Allied public health authorities are ordering burgomasters to take measures ensuring the easy burial of the dead in the winter. Graves are to be dug now which men debilitated by weeks of under-nourishment will not have the strength to dig in a few months' time . . . Coffins will have to be dispensed with, what wood is available being needed for fuel.
In October 1945 General Clay refused to permit a barter deal for Czech sugar, because the Allied Control Council required all sales in currency. At the time he did this he considered it unwise to bring up the food question until reports of German privations had convinced the American people that additional food should be given to Germans. There was also an Office of Military Government rule that all exports from Germany must be paid for in dollars. Peterson related the case of the Dutch, who were short of dollars, and who were driven to the expedient in 1947 of destroying the vegetables they were long accustomed to sell to the Ruhr and Rhineland. As late as February 1948 Swedish fishermen were either destroying their catch or working only two days a week, because the Military Government would not allow them to barter with their German customers. Nicholas Balabkins listed several products that were not available under the Military Government’s rules:
Neither the Italians nor the Dutch could sell the vegetables that they had previously sold in Germany, with the consequence that the Dutch had to destroy considerable proportions of their crop. Denmark offered 150 tons of lard a month; Turkey offered hazelnuts; Norway offered fish and fish oil; Sweden offered considerable amounts of fats. However, the Allies disallowed the Germans to trade.
Col. Stanley Andrews, related how, “In Scandinavia, tons of fish were being transformed into cow feed and fish meal because the normal markets for fish had not been allowed yet to open in Germany.
In order to insure the equitable distribution of food the Military Government created Control Council Law No. 50 of March 20, 1947. This law threatened those involved in the unlawful use of foodstuffs and rationed goods with hard labor for life. W. Friedmann declared that this law would be, "flouted daily, as long as the struggle for survival drives people into the black market." Friedmann commented, "The situation has deteriorated so much that the struggle for sheer survival is stronger than the fear of punishment."
Peterson estimated the cost of these often contradictory occupation policies to be 1.5 billion dollars for food relief alone for the first three years. John Backer concluded that the grand total of all GARIOA [Government and Relief in Occupied Areas] expenditures in Germany was $1.52 billion. Herbert Hoover estimated that the United States and Britain were contributing nearly $600,000,000 a year to prevent starvation of the Germans in the American and British zones alone. John Gimble reported:
Allied public health authorities are ordering burgomasters to take measures ensuring the easy burial of the dead in the winter. Graves are to be dug now which men debilitated by weeks of under-nourishment will not have the strength to dig in a few months' time . . . Coffins will have to be dispensed with, what wood is available being needed for fuel.
Field Marshall Montgomery described the dilemma facing the occupation authorities in a Memo to the Prime Minister on May 2, 1946. In it he stated, "We must decide whether we are going to feed the Germans, or let them starve." He believed that "we must not let them starve." However, he pointed out, "It does not look at present as if we can increase the ration beyond the present rate of 1042 calories; this means we are going to let them starve: gradually." W. Friedmann commented on the consequences of the Western rationing policies:
Extermination need not proceed dramatically, through gas chambers and mass executions; it can be no less effective through the gradual sapping of vitality. This, then, is one method of settling the German problem for all times. It would be degrading to prove that this is not and cannot be allied policy. Yet, the Germans are increasingly convinced that it is.
The Germans were not the only ones who believed that this was American policy. Senator William Langer gave a speech in March 1946 stating:
...among the crimes with which this (Nazi) leadership has been charged (at Nuremberg) is the crime of systematic and mass starvation of racial or political minorities or opponents.... Yet to our utter horror, we discover that our own policies have merely spread those same conditions...I hold in my hands absolutely authentic photographs which have been taken at the beginning of the winter in the city of Berlin. These photographs are interchangeable for horror with the photographs with which we became familiar from Dachau, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, and other extermination camps. These are photographs of children between the ages of 5 and l4...
On February 5, 1946 Senator Homer E. Capehart of Indiana addressed the Senate:
For nine months now this administration has been carrying on a deliberate policy of mass starvation without any distinction between the innocent and the helpless and guilty alike. Those who have been responsible for this deliberate destruction of the German state and this criminal mass starvation of the German people have been so zealous in their hatred that all other interests and concerns have been subordinated to this one obsession of revenge. In order to accomplish this it mattered not if the liberated countries in Europe suffered and starved. To this point this clique of conspirators have addressed themselves: ‘Germany is to be destroyed. What happens to other countries of Europe in the process is of secondary importance.’
