Eisenhower death camps

50
Call it heartless, call it reprisal, call it a policy of hostile denial: a million Germans captured by the Eisenhower armies died in captivity after surrender.

In the spring of 1945, the third Adolf Hitler Reich was on the verge of death, crushed by the Red Army, advancing westward towards Berlin and the American, British and Canadian armies under the command of General Dwight Eisenhower, advancing eastward along the Rhine. From the date of the landing in Normandy in June last year, the Western allies won France and small European countries, and some Wehrmacht commanders were ready for local capitulation. Other units, however, continued to obey Hitler's orders to fight to the last. Most of the infrastructure, including transportation, was destroyed, and the population roamed in fear of the Russians approaching.

“Hungry and frightened, lying in the fields fifty feet away, ready to give up to fly away” - So the captain of the Second Anti-Tank Regiment of the Second Canadian Division HF McCullough describes the chaos of Germany’s surrender at the end of the Second World War. For one and a half days, according to statements by Field Marshal Montgomery, 500 000 of the Germans surrendered to his 21 Army Group in northern Germany.
Shortly after Victory Day - May 8, British-Canadian troops captured more than 2 millions. Virtually nothing about their treatment has been preserved in the archives of London and Ottawa, but some scant evidence from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the relevant military personnel and the prisoners themselves indicate that the prisoners felt excellent. In any case, many were quickly released and sent home, or transferred to France for post-war reconstruction work. The French army itself captured the Germans around 300 000.


Like the British and Canadians, the Americans unexpectedly met with a huge number of surrounded German troops: the total number of prisoners of war only among the Americans reached 2,5 millions, without Italy and northern Africa. But the attitude of the Americans was very different.

Among the first US prisoners of war was Corporal Helmut Liebig, who served in the anti-aircraft experimental group at Peenemunde in the Baltic. Liebig was captured by Americans on April 17 near Gotha in central Germany. Forty-two years later, he distinctly recalled that in the camp of Goth there were not even awnings, only a barbed wire fence around the field, which soon turned into a marsh.

The prisoners received a small portion of food on the first day, but on the second and subsequent days it was cut by half. To get her, they were forced to run through the line. Hunched up, they fled between the ranks of the American guards, who beat them with sticks as they approached food. 27 April, they were transferred to the American camp Heidesheim, where for several days there was no food at all, and then only a little bit.

In the open, starved, thirsty, people began to die. Liebig counted daily from 10 to 30 bodies, which were pulled out of his section B, which contained about 5 200 people. He saw one prisoner beat another to death because of a small piece of bread.

One night, when it was raining, Liebig noticed that the walls of the hole dug in the sandy ground for shelter had fallen upon people who were too weak to get out from under them. They suffocated before their comrades came to the rescue ...



The German newspaper, Rhein-Zeitung, so called this photograph that had survived from the Americans, placed on its own strip: Camp in Sinzig-Remagen, spring 1945.

Liebig sat down and wept. "I could not believe that people were so cruel to each other."

Typhus broke into Heidesheim in early May. Five days after Germany’s surrender, 13 May, Liebig was transferred to another American prisoner of war camp, Bingem-Rudesheim in Rhineland, near Bad Kreusnach. The prisoners there contained 200 - 400 of thousands, without shelter, practically without food, water, medicine, in terrible cramping.

Soon he fell ill with typhus and dysentery at the same time. He, half-conscious and delirious, was taken with sixty prisoners in an open carriage to the north-west, down the Rhine, on a tour of Holland, where the Dutch stood on bridges and spat on their heads. Occasionally, American guards fired warning shots to drive the Dutch away. Sometimes not.

After three days, the comrades helped him to reach the large camp in Rheinberg, near the border with Holland, again without shelter and practically without food. When some food was delivered, it turned out to be rotten. In none of the four camps did Liebig see any shelters for prisoners — they were all located under the open sky.

According to the remaining evidence from the medical service, the death rate in American camps for German prisoners of war in the Rhineland was about 30% in 1945 year. At that time, the average mortality rate among the civilian population of Germany was 1-2%.

One day in June, through hallucinations, Liebig saw "Tommy" entering the camp. The British took the camp under their guard, and this saved Liebig's life. Then he, while growing 5 feet 10 inches, weighed 96,8 pounds.

Eisenhower CAM SIGNED AN ORDER TO CREATE A CATEGORY OF PRISONERS, NOT SUBJECT TO THE GENEVA CONVENTION.

According to the stories of ex-prisoners of Rheinberg, the last action of the Americans before the arrival of the British was to level one section of the camp with a bulldozer, and many of the weakened prisoners could not leave their burrows ...

According to the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war were guaranteed three important rights: that they should be fed and placed according to the same standards. that the winners must be able to receive and send mail and that they must be visited by delegations of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who must compile secret reports on the conditions of detention to the Protecting Party.
(In the case of Germany, since its government was dissolved in the final stages of the war, Switzerland was appointed the Protecting Party).

In fact, the German prisoner army of the United States denied these and most other rights by a series of special decisions and directives adopted by its command at SHAEF - Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force - Allied Expeditionary Forces Headquarters.
General Dwight Eisenhower was both the supreme commander of the SHAEF - all the Allied armies in northwestern Europe, and the commander-in-chief of the US Armed Forces at the European theater of operations.
He submitted to the Joint Command of the United States and Britain (CCS), the United Command of the United States (JCS), as well as the policy of the US Government, but due to the lack of relevant directives, all responsibility for the treatment of German prisoners lies entirely on him.

“God, I hate the Germans,” he wrote to his wife, Mamie, in September 1944. Earlier, he told the British ambassador in Washington that all 3 500 officers of the German General Staff must be "destroyed." In March, 1945 in a letter to CCS, signed by Eisenhower, recommended the creation of a new class of prisoners - Disarmed Enemy Forces - DEF - the Disarmed Adversary Forces, which, unlike prisoners of war, did not fall under the Geneva Convention. Therefore, they should not have been supplied by the victorious army after the surrender of Germany.

It was a direct violation of the Geneva Convention. In a letter from 10 March, in particular. argued: "The additional load on the supply of troops, caused by the recognition of the German Armed Forces as prisoners of war, requiring their provision at the level of the basic military ration, lies far beyond the limits of the Allies, even with all the resources of Germany." The letter ended: "Your approval is required. Plans will be made on this basis."

