American Death Camps
William F. Jasper | The New American
May 21, 1990
April 20 was a blustery day with alternate rain, sleet and snow and with bone-chilling winds sweeping down the Rhine valley from the north over the fiats where the inclosure was located. Huddled close together for warmth, behind the barbed wire was a most awesome sight -- nearly 100,000 haggard, apathetic, dirty, gaunt blank-staring men clad in dirty field grey uniforms, and standing ankle-deep in mud. Here and there were dirty white blurs which, upon a closer look were seen to be men with bandaged heads or arms or standing in shirt sleeves! The German Division Commander reported that the men had not eaten for at least two days, and the provision of water was a major problem -- yet only 200 yards away was the river Rhine running bank-full.
A description of the horrid conditions found at Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, or Treblinka? No, it is an excerpt from a report by two U.S. Army colonels, James B. Mason and Charles H. Beasley, who, in the spring of 1945, were inspecting the conditions in American prisoner of war camps where millions of Germans were being held. Here is another description of the same camps from another source:
In April 1945, hundreds of thousands of German soldiers as well as the sick from hospitals, amputees, women auxiliaries, and civilians were caught .... Nagging hunger and agonizing thirst were their companions, and they died of dysentery. A cruel heaven pelted them week after week with streams of rain .... [A]mputees slithered like amphibians through the mud, soaking and freezing. Naked to the skies day after day and night after night, they lay desperate in the sand of the Rheinberg or slept exhaustedly into eternity in their collapsing holes.
Ike's Killing Fields
These shocking passages are taken from Other Losses: An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans After World War II, a book that is dropping like a nuclear bomb on the Dwight D. Eisenhower centennial celebrations this year. Canadian author James Bacque asserts that a million or more Germans died of starvation, exposure, and sickness due to overcrowding and the complete absence of shelter and sanitation in American and French POW camps. 750,000 perished under American control, 250,000 under the French, he says.
"At least 10 times as many Germans died in the French and American camps as were killed in all the combat on the western front in northwest Europe from June 1941 to April 1945," Bacque writes in Other Losses. "By the end of May (1945) more people had died in the U.S. camps than died in the atomic blast at Hiroshima. Not a word reached the press." Bacque places the blame for these deaths directly on Eisenhower, who, he charges, personally ordered the inhuman treatment that violated the Rules of Land Warfare, the Geneva Convention, and "the common decency of the enormous majority of Americans" -- knowing full well that this would result in a tremendous loss of life. Ike then orchestrated a massive and -- until now -- completely effective cover-up.
Preposterous! Impossible! Neo-Nazi crackpot revisionist propaganda! Scandal mongering! America bashing! Hero bashing! All of these charges have been leveled at Bacque since the publication of Other Losses last fall. Not Ike, the gentle soldier, the kindly grandfather, the Supreme Commander of all Allied forces in Europe, the general who "defeated Hitler" and "won the war" for us, our 34th president. Ridiculous! Obviously the invention of a warped, fascist mind.
But Bacque carries no torch for fascism, Hitler, or the Nazis. He is, in fact, a certified "liberal," and a life-long Germanophobe. The explosive story of Other Losses is a live bomb that he just happened to stumble across while researching another completely unconnected aspect of World War II. The evidence he presents is not easily dismissed, and his meticulous research has won praise from a number of distinguished historians.
Former Senior Historian of the United States Army Dr. Ernest F. Fisher, a retired colonel who served with the 101st Airborne in World War II, wrote the Foreword to Other Losses. Peter Hoffman, Professor of German History at Montreal's McGill University, says that he finds Bacque's evidence "convincing on most points, persuasive on others." Stephen E. Ambrose, Professor of History at the Eisenhower Center of the University of New Orleans and author of The Supreme Commander: The War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, called Other Losses "a major historical discovery, the full impact of which neither you nor I can fully imagine ... (this) will span the ocean and have reverberations for decades, yes centuries, to come."
But wait -- Professor Ambrose, the big gun in Eisenhower research, has now reversed himself on Bacque's book. During a telephone interview with THE NEW AMERICAN in April, Ambrose had little that was positive to say about either Bacque or Other Losses. While he still agrees that Bacque has made a major discovery, he says now that "his research is shoddy, inexcusably so." "He doesn't get the story right on Eisenhower or the POWs, and he grossly exaggerates the number of deaths," said Ambrose. "By sensationalizing the story he has cheapened it." He offered no specifics to back these serious accusations and was obviously annoyed when pressed for examples of "shoddy" research.