On May 27, 1947 William Clayton sent a memo to Under Secretary Dean Acheson stating "millions of people in the cities are slowly starving." American attitudes gradually began to change. This was illustrated by General Frank Howley in his book Berlin Command. Howley arrived in Berlin on July 1, 1945 as the head of the military government detachment. He recorded, “We went to Berlin in 1945, thinking only of the Russians as big, jolly, balalaika-playing fellows, who drank prodigious quantities of vodka and liked to wrestle in the drawing room. We know now—or should know—that we were hopelessly naive. ”
Howley relates a story about a hunting trip in Barbizon, France prior to his assignment to Berlin. In December a wild sow was shot. She had two “little ones.” A “softhearted G.I.” picked them up and brought them to him and he decided to keep them as mascots. They named them the Smith Brothers although one of them was female. “They were fed with milk, from bottles with nipples, and proved a good morale factor.” They were carried to Berlin where they lived for two years in a converted garage. They eventually grew to three feet high.
One day the Sergeant in charge of the pigs heard a “frightful squealing.” He found a German clubbing the sow. Attempts to revive her failed and she passed away and was buried “with military honors.” After this “tragedy” the other pig became uncontrollable and was reluctantly barbecued. This is a very touching story. However, it should be pointed out that infants were dying of starvation not to far from where a pig was buried at the Colonels headquarters. Howley was promoted to Commandant of the Berlin garrison on December 1, 1947 and Brigadier General in March, 1949. He departed Berlin in August 1949. He took his duties seriously and endeared himself to the Berliners. They name a street after him in gratitude.
Richard Dominic Wiggers contends that, “The ensuing famine continued for nearly three years, but the few scholars who have examined the issue have concluded that the German famine was simply a tragic by-product of world-wide food shortages.” Senator Langer commented on this coverup as early as 1946:
The American press has recently carried several inspired stories to the effect that there is no starvation in the American zone, citing the findings of five Army boards of nutritional experts, along with Mrs. Roosevelt’s 3-hour whirlwind observations made in Berlin. These stories, however, are nothing but the rankest kind of face-saving hypocrisies.
Langer reported that reports of famine were suppressed because, “The whole ghastly story of the frightful consequences of the vicious Morgenthau plan which this report would expose would incriminate many of this administration’s advisers and confidants as murderous peace criminals.” Ibid., p.38 He asserted, “America has become an accomplice in one of the most staggering crimes ever committed against humanity.”
Western policy gradually began to change. This was not an entirely humanitarian decision. Increased tension with the Soviet caused the leaders to realize that the Germans could be a great asset. They no longer deplored their militarism. General Clay remarked, "there is no choice between becoming a Communist on 1500 calories and a believer in democracy on 1000 calories. It is my sincere belief that our proposed ration allowance in Germany will not only defeat our objectives in middle Europe but will pave the road to a Communist Germany."
Strategic Bombing
During his 4:00 P.M. hour long meeting with the President, Morgenthau was told, "I have asked you to come up so that you could talk to 'the Prof [Lord Cherwell].'" The "Prof" was Friedrich A. Lindemann, "Churchill's most trusted adviser and intellectual support over many years." In 1942 Lindemann wrote a paper on the strategic bombing of Germany which might be called the Lindemann Plan. According to C.P. Snow,
It described in quantitative terms, the effect on Germany of a British bombing offensive in the next 18 months [approximately March 1942 - September 1943]. The paper laid down a strategic policy. The bombing must be directed essentially against German working-class houses. Middle-class houses have too much space round them, and so are bound to waste bombs; factories and "military objectives," had long since been forgotten, except in official bulletins, since they were much too difficult to find and hit. The paper claimed that - given a total concentration of effort on the production and use of bombing aircraft - it would be possible, in all the larger towns of Germany [that is, those with more than 50,000 inhabitants], to destroy 50 per cent of all houses.
A survey of the results of this plan in the Ruhr area showed that of "1,200,000 houses, 400,000 were destroyed, 320,000 were more or less badly damaged but repairable, 260,000 were slightly damaged, and only 220,000 undamaged." Victor Gollancz reported, “Of the 5.500.000 pre-war dwelling units in the British zone 1.600.000 were totally destroyed or irreparably damaged, and another 1.400.000 damaged but capable of repair; in the British sector of Berlin only 27.966 were undamaged out of a total of 298.477. At the same time, “Studies showed that German industries and facilities were largely intact and that production could have been restored quickly.” 80-85 per cent of the machinery and plant survived intact. This might indicate that the bombing offensive was more concentrated on the civilian population rather than on industry. In other words it was a genocidal plan directed at women and children.
The effort to target women and children is reinforced by the orders given to fighter pilot to strafe fleeing refugees. General Chuck Yeager writes in this autobiography, “We were ordered to commit an atrocity. If it occurred to anyone to refuse to participate (nobody refused, as I recall) that person would have probably been court-martialed. I remember sitting next to (Major Donald H. Bochkay) Bochkay at the briefing and whispering to him: ‘If we’re gonna do things like this, we sure as hell better make sure we’re on the winning side.’” He concluded, “I’m certainly not proud of that particular strafing mission against civilians. But it is there, on the record and in my memory."