26 April 1945 Joint Command approved DEF status only for prisoners of war in the hands of the US Army: British command refused to accept the American plan for its prisoners of war. CCS decided to keep the status of disarmed German troops in secret.

At the same time, the Chief Quartermaster of Eisenhower at SAEF, General Robert Littlejohn, already halved the ration for prisoners and the letter from SAEF addressed to General George Marshall, Commander-in-Chief of the US Army, signed by Eisenhower, said that there would be no roof, other amenities ... ".

However, the reason was not the supply. In Europe, there were plenty of materials in warehouses to build acceptable camps for prisoners of war. Eisenhower's adjutant on special issues, General Everett Hughes, visited the huge warehouses in Naples and Marseilles and reported: "More supplies than we can ever use. Extend within sight." That is, the food was not the cause either. The stocks of wheat and corn in the United States were as great as ever, the potato harvest was also a record.

In the army reserves there was such a supply of food that when a whole warehouse center in England stopped supplying after an accident, it was not noticed for three months. In addition, the International Committee of the Red Cross had more than 100 000 tons of food in its warehouses in Switzerland. When he tried to send two echelons of food to the American sector of Germany, the American command unfolded them back, stating that the warehouses were so full that they would never be empty.

Thus, the reason for the deprivation policy of German prisoners of war could in no case be a shortage of supplies. Water, food, tents, squares, medical care — everything necessary for prisoners of war was provided in fatal scarcity.

In the camp of Rheinberg, from where Corporal Liebig escaped in mid-May, dying from dysentery and typhoid, there was no food for prisoners at the time of the opening of April April 17. As in the other camps of the "Floods of the Rhine", opened by Americans in mid-April, there were no watchtowers, no tents, no barracks, no kitchens, no water, no toilets, no food ...

Georg Weiss, repairman tankscurrently living in Toronto, speaks of his camp on the Rhine: “We had to sit huddled together all night. But the lack of water was the worst. For three and a half days we had no water at all. We drank our urine .. . "

Private Hans T. (his name was hidden at his request), who was only eighteen, was in the hospital when the Americans arrived on April 18. He and the other patients were taken to the Bad Kreuznach camp in the Rhineland, which by that time already had several hundred prisoners of war. Hans had only a pair of shorts, shirts and boots.

Hans was not the youngest in the camp - there were thousands of displaced civilian Germans. There were children of six years old, pregnant women, and old people after 60. In the beginning, when there were still trees in the camp, some began to tear off the branches and make a fire. The guard ordered the fire to be put out. At many sites it was forbidden to dig holes in the ground for shelter. "We were forced to eat grass," recalls Hans.

Charles von Luttichau was on his way home when he decided to resist the tyranny of the American military. He was sent to the Kripp camp, on the Rhine near Remagen.
“We were kept extremely crowded in open-air fenced cells with virtually no food,” he recalls now.



Camps POW - Prisoners Of War - POWs along the Rhine - the consequences of the Allied victorious invasion of Germany. The US Army officially captured about 5,25 a million German soldiers

More than half of the days we did not receive any food at all. And on other days - a poor ration "K". I saw that the Americans gave us one tenth of the diet they received themselves ... I complained to the head of the American camp that they were violating the Geneva Convention, to which he replied: "Forget the Convention. You have no rights here."

“The toilets were just logs, thrown over the ditches dug from barbed wire fences. But due to weakness, people could not reach them and walk to the ground. Soon, many of us were so weak that we could not even take off our pants.

WORKING teams stripped identification tags from corpses, stripped them and folded them in layers, pouring quicklime.

So all our clothes became crap, and also the space on which we walked, sat and lay. In such conditions, people soon began to die. A few days later, many people who went to camp healthy were dead. I saw a lot of people dragging corpses to the gates of the camp, where they piled them on top of each other in the truck bodies that took them out of the camp. "
Von Luttichau stayed in the Kripp camp for about three months. His mother was German, and he later emigrated to Washington, where he became a military historian describing history US Army.

Wolfgang Iff, a former Rhineberg prisoner and now living in Germany, describes how out of approximately 10 000 prisoners were dragged daily from 30 to 50 corpses. Iff says that he worked in the funeral team and pulled the corpses from his sector to the camp gate, where they were taken in cars to several large steel garages.

Here, Iff and his comrades stripped corpses, bit off half of the aluminum identification tag, folded the bodies with 15-20 layers in one layer, sprinkled each layer with ten layers of quicklime, forming piles one meter high, and then folded the fragments of tags into bags for Americans, and so time after time ...
Some of the dead were dead from gangrene after frostbite (spring was unusually cold). Some were too weak to hold on to logs thrown through ditches that served as toilets, falling and drowning.

Conditions at the American camps along the Rhine at the end of April were checked by two colonels of the US Army Medical Corps, James Mason and Charles Beesley, who described them in a newspaper published on 1950: "Huddled behind the barbed heap for warmth, they were a terrifying sight: 100 000 slow, apathetic, dirty, emaciated people with empty looks, dressed in a dirty gray field uniform, stood ankle-deep in mud ...
The commander of the German Division reported that people had not eaten for at least two days, and the supply of water was the main problem - even though deep-flowing Rhine flowed in 200 yards. "

4 May 1945 The first German prisoners of war at the disposal of the Americans were transferred to the status of DEF - the Disarmed Forces of the Enemy. On the same day, the US Department of State prohibited prisoners from sending and receiving letters. (When the International Committee of the Red Cross proposed a plan to restore the mail in July, it was rejected).

8 On May 9, Victory Day, the German government was abolished and at the same time the US Department deposed Switzerland as a defending party for German prisoners. (Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King appealed in the London Foreign Office for the simultaneous dismissal of Switzerland as a defending party in the British-Canadian camps, but received a scathing response for his sympathy).
After that, the State Department notified the International Committee of the Red Cross. that since the defending party to which reports can be sent is absent, there is also no need to visit the camps.

From that moment on, prisoners in the US camps officially lost the opportunity to visit independent observers, as well as the possibility of receiving food packages, clothing or medicine from any humanitarian organization, as well as any mail.

