ZGram 0 6/2/2004 - "How Allies treated German POWs"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

June 2, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

One of the most courageous and informed European dissident writers is 
Michael Walsh of Britain.  We don't see nearly enough of his 
research, in my opinion, on the Internet.  I believe his website is 
http://www.ety.com, although I am not sure - I don't surf nearly 
enough to get to know all those who lend a consistent voice to our 
struggle.

Here, Walsh provides a much-needed bridge to the past, in light of 
America's current torture scandal in Iraq.  I found there to be a 
punctuation problem in this summary, which may have been the result 
of having it filtered through email.  Those who have the time and 
expertise may want to double-check the numbers, but I know from 
experience that the thrust of this summary is true.

[START]

MICHAEL WALSH: BEHIND THE HEADLINES

  SCANDAL EMERGING;  HOW ALLIES TREATED GERMAN POWs

"War crime trials for allied soldiers overdue," says analyst

  "British and allied troops appearing as defendants in war crimes 
trials with brutal Serbs and former Red Army thugs is well overdue", 
says 20th Century analyst, Michael Walsh. His research exposes allied 
genocide, enslavement and institutionalized ill treatment of axis 
prisoners-of-war both during and after World War 11.

He says, "the scale of abuse of prisoners-of-war was contrary to the 
Geneva and other conventions to which Britain and its allies were 
signatories. As late as 1948, three years after the war's end, the 
British Government's treatment of its foreign prisoners was subject 
to International Red Cross scrutiny and international condemnation. 
The IRC threatened to bring the British government before 
international tribunals for abuse and illegal enslavement. Typically, 
British administered prisoner-of-war camps were worse than Belsen 
long after the war had ended and war disruption ceased. Tragically 
even civilians were illegally held, deported and murdered in the tens 
of thousands whilst the evil killers responsible have so far evaded 
justice."

The respected Associated Press Photographer, Henry Griffin who had 
taken the pictures of corpses in Buchenwald and Dachau when visiting 
Allied POW camps agreed: "The only difference I can see between these 
men and those corpses is that here they are still breathing." (1)

"According to revelations by members of the House of Commons, about 
130,000 former German officers and men were held during the winter of 
1945-46 in British camps in Belgium under conditions which British 
officers have described as 'not much better than Belsen.'" (2)

TORTURE AND BRUTALITY

Adding to international outrage, Cyril Connolly, one of England's 
most acclaimed writers reported: "British guards imprisoned German 
troops and tortured them." He described how "they were so possessed 
by propaganda about German 'Huns' that they obviously enjoyed 
demonstrating their atrocities to visiting journalists. A British 
reporter named Moorehead who was present at these "torture fests" 
observed that a young British medical officer and a captain of 
engineers managed the Bergen-Belsen camp. "The captain was in the 
best of moods," he said. "When we approached the cells of gaoled 
guards, the sergeant lost his temper." The captain explained. "This 
morning we had an interrogation. I'm afraid the prisoners don't look 
exactly nice."

The cells were opened for the visiting journalists. "The German 
prisoners lay there, crumpled, moaning, covered with gore. The man 
next to me made vain attempts to get to his feet and finally managed 
to stand up. He stood there trembling, and tried to stretch out his 
arms as if fending off blows.

"Up!" yelled the sergeant. "Come off the wall."

They pushed themselves off from the wall and stood there, swaying. In 
another cell the medical officer had just finished an interrogation.

"Up." yelled the officer. "Get up."

The man lay in his blood on the floor. He propped two arms on a chair 
and tried to pull himself up. A second demand and he succeeded in 
getting to his feet. He stretched his arms towards us. "Why don't you 
kill me off?" he moaned.

"The dirty bastard is jabbering this all morning." the sergeant stated. (3)

SHOOTING PRISONERS "FOR FUN'

Former British Army veteran A.W Perkins of Holland-on-Sea described 
conditions in the "Sennelager" British concentration camp, which 
shockingly held, not captured troops, but civilians. He recounts; 
"During the latter half of 1945 I was with British troops guarding 
suspected Nazi civilians living on starvation rations in a camp 
called Sennelager. They were frequently beaten and grew as thin as 
concentration camp victims, scooping handfuls of swill from our waste 
bins."

This ex-guard described how other guards amused themselves by baiting 
starving prisoners. "They could be shot on sight if they ventured 
close to the perimeter fence. It was a common trick to throw a 
cigarette just inside the fence and shoot any prisoner who tried to 
reach it." (4).