The number of fatalities caused by the bombing is a matter of controversy. Naturally there are those who would like to minimize the number along with those who would like to exaggerate the number for their various political purposes. There is even disagreement on the number of tons dropped. Claudia Baldoli and Andrew Knapp have concluded. “It took the Luftwaffe approximately 1.2 tons of bombs to kill a British civilian. The Allies were noticeably less efficient against the Reich: it required 3.4 tons to kill a German.” They base their conclusions on the generally accepted numbers of tons dropped and numbers of fatalities. Could these generally accepted numbers be accurate? Considering that the RAF targeted working class neighborhoods and successfully created firestorms in at least four German cities, it would not be unreasonable to question these numbers.
Enforced (Slave) Labor
Perhaps it would be best to conclude any discussion of the use of "forced labor" at this point. However, on close inspection, events following the conclusion of hostilities do not appear to conform to the stated U.S. policy. This subject is extremely difficult for defenders of President Roosevelt's postwar policies to explain. The most effective defense is to omit any reference to enforced/slave labor. When the subject does arise the euphemism, "forced labor," is used for what was clearly slave labor. In closed meetings the use of the term “slave labor” was used. In a March 6, 1945 British Cabinet meeting a value of $16 billion was “assigned for the 4 million slave labour” claimed by the Russians. Secretary of State Byrnes, while admitting that slave labor was abhorrent, attempted to minimize its impact by suggesting that the number of persons enslaved numbered in the thousands.
In 1947 his Ministry of Agriculture argued against rapid repatriation of German prisoners, because they made up 25 percent of the agricultural workforce, and they wanted to use them also in 1948. The U.S. government had similar views. According to Noam Chomsky, “Truman delayed repatriation for 60 days for POWs essential for the harvest.”
American representatives not only condoned the use of slave labor by their allies but also provided them with a large number of prisoners for that purpose. Stephen E. Ambrose provided a simple explanation for this transfer of prisoners of war: "What happened is simple enough: the Allies could not afford to feed the millions of German prisoners at the same level at which they were able to feed German civilians, not to mention the civilians of the liberated countries of Western Europe." Secretary of State Byrnes gave a similar explanation. "In the closing days of the war against Germany we took so many prisoners it was difficult to care for them behind the lines, and guarding them required so many troops that General Eisenhower decided to transfer many of them to the custody of the liberated nations. But these prisoners surrendered to the United States Army and we therefore retained responsibility." These POWs could not be cared for properly so they were transferred for humanitarian reasons. This is not believable.
Had Eisenhower been a German general who handed over hundreds of thousands of Allied prisoners to a non signatory of the Geneva Convention he would likely have found himself seated next to the other defendants at the Nuremberg trials. The New York Times reported that thousands of prisoners were transferred to Soviet authorities. 6,000 German officers were sent from the West to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp run by the NKVD. Researchers say about 12,000 inmates died in Sachsenhausen between 1945 and 1950, when the prison was closed. A mass grave from the Soviet period was discovered in 1990.
Conditions under which prisoners were held varied greatly. The British held their prisoners under relatively benign conditions, perhaps with the view that these experienced troops might be needed one day. In spite of earlier thoughts that the British would not require laborers they apparently had a change of heart. According to Field Marshal Montgomery, "the British Government required 225,000 Germans as reparations labour for the United Kingdom." According to Earl Ziemke U.S. forces were using over half a million prisoners in Military Labor Service Units. In fact all Germans between the ages of 14 to 65 were subject to involuntary servitude under Allied Control Law No. 3 of February 17, 1946.
Peterson gave a 75 percent mortality rate for captives of the Soviets: "Deaths during captivity presumably accounted for 75 percent of the prisoners; out of 60,000 Italians known captured only 12,500 returned. . . . they had probably taken a large number of civilians, including women; of one such group of 1,300 German women, 800 died in two years [Manchester Guardian, 31 July 1947].” S. P. MacKencie reported, “Of the 594,000 Japanese troops captured by the Soviet Union in Manchuria in the last week of the war, 300,000 remained unaccounted for in the 1970s.” According to Alfred de Zayas of the 874,000 German civilians abducted to the Soviet Union, 45% perished.
Bacque quoted a former POW named G. Kurtz who reported: "I survived Stalingrad, the exhausting marches, I even survived the death camp of Beketovka, where in a couple of weeks, of my 55,000 comrades, 42,000 died from hunger and disease." This resulted in a mortality rate of 76 percent in a matter of weeks. Germany's allies did not fair any better. Nikolai Tolstoy reported that, "About 320,000 Romanian soldiers had been taken prisoner [about 130,000 of whom were captured after hostilities ceased]. In addition to these were 100,000 more who had been recruited into the Hungarian Army. Of this total of 420,000, less than half [190,000] ever returned home."
