For those wanting a better
picture of the moral condition of post war Europe and its Allied commanders,
one can do no better than reading Other Losses by James Bacque. It recounts the
squalid conditions which permeated every American and French Prisoner of War
camp under both Eisenhower’s and De Gaulle’s command.
We are enthusiastic admirers of
Bacque for he sees past the hagiography of both men to present them as they
truly are – men of moral turpitude whose reputations for decency or virtue are
entirely undeserved. Bacque minces no words in assigning responsibility to
these men, particularly Eisenhower, in promulgating policies which deliberately
and maliciously lead to the deaths of 800 – 1500 thousands of men under
American control.
Bacque has no patience for the
exculpatory excuses of command aloofness, or the “chaos” of war, as he shows
that Eisenhower not only operated an efficient army, but was well briefed on
its operations to the lowest levels. In fact, Eisenhower had a direct hand in
the promulgation of policies which resulted purposely in the deaths of hundreds
of thousands of men, which in our minds makes Eisenhower a murderer on an epic
scale.
Some may excuse Eisenhower’s
behavior due to the wanton suffering he saw as he marched across Europe, but
this a canard of a murderer – not that of a fact seeker. Civilized society has
laws and public mechanisms for dealing with crimes, but Eisenhower took into
his own hands a furtive administration of genocide against the German people.
There is no question that the
Germans mistreated prisoners of war and imposed their own atrocities on conquered
countries, but to use that as a defense of Eisenhower’s murder is to justify
murder as a policy of state – a complete repudiation of civilization.
Returning to our review, Bacque
shows the methods Eisenhower used to command his army, methods which when at
all possible utilized winks, nods, and intermediaries to accomplish his will,
rather than use of explicit forthright commands and directives. Thus the mechanisms
for surreptitiously carrying out a genocidal policy were already well
established with the SHAEF commander.
The policies for carrying out the
mass extermination of POWs were formulated both in the White House and in SHAEF
headquarters. Henry Morgenthau, Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury, had
crafted his famous Morgenthau Plan of pastoralizing Germany by dismantling its
industry and returning it an agricultural idyll. But the implications are of
the most sinister kind because it was designed to deprive the Germans of the
currency needed to feed themselves as the nation used manufactured exports to
raise the monies needed to import adequate food.
Bacque, quoting Eisenhower’s
famous rage that he regretted not being able to kill more Germans, shows that
Eisenhower had the animus to support the Morgenthau plan, a plan which he
implemented throughout his command. The first step came from the State
Department which removed Switzerland’s protective role of German POWs after the
country surrendered unconditionally. This move deprived POWs of protective
custody and all of their rights under the Geneva and Hague treaties. Without
any legal protections, Eisenhower ordered the reclassification of POWs to Disarmed Enemy
Forces (DEF) which allowed him to reduce rations to German prisoners below
subsistence levels, thus resulting in a prolonged painful death by starvation.
On the other hand, starvation was
not the leading cause of death in America’s concentration camps which were so
overcrowded that in many of them, the prisoners could literally not lie down.
The most common causes of death resulted from grossly unsanitary camp
conditions which engendered disease, and hastened death aggravated by starvation.
To cover up his crimes,
Eisenhower ordered the International Red Cross banned from all camps, denied
mail privileges in all American camps, banned all reporters from the camps, and
denied civilian authorities access to the camps. He instituted a system of
brainwashing where military administrators began systematically denying in German town
hall meetings the news that prisoners were dying at alarming rates in American
camps.
But the most deceptive practice
Eisenhower implemented was fraudulent bookkeeping which entailed the use of a
euphemistic category called Other Losses which included by definition escapes
and deaths. Bacque discovered that very few prisoners escaped, meaning that
well over 99% of the Other Losses were deaths. Eisenhower’s camp commanders
buried these bodies in mass graves, an act which led us to conclude elsewhere
that many of the so-called German mass graves were in fact American mass graves
of German prisoners.
Bacque required the skills of a
forensic accountant to uncover the true numbers of concealed deaths. The war
records were deliberately destroyed, and prisoner numbers at times hopelessly
inconsistent, but he nevertheless managed to piece together enough data to draw
some tentative and reasonable conclusions about the extent of the genocide. He
discovered that death rates in the American camps hovered around 30%.
The argument advanced by others
that there were food shortages throughout Europe are laid to waste and exposed
for the vicious fraud that they are. Bacque reports that Red Cross and US Army
warehouses were bursting with food, enough to more than terminate the
starvation alleged to be the result of food shortage. In addition, he shows
that American and Canadian surpluses of food were actually becoming
problematic.
But the prisoners were not just
soldiers; they included women and children – even pregnant women. Americans
would go to the barbed wire cages and open fire on them, claiming that they saw
an escape in progress. Bacque tells of one instance where a French captain
murdered in cold blood a group of women who were trying to bring food to the
captives. Americans forbade, on pain of death – without trial – anyone from
approaching the camps to bring food.
Of course Eisenhower had great
help in prosecuting his vengeful massacre, names which Bacque thankfully
mentions, such as Beddell Smith and Everett Hughes.
The extraordinary research and
findings of Bacque have forever changed our views of America’s involvement in
World War 2, and so-called heroes. Eisenhower is forever in our mind a murderer
with no redeeming qualities.
Copyright 2014 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.
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