"When Press representatives ask to examine the prison camps, the 
British loudly refuse with the excuse that the Geneva Convention bars 
such visits to prisoner-of-war camps." complained press correspondent 
Arthur Veysey from London on May 28th 1946.

"UNDERFED AND BEATEN" ADMITS TOP AMERICAN NEWSPAPER

Typically "The prisoners lived through the winter in tents and slept 
on the bare ground under one blanket each. They say they are underfed 
and beaten and kicked by guards. Many have no underclothes or boots." 
reported the Chicago Tribune Press Service on 19 May 1946 one year 
after the war's end.

"In the summer of 1946 an increasing number of prisoners of-war were 
escaping from British slave camps often with British civilian aid. 
"Accounts of the chases by military police are reminiscent of 
pre-Civil War pursuits by fleeing Negro fugitives," stated an 
Associated Press dispatch (London, August 27th, 1946) more than 
sixteen months after the war ended.

CIVILIANS; WOMEN AND CHILDREN MACHINE-GUNNED

Tens of thousands of middle-European peoples, displaced by the war 
who fell into British hands were treated even worse in British 
controlled Austria and Yugoslavia. There, Britain and the NKVD ran 
the concentration camps jointly. The latter, forerunners to the evil 
KGB, were invited to assist the British in the capture and 
corralling, deportation and slaughter of their captives.

One British officer described how "The prisoners (civilians) were 
treated coarsely but not brutally. They were pushed and shoved but 
there was no resistance, no fighting or trying to get back or get 
away. They were all completely docile, resigned to their fate. The 
soldiers collected them all quickly into groups and marched them away 
to be machine-gunned in groups."

The British officer added, "some of them didn't get very far I'm 
afraid. At the back of the station there was a wood, a copse, [?] and 
they seemed to be marched behind this copse. Shortly afterwards there 
were quite a number of sustained bursts of machine-gun fire. I can't 
say for certain what happened, because I couldn't see the shooting. 
But I am pretty sure that a lot of them were shot there and then, not 
on the siding itself but just around the corner of the wood."

This is typical of many accounts when units of the British 
Army,working with Red Army NKVD officers, hunted down and butchered 
tens of thousands of Cossack civilian refugees including children in 
Austria, in summer, 1945 after the war had ended.

A BLOOD-SPATTERED BRITISH TRANSPORT TRAIN

Tens of thousands of people of many nationalities were hunted down 
and rounded up like cattle to be taken to the Red Army's killing 
fields. One account described how "the whole train was bespattered 
with blood. They were open-plan carriages, and I remember the 
bloodstains where bodies had been dragged right down the corridor 
between the seats and down three of four steps. The lavatories were 
absolutely covered in blood."

"Another such patrol, consisting of two Red Army officers and four 
British soldiers set off into the hills on horseback on June 8th. 
They captured one such group on the lower slopes.... "The Cossacks 
ran off, leaving just a few, mainly women and children who were too 
weak to move. One soldier spotted a Cossack in the distance, aimed 
his rifle at him, fired and saw him drop. .... As he was not seen to 
rise again it was assumed he had been killed."

Captain Duncan McMillan remembers, "Being guided to a small railway 
station where there was a barbed-wire enclosure." He saw the Cossacks 
being unloaded from the trucks and described how they were stripped 
of their possessions, even food before being marched away.  "Many 
British soldiers who were there have testified that they heard the 
rattle of machine-guns nearby just moments after the prisoners were 
removed." James Davidson said: "We thought that machine-gunning must 
be the finish of them. We thought they were just taken back there and 
slaughtered."

These awful accounts were described in Nicholas Bethell's book, The 
Last Secret published by Futura, (London) in 1974. The English legal 
apparatus suppressed further accounts.

SLAVE LABOUR IN THE CENTURY

In August 1946 15 months after the end of the Second World War, 
according to the International Red Cross, "Britain had 460,000 German 
prisoners slaving for her." This was in direct contravention of the 
Geneva Convention (Enslavement of Prisoners-of-War is a violation of 
the Geneva Convention. Article.75) which Britain was a signatory to. 
Arthur Veysey of the Chicago Tribune Press Service on May 28th 1946 
reported "When they (German POWs) learned upon arrival in British and 
French ports they were to be worked indefinitely as slaves, they 
became sullen."