The Third Army of General Patton was the only army in the whole European theater of military operations, which freed the prisoners of war and thereby saved many German soldiers from inevitable death during May. Omar Bradley and General J.S.C. Lee, commander of the Communication Zone of Europe, issued an order to release prisoners within a week after the war, but it was 15 of May canceled by Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force - All Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces .

On the same day, at the meeting, Eisenhower and Churchill agreed to reduce the ration of prisoners. From Churchill demanded an agreement on the level of rations of prisoners because he had to declare a decrease in the meat ration of the British and wanted to make sure that "prisoners as much as possible ... should have been supplied with those supplies that we saved." Eisenhower replied that he had already "given the question the necessary attention," but he was going to double-check everything to see if "further reduction is possible."

He told Churchill that POW - POWs get 2 000 calories per day (2150 calories were taken by the US Army Medical Corps as the absolute minimum minimum for adults living in a warm and sedentary lifestyle. US military received 4 000 calories per day) . However, he did not say that the American army practically does not feed DEF at all - the Disarmed Forces of the Enemy or feed them much less than those who still enjoy the status of prisoners of war.

The rations were then trimmed again - direct cuts were recorded in the Quartermaster Report. However, there were indirect cuts. They turned out to be possible due to the discrepancy between the list and the actual number of prisoners in the camps.
The meticulous General Lee was so furious with these inconsistencies that he literally ignited the telephone cable from his headquarters in Paris to the SHAEF headquarters in Frankfurt: "The command is experiencing significant difficulties in establishing an adequate base of rations for prisoners of war held in the theater of operations. In response to a request from the Command ... SAEF provided completely contradictory information about the number of prisoners held in the theater of operations. "



The policy of the US Army was not to provide "no shelter or other amenities." In the prisoners' disposition: people lived in holes dug by them in the ground.

He then quotes the latest SAEF statements: “In a telegram from 31 May, it is stated that 1 890 000 prisoners of war and 1 200 000 of disarmed Germans are available. 910, and in the Twelfth Army of the GP - 980 1, giving the total number of 002 422 965 and in addition 135 2 878 of the Disarmed German Forces from the Germans and the Austrians. "

The situation was amazing: Lee reported on more than a million people in US camps in Europe, which resulted in SHAEF in her data. But he fought windmills: he was forced to count on supplying German prisoners with food based on the number of prisoners determined by the SHAEF G-3 (operational) data. Given the general confusion, the data fluctuations are excusable, but more than 1 million prisoners clearly disappeared between the two reports of the Head of Military Police of the Theater of Military Operations, published on the same day, June 2:
The last of the daily series of TPM reports was 2 870 000 prisoners, and the first was 1 836 000. One day in mid-June, the number of prisoners on the ration list was 1 421 559, while the data from Lee does not only indicate the real number, almost three times the official number!

Allocating an obviously completely inadequate diet was one way to create hunger. Another was significantly underestimated data on the number of prisoners. In addition, a million prisoners who received at least some food due to their status as prisoners of war lost their rights and their food by secret transfer to DEF status. The translation was carried out rigorously for many weeks, with particular attention to the balance in the weekly SHAEF reports between POW and DEF - prisoners of war and disarmed enemies.
The difference between those removed from POW status and those who received DEF status was during the period from June 2 to July 28 0,43%.

The transfer to the DEF did not require any transfer of a person to other camps or the involvement of any new organizations to attract German civilian supplies. People stayed where they were. All that happened after a few clicks of a typewriter was that the person stopped getting a meager piece of food from the US Army.

The condition of the policy implemented by recalculation and supported by winks and nods - without the execution of orders, was to discredit, isolate and expel mid-level officers responsible for POW.
The Colonel of the Quartermaster Service of the Forward Combat Units of the United States wrote a personal appeal to General of the same service, Robert Littlejohn, on April 27: “Apart from the 750 tons received from the 15th Army, there have been no receipts and are not expected. we received, are intended entirely for consumption by the troops on personal request and absolutely do not relate to the requirements imposed on us in connection with the influx of prisoners of war. "

Rumors about conditions in the camps circulated in the American army. "Boys, these camps are bad news"- said Benedict K. Zobrist, technical sergeant of the Medical Corps." We were warned to stay away from them as far as possible. "
In May and early June, the 1945 medical team from the US Army Medical Corps inspected some of the camps in the Rhine Valley, where German prisoners of war were kept around 80 000. Their report has been removed from the National Archives of the United States in Washington, but two secondary sources provide some information from the report.

The three main killers were: diarrhea or dysentery (considered one category), heart disease and pneumonia. However, with the stress of medical terminology, doctors also recorded deaths from "exhaustion" and "debilitation." Their data revealed a death rate eight times higher than the highest levels of peacetime.

But only from 9,7 to 15% of prisoners died for reasons purely associated with malnutrition, such as exhaustion and dehydration. Prevailing other diseases directly related to unbearable conditions of detention. Overcrowding, dirt, lack of any sanitary conditions were undoubtedly aggravated by hunger.
The report noted: "Content, crowding in pens, lack of food and lack of sanitary conditions all contribute to such a high mortality rate." It should be remembered that the data were obtained in the POW camps - prisoners of war, and not DEF - of the disarmed forces of the enemy.

At the end of May, more people died in American camps in the American camps than in the flame of the atomic explosion in Hiroshima.

4 1945 June A telegram signed by Eisenhower reported to Washington that "there is an urgent need to reduce the number of prisoners at the earliest opportunity by re-sorting all classes of prisoners in a different way than the Allies require." It is difficult to understand the meaning of this telegram.
There are no grounds for its understanding in the large volume of telegrams preserved in the archives of London, Washington and Abilene, Kansas. And regardless of the orders of Eisenhower to accept or transfer prisoners of war, the order of the Joint Command from 26 of April forced him not to take more prisoners of war after Victory Day, even for work. However, around 2 million DEF were driven after 8 May.

During June, Germany was divided into occupation zones and in July 1945 SHAEF - Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force - The Allied Expeditionary Forces Headquarters was disbanded. Eisenhower became the military governor of the United States. He continued to restrain representatives of the Red Cross and the US Army notified US humanitarian groups that the zone was closed to them.
It turned out to be completely closed for any humanitarian supplies - until December 1945, when some relief came into effect.

