I always like to read and interpret history from a critical point of view. I never think that things are black or white, I prefer to see the scale btw those colours. When we talk about war crimes always appears jew genocide (wich was horrible), but during WW II also happened things that should have been judged in a war crime court. I will give a few examples:

- On the night of February 13th 1945 Dresden was bombed with 730.000 incendiaries bombs. The estimates range from 30.000 to 150.000 people killed, the real numbers of how many were actually killed will never be known because Dresden had a large number of refugees in the city at the time of the bombing.

- When Germany surrendered in May 1945, the American Military Governor, General Eisenhower, sent out an “urgent courier” with instructions making it a crime punishable by death to feed German prisoners. It was even a capital offence to gather food together in one place to take to prisoners. The message reads in part: “…Under no circumstances may food supplies be assembled among the local inhabitants in order to deliver them to prisoners of war. Those who violate this command and nevertheless try to circumvent this blockade to allow something to come to the prisoners place themselves in danger of being shot…” Between 1941 and 1950 around one and a half to two million German prisoners of war died. Whilst a further five million seven hundred thousand German civilians died between 1946 and 1950, largely, Bacque maintains, as a result of Allied policy. In all Bacque’s estimates that between nine and half and fourteen million ethnic Germans, German prisoners of war and civilians were to die in these iniquities. Part of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of Josef Stalin who, through his propaganda minister, Ilya Ehrenburg, actually encouraged the rape and degradation of the German civilian population.

- Hiroshima & Nagasaki. By the end of 1945, some 145,000 people had died in Hiroshima, and some 75,000 people had died in Nagasaki. Tens of thousands more suffered serious injuries. Deaths among survivors of the bombings have continued over the years due primarily to the effects of radiation poisoning.

The Allies were certainly guilty of numerous war crimes, particularly the Soviet Union. But the winners tend to enjoy the luxury of being able, to a certain degree, gloss over any crimes they may have committed.

Nothing the Western Allies did though can come even close to comparing to what Hitler did to the Jews and the Slavs or even what Stalin did to his own people.

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

The Allies were certainly guilty of numerous war crimes, particularly the Soviet Union. But the winners tend to enjoy the luxury of being able, to a certain degree, gloss over any crimes they may have committed.

Nothing the Western Allies did though can come even close to comparing to what Hitler did to the Jews and the Slavs or even what Stalin did to his own people.

Yes, you are right. Winners write the history.

All I can say is War Is Hell.

Dear Member,

1> The statement about starving German prisoners has been proven a hoax over and over -- ie it is in the same catagory as the photos of the dead in the concentration camps were bombing victims and 6 milllion Jews were not killed by Hitlers thugs.

2> Both Dresden and Hiroshima were not declared "open cities" and were actually defended citied and both the Germans and Japanese had engaged in terror bombing first (ie including the bombing of cities declared open) and before the 1949 Geneva Convention there was what was called "reciprocity" meaning if one side ignored international law and broke it then the other side could retaliate in kind.

Finally, I have heard that more and more messages like this are poping up in Europe and in books and speeches (ie sort of like many in the US over fustration over Iraq bashing the French all the time and even claiming that France never helped the US much even including at Yorktown in 1782). It is a lot like I think after the American Civil War ended. Many whites in the South had come at first to an acceptance of that enslaving the Blacks was wrong. But after a few decades and the shock had worn off they changed their atttitude to the "Old South Lost Cause" where the Black slaves were actually very happy, well treated and loved their masters and that the evil Northeners mistreated their Irish and other immigrants far worst, etc. And then they started the legend about the brutal occupation of the South by the Union after the war ended -- ie when in fact as civil wars go the peace after was totally the opposite with only one Confederate POW camp commander being shot and even the President of the Confederacy who was a former Army officer and Secretary of War and legally was guilty of treason was only held less than a year. But in their minds there was mass rape, murder, and pillage by the occupation forces. Only today are they admitting it was not true.

Jack E. Hammond

NOTE> To give credit, the Japanese are far worst than any of the revisionists in Europe about WW2. They have convinced themselves they waged a war of liberation of the Asians from the Europeans and not a brutal (and it was extremely brutal by any measure) of conquest where they held the Asians they conquerored in more contempt than the Europeans. This kind of revisition of actual history is now causing a massive problem betwen China and Japan.