PROFITING FROM GERMAN SLAVES

Arthur Veysey, appalled by the British government's abuse of human 
rights and the illegality of its evil slave-ownership policies and 
defiance of the Geneva Convention, said, "The British Government nets 
over $250,000,000 annually from its slaves. The Government, which 
frankly calls itself the 'owner' of the prisoners, hires the men out 
to any employer needing men, charging the going rate for such work, 
usually $15 to $20 a week. It pays the slaves from 10 to 20 cents a 
day. The prisoners are never paid in cash, but are given credits 
either in the form of vouchers or credits."

THE SOVIET UNION FOLLOWS BRITAIN'S SLAVE EMPIRE EXAMPLE

When American attempts were made to prevent Stalin from abducting 
five million Germans, many of them civilians including children, as 
slave laborers after Germany's defeat, the Soviets made their point. 
They produced a proclamation signed by General Dwight Eisenhower a 
year earlier, which gave the Soviets complete freedom to do whatever 
they wished with captured Germans. This included deportation, 
enslavement; to loot and destroy without restraint, even using German 
transport to do so. They reminded the US Government that they had an 
equal right to do as the Americans were doing and were exercising the 
same right.

Eyewitness accounts describe events when Berlin and Breslau 
surrendered. "The long grey-green columns of prisoners were marched 
east downcast and fearful towards huge depots near Leningrad, Moscow, 
Minsk, Stalingrad, Kiev, Kharkov and Sevastopol. All fit men had to 
march 22 miles a day. Those physically handicapped went in handcarts 
or carts pulled by spare beasts." This was reported in the 
Congressional Record on March 29th 1946.

STARVATION OF POWS IN FRANCE

By August 1946 France according to the International Red Cross had 
enslaved nearly three-quarters of a million former German servicemen. 
Of these 475,000 had been captured by the Americans who "in a deal' 
had transferred them to French control for the expressed purpose of 
forced labour. Interestingly in a macabre way, the French returned 
2,474 German POWs complaining that they were weaklings. (5)

Those returned must indeed have been in a bad way, for the 472,526 
remaining slaves had already been described by correspondents as; "a 
beggar army of pale, thin men clad in vermin infested tatters." All 
were pronounced unfit for work, three quarters of them due to 
deliberate starvation. Of this unfortunate "army' of slaves, 19% were 
so badly treated they needed to be hospitalized (6)

In the notorious camp in the Sarthe District for 20,000 prisoners, 
inmates received just 900 calories a day; thus 12 died every day in 
the hospital. Four to five thousand are unable to work any more. 
Recently trains with new prisoners arrived at the camp; several 
prisoners had died during the trip, several others had tried to stay 
alive by eating coal that had been lying in the freight train by 
which they came. (7)

On December 5th 1946 the American Government requested the 
repatriation (by October 1, 1947) to Germany of the 674,000 German 
prisoners-of-war it had handed over to France, Belgium, the 
Netherlands and Luxemburg.

France agreed in principle but refused to abide by the release date 
stipulated. They pointed out, correctly, that a December 1st 1945 
memorandum clearly stated that German prisoners handed over to the 
French by the US Government "were chattels to be used indefinitely as 
forced labour'. (8)

US ARMY SLAUGHTERED GERMAN POWS

The German armed forces invariably obeyed the Rules of War 
conventions to the letter. Speaking for himself and other allied 
military commanders, Major General Robert W. Grow, U.S.A. Commander 
6th Armored Division in Europe conceded there was "no German atrocity 
problem".

"My service during World War Two was in command of an armored 
division throughout the European campaign, from Normandy to Saxony. 
My division lost quite a number of officers and men captured between 
July 1944 and April 1945. In no instance did I hear of personnel from 
our division receiving treatment other than proper under the 'Rules 
of Land Warfare'. As far as the 6th Armored Division was concerned, 
in its 280 days of front line contact, there was no 'atrocity 
problem'. Frankly, I was aghast, as were many of my contemporaries, 
when we learned of the proposed 'war crimes' trials and the fact that 
military commanders were among the accused. I know of no general 
officer who approved of them." (9)

Despite the German observance of convention the American forces' 
response was often as summary and as brutal as those practiced by 
their Soviet allies. Only in cases where large numbers of captured 
soldiers had been taken were they to be enslaved. If captured in 
smaller groups, the US Army policy was simply to slaughter their 
captured prisoners where they stood.

A specific study is now being made for the purpose of compiling 
evidence of such atrocities to which the author, Michael Walsh, would 
appreciate input.

One such case was the cold-blooded slaying of an estimated 700 troops 
of the 8th SS Mountain Division. These troops who had fought with 
honorable distinction had earlier captured a US field hospital. 
Although the German troops had conducted themselves properly, they 
were, when subsequently captured by the US Army, routinely separated 
and gunned down in groups by squads of American troops.

