Eisenhower and German POWs
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Accusation of genocide
According to Canadian novelist James Bacque hundreds of thousands or millions of German POWs died of starvation or exposure while held in post-war internment camps. However no professional historian has confirmed these deaths and Bacque's scholarship is often critized for poor methodology and having misinterpreted data.
Bacque charges that hundreds of thousands of German POWs who entered the camps were not transferred out and so they must have died. The fact that Red Cross food aid was returned and soldiers were kept on short rations are seen by Bacque as the method of the genocide.
Defense of Eisenhower
In a New York Times book review, prominent historian and Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose retorted:
- Mr. Bacque is wrong on every major charge and nearly all his minor ones. Eisenhower was not a Hitler, he did not run death camps, German prisoners did not die by the hundreds of thousands, there was a severe food shortage in 1945, there was nothing sinister or secret about the "disarmed enemy forces" designation or about the column "other losses." Mr. Bacque's "missing million" were old men and young boys in the militia. (source) (http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/b/bacque-james/ambrose-001.html)
Several historians rebutting Bacque have explained that the missing POWs simply went home, that Red Cross food aid was sent to displaced civilians and that German POWs were fed the same rations that the US Army was providing to the civilian population. US and German sources estimate the number of German POWs who died in captivity at between 56,000 or 78,000 or about one percent of all German prisoners which is roughtly the same as the percentage of American POWs who died in German captivity.
External links
- Did the Allies Starve Millions of Germans? (http://www.serendipity.li/hr/bacque01.htm) -- This James Bacque article seems to be the main source for the genocide accusation
- Stephen Ambrose's lengthy rebuttal of Bacque's claims (http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/b/bacque-james/ambrose-001.html)
- More debunking of Bacque's claims (http://www.ghi-dc.org/bulletinF98/bulletin_f98.html#Fact)