Originally Posted by staurofilakes

I always like to read and interpret history from a critical point of view. I never think that things are black or white, I prefer to see the scale btw those colours. When we talk about war crimes always appears jew genocide (wich was horrible), but during WW II also happened things that should have been judged in a war crime court. I will give a few examples:

- On the night of February 13th 1945 Dresden was bombed with 730.000 incendiaries bombs. The estimates range from 30.000 to 150.000 people killed, the real numbers of how many were actually killed will never be known because Dresden had a large number of refugees in the city at the time of the bombing.

- When Germany surrendered in May 1945, the American Military Governor, General Eisenhower, sent out an “urgent courier” with instructions making it a crime punishable by death to feed German prisoners. It was even a capital offence to gather food together in one place to take to prisoners. The message reads in part: “…Under no circumstances may food supplies be assembled among the local inhabitants in order to deliver them to prisoners of war. Those who violate this command and nevertheless try to circumvent this blockade to allow something to come to the prisoners place themselves in danger of being shot…” Between 1941 and 1950 around one and a half to two million German prisoners of war died. Whilst a further five million seven hundred thousand German civilians died between 1946 and 1950, largely, Bacque maintains, as a result of Allied policy. In all Bacque’s estimates that between nine and half and fourteen million ethnic Germans, German prisoners of war and civilians were to die in these iniquities. Part of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of Josef Stalin who, through his propaganda minister, Ilya Ehrenburg, actually encouraged the rape and degradation of the German civilian population.

- Hiroshima & Nagasaki. By the end of 1945, some 145,000 people had died in Hiroshima, and some 75,000 people had died in Nagasaki. Tens of thousands more suffered serious injuries. Deaths among survivors of the bombings have continued over the years due primarily to the effects of radiation poisoning.

Originally Posted by Missileer

All I can say is War Is h**l.

Dear Member,

Better to say "It is not true." Even General Sherman who made that statement kept his soldiers in line (ie he did not allow rape and murder or mistreatment of prisoners and the pillage was only along the line of march from Atlanta to Savannah and he made orders that food be left behind enough to make it).

You will read a lot of this stuff from those that do not like their past. It is a self protection mechanism I believe maybe. Or it is trying to gain and advantage -- ie many pro-Israeli groups push the belief that the Allies could have stopped the butchering of the Jews but just ignored it.

Jack E. Hammond

PS> Of all the wrongs that the US did after WW2 I can only think of one that was truely horrible. And that was the execution of General Yamashita in 1946. But compared to past behavior of occupiers in wars the US and the UK have a reputation none can touch. US Admirals (including both King and Nimitz) came to the defense of the German Admiral over U-boat warfare who the Allies wanted to execute.

If War crimes were not done then war would be a very boring thing.

Jack, you should not compare Dresden and Hiroshima-Nagasaki with for example The bombing of London. Dresden was completely destroyed in a single night, not to mention Hiroshima...Cocerning the dead of thousand of german citizens:

1944: Eisenhower told the British ambassador to Washington that the 3,500 officers of the German General staff should be ''exterminated.'' He also favored the liquidation of perhaps 100,000 prominent Germans. Soon after, he wrote to his wife, Mamie: "God, I hate Germans! Why? Because the German is a beast!" Eisenhower said he was ashamed to bear a German name.

August 1944: The North American wheat surplus was greater than at any time in history, nearly one billion bushels. The U.S. corn surplus and potato crop also reached a new high.

March 10, 1944: A message sent from Eisenhower to the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) of Britain and the U.S. recommended the creation of an entirely new class of prisoners, Disarmed Enemy Forces or DEFs. At a press conference in Paris, this same day, Ike said: "If the Germans were reasoning like normal beings, they would realize the whole history of the United States and Great Britain is to be generous towards a defeated enemy. We observe all the laws of the Geneva Convention.''

March 19, 1945: Eisenhower's special assistant, General Everett Hughes, visited the American supply depots at Naples and Marseille. In both places, he writes, there are ''more stocks than we can ever use. (They) stretch as far as eye can see.''

Spring 1945: The International Red Cross had over 100,000 tons of food stockpiled in Switzerland. At one point, it sent two trainloads into the American Zone of Germany, but the food was sent back. The Morgenthau Plan for a ''Carthaginian Peace'' in Germany, to use the words of Military Governor Lucius Clay, is implemented through the directive JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff) 1067, which specifies to Eisenhower the policy he must adopt towards every institution in Germany. The directive is largely the work of three of Henry Morgenthau's underlings in the Treasury Department Harry Dexter White, Frank Coe, and Harry Glasser. White and Glasser were both Jews and all three were Communist ''fellow travelers.''