US ARMY TURNS PEACEFUL DACHAU INTO CHARNEL HOUSE

A similar fate befell infantrymen of the SS Westphalia Brigade who 
were captured by the US 3rd Armored Division. Most of the German 
captives were shot through the back of the head. "The jubilant 
Americans told the locals to leave their bodies in the streets as a 
warning to others of US revenge. Their corpses lay in the streets for 
five days before the occupying forces relented and allowed the 
corpses to be buried. After the war the German authorities attempted, 
without success, to prosecute the GIs responsible. (10)

Ironically, in the light of postwar research, it has been revealed 
that the only atrocities committed at Dachau were those carried out 
by the victorious allies. Equally ironically, this camp was an allied 
concentration camp (eleven years) for a longer period of time than it 
was a German administered camp. There, "Three hundred SS camp guards 
were quickly neutralized" on the orders of General Dwight D. 
Eisenhower.

The term neutralized of course is a politically correct (or cowardly) 
way of saying that prisoners-of-war were rounded up and 
machine-gunned in groups. Accounts of the mass murder of 
prisoners-of-war at Dachau have been described in at least two books, 
The Day of the Americans by Nerin Gun, Fleet Publishing Company, New 
York, and Deliverance Day - The Last Hours at Dachau by Michael 
Selzer; Lippincot, Philadelphia.

These books describe how German prisoners were collected in groups, 
placed against a wall and methodically machine-gunned by American 
soldiers while some were still standing, hands raised in surrender. 
American soldiers casually climbed over the still twitching bodies, 
killing the wounded. Whilst this was happening, American 
photographers were taking pictures of the massacres that have since 
been published.

At Dachau, which was in the American zone of Germany, a shock force 
of American and Polish guards attempted to entrain a group of Russian 
prisoners from Vlasov's Army, who had refused to be repatriated under 
the new American ruling.

MASS SUICIDES

"All of these men refused to entrain," Robert Murphy wrote in his 
report of the incident. "They begged to be shot. They resisted 
entrainment by taking off their clothes and refusing to leave their 
quarters.... Tear-gas forced them out of the building into the snow 
where those who had cut and stabbed themselves fell exhausted and 
bleeding in the snow. Nine men hanged themselves and one had stabbed 
himself to death and one other who had stabbed himself subsequently 
died; while twenty others are still in hospital from self-inflicted 
wounds. The entrainment was finally effected of 368 men." (11)

"The last operation of this kind in Germany took place at Plattling 
near Regensburg, where fifteen hundred men of Vlasov's Army had been 
interned by the Americans. In the early hours of February 24th, 1946, 
they were driven out of their huts wearing only their night-clothes, 
and handed over to the Russians in the forest near the Bavarian-Czech 
border. Before the train set off on its return journey, the American 
guards were horrified to see the bodies of Vlasov's men who had 
already committed suicide hanging in rows from trees, and when they 
returned to Plattling, even the German SS prisoners in the nearby POW 
camp jeered at them for what they had done." (13)

According to the Toronto Daily Star, March, 9th, 1968, "Former 
members of an illegal Israeli force which was given absolute freedom 
to slaughter Germans conceded that "More than 1,000 Nazi SS Officers 
died as a result of eating arsenic-impregnated bread introduced 
April, 13th, 1946, in an American-run prisoner-of-war camp near 
Nuremberg."

After the US victory (the battle for Remagen Bridge) Germans in the 
Rhineland surrendered en masse. Between April and July 1945, some 
260,000 German prisoners-of-war were held under American guard in the 
boggy fields between Remagen and Sinzig. They were kept in the open 
air and their daily ration was one potato, a biscuit, a spoonful of 
vegetables and some water. Racked by disease, at least 1,200 died, 
according to German records." (14)

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH CONDEMNS US SLAVERY

In the USA where 140,000 German prisoners-of-war were shipped, the 
Catholic Bishops Conference described how, "Multitudes of civilians 
and prisoners of war have been deported and degraded into forced 
labor unworthy of human beings."

"Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, are put like slaves to 
forced labor, although the only thing with which they can be 
reproached is the fact that they were soldiers. Many of these poor 
fellows are without news from home and have not been allowed to send 
a sign of life to their dear ones."