Also, starting in April, the Americans transferred from 600 000 to 700 000 German prisoners of war to France to restore its infrastructure damaged during the war. Many of the transports were from five American camps located around Dietersheim, near Mainz, in a part of Germany that came under the control of France. (The rest were taken from American camps in France).

On July 10, the French Army unit entered Dietersheim and in 17 days, Captain Julien arrived to take command. His report has been preserved as part of an army investigation in the discussion of Captain Julien and his predecessor. In the first camp in which he entered, he witnessed the presence of a dirty land "inhabited by living skeletons", some of which were dying before his eyes.
Others piled under pieces of cardboard, although July was not too hot. The women lying in holes dug in the ground looked at him, swollen from hunger, with bellies parodying the pregnancy; old men with long gray hair looked at him hunched over; children of six or seven years old with hungry circles of raccoons around their eyes looked at him with lifeless eyes.

Two German doctors in the "hospital" tried to help the dying on the ground under the open sky, between the tracks from the tent, which the Americans took with them. Julien, a member of the Resistance, caught himself thinking: "This is reminiscent of photos of Dachau and Buchenwald .." (That's just the German labor camps have reached a deplorable state because of the defeat of Germany; the American death camps were created because of America's victory - approx. transl.)

In the five camps around Dietersheim there were about 103 500 people, and among them officers Julien counted 32 640 people who were not able to work at all. They were immediately released. In total, two thirds of the prisoners taken by the French this summer from Americans from camps in Germany and in France were useless for reconstruction work.
In the St. Marti camp, 615 of 700 prisoners were unable to work. In Erbisel, near Mons, in Belgium, twenty-five percent of men adopted by the French were “dechets,” or ballast.

In July and August, United States Quartermaster Littlejohn reported to Eisenhower that the Army’s food reserves in Europe had increased by 39%.
4 August, Eisenhower's order, consisting of one sentence, condemned all prisoners of war in the hands of Americans to the DEF provision: "Immediately count all members of the German forces held by the US in the US occupation zone of GERMANY as disarmed by the enemy forces and not having the status of prisoners of war . "

The reason was not given. The remaining weekly results indicate a double classification that has been preserved, but for POWs that were now treated as DEF, the diet began to decline at a rate of 2% per week to 8%.

The mortality rate among DEFs for the entire period was five times higher than the above percentages. The official Weekly PW & DEF Report, September 8, 1945, is still kept in Washington. It states that a total of 1 prisoners were held by the US Army at the European Theater, of which about two-thirds were identified as POW. The remaining third is 056 482 - DEF. During the week 363 of them died.

In November, 1945 was replaced by General Eisenhower, George Marshall, and Eisenhower left for the United States. In January, 1946 still contained a significant number of prisoners in the camps, but by the end of 1946, the United States had almost reduced the number of its prisoners. The French continued to hold hundreds of thousands of prisoners in 1946, but by the year 1949 had released almost everyone.

During 1950, most of the materials relating to American prisoner of war camps were destroyed by the US Army.

Eisenhower regretted the useless German defense of the Reich in the last months of the war due to the useless losses on the German side. At least 10 times more Germans - at least 800 000, very likely more 900 000, and quite possibly more than 1 million, died in American and French camps than were killed in northwestern Europe since America’s accession in the war in 1941 to April 1945.

An excerpt from the memoirs of Johann Baumberger, a German prisoner of war
home.arcor.de/kriegsgefangene/usa/europe.html
home.arcor.de/kriegsgefangene/usa/johann_baumberger2.html#We%20came




On this aerial photograph, each black dot means a German prisoner of war sitting in a snowy field for a month.

We came to the POW camp in Brilon near Sauerland. It was winter and we settled on a snowy pasture. At night, we lay on the 7-8 man, huddled close to each other. After midnight, those lying inside were changing places with those lying outside, so that they would not freeze to death.

The next camp was Remagen on the Rhine. 400 000 people in the same camp. The conditions were terrible. We were not given food on the 2-3 of the day, and we drank water from the Rhine. We lined up in the morning to get a liter of water ("brown soup") 1 / 2 by the evening. The one who did not boil water, fell ill with diarrhea and died, in most cases in the moat-toilet. There were beautiful orchards here, but after a few weeks nothing was left of them.
We tore off the branches, made a fire, boiled water and cooked one potato for two. 40 people received 1 kg of bread. I did not have a chair for a month. In such conditions, a week for 1 died 000 people. We were so weak that we could not get up and walk - that memory forever bumped into my memory.

Fever broke into camp in May 1945. We were transferred to another camp in Koblenz. When we arrived, the clover was 15cm tall. We pressed and ate it. Wheat reached half a meter and we were glad that we could not lie on bare ground. The camp submitted to the French, and most of the prisoners were transferred to France. I had the good fortune to be released on medical advice.

In "Eisenhower" s Death Camps ": A US Prison Guard" s Story

In the "Eisenhower death camps": The story of the American guard (excerpt)
the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/us_war_crimes/Eisenhowers_death_camps.htm

In late March - early April, 1945 sent me to guard a prisoner of war camp near Andernach on the Rhine. I had four German courses and could talk to prisoners, although it was forbidden. But over time, I became a translator and was assigned to identify members of the SS. (I have not identified any).



In Andernach, around 50 000 prisoners were kept in an open field, surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate pen. The prisoners had no shelters, no blankets, many did not have a coat. They slept in the mud, in the rain and in the cold, among incredibly long ditches for excrement. The spring was cold and windy, and the weather was terrible.

It was even more terrible to watch prisoners cooked in cans a semblance of liquid grass and weed soup. Very soon the prisoners were exhausted. Dysentery raged, and very soon they slept in their own excrement, too weak and crowded to get to the trench toilets.
Many begged for food, weakened and died before our eyes. We had plenty of food and other food, but we could not help them, including medical care.

Enraged, I protested to my officers, but was received with hostility or mild indifference. Under pressure, they replied that they were following the strictest instructions "from the very top".
Turning to the kitchen, I heard that the kitchen master is strictly forbidden to share provisions with the prisoners, but more than ever, they don’t know what to do with it. I promised to allocate a little.