April 11, 1945: On the eve of his death, FDR told Morgenthau in Warm Springs, GA: "Henry, I am with you l00%" When Truman took over, he continued Morgenthau's "Carthaginian Policy" towards conquered Germany.

April 17, 1945: The Americans opened their enormous Rheinberg Camp, six miles in circumference, with no food or shelter whatsoever. As in the other big "Rhine meadow" camps, opened in mid-April, there was initially no latrines and no water. In some camps, the men were so crowded they could not lie down. Meanwhile, at Camp Kripp, near Remagen, the half-American Charles von Luttichau determines that his German comrades are receiving about 5% as much food as their captors." Complaining to the camp commander, HE SAID: ''Forget the Geneva Convention. You don't have any rights."

Late April 1945: Heinz Janssen, a survivor of the Rheinberg camp, described conditions as they were at the time. "Amputees slithered like amphibians through the mud , soaking and freezing. Naked to the skies day after day and night after flight, they lay desperate in the sand of Rheinberg or sleep exhaustedly into eternity ill their collapsing holes.''

April 26, 1945: The Combined Chiefs of Staff sent a message to Eisenhower, urging him not to take any more German prisoners after VE Day. He ignored it. The CCS approved of Ike's proposed DEF status, but only for certain types of German prisoners. The British refused to go against the Geneva Convention. The CCS orders the illegal DEF status to be kept strictly secret. By this date, Eisenhower's Quartermaster General of ASHAEF, Gen. Robert Littlejohn, has already twice reduced the rations to German prisoners. A message to Gen. George C. Marshall, signed by Ike, mandated: ''No shelter'' for German prisoners, despite an unusually cold and wet March and April.

May 4, 1945: The first German POWs were transfer-red to DEF status. Mail to and from all German prisoners was banned for more than a year.

May 8, 1945: Germany surrendered unconditionally. The U.S. State Department wasted no time dismissing Switzerland as the official Protecting Power for German prisoners, contravening the Geneva Convention. State also informed the International Red Cross that, with no Protecting Power to report to, there is no point in sending delegates to the camps. From this day forward, prisoners held by the U.S. Army had no access to any impartial observer. The British and Canadians also removed the Swiss protectors, but continued treating their POWs decently.

May, 1945: The American Red Cross reported that more than 98% of Americans captured by the Germans will be coming home safely, thanks in part to the food parcels sent to them during the war, which were promptly delivered by the Germans.

May 15, 1945: Eisenhower and Churchill talked about further reducing the rations for the German POWs. Churchill was informed that the POWs have been getting 2,000 calories per day (compared to 4,000 for American troops) and that 2,150 was regarded as an absolute minimum required for sedentary adults living under shelter. Eisenhower failed to tell Churchill that the U.S. Army was not even feeding many DEFs, and that they were feeding others, much less than 2,000 calories per day.

Mid-May 1945: The Bingen camp, near Bad Kreuznach in the Rhineland, was now holding between 200,000 and 400,000 German POWs, with no shelter, food, water, or medicine. The death rate for prisoners in these U.S. camps were now about 30% per year, according to a U.S. medical survey.

June 2, 1945: The European Theater Provost Marshal issued two reports. One, the last in a series of daily reports, logged 2,870,400 POWs on hand. The other, the first report in a weekly series, dated the same day, logged only 1,836,000. At one point in mid-June, the prisoner strength on the ration list is given as 1,421,559, despite the evidence of Gen. J.C.H. Lee and others that there were about 4 million. This bizarre bookkeeping persisted throughout 1945 in all branches of the occupying army. The apparent purpose was to obscure the death toll by means of an indecipherable mass of conflicting Statistics. (One of Bacque's greatest coups has been to decipher them.)

Mid - June, 1945: British "Tommies" took over the huge Rheinberg camp from the Americans, saving many thousands of German lives. The final act of the ''Yanks" before the British took charge, was to bulldoze one section flat while the men were still living in their holes in the ground. Meanwhile, a team of doctors from the U.S. Army Medical Corps completed a survey of some of the smaller Rhineland camps, holding some 80,000 POWs (not DEFs). They found a death rate 80 times higher than anything they have known in their professional career.

July, 1945: Eisenhower becomes military governor of the U.S. Zone in Germany. He continued to turn back all relief teams from Switzerland, the U.S. and elsewhere.