GERMAN SLAVES HELD IN ALLIED COUNTRIES

United States 140,000 (US Occupation Zone of which 100,000 were held 
in France, 30,000 in Italy, 14,000 in Belgium. Great Britain 460,000 
German slaves. The Soviet Union 4,000,000 - 5,000,000 estimated. 
France had 680,000 German slaves by August 1946. Yugoslavia 80,000, 
Belgium 48,000, Czechoslovakia 45,000, Luxembourg 4,000, Holland 
1,300. Source: International Red Cross.

"AN EVIL PRECEDENT"

An outraged International Red Cross organization opined: "The United 
States, Britain and France, nearly a year after peace are violating 
International Red Cross agreements they solemnly signed in 1929. 
Although thousands of former German soldiers are being used in the 
hazardous work of clearing minefields, sweeping sea mines and razing 
shattered buildings, the Geneva Convention expressly forbids 
employing prisoners 'in any dangerous labour or in the transport of 
any material used in warfare."

Henry Wales in Geneva, Switzerland on April 13, 1946 added, "The 
bartering of captured enemy soldiers by the victors throws the world 
back to the dark ages when feudal barons raided adjoining duchies to 
replenish their human live stock. It is an iniquitous system and an 
evil precedent because it is wide open for abuse with difficulty in 
establishing responsibility. It is manifestly unjust and sell them 
for political reasons as the African Negroes were a century ago."

GERMAN TREATMENT OF POWs FAR MORE HUMANE

By contrast the German armed forces behaved impeccably towards their 
prisoners-of-war. "The most amazing thing about the atrocities in 
this war is that there have been so few of them. I have come up 
against few instances where the Germans have not treated prisoners 
according to the rules, and respected the Red Cross reported 
respected newspaper The Progressive February, 4th1945.

Allan Wood, London Correspondent of the London Express agreed. "The 
Germans even in their greatest moments of despair obeyed the 
Convention in most respects. True it is that there were front line 
atrocities - passions run high up there - but they were incidents, 
not practices, and misadministration of their American prison camps 
was very uncommon." Lieutenant Newton L. Marguiles echoed his words.

US Assistant Judge Advocate, Jefferson Barracks, April 27th1945. "It 
is true that the Reich exacted forced labour from foreign workers, 
but it is also true that, they were for the most part paid and fed 
well."

"I think some of the persons found themselves better off than at any 
time in their lives before." added Dr.James K.Pollack, Allied 
Military Government.

"What did the Germans do to get efficient production from forced 
labour that we were not able to do with Germans working down the 
mines? They fed their help and fed them well." Said Max H. Forester, 
Chief of AMG's Coal and Mining Division in July 1946.

WILL NEMESIS DELIVER?

Asked what were the chances of the evil perpetrators of such crimes 
being brought to justice, Michael Walsh said that the only thing that 
stood between the allied sadists and the hangman's rope was the will 
to bring them to trial.

Precedent on retrospective justice is already a fact of life. Its 
failure is that war crimes justice is selective and so far applicable 
only to the defeated foe under highly questionable and 
internationally criticized legal procedures.

What is needed is to raise public awareness and a lead be given by 
those in public life whose voice is less likely to be censored. He 
added that the interests of justice must come before national pride, 
political expediency and military guilt. "How else," He added, "can 
human civilization progress, than through the administration of 
justice that is blind to race, political dogma and national interests?


Sources:

(1) Congressional Record, December 11, 1945 p. A-5816.

(2) Gruesome Harvest, R.F. Keeling, Institute of American Economics, 
Chicago, 1947.

(3) Cyril Connolly, The Golden Horizon, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London

(4) Daily Mail, London, 22nd, April, 1995

(5) John Thompson, Chicago Tribune Press Service, Geneva, August 24, 1946).

(6) Gruesome Harvest, R.F. Keeling, Institute of American Economics, 
Chicago, 1947).

(7) Louis Clair, The Progressive, 14 January, 1946).

(8) Gruesome Harvest, R.F. Keeling, Institute of American Economics, 
Chicago, 1947).

(9) Doenitz at Nuremberg: A Re-Appraisal, H.K Thompson/Henry Strutz, 
Amber Publishing Corp.

N.Y 1976.

(10) Daily Mail, London, May 1, 1995.

(11) Douglas Botting, In The Ruins of The Reich, George Allen & Unwin, London

(12) Douglas Botting, In The Ruins of The Reich, George Allen & Unwin, London

(13) Douglas Botting, In The Ruins of The Reich, George Allen & Unwin, London

(14) Roger Boyes, The (London) Times, 7th March 1995

  A MICHAEL WALSH SPECIAL REPORT