The French government requested 1,700,000 prisoners of war to be used as "enforced laborers." In July 1945 SHAEF agreed to provide 1.3 million prisoners for labor in France. There are conflicting reports on how many prisoners were actually delivered to the French. A State Department memo from the Secretary of State to the U.S. Ambassador in France dated February 25, 1947 mentions 740,000 prisoners transferred to France in July 1945. The memo states that 290,000 of these prisoners have been “stricken off the rolls” [“rayes des controles”] and expressed a desire for a breakdown of what happened to these prisoners. Yet on March 13, 1947 the American Ambassador to France relayed a message stating that the French had 630,000 prisoners “at the present time.” The memo did not address the missing 290,000 prisoners. It stated “in addition to the 450,000 transferred by the United States, 180,000 were captured by the French forces.” Bacque stated that primarily between July - September 1945, "The Americans granted them [the French] around 800,000 [POWs], the British some 55,000." In 1947 the War Department informed Senator Knowland that the United States Army had transferred a total of 600,000 prisoners to the French. Eugene Davidson gave a figure of 440,000.
The fate of these prisoners was foreseen by General Patton who wrote in his diary, "I am also opposed to sending PW's to work as slaves in foreign lands [in particular, to France] where many will be starved to death." General Patton commented that, "It is amusing to recall that we fought the Revolution in defense of the rights of man and the Civil War to abolish slavery and have now gone back on both principles."
Problems began to arise almost immediately after the cessation of hostilities about the health of these prisoners of war. Dr. Ernest F. Fisher Jr., a senior historian with the United States Army Center for Military History, claimed that, "Starting in April 1945, the United States Army and the French army casually annihilated about one million men, most of them in American camps." Conditions in the camps threatened to become a public scandal and French officials began to blame the Americans for these conditions while American officials began to blame the French. The literature contains several references to the harsh conditions in French camps. Eugene Davidson wrote, "The French were getting thousands of Germans from American POW camps, and these men were treated in such a fashion that American officers compared them with the emaciated inmates the Allies had liberated from Dachau."
Bacque quoted a letter to the American Red Cross Headquarters in Washington by Henry W. Dunning of the prisoners of war department of the American Red Cross:
Bacque related the situation in the Labouheyre work camp where, " . . . 25 percent of the men died in January, of starvation, dysentery or disease. The dysentery was so bad that the French came down with it." He also mentioned two camps that were notorious to the Red Cross, "La Chauvinerie and Montreuil-Bellay, where in September 1945, there were thousands of women and children who had been originally imprisoned by the Americans. The ICRC complained to the French that these old men, women and children were dying of typhus that would soon spread to the surrounding French civilians."
The condition of these prisoners was becoming impossible to conceal from the press. In September 1945 Serge Bromberger wrote in Le Figaro:
The most serious source confirmed that the physical state of the prisoners was worse then deplorable. People were talking about a horrifying death rate, not from sickness but starvation, and of men who weighed an average 35-45 kilos [80 - 100 lbs]. At first we doubted the truth of all this, but appeals came to us from many sources and we could not disregard the testimony of Father le Meur, Assistant General Chaplain to the prisoners.
Bromberger interviewed French General Louis Buisson, in charge of the French camps, who admitted that the prisoners got only 900 to 1,000 calories per day. Bacque stated, "Circumspectly, he [Buisson] referred to the Americans only as the source of prisoners transferred to French custody, leaving the cause of the condition implied."
While the French press was suggesting that the condition of the POWs was the responsibility of the Americans, the American press was suggesting that it was the result of French treatment. Drew Middleton of the New York Times reported that the French had stolen food from the prisoners and that the U.S. Army had turned over "large stocks of army rations" to the prisoners, "because General Eisenhower and his senior staff officers feel strongly that the United States Army is obligated to watch over the welfare of the prisoners that it captured." The Times reported that one source compared the photographs of prisoners in French camps to photographs taken at Dachau. Dorothy Thompson wrote,
That country [France], with our consent and connivance, and in defiance of the Geneva Convention, has been employing [prisoners] as slave labor under the same definition of slave labor as that used against Herr Sauckel in Nuremberg. Few care to recall that President Roosevelt gave a specific pledge to the German people in September 1944: 'The Allies do not traffic in human slavery.' Do only a handful of people see that if, having defeated Germany, we accept for ourselves Hitler's standards and Hitler's methods, Hitler has conquered?
Eugene Davidson also commented on reports of mistreatment and that the American Red Cross found the prisoners improperly treated. "The New York Herald Tribune reported 12 October that the French were starving their POWs; Americans compared their emaciation to that of those liberated from Dachau." In October French journalist Jacques Fauvet wrote in Le Monde about conditions in the French camps. He reported a death rate exceeding 21% and stated, "As one speaks today of Dachau, in ten years people throughout the world will speak about camps like Saint Paul D'Eyjeaux". All this negative publicity led to the apparent termination of POW deliveries to the French. In March 1946 Senator William Langer reported to the Senate: "On 12 October 1945, the United States Army officials stopped turning over German prisoners to the French after the International Red Cross charged the French with failing to provide sufficient food for German prisoners in French camps . . . General Louis Buisson, Director of the War Prisons, said that food rations were 'just enough to allow men to lie down, not move, and not die too quickly.'" Langer concluded, "In spite of the certain fate awaiting German prisoners of war in French hands, this government continues to be a party to sentencing German prisoners of war to starvation in continued violation of the articles of the Geneva Convention." Edward N. Peterson commented that, "About one-third [of the million prisoners promised to the French] had been delivered when Clay in September [1945] discovered the French were not complying with the Geneva Convention. General W.B. Smith showed Eisenhower photographs of emaciated PWs, who were being used as slave labor; the United States turned over none after 1 October." Eugene Davidson reported that, "The Americans, appalled at the state of a portion of the 440,000 men they had turned over to the French, negotiated for their return." However, the termination of these transfers was more apparent than real. As Bacque states, "The army had pretended to stop delivering German slaves to the French, but in fact they continued. More than a hundred thousand were delivered after the ban was announced. Some Germans who had already been discharged by General Mark Clark in Austria were seized again and sent to France."