July 10, 1945: A French Army unit under Gen. Rousseau, took over the Dietersheim camp (near Mainz) from the Americans. He found 32,000 men and women of all ages in a moribund (dying) State. Another French officer Capt .Julien, was taking command 17 days later and found a vast mire ''peopled with living skeletons, male and female, huddling under scraps of wet card board ." Horrified, Julien wrote: 'This is just like the photographs of Buchenwald and Dachau.

July 20, 1945: Gen. Littlejohn received a memo stating, "These men, German POWs are authorized a maximum of 1,150 calories for the non-workers and 1,850 for workers.'' (Remember, it takes 2,000 calories of keep a sedentary adult alive.

July 26, 1945: The International Red Cross proposed restoring mail service to German POWs. Fearing that the reality of the death camps might come to light, the U. S. War Department rejected the idea.

August 4, 1945: Eisenhower ordered that all remaining German POWs be stripper of their rights, thus reducing them to DEF status.

August 27, 1945: In a long memorandum, Gen. Littlejohn informed Eisenhower that 1,550,000 Germans who supposedly were getting U.S. ARMY RATIONS, WERE RECEIVING NOTHING. Ike turned a deaf ear to his report and the death rate continued to climb.

August 30, 1945: Max Huber, head of the International Red Cross, wrote a stinging letter to the U.S. State Department about American interference in efforts to save starving Germans. Some months later, an evasive response, signed ''Eisenhower,'' arrived in Washington, falsely claiming that giving Red Cross food to enemy personnel was forbidden. Thousands of train cars loaded with decaying food were sent back to Geneva arid to sources in Paris and Brussels. Huber apologized for tying up the French rail system because of the food which was being returned by the Americans.

By this time, more than 2-million German men had been discharged into American custody, including thousands of priests, ministers, doctors, and professors. Not one single camp commander or guard was questioned by the Allied press corps and the controlled media of the U.S. concerning conditions in these hell holes.

Dear Member,

I could argue all the below till the cows come home as the say in the US. A US colonel helped on a book with the same stuff you have shown below. It became very controversial in the US and even Europe. But it only was a short time before the historical researchers and experts started to take apart everything thing you have posted below. Don't get me wrong. You believe everything you have posted (ie just as the PM of Israel actually believe that in 1943 and 1944 that the Allies could have stopped the massacre of the Jews if only they had wanted to). But the fact is it is not true. And as one famous Victorian general stated "Yes it all could be true for the sake of a debate -- as long as all the facts are not deployed."

This was debated over on Compuserves Military Forum when it was the big dog on the block in the 1990s. One gentleman came and brought the same facts and quotes and dates you have. Only he did not know there was an expert historical researcher on the forum at that time. CS Military Forum is nothing but a shell now (ie mainly for right wing Christians) and a lot of the forums and libraries were deleted. But I wish that one file of saved debates in certain year in around 1995-95 was available. It has everything you have listed and the relative facts.

Finally, I am sorry, but I think I will bow out of this debate. In a way it is like debating the neo-Confederates in my country or the Holocaust didn't happen crowd in the world. It gets tiresome going over and over and over and over.

Jack E. Hammond


Jack E. Hammond

Originally Posted by staurofilakes

Jack, you should not compare Dresden and Hiroshima-Nagasaki with for example The bombing of London. Dresden was completely destroyed in a single night, not to mention Hiroshima...Cocerning the dead of thousand of german citizens:

War crimes are terrible in nature, and I know it's hardly an excuse, but what the Soviet soldiers have done in Germany or to the German prisoners, to that I can only say; eye for an eye. What was done to my native country, Ukraine, or Russia, Belorussia, etc, (most of USSR basically) by the Third Reich is an indescribable horror. If I, by some sick twist of fate, would find myself in a similar situation, knowing that my motherland has been raped, pillaged, millions murdered, starved and mutilated and that my family is quite likely has been killed by the Germans, it would be an understatement saying that I'd be pretty angry, and I would not take any prisoners. And, well, winners are rarely judged. If the Nazis had won, their war crimes and genocide would probably be feats of heroism in history books today.
A beaten cliche phrase, yet very true, history is written by the winners. There were a lot of rapes when Russians took Berlin, and a lot of treasures were stolen, etc, and yet the Berlin campaign is regarded as a highly successful battle, etc. Most of allied soldiers took 'souvenirs' home. Not all war crimes were commited by the Germans or Soviets, there were a lot of other allied crimes in fact, on every side. It's never black and white.