When I threw food to the prisoners over the barbed wire, I was caught by the guards. I repeated the "offense" and the officer viciously threatened to shoot me. I thought it was a bluff, until I saw on the hill near the camp of an officer who was shooting a group of German civil women with an 45 caliber pistol.
He answered my question: “Target shooting” and continued firing to the last cartridge in the store. I saw how the women fled to the shelter, but because of the distance I could not determine whether the officer had wounded anyone.

Then I realized that I was dealing with cold-blooded killers, full of moral hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman, worthy of destruction: another round of the downward spiral of racism. The entire press of the end of the war was full of photographs of German concentration camps with depleted prisoners. This increased our self-assured cruelty and made it easier for us to behave in the way we were sent to fight ...
50 comments
Information
Dear reader, to leave comments on the publication, you must sign in.
  1. Beck
    -22
    8 December 2012 10: 11
    That's why you write such nonsense, and even under such a heading. If only to belittle the amers.

    I agree there were some flaws in the Americans at first, which they did not foresee. Just 2 million prisoners of war. And how in one day to make so many barracks for all 2 million. So they lived for the first time in the open. And you will not immediately provide food. First you need to feed your army. Then everything was settled. Yes, and the West held German prisoners of war only until 1946, then released the Gestapo to their homes, except for the SS.

    We have, on this issue, what was better than the Americans? The Americans had something to feed prisoners of war, we did not have enough for our soldiers. And it’s right to feed the enemy, although a prisoner is better than Soviet soldiers at the front. Fritz was slaughtered in Soviet captivity, which they deserved by their attack. And they kept prisoners of war until the mid-50s.

    Before writing about allies, you first need to look at yourself, and not escalate psychosis. According to various sources, after the Battle of Stalingrad, from 100 to 200 thousand captured German soldiers were captured in the Soviet Union. Take 150 thousand. Of these, only 6 thousand returned home after the war. So what? Nothing for me personally. There was nothing to carry to Stalingrad. What should they give the sheepskin coat for the winter from the Soviet soldiers? Or cut back the rations of our soldiers so that the Germans could live a satisfying life? Captivity is captivity this is not a resort.
    1. +18
      8 December 2012 11: 09
      And about our "flaws" gentlemen democrats shout at every opportunity. And fanning the elephant out of a fly. Should we be silent about their "flaws"? Or is it not true in the article?
      1. Brother Sarych
        +18
        8 December 2012 13: 30
        The article says the truth, it is quite possible that not all ...
        1. NKVD
          +2
          9 December 2012 12: 43
          Is it really a pity for someone to become sausages? poor and unfortunate Fritz how they felt bad in captivity ... But what about the millions of tortured our prisoners and civilians in fascist camps? (read the article and cried a lot ..)
      2. YARY
        +5
        8 December 2012 15: 36
        I had a small opportunity to find out what is written in the article, what is called first-hand. There are no differences in the description.
        But, I do not feed and a scanty feeling for any rubbish on both sides.
        They were all worthy of only one death.
      3. vyatom
        0
        14 December 2012 13: 24
        I do not mind these Germans. For that fought for it and ran. They mocked our prisoners of war. Mocked the civilian population. Therefore, the Americans are great in this regard.
    2. +13
      8 December 2012 11: 18
      Quote: Beck
      . Yes, and the West held German prisoners of war only until 1946, then released the Gestapo to their homes, except for the SS.

      Yes, the SS was not released, many were even invited to America with a salary, to continue their service hi
      Quote: Beck
      According to various sources, the battle of Stalingrad in Soviet captivity turned out to be from 100 to 200 thousand captured German soldiers. Take 150 thousand. Of these, only 6 thousand returned home after the war. So what?

      Beck, and who called them to Stalingrad, and what did these prisoners do with Stalingrad itself and many other cities of the USSR? Tell you about how the Germans treated the Russian prisoners? And how many including Kazakhs died in the concentration camps of Germany.
      1. Beck
        -12
        8 December 2012 13: 07
        Quote: Smirnov Vadim
        Or is the article not true?


        I did not say that it was not true. I mean that there is nothing to be done from the captive aggressor of the poor, here are the amers how they were mistreated. As it turned out with them in captivity, it happened. They themselves went to this destroying and killing. They were the first to build concentration camps, so they had to experience what others wanted.

        Quote: Alexander Romanov
        Yes, the SS was not released, many were even invited to America with a salary, to continue their service


        Well, that is a fact. But not completely. Scientists like Brown - yes. Type Erich Koch - no. And our German scientists were taken out.

        Quote: Alexander Romanov
        Beck, and who called them to Stalingrad and what these prisoners did to Stalingrad itself and many other cities of the USSR


        Alexander gives the impression that you didn’t read my comment upstairs. With half the comment rushed to write an answer. My answer is in the top and this comment.
        1. +5
          8 December 2012 13: 20
          Quote: Beck
          Well, that is a fact. But not completely. Scientists like Brown - yes. Type Erich Koch - no. And our German scientists were taken out.

          I did not mean scientists, namely SS officers and the Gestapo, whose experience was used by amers in the cold war against the USSR.
          Quote: Beck

          Alexander gives the impression that you didn’t read my comment upstairs. With half the comment rushed to write an answer. My answer is in the top and this comment.

          I read it, and therefore wrote it. On the one hand, say to yourself you need to look and what ........... they looked. Why do you immediately have a defensive reaction to any facts about US crimes?
          1. Beck
            +2
            8 December 2012 14: 14
            Quote: Alexander Romanov
            Why do you immediately have a defensive reaction to any facts about US crimes?


            I have no defensive reactions. I have objectivity, well, as I understand it. Amers burned out the jungle in orange - burned out. Crime is a crime. The last amers abolished official segregation - the last. Racism is racism. Amers mocked the prisoners of the Abu Grave prison - mocked. Crime is a crime.

            But how could it be a crime the initial confusion in organizing the maintenance of prisoners of war. And once again I repeat the German prisoners of war are not poor, innocent lambs. These are aggressors. And why worry if they went hungry for a week.