Almost immediately after the publicly announced termination of these transfers a new agreement was worked out for their resumption. According to Eugene Davidson, "In October [1945] an arrangement was announced by which 350,000 more German prisoners of war were to be turned over to the French at the rate of 50,000 a month to help the French reconstruction. 90,000 prisoners were to be returned by the French to the American authorities because of the poor physical condition." Davidson added "it would not be long before many of the healthy prisoners of war going to France would be in the state of the 90,000." Earl F. Ziemke reported that, "During January [1946], USFET discharged almost a hundred thousand prisoners of war but, at the end of the month, having secured assurances the prisoners would be adequately cared for, resumed prisoner of war transfers to the French." There will in all likelihood never be an accurate accounting of the number of prisoners who perished in these camps. Bacque concludes that "not more than 314,241 and no fewer than 167,000 men died in French captivity between 1945 and 1948."
Could U.S. military authorities have been unaware of the fate of these prisoners from the very beginning? Certainly General Patton foresaw their predicament even before the transfers took place. Why did General Clay "discover" that the French were not adhering to the Geneva Convention when he should have known that the Geneva Convention did not apply to "Disarmed Enemy Forces?" These transfers were in themselves a violation of the Geneva Convention. Did prisoners of war fair much better in U.S. run camps? Is there any basis for Colonel Ernest Fisher's charge that most of the missing prisoners of war perished in U.S. camps?
General Eisenhower had clearly demonstrated that he was willing to violate the Geneva Convention by turning over prisoners to the Soviets as a "gesture of friendship." and his agreement to reclassify prisoners as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" not subject to the Geneva Convention. U.S. forces refused to accept the surrender of German troops in Saxony and Bohemia, and instead handed them over to the Soviet Union. Could General Eisenhower have agreed to and even encouraged other violations of the Convention?
James Bacque makes a strong case that he did. There is evidence that the U.S. Army was following policies similar to the French. There were complaints from the French that up to 25 percent of the prisoners they received were "dechets," or garbage. Of course any violation of the Geneva Convention had to be kept secret. As Bacque pointed out, General Everett S. Huges, Eisenhower's Special Assistant, advised Eisenhower "not to issue any orders about feeding POWs and issue of liquor." Hughes passed the message about the need for secrecy down the line to a subordinate officer in Europe on Friday, November 24. "You shouldn't put yours or your staff's views about POW rations on paper."
Bacque pointed out, "As soon as Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, the American Military Governor, General Eisenhower, sent out an 'urgent courier' throughout the huge area that he commanded, making it a crime punishable by death for German civilians to feed prisoners." Bacque reproduced a copy of this announcement, dated May 9, 1945 and quoted one U.S. Army officer as saying that it was "the intention of Army command regarding the German POW camps in the U.S. Zone from May 1945 through the end of 1947 to exterminate as many POWs as the traffic would bear without international scrutiny." Bacque reported, "an official U.S. Army ration book, smuggled out by an exprisoner, for the huge camp at Bretzenheim, shows that these captives who nominally had prisoner-of-war status - supposedly the best-treated of all - got only 600-850 calories per day." This resulted in an appalling death rate. According to Bacque ". . . as early as May 1 the prisoners of war, who apparently were the best treated, were already exposed to conditions that killed them at the rate of over 30 percent per year."
The fear that the civilian population would somehow supply the prisoners with food from their own meager rations was perhaps based on the knowledge that this source of food could be very important. General Patton commented on the fact that Allied prisoners in German hands often depended upon outside sources of food. "During the last month the prisoners at Moosberg were wholly supported by American Red Cross packages, as the Germans made practically no attempt to supply food which they themselves did not possess." Patton added, "To their credit be it stated that they did not tamper with the packages." Lt. Col. Henry W. Allard, of the Corps of Military Police in charge of the U.S. camps in France in 1945 stated: "The standards of PW [prisoner of war] camps in the ComZ [the U.S. Army's rear zone] in Europe compare as only slightly better or even with the living conditions of the Japanese PW camps our men tell us about, and unfavorably with the Germans." Bacque pointed out, "After the German surrender on 8 May 1945, the American camps grew steadily worse." Policies followed by the Japanese resulted in a 27 percent mortality rate. Paul Johnson pointed out that, "The Japanese POW record, in fact, was much worse than the Nazis': of 235,000 Anglo-American POWs held by Germany and Italy only 4 percent died, whereas of the 132,000 in Japanese custody 27 per cent died." Clifford and Pontiff report, “By the end of the war approximately 90,000 U.S. soldiers were held by Germany. American POWs were held in 188 camps. Approximately 3% of the American POWs held by Germany died before being liberated. The number of deaths, 2,402.” (“Hierarchies and the Survival of POWs during WWII,”) Nazi POW camps, unlike Western POW camps, have been the subject of comedy.