Raining on Ike's Parade
Other Losses is sure to cause some gigantic headaches for sponsors of Eisenhower celebrations this year, and for the Insiders who have been covering up his black deeds these past four decades. Because Bacque still has been unable to find a U.S. publisher, only a relatively small number of copies of the book have been sold here; in Canada and Europe, it has already sold over 100,000 copies. The book received a big boost in Canada when Saturday Night, a respected monthly magazine with a liberal bent, featured a major article by Bacque condensing Other Losses. That September 1989 issue -- with an ominous photo of General Eisenhower on the cover and the blaring headline, "Eisenhower's Death Camps: The Last Dirty Secret of World War Two" -- ignited a storm of controversy that continues to rage. New editions and translations of the book are now being published in Germany, England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Holland, Turkey, and Japan.
Still, it is virtually impossible to find the book at bookstores in this country, and it has been ignored in the review pages of America's "prestige" press. Professor Ambrose is quoted as saying, in a Knight-Ridder newspaper article of March 18th: "I'm amazed there wasn't more made of this in the U.S. I've gotten calls from reporters all over Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany." But he had received calls from only two American reporters, he said. Ambrose is reported to have said that, judging from the negligible media coverage and the rejection of the book by U.S. publishers, there appears to be a "conspiracy to protect Ike" in the United States. Ambrose, apparently, for whatever reasons, has now joined that conspiracy.
Nevertheless, through the American "underground" press, word-of-mouth, and with the help of one of Patrick Buchanan's syndicated columns, Americans have begun to learn of Other Losses. U.S. orders for the book have been flowing in to the Canadian publisher, Stoddart Publishing, in Toronto.
"Disarmed Enemy Forces"
On March 10, 1945, two months before VE Day, the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff received a message signed and initialed by Eisenhower that proposed circumventing the Geneva Convention through the creation of a new class of prisoners. These prisoners would not be fed by the army after the surrender of Germany. They would no longer be classified as prisoners of war, but as "disarmed enemy forces" or DEF. The proposal didn't originate with Eisenhower, but followed from directive JCS 1067, the revised Morganthau Plan drawn up by Secretary Morganthau and Soviet agent Harry Dexter White. The Combined Chiefs approved the DEF status of POWs in American hands only, since the British members of the CCS refused to adopt this obvious violation of the Geneva Convention as policy for their own prisoners.
Under the terms of the Convention, which had been signed by all of the Allied powers. prisoners of war were guaranteed important basic rights, which included: the right to send and receive mail; the right to be fed and sheltered to the same standard as base or depot troops of the Capturing Power; and the right to be visited by delegates of the Red Cross for independent verification of adherence to the Convention. All of these rights, Bacque claims, were denied to millions of German prisoners who were transferred from POW to DEF status during 1945. The result was excruciating misery, starvation, and death on a massive scale. These deaths were not recorded as deaths, but were hidden among the statistics in the U.S. Army's POW reports under a nebulous category known as "other losses."
Other Voices
The publication of Other Losses appears to have broken a logjam. In the past few months, many former American GI prison guards and former German POWs have come forward to corroborate Bacque's thesis with their own harrowing experiences. Dr. Martin Brech is one of those, Now a professor of philosophy and religion at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York, he served in early 1945 as a POW guard in the U.S. Army 14th Infantry regiment, 71st Division at Andernach. There, he says, "I witnessed an atrocity: the deliberate starvation of German POWs by our own army." In a 12-page statement, parts of which have been published as letters to the editor in various newspapers, Dr. Brech writes that the conditions under which the 50,000 to 65,000 prisoners were kept were "indescribable." "The men I guarded had no tents or other shelter, no blankets and many had no coats ... during a cold, wet spring. Their misery from exposure alone was evident."
He was shocked to see prisoners eating grass to ease their hunger pangs and sleeping in their own excrement. "I saw no sign of provision for water, so the thin soup was their food and water for the day," says Brech. "Some days there was bread, less than a slice each. Other days there was nothing." The 18-year-old Private Brech was outraged: "The sight of so many men desperate for food and water, sickening and dying before our eyes, is indescribable. Even now, I can only think of it momentarily.
"We had ample food and supplies that could have been shared more humanely, and we could have offered some medical assistance but did nothing. Only the dead were quickly and efficiently taken care of: hauled away to mass graves."
His vigorous protests to his officers, says Brech, were met "with hostility or bland indifference." They explained that they were under strict orders from "higher up." When he threw extra food over the barbed wire to the prisoners, he was himself threatened with imprisonment, court martial, and shooting. Forty-five years later, Brech is still being harassed and threatened for speaking out against the atrocities. During a telephone interview with THE NEW AMERICAN in April, he charged that he was receiving threatening phone calls, that his mail box had been destroyed, and that his car had been broken into and the wiring pulled out. He had not felt any repercussions at the college, but said he "wouldn't be surprised" if some developed.