            And then, I can’t know everything. I don’t know which SS and Gestapo men were taken to the USA. (Of course, the documents were taken away). Who I read about was General Reinhard Gehlen, the head of the Abwehr that the Americans used. His and his agents.
        2. Brother Sarych
          +4
          8 December 2012 13: 31
          And I read to the end, and answered quite deliberately ...
        3. Ruslan
          +1
          8 December 2012 19: 06
          Quote: Beck
          I did not say that it was not true. I mean that there is nothing to be done from the captive aggressor of the poor, here are the amers how they were mistreated. As it turned out with them in captivity, it happened. They themselves went to this destroying and killing. They were the first to build concentration camps, so they had to experience what others wanted.
          You read the story back as the Germans of the prisoners of war in England and the USA kept and compare it with this and then move your brains - for what the West did this - there were enough resources to build elementary barracks and give a simple soup.
    3. Brother Sarych
      +7
      8 December 2012 13: 29
      Actually, this is far from nonsense!
      This is actually an indicator, and you could find out about this before ...
      We had nothing to feed the prisoners, our people were undernourished, therefore there was a rather high mortality rate, but no one tried to specifically kill - and this is a proven fact, as long as eyewitnesses are alive ...
      Yes, arranging several million prisoners at once is problematic, especially if resources are limited, but the capabilities of the Allied rear services are quite possible, which not only exceeded the capabilities of the Germans or ours, but exceeded multiple! And the level of organization of supply was the highest, especially since there was nothing to supply ...
      Whether the Germans went to Stalingrad or not, this is the second question, they will tell you to go somewhere and you will go until the enemy with weapons is worthy of destruction, but if he surrenders, then this is a completely different matter - and in relation to the defeated enemy you people, or the same fascists, only without a swastika ...
      1. Lech e-mine
        +4
        8 December 2012 18: 39
        THIS is the dead prisoners of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp.
        I deeply spit on the fate of the Fritz who were captured at the end of the war — they received for their crimes and should fully experience in their own skin what our prisoners of war felt in German concentration camps — TOLERANCE HERE IS INappropriate.
    4. +2
      8 December 2012 14: 34
      Quote: Beck
      That's why writing such nonsense,
      it is necessary to write such "BOTH" more often so that no one is tempted to give up something that happens
    5. Ruslan
      +3
      8 December 2012 19: 03
      Quote: Beck
      That's why you write such nonsense, and even under such a heading. If only to belittle the amers.
      Beck is a big fan of Americans, Jews and other liberal blues.
    6. Dimon Lviv
      +3
      8 December 2012 19: 53
      Beck, minus you - it’s just rubbish. Everything described in the article took place. Throughout their history, the Americans treated the peoples they captured a little better than the Germans, in fact, did not differ much from them.
      1. Beck
        0
        8 December 2012 20: 53
        Quote: Dimon Lviv
        Beck, minus you


        Minus is so minus. But you tell me what you most upset about in the article. That Americans, bastards are bad, poor Germans were mistreated. Or just your pity for the fascists, What would you like for the aggressors who destroyed the floor of our country had separate lathes?

        I wrote in my comment that the confusion of the first days with the maintenance of German prisoners of war is not a crime. Then everything was organized. And I wrote in komente that I did not feel sorry for those Nazi Germans who had been starving for a week in American captivity.
      2. vyatom
        0
        14 December 2012 13: 26
        Yes, but the Americans started the Second World War, namely the Germans.
    7. bart74
      +1
      8 December 2012 21: 14
      Do you hear yourself? I think so, no! Here my grandfather was held captive twice. They woke up like herrings in a jar in a barracks. Woke up and next to the corpses. In general, do not blame the soldiers captured. GOD FORBID! and do not reproach the soldier with a piece of bread!
    8. +3
      9 December 2012 12: 38
      From which camel came the numbers / 150 thousand and 6 thousand survivors / I lived in a hut of a former prison camp at the 1st gateway of the Volga-Don canal, a quite solid hut and demolished them in the late 50s, when they provided residents with new housing, and the camp cemetery was very small, there was food from the stationary dining room / then there was a store in it / the prisoners had time to make various crafts that they sold or changed, I saw them - these were toys, lighters and kitchen utensils. Therefore, it is not necessary to equalize with cliches — whoever saw this is still alive.
      1. Andrew-53
        +1
        11 December 2012 01: 52
        And I also met these numbers. Where I do not remember, but definitely under the Soviet regime. Moreover, the officers returned mainly because they were kept separately from ordinary soldiers. In the spring of 43, a typhus epidemic broke out in prisoner-of-war camps and approximately 90-100 thousand died out, including many of our people (doctors m / sisters, etc.). These facts of the death of the Soviet medical staff were noted by various authors who wrote on the theme of Stalingrad.
    9. +3
      9 December 2012 13: 15
      Take 150 thousand. Of these, only 6 thousand returned home after the war


      Kindly link. Shurik Solzhenitsyn not to offer.
      1. Beck
        -2
        9 December 2012 19: 16
        Quote: rexby63
        Kindly link. Shurik Solzhenitsyn not to offer.


        And why will I remember that, where, when I read. Link - My worldview developed when the Internet was not there.

        Look for it yourself. You will find the disproving right then and pop under my nose. And if you have nothing. I will not run for you anywhere.
        1. 0
          10 December 2012 20: 01
          QED
  2. Sirius
    +3
    8 December 2012 10: 45
    1. We were not spared in the 41-42th!
    2. The Germans, fearing the Russians themselves, fled in droves to the amers! For that fought for it and ran!
    3. We have the right to revenge! And we did not use it to the end! The Germans still owe us!
    4. Let the Germans choose with whom to be friends: with us or with amers! And then squealing about 2 million raped Germans! There wasn’t such a number! Read paragraph 3 They owe us!
    And after that, the Germans are members of NATO ?!
    1. Brother Sarych
      0
      8 December 2012 13: 33
      Personally, no one owes you anything!
      But the problem is quite complicated ...
    2. vyatom
      0
      14 December 2012 13: 28
      4. Yes, they even raped these German women. Nothing wrong. the winner gets everything. Including women of these cockerels.
  3. Volkhov
    +3
    8 December 2012 11: 40
    The article is very deep - it shows the world source of genocide, from which the Germans drank this time. The Indians were exterminated in the same way, the Irish in England, the Russians in the concentration camps of the interventionists, the Russians in the Gulag, in the German camps - and all this is a program of Zionism, which Venusians stand for.
    As soon as the power of Zionism comes without restrictions, the population begins to die - the Russian Federation is no exception, only the forms change. Fresh vivid examples are Libya and Syria, in which an understanding of the essence of "democracy" and the "Shabiha" units have emerged.
  4. Nu daaaa ...
    -9
    8 December 2012 12: 24
    As I recall, in the Soviet zone there were initially ten internment camps, subordinate to the Department of Special Camps of the NKVD of the USSR. Among them, one of the largest concentration camps in Germany, located near Weimar in Thuringia - Buchenwald (Special Camp No. 2). In 1948, it was integrated into the Gulag system. According to Soviet archival data, in 1945-1950. 28 455 prisoners passed through the camp, of which 7113 (25%) died ...