In response to Bacque's charges, Steven Ambrose quoted Albert Cowdrey of the Department of the Army's Center of Military History who reported, "the overall death rate among German prisoners was 1 percent." Cowdrey could have picked a more realistic figure. Under the best of circumstances the mortality rate of these troops would have been higher than 1 percent. The civilian mortality rate in Britain was 1.2 percent per year at the time. Although they were primarily healthy young men at the time of induction, at the time of capture many were severely wounded.
The reporting of fatality numbers among the POWs provides an excellent example of the results of bias. Keith Lowe and Steven Ambrose claim, “Bacque’s absurdly high figure has since been comprehensively discredited by academics in several countries.” They point out that a German commission has determined that just 4,537 POWs died in the Rheinwiesenlager. Where did this commission obtain it’s statistics if not from the organizations responsible for the fatalities? They give a figure of 0.15% fatalities. They could have chosen a more credible figure. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 0.81% of the U.S. population suffered death in 2007. This would suggest that these POWs were living in an extremely healthy environment. Lowe admits that, “ even the official historians concede that thousands of deaths probably went unrecorded.” This is comparable to the U.S. military fatality rate. “According to the Defense Manpower Data Center, the total military FTE (Full Time Equivalent, which includes mobilized National Guard and Reserve), counted for 2011 was 1,603,904. The death rate per 100,000 serving was only 802. This means that about 12,864 soldiers died in 2011, which is about 0.802% of those serving.” It appears that Bacque has more credibility than Ambrose.
There are many eyewitness accounts of conditions in the camps. Bacque quoted Martin Brech, a retired professor of philosophy at Mercy College in New York, who was a guard at Andernach in 1945. Brech has said that he was told by an officer that, "it is our policy that these men not be fed." Bacque related that the 50,000 to 60,000 men in Andernach were starving, living with no shelter in holes in the ground, trying to nourish themselves on grass. When Brech smuggled bread to them through the wire, he was ordered to stop by an officer. Later, Brech sneaked more food to them, was caught, and told by the same officer, "If you do that again, you'll be shot." John dos Passos related the story of a Jewish intelligence officer who stated, "I've been interrogating German officers for the War Crimes Commission, and when I find them half-starved to death right in our own P.W. cages and being treated like you wouldn't treat a dog, I ask myself some questions. Sometimes I have to get them fed up and hospitalized before I can get a coherent story out of them."
There were examples of camps run according to the Geneva Convention and certainly dedicated researchers can uncover their location. However, their practices apparently were not in line with official policy. General Hughes recorded that he, "Stopped at PWE [prisoner of war enclosure] near Stenay. Find Germans eating full B rations." To this he added, "I wonder if I can kick that problem." It may also be noted that there were numerous civilians kept in these camps. Bacque noted, "In many US camps, sections were devoted to women, many of them accompanied by young children. At Attichy, the so-called 'baby cage' held at one time 10,000 children who had been sent there under tough conditions by truck and train."
Eventually the survivors of these camps were released. Secretary of State Byrnes reported that the "last of the German and Italian prisoners in this country were returned home in the fall of 1946." Secretary Byrnes reported that the British announced a program on September 12, 1946 to return their last prisoners by October 1948. In September Byrnes suggested informally to the French a program to return the 600,000 prisoners in their hands which had been transferred to them by General Eisenhower. Byrnes explained:
The French asked me to withhold any formal action for a short time, which I did. But on December 2, 1946, I asked all three governments holding prisoners for us - France, Belgium and Luxembourg - to agree to complete repatriation by October 1, 1947. My message pointed out that eighteen months had elapsed since the end of hostilities and that, since the idea of forced labor was repugnant to the American people, we believed those prisoners not charged with war crimes should be returned. The French answered that while they realized the prisoners must be returned, they were so short of labor that they needed a longer period to complete the repatriation.
Byrnes went on to explain, "On March 13, 1947, our government announced that an agreement had been reached with the French under which approximately 450,000 prisoners, including those captured by French forces as well as our own, would be released at the rate of 20,000 per month. This means that the last of the German prisoners will not be returned home until about four years after the end of the war." Secretary Byrnes made no mention of the discrepancy of his original figure of 600,000 prisoners transferred to the French by General Eisenhower and the 450,000 they agreed to return. The French also captured approximately 200,000 prisoners on their own. This would leave approximately 350,000 prisoners unaccounted for. This figure exceeds Bacque's upper figure of 314,241 who died in French captivity. The 36,000 difference may be accounted for by the large number of prisoners who joined the French Foreign Legion.