Merrill W. Campbell was a technical sergeant in the 3009 mobile bakery in the 7th Army when, in the spring of 1945, his company furnished some guards at a POW camp in the foothills of Bavaria. After hearing about the controversy over Other Losses, he wrote a letter to James Bacque concerning the horrors he had witnessed:
There was 10,000 or more German prisoners in this open field, standing shoulder to shoulder. It was raining and sleet and some snow. This bunch of prisoners were there for three days or more with no food or water, no shelter. There was little concern for these people .... As for food and water, I personally think it could have been furnished to them. Most of the guards were very brutal ....
On the morning the prisoners were moved out, my company had orders to leave .... I looked back where they were moving the prisoners out, mud was deep. As the weak fell down the others tromped them into the mud, as far as I could see. Heads, arms and legs of the dead were sticking out of the mud. It made me sick and disgusted. Other camps I was at treated the prisoners fairly well.
On the morning the prisoners were moved out, my company had orders to leave .... I looked back where they were moving the prisoners out, mud was deep. As the weak fell down the others tromped them into the mud, as far as I could see. Heads, arms and legs of the dead were sticking out of the mud. It made me sick and disgusted. Other camps I was at treated the prisoners fairly well.
Like Buchenwald, Dachau
In the course of his research, Bacque uncovered a number of statements, from significant sources, comparing the conditions in the American prisoner camps to those in notorious Nazi concentration camps:
• U.S. Army Colonel Philip Lauben remarked that the American and French camps in the Vosges region were so bad that "the Vosges was just one big death camp." This is an especially significant admission, since Lauben had been chief of the German Affairs Branch for SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) in charge of repatriation of prisoners and transfers to the French.
• Marshal of the French Army Alphonse Juin complained that many of the prisoners turned over to him from the American camp at Hechtsheim looked like the starving wrecks at Dachau and Buchenwald.
• French Captain Julien of the Troisieme Regiment de Tirailleurs Algeriens was appalled by what he found at the American prison camp at Dietersheim: muddy ground "peopled with living skeletons" -- 32,000 of them, including many women and children. "This is just like Buchenwald and Dachau," he wrote in his report.
• Le Monde, in September of 1945, printed a story by Jacques Fauvet comparing the camp at Saint Paul d'Egiaux (population 17,000) to Dachau.
• Around the same time, Le Figaro carried a story on the French camps under General Buisson. The German prisoners, it said, "looked like skeletons."
• Marshal of the French Army Alphonse Juin complained that many of the prisoners turned over to him from the American camp at Hechtsheim looked like the starving wrecks at Dachau and Buchenwald.
• French Captain Julien of the Troisieme Regiment de Tirailleurs Algeriens was appalled by what he found at the American prison camp at Dietersheim: muddy ground "peopled with living skeletons" -- 32,000 of them, including many women and children. "This is just like Buchenwald and Dachau," he wrote in his report.
• Le Monde, in September of 1945, printed a story by Jacques Fauvet comparing the camp at Saint Paul d'Egiaux (population 17,000) to Dachau.
• Around the same time, Le Figaro carried a story on the French camps under General Buisson. The German prisoners, it said, "looked like skeletons."
Even Professor Ambrose has publicly admitted that the Allied atrocities almost certainly took place, and on a large scale. He demurs on the total number of deaths, which he claims was more on the order of 100,000 to 200,000. Like other critics, he asserts that these fatalities were the unfortunate result of the chaotic conditions and food shortage of the times, not the intended consequence of official Allied policy. Certainly, he says, there is no evidence to prove that Eisenhower himself should be held responsible.
Nevertheless, as Bacque has convincingly shown, not only was there no food shortage to justify the starvation policy, but enormous military and private stockpiles were readily available and both military and private relief personnel pleaded to be allowed to feed the prisoners:
• General Everett S. Hughes, special assistant to, and confidante of, Eisenhower wrote in his diary on March 19th, after inspecting the huge supply depots at Naples and Marseille: "[Marseille is] Naples all over again. More stocks than we can ever use. Stretch as far as eye can see."
• The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had over 100,000 tons of food in its warehouses in Switzerland that it wanted desperately to get to the war victims. In May 1945, the ICRC sent two freight trains loaded with food to Germany. They were stopped by the U.S. Army and forced to return, with the food, to Switzerland.
• The Red Cross, the YMCA, the Quakers, and all other private relief organizations were expressly prohibited from aiding German prisoners, under orders from Eisenhower.