    Petra Weber, Justiz und Diktatur: Justizverwaltung und politische Strafjustiz in Thüringen 1945-1961: Veröffentlichungen zur SBZ- / DDR -Forschung im Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2000, p. 99, ISBN 3-486-56463-3.

    Or a camp in Mulberg, in the former Nazi prisoner of war camp Stammlager IV B ...
    Nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs wurde das Lager als Speziallager Nr. 1 Mühlberg vom sowjetischen NKWD und SMERSCH, vom September 1945 to 1948, betrieben. Etwa 22.000 Personen wurden in dieser Zeit inhaftiert, von denen etwa 7.000 die Gefangenschaft nicht überlebten. Die Verstorbenen wurden in Massengräbern am Rande des Geländes beerdigt.


    The number of special camps decreased as their contingent decreased, and in 1948 there were only three camps that were assigned a new numbering: special camp No. 1 - Sachsenhausen, No. 2 - Buchenwald, No. 3 - Bautzen.

    Sachsenhausen is a Nazi concentration camp located near the city of Oranienburg in Germany. There were Nazi war criminals. In 1948, the camp was renamed to "Special Camp N ° 1". "Special Camp N ° 1" - the largest of the three special camps for internees in the Soviet zone of occupation - was closed in 1950. About 60.000 people passed through it.
    By the time the camp was closed in the spring of 1950, at least 12,000 had died of malnutrition and disease.

    With the fall of the communist East Germany it was possible to do excavations in the former camps. At Sachsenhausen, the bodies of 12,500 victims were found, most were children, adolescents and elderly people.


    http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/24/world/germans-find-mass-graves-at-an-ex-soviet

    -camp.html
  5. 0
    8 December 2012 12: 41
    Only 6000 people returned from the prisoner of Paulus’s army. So what? I don’t feel sorry for either of those. Why do I hope I don’t have to explain?
    1. vyatom
      +1
      14 December 2012 13: 30
      Why has so much returned?
      I'm not sorry for them at all.
  6. 0
    8 December 2012 12: 54
    The phrase is incomprehensible.
    "Julien, a member of the Resistance, caught himself thinking:" This resembles photographs of Dachau and Buchenwald .. "(But the German labor camps reached a deplorable state because of the defeat of Germany; American death camps were created because of the victory of America - approx . transl.) "
    , that is, the German "labor camps" Dachau and Buchenwald, according to the translator, originally had excellent conditions of detention?
    1. Brother Sarych
      +4
      8 December 2012 13: 36
      For a concentration camp - practically yes, for a sanatorium - it’s not very finished ...
      Look at the pictures of the same huts, if you do not pay attention to the exhausted prisoners, then it is not so bad - in agricultural work these days it is much worse ...
  7. 0
    8 December 2012 14: 48
    Well, it’s right that the reptiles were starved. For the suffering of only the Soviet people from Germany, it was necessary not to leave stone unturned. They wanted to have Russians as slaves, they themselves became slaves until the death of Stalin. Nemchur still cannot recover from the war; in the Reichstag they left the inscriptions of Soviet soldiers as a warning to posterity. Bismarck warned them against going east, did not obey, reap the fruits.
    1. newFeofan
      0
      8 December 2012 19: 50
      The dog barks - the wind wears. In this case, who will guess the dog yourself.
      1. vyatom
        -1
        14 December 2012 13: 31
        This is you not barking on business
    2. vyatom
      0
      14 December 2012 13: 30
      Who is the minus? what kind of clown?
  8. +3
    8 December 2012 15: 33
    Yeah. This is what needs to be exhibited in response to Russia's accusations of inhuman treatment of prisoners. And then we are all silent and apologize ..
  9. KAZAKHSTAN
    +2
    8 December 2012 16: 12
    I read the comments and the conclusions are zero ... These millions of people this gray mass was once abandoned by a bunch of politicians to conquer the eastern lands, but it didn’t work out and this meat was consumed ... Almost a hundred years have passed and nothing has changed, have people, the masses been incapable of self-organization ?! As long as we people are at the head of the fathers of POLITICIANS and we entrust our souls to them, these clever men will manage our lives !!! Down with the politicians !!! Engineers, teachers and doctors are greeting !!!
  10. zavesa01
    +3
    8 December 2012 17: 30
    I read the article and comments, in my opinion one Sarych is adequate
  11. Lech e-mine
    +5
    8 December 2012 18: 34
    And this is a concentration camp for our prisoners of war- BERGEN BELSEN
    on PHOTO OUR AND POWS DIED FROM HUNGER.
    In my opinion, after that, to regret the Fritz, I DO NOT HAVE ANY DESIRE.
    1. Ruslan
      +1
      8 December 2012 19: 12
      Quote: Leha e-mine
      In my opinion, after that, to regret the Fritz, I DO NOT HAVE ANY DESIRE.
      SORRY do not need freaks who gave orders and those who sponsored them - sitting across the ocean and eating matzo, these freaks across the ocean and sheltered those who gave orders and simply threw them to die - I recommend watching the good modern German film Stalingrad
      1. +2
        9 December 2012 00: 33
        and the "simple" did this: see the photo. So it was necessary to root them all!
        1. Nu daaaa ...
          -3
          9 December 2012 01: 51
          Do not worry so much about photo montage ...