Byrnes recorded that, "In March 1947, the Soviet Government claimed to have returned over one million Germans and to have 890,000 left. Forced labor camps are a symbol of Hitler's regime that we should eliminate as rapidly as possible." Eugene Davidson reported that, "More than 4 million German prisoners of war were still in Allied hands in March 1947. Many returning from France and Russia looked like walking skeletons." A Military Government report in 1948 stated: "Those who are returned by Russia from time to time are the most pitiable objects of starvation and suffering one could imagine."
In Steven Ambrose's rebuttal to James Bacque's charges that prisoners where, in effect exterminated, he wrote, "Was the undoubted suffering in the camps, especially the transit camps along the Rhine, the result of Eisenhower's policy or the result of the chaotic conditions that prevailed in Europe in the spring and summer of 1945?" Ambrose contended that this suffering was beyond Eisenhower's control. He did admit that, "Men did die needlessly and inexcusably." But how many men? It would be significant if it were two men or one million.
Ambrose admitted that the policy of Eisenhower's superiors "was to impress upon the Germans the fact of their defeat, the fact that they had brought it on themselves and in other ways to 'treat 'em rough.'" John Dos Passos' intelligence officer's comment on this policy seems appropriate, "All these directives about don't coddle the German have thrown open the gates for every criminal tendency we've got in us."
One indication of the value placed on the lives of these prisoners is their use by the allies in mine clearance. A Norwegian documentary claimed, “Many of the Germans were killed through their guards' habit of chasing them criss-cross over a cleared field to ensure that no mines remained.” Over 5,000 German prisoners of war were forced by the British, under the command of General Sir Andrew Thorn, to clear landmines. The POWs had to walk arm-in-arm through minefields already cleared of mines in hopes of triggering off land mines that were not previously found. By June 21, 1945 199 were listed as dead and 163 wounded. Neither Thorn nor anyone else was ever held accountable for war crimes.
According to S. P. MacKenzie, "by September 1945 it was estimated by the French authorities that two thousand prisoners were being maimed and killed each month in [mine clearance] accidents” The tragic consequences of untrained personnel clearing mines was portrayed in a 2015 movie entitled Land of Mine. It told the story of a group of German youths assigned to clearing mines on the Danish coast. This was a clear violation of Article 32 of the Geneva Convention of 1929 which states, “It is forbidden to employ prisoners of war on unhealthy or dangerous work. Conditions of work shall not be rendered more arduous by disciplinary measures.” Of course the Geneva Convention did not apply to Disarmed Enemy Forces even though the State Department had informed the Swiss that the U.S. would continue to treat the prisoners "in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Convention." Rüdiger Overmans estimates that as many as 50,000 POWs were used for this purpose.
Ambrose's most devastating critique of Bacque rests on his criticism of Bacque’s credentials as a historian. Ambrose quoted Albert Cowdrey of the Department of the Army’s Center of Military History: “Surely the author has reason to be satisfied with his achievement. He has no reputation as a historian to lose, and ‘Other Losses’ can only enhance his standing as a writer of fiction.” Ambrose continued, "Mr. Bacque has all the paraphernalia of scholarship; it looks impressive enough to bamboozle even scholars." In other words, the facts Bacque presents are irrelevant because he is not an authorized spokesman for the historical establishment. Because he is not a respected scholar, what he says can be discounted. It is quite possible that the fact Bacque had “no reputation as a historian to lose” enabled him to report events that a “reputable” historian would avoid. Thomas Kuhn describes the resistance scientific establishments offer to challenges to their longstanding beliefs in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The field of history is far more subjective and vulnerable to bias than the hard sciences. An outsider is often more capable of noticing that “the emperor has no cloths.”
Ambrose’s credentials as a historian have recently come under scrutiny. Timothy D. Rives, the deputy director of the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, claims, “the records I found did not substantiate Ambrose’s account of how he met President Eisenhower, nor did the records support his claims to have interviewed Eisenhower extensively over four or five years.” Rives claimed “Ike’s post-presidential records . . . differs radically from the one described by Ambrose.” Rives wrote this after a 2010 article by Richard Rayner (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/04/26/channelling-ike) in the New Yorker in which he claimed Rives discovered that, “contrary to Ambrose’s claims, Eisenhower never approached him to write his biography.”
It might be pointed that these “enforced laborers” were a valuable asset. Ralph Keeling commented on the prisoners held by the British:
The British Government nets over $250,000,000 annually from its slaves. The Government, which frankly calls itself the “owner” of the prisoners, hires the men out to any employer needing men, charging the going rates of pay for such work – usually $15 to $20 per week. It pays the slaves from 10 cents to 20 cents a day.