• Villagers near the prisoner camps, as well as the families of the prisoners, were prevented from bringing food and other aid to those incarcerated.
• The British and the Canadians had access to no more food and supplies than did the Americans and the French, but German POWs under their control survived in fairly good condition.
• The denial of mail privileges to the prisoners in American camps, in violation of the Geneva Convention, prevented them from receiving life-saying food, medicines, and other supplies from relatives and relief organizations.
• The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had over 100,000 tons of food in its warehouses in Switzerland that it wanted desperately to get to the war victims. In May 1945, the ICRC sent two freight trains loaded with food to Germany. They were stopped by the U.S. Army and forced to return, with the food, to Switzerland.
• The Red Cross, the YMCA, the Quakers, and all other private relief organizations were expressly prohibited from aiding German prisoners, under orders from Eisenhower.
• Villagers near the prisoner camps, as well as the families of the prisoners, were prevented from bringing food and other aid to those incarcerated.
• The British and the Canadians had access to no more food and supplies than did the Americans and the French, but German POWs under their control survived in fairly good condition.
• The denial of mail privileges to the prisoners in American camps, in violation of the Geneva Convention, prevented them from receiving life-saying food, medicines, and other supplies from relatives and relief organizations.
Ike Spikes the Story
The denial of mail privileges, together with the refusal to allow the ICRC or any other independent "protecting power" to inspect the camps, also effectively prevented the prisoners from communicating their plight to the outside world. To further insure that word of the atrocities would not leak out, Eisenhower imposed rigid censorship on all newspapers, publications, and radio programming in the American-occupied sector of Germany.
Silencing dissent among his generals and officers over his vengeful "peace" was another problem. Implementation of JCS 1067 was repugnant to most American military leaders, and General George Patton was particularly vocal in his opposition to a Carthaginian peace for Germany. In his diary entry for May 10, 1945, Patton recorded that after lunch that day "General Eisenhower talked to us very confidentially on the necessity for solidarity in the event that any of us are called before a Congressional Committee .... "During April and May of 1945 Patton released German prisoners by the hundreds of thousands. On May 13th, Generals Omar Bradley and J.C.H. Lee both ordered the release of prisoners, but an order from Supreme Headquarters signed "Eisenhower" countermanded them on May 15th.
General Patton was tough, but he was not cruel. He placed a high premium on honor. "Kill all the Germans you can," he told his troops, "but do not put them up against a wall and kill them. Do your killing while they are still fighting. After a man has surrendered, he should be treated exactly in accordance with the Rules of Land Warfare, and just as you would hope to be treated if you were foolish enough to surrender. Americans do not kick people in the teeth after they are down."
The Big Question: Why?
James Bacque suggests that General Eisenhower's motivation for the brutal, criminal acts he ordered stemmed from his intense hatred not only of Hitler and the Nazis, but of the German people in general. ("God, I hate the Germans," he wrote to his wife, Mamie. "It is a pity that we could not. have killed more [Germans]," he said in a letter to General Marshall.) Undoubtedly that was a factor, but it is more likely that he was acting primarily out of obedience to those in the shadows of power who had catapulted him from the rank of lieutenant colonel to Commander in Chief of all Allied forces with such mercurial speed. His purpose was to further the establishment of the New World Order advocated by the Insiders of the Council on Foreign Relations. Under this plan, Germany had to be laid low so that Stalin's Soviet state could rise to pre-eminence in Europe.
That this is exactly what would result from the harsh "peace" imposed on Europe was evident to many of the military and political leaders of the day. "It is indeed unfortunate," Marshal Alphonse Juin told Patton in August 1945, "that the English and Americans have destroyed the only sound country in Europe -- and I do not mean France -- therefore the road is now open for the advent of Russian communism."
In the spring of 1945 State Department official Howard Trivets watched with mounting concern as Treasury men Harry Dexter White, Frank Coe, and Harry Glasser -- all later identified as Soviet agents -- drew up the JCS 1067 directive instructing Eisenhower to implement the Morganthau Plan. Trivers wrote:
Later, I wondered whether they also had been acting under Soviet instructions, if they really were members of a communist cell .... It would have been typical Soviet policy and practice to instruct American Communists to support vocally the dismemberment and pastoralization of Germany and to seek to determine American policy along these lines. In this way, contrary to the Americans, the Soviets could present themselves to the Germans as the champions of the German national cause, the ultimate aim, of course, veiled at first, being a United Germany under Communism.
Is it mere coincidence that this plan, set in motion 45 years ago, is coming to fruition in the year of Eisenhower's centennial?
Related Articles:
1990 - Eisenhower's War Crimes
1990 - It Keeps Getting Harder to Like Ike
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