          http://www.diletant.ru/articles/4425076/
    2. Dimon Lviv
      +9
      8 December 2012 19: 56
      Fritsev has nothing to regret. But once again recall the scumbag of the Americans does not hurt!
      1. vyatom
        0
        14 December 2012 13: 32
        Hans ch.m.oshnyh not a pity. Let them know their places of history.
  12. +2
    8 December 2012 19: 34
    What's new for us here?
    Translate into German and publish in Germany.
  13. bart74
    0
    8 December 2012 21: 21
    God forbid! I do not want any victorious army to surrender mine and take the enemy prisoner. And if this happens, then let it be on the level. war she is like a mother
  14. +1
    8 December 2012 22: 36
    Very adequate, interesting and useful information in the article.
    Thanks to the author!
    Most people do not understand the uniqueness and value of each individual life, therefore the comments are "zero".
  15. +1
    8 December 2012 23: 23
    If we take a purely time period described in the article, then of course it is a pity for the people .. And this shooting of women at the end .. Woe to the vanquished .. But if you remember how the population of our country, young and old, was destroyed. With cruelty and pleasure, everything is deserved .. In any case, I want good to be with fists, but fair good ... Punishing precisely those who are guilty .. Our soldier in Treptower Park as the embodiment of this ideal .. He came to the house of the fanatical aggressor to punish the reptile, but he saved the daughter of this creature .. After all, you can still make a good person out of her .. Despite the fact that her dad wrote - "Russians must die so that we can live" ..
  16. AK-47
    +3
    9 December 2012 00: 18
    A few words about Dwight David Eisenhower, the dreaded Swedish Jew. His father was a Swedish Jew who married a Swedish non-Jewish woman.
    ... in 1943, MacArthur (commander of the Allied forces in the Philippines) reported to his superiors in Washington that Eisenhower was incompetent and not needed at his headquarters, but Washington not only transferred Colonel Eisenhower to Europe, but also promoted him ahead of 30 more experienced senior officers , awarded the title of five star general and placed at the head of the US forces in Europe.
    ... Earlier, the Zionists recruited Eisenhower, and Baruch (the group of the richest Jewish bankers who had undertaken the obligations of the US state bank, having formed the Federal Reserve System, which controls not only the United States, but all the countries of the world) promoted him to the general.
    So, here too I emphasize world Zionism.
    1. vyatom
      0
      14 December 2012 13: 34
      You would have closed your mouth ak-47. The Germans brought a lot of evil to our country. And all who fought with them, even if so destroyed in the camps deserve respect regardless of nationality.
      1. stroporez
        0
        5 July 2013 16: 00
        our ancestors fought against fascism and not against the Germans. and as it turned out ---- in an empty place. the third Reich was destroyed. and at the same time the fourth was formed. and the most "trap" is that our "allies" were much worse than those with whom we fought .........
  17. +1
    9 December 2012 00: 31
    Liebig sat down and wept. "I could not believe that people were so cruel to each other." what they did with our prisoners of war, then they got "in return" !!! Let them rejoice that in general someone now speaks German, and there was no mass destruction of the "yubermens", for everything that they did with us.
  18. +1
    9 December 2012 09: 30
    First of all, you need to feel sorry for your own, and not for strangers. After what the Germans did on the territory of the Union, Germany had to burn to the ground.
  19. +1
    9 December 2012 10: 03
    Well, it’s good that they died ... For me it was necessary to keep everyone so until one was left, then let him go so that he would tell everyone that it was not necessary to shed our blood!
  20. +1
    9 December 2012 14: 15
    No FIG was to start a war.
  21. +2
    9 December 2012 14: 16
    Dead, that's how it should be .... basically everyone has exclamations, in general, the purpose of the article is to show what the Americans, the British are ... And what could happen to us in the future if we continue to look with our mouths open to the "west"! Stop moaning about the past, you just need to remember, take into account, and think about our and our children’s future!
  22. Dikremnij
    +2
    10 December 2012 03: 41
    So evil always returns: in 1941-1944 the Germans destroyed the Slavs, Jews and Gypsies, and now the Germans are self-destructing - the Turkish problem is very acute.
  23. +2
    10 December 2012 13: 45
    You’re angry ... ordinary people don’t even feel sorry for the soldier
  24. 0
    10 December 2012 17: 57
    that the German critters died — like flies from Europeans — I personally don’t care, they themselves are to blame .... the read descriptions of the camps remind us of the conditions found in 1941, while the Fritzes were more afraid of our camps ... well ....
  25. MAX
    MAX
    +1
    10 December 2012 20: 36
    I personally have the opinion that the Anglo-Saxons and those who govern them have consciously pitted (and will pit) the German and Russian peoples until complete annihilation. Well, they like it when we die out or cut each other out.
    1. stroporez
      0
      5 July 2013 16: 08
      I read somewhere, the most terrible dream of the United States and Britain is Russian technologies and resources multiplied by German accuracy and quality .............
  26. Raven
    +2
    12 December 2012 15: 31
    In the camps it is necessary to contain the top of the Reich and the SS with punitive detachments. And not the soldiers who were ordered to go to the stuffing.
  27. 0
    14 December 2012 19: 30
    In the United States, all people of Japanese descent were imprisoned in concentration camps until the end of the war, even if they were no longer US citizens of the first generation. This is 112 thousand people, including women, old people, children. In 1988, President Reagan recognized this as a "mistake" and signed legislation to compensate the approximately 81 surviving US concentration camp prisoners and their heirs. How many died in the camps, if two generations later the surviving Japanese along with their children and grandchildren turned out to be one third less. So they did this with their citizens, who did not cooperate with Japan, were not in the occupied territory. They were not sent deep into the territory (as the "tyrant" Stalin did), they were simply imprisoned. What can we say about the prisoners of war.
  28. 0
    21 November 2017 12: 14
    I think the Germans got what they deserved. It’s a pity that just after 2 years the American policy towards Germany has changed. Smashed the Germans of the Red Army and captured Germans almost all were in the Western armies. The dumb Russians didn’t want to give up, they knew what they had done in Russia. True, the policy towards Germany among Amers has changed, and they have worked longer prisoners of war in Russia.