According to the BBC a fifth of all agricultural work in the UK was performed by German prisoners in 1946. The British Ministry of Agriculture argued against repatriation of German prisoners 1947 because they made up 25 percent of the agricultural workforce. In spite of their objections 250,000 of the prisoners were repatriated by the end of 1947 with the last prisoners released by November 1948.
One of the main opponents of the use of slave labor was Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson. Jackson stated, “The plan is to impress great numbers of laborers into foreign service, which means herding them into concentration camps.” He believed this, “will largely destroy the positions of the United States in this war.” Jackson told President Truman in October 1945 that the Allies, "have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest.” Nevertheless, as America’s lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crime trials, Jackson condemned the Nazi “enforced labor” organizer, Fritz Saukel, to death.
The mortality rate among slave laborers in the hands of any totalitarian regime is naturally high and Fritz Saukel undoubtedly deserved his punishment. However, Mark Elliott quotes a British lieutenant working in the Ruhr who made the following astounding remark:
We had to go round the farms to collect the Russians who had been working as labourers on the farms – mostly old men and women, and were amazed and somewhat perplexed to have people who had literally been slaves on German farms, falling on their knees in front of you and begging to be allowed to stay, and crying bitterly – not with joy – when they were told they were being sent back to Russia.
Much has been made of is treatment of POWs in German hands. Certainly Soviets prisoners were not treated well, reportedly having a 57.5 mortality rate. S. P. MacKenzie reported that with the conclusion of armistice agreements with Norwegian, Dutch, Belgian, and French surrender delegations the Wehrmacht found itself in possession of nearly three million POWs. He reported that Germany “released on parole all the Dutch, the Flemish Belgians, nine-tenths of the Poles, and nearly a third of the French captives.” He claims, “The living conditions of the remaining Polish prisoners, for example, were noted by the Swiss to be often considerably below those granted captured British servicemen.” Apparently the Germans allowed ICRC visits to their Polish POW camps. The International Red Cross was never allowed to involve itself properly in the welfare of SEP and DEF prisoners held by the Western powers. There is no mention of a Katyn Forrest type massacre of Polish officers.
Soviet treatment of German POWs is sometimes justified by German treatment of Soviet prisoners. However it can not justify Soviet treatment of Finnish POWs. They suffered between 17 and 40 percent fatalities depending on the source. Of the 594,000 Japanese captured in the last two weeks of the war 60,000 to 347,000 perished.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Langer, William. The Famine in Germany. Washington: The United States Printing Office, 1946.
Diana West. “Influence and the Experts, Part 1,” dianawest.net, May 6, 2014, <http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2823/Influence-and-the-Experts-Part-I.aspx>.
Diana West. “DianaWest,” “Influence and the Experts, Part 1.” dianawest.net, May 6, 2014. accessed 28 Jan 2018.
<http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2823/Influence-and-the-Experts-Part-I.aspx>
Harvey Klehr (personal communication, July 1, 2015)
Geoffrey W. Lewis. Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum, July 15, 1974, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/lewisgw.htm.
Richard Dominic Wiggers, “The United States and the Refusal to Feed German Civilians after Work War II,” in Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, ed. by Steven Bela Vardy and T. Hunt Tooley (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 455
William Langer. The Famine in Germany. (Washington: The United States Printing Office, 1946), p.
Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos, Yeager An Autobiography, (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1985), pp. 62-63.
Stanley Andrews. The Journal Of A Retread. 1971.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/hstpaper/andrewss.htm.
Wikipedia. Council of Relief Agencies Licensed to Operate in Germany, en.wikipedia.org,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Relief_Agencies_Licensed_to_Operate_in_Germany
Steven Bela Vardy and T. Hunt Tooley, eds. "Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe" ISBN 0-88033-995-0. Chapter by Richard Dominic Wiggers, "The United States and the Refusal to Feed German Civilians after World War II" p.282,283 Further referenced to: Kenneth S. Wherry, United States Senate, Committee on Appropriations, to the President, 4 January 1946, HST/WHOF/B1272.
Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961 ed. Carlos Baker, Charles Schribner’s Sons, New York, 1981
War Cabinet Minutes, W.M.(45)26th Meeting – C.M.(46) 13th Meeting, 6 March 1945, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/cab_195_3_transcript.pdf
Miller, Francis Pickens. Man from the Valley. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971.
Langer, William. The Famine in Germany. Washington: The United States Printing Office, 1946.
Irving, David. The War Between The Generals. New York: Congdon & Lattes, Inc, 1981.
Yeager, Chuck and Janos, Leo. Yeager An Autobiography. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1985.
Publication date 1971
Usage http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
Topics World War II, food, agriculture, U.S. Army
Collection opensource
Language English
World War II memoir of Colonel Stanley Andrews.
Identifier TheJournalOfARetread
Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t0rr3qf2t
Ocr ABBYY FineReader 8.0
Ppi 300
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