J
2008-07-28 01:41:10 UTC
New Book Details Mass Killings and Brutal Mistreatment of Germans
at the End of World War Two
By Mark Weber
Germany's defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not
bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people.
Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era that, in many
ways, was worse than the destruction wrought by war.
In a sobering and courageous new book, After the Reich: The Brutal History
of Allied Occupation, British historian Giles MacDonogh details how the
ruined and prostrate Reich (including Austria) was systematically raped and
robbed, and how many Germans who survived the war were either killed in cold
blood or deliberately left to die of disease, cold, malnutrition or
starvation.
Many people take the view that, given the wartime misdeeds of the Nazis,
some degree of vengeful violence against the defeated Germans was inevitable
and perhaps justified. A common response to reports of Allied atrocities is
to say that the Germans "deserved what they got." But as MacDonogh
establishes, the appalling cruelties inflicted on the totally prostrate
German people went far beyond that.
His best estimate is that some three million Germans, military and
civilians, died unnecessarily after the official end of hostilities.
A million of these were men who were being held as prisoners of war, most of
whom died in Soviet captivity. (Of the 90,000 Germans who surrendered at
Stalingrad, for example, only 5,000 ever returned to their homeland.) Less
well known is the story of the many thousands of German prisoners who died
in American and British captivity, most infamously in horrid holding camps
along the Rhine river, with no shelter and very little food. Others, more
fortunate, toiled as slave labor in Allied countries, often for years.
Most of the two million German civilians who perished after the end of the
war were women, children and elderly -- victims of disease, cold, hunger,
suicide, and mass murder.
Apart from the wide-scale rape of millions of German girls and woman in the
Soviet occupation zones, perhaps the most shocking outrage recorded by
MacDonogh is the slaughter of a quarter of a million Sudeten Germans by
their vengeful Czech compatriots. The wretched survivors of this ethnic
cleansing were pitched across the border, never to return to their homes.
There were similar scenes of death and dispossession in Pomerania, Silesia
and East Prussia as the age-old German communities of those provinces were
likewise brutally expunged.
We are ceaselessly reminded of the Third Reich's wartime concentration
camps. But few Americans are aware that such infamous camps as Dachau,
Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz stayed in business after the end of
the war, only now packed with German captives, many of whom perished
miserably.
The vengeful plan by US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau to turn defeated
Germany into an impoverished "pastoral" country, stripped of modern
industry, is recounted by MacDonogh, as well as other genocidal schemes to
starve, sterilize or deport the population of what was left of the
bombed-out cities.
It wasn't an awakening of humanitarian concern that prompted a change in
American and British attitudes toward the defeated Germans. The shift in
postwar policy was based on fear of Soviet Russian expansion, and prompted a
calculated appeal to the German public to support the new anti-Soviet stance
of the US and Britain.
MacDonogh's important book is an antidote to the simplistic but enduring
propaganda portrait of World War II as a clash between Good and Evil, and
debunks the widely accepted image of benevolent Allied treatment of defeated
Germany.
This 615-page volume is much more than a gruesome chronicle of death and
human suffering. Enhanced with moving anecdotes, it also provides historical
context and perspective. It is probably the best work available in English
on this shameful chapter of twentieth century history.
at the End of World War Two
By Mark Weber
Germany's defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not
bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people.
Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era that, in many
ways, was worse than the destruction wrought by war.
In a sobering and courageous new book, After the Reich: The Brutal History
of Allied Occupation, British historian Giles MacDonogh details how the
ruined and prostrate Reich (including Austria) was systematically raped and
robbed, and how many Germans who survived the war were either killed in cold
blood or deliberately left to die of disease, cold, malnutrition or
starvation.
Many people take the view that, given the wartime misdeeds of the Nazis,
some degree of vengeful violence against the defeated Germans was inevitable
and perhaps justified. A common response to reports of Allied atrocities is
to say that the Germans "deserved what they got." But as MacDonogh
establishes, the appalling cruelties inflicted on the totally prostrate
German people went far beyond that.
His best estimate is that some three million Germans, military and
civilians, died unnecessarily after the official end of hostilities.
A million of these were men who were being held as prisoners of war, most of
whom died in Soviet captivity. (Of the 90,000 Germans who surrendered at
Stalingrad, for example, only 5,000 ever returned to their homeland.) Less
well known is the story of the many thousands of German prisoners who died
in American and British captivity, most infamously in horrid holding camps
along the Rhine river, with no shelter and very little food. Others, more
fortunate, toiled as slave labor in Allied countries, often for years.
Most of the two million German civilians who perished after the end of the
war were women, children and elderly -- victims of disease, cold, hunger,
suicide, and mass murder.
Apart from the wide-scale rape of millions of German girls and woman in the
Soviet occupation zones, perhaps the most shocking outrage recorded by
MacDonogh is the slaughter of a quarter of a million Sudeten Germans by
their vengeful Czech compatriots. The wretched survivors of this ethnic
cleansing were pitched across the border, never to return to their homes.
There were similar scenes of death and dispossession in Pomerania, Silesia
and East Prussia as the age-old German communities of those provinces were
likewise brutally expunged.
We are ceaselessly reminded of the Third Reich's wartime concentration
camps. But few Americans are aware that such infamous camps as Dachau,
Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz stayed in business after the end of
the war, only now packed with German captives, many of whom perished
miserably.
The vengeful plan by US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau to turn defeated
Germany into an impoverished "pastoral" country, stripped of modern
industry, is recounted by MacDonogh, as well as other genocidal schemes to
starve, sterilize or deport the population of what was left of the
bombed-out cities.
It wasn't an awakening of humanitarian concern that prompted a change in
American and British attitudes toward the defeated Germans. The shift in
postwar policy was based on fear of Soviet Russian expansion, and prompted a
calculated appeal to the German public to support the new anti-Soviet stance
of the US and Britain.
MacDonogh's important book is an antidote to the simplistic but enduring
propaganda portrait of World War II as a clash between Good and Evil, and
debunks the widely accepted image of benevolent Allied treatment of defeated
Germany.
This 615-page volume is much more than a gruesome chronicle of death and
human suffering. Enhanced with moving anecdotes, it also provides historical
context and perspective. It is probably the best work available in English
on this shameful chapter of twentieth century history.
--
J Young
***@live.com
Owner of 'LC'
J Young
***@live.com
Owner of 'LC'