WITNESS TO HISTORY
Michael Walsh
CHAPTER 16
THE CONQUERORS BLOODLUST
'Enjoy the war - the peace is going to be terrible.' Graffiti on a Berlin wall, March 1945
As the German nation fought for its survival in a war which to quote Churchill, was necessary to 'obtain German sales markets', a bloodlust seized the conquerors:
THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT:
"Since the end of the war about 3,000,000 people, mostly women and children and over-aged men, have been killed in Eastern Germany and south-eastern Europe; about 15,000,000 people have been deported or had to flee their homesteads and are on the road. About 25% of these people, over 3,000,000 have perished.
"About 4,000,000 men and women have been deported to Eastern Europe as slaves.
"It seems that the elimination of the German population of Eastern Europe - at least 15,000,000 people - was planned in accordance with decisions made at Yalta.
"Churchill had said to Mikolakczyk when the latter protested during the negotiations to Moscow against forcing Poland to incorporate eastern Germany;
'Don't mind the five or more million Germans. Stalin will see to them. You will have no trouble with them; they will cease to exist'." Senator Homer Capehart; U.S Senate February 5th 1946
THE AMERICANS
"When I said that in the end Germany would be driven into the arms of Soviet Russia and Bolshevism, the Ambassador replied:
'What of it? There will not be enough Germans left when the war is over to be worth bolshevising'." Karl von Wiegand, April 23rd 1944 Chicago Herald American, November 12th p.18
THE SOVIETS
"The Germans are not human beings. From now on the word German means to us the most terrible oath. . . We shall kill.
"If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day. If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with a bayonet. If there is calm on your part of the front, or if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German in the meantime. If you kill one German, kill another. There is nothing more amusing than a heap of German corpses." Ilya Ehrenburg, The Soviet Minister of Propaganda
"In war. . . it is a mitzvah (good deed) to kill every gentile from the nation that is fighting the Jew, even women and children." Rabbi Ido Elba. Baruch, The Man. The Times, 16th March 1995
ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN
"For three weeks the war had been going on inside Germany, and all of us knew very well that if the girls were German they could be raped and then shot. This was almost a combat distinction."
AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT
The following is an excerpt from an eyewitness's account given by Leonora Geier (born, October 22nd 1925, Sao Paulo, Brazil) to Dr. Trutz Foelsche, Ph.D, the original account of which appeared in Deutsche Nationalzeitung, No.17-65, p.7.
"On the morning of February, 16th, (1945) a Russian detachment occupied the RAD (Reichsarbeitsdienst) camp Vilmsee near Neustettin. The Commissar told me in good German language that the camp was dissolved and that we, as a unit with uniforms (RAD - German Labour Service, not military uniforms), would be transported to a collection camp.
"Since I, as a Brazilian citizen, belong to an allied nation, he asked me to take over as a leader of the transport that went to Neustettin, into the yard of a former iron foundry. We were about 500 girls (Maidens of the Reichsarbeitsdienst - German Labour Service).
"He said I could come into the orderly room, which I accepted. Immediately he directed me to make no further contact with the other women, because they were members of an illegal army. On my response that this was not true, he cut me off with the remark that I would be shot immediately, if I would repeat in any form a similar statement.
"Suddenly I heard loud screams, and promptly, five girls were brought in by two Red Armists. The Commissar ordered them to undress. When they, in a sense of shame, refused to do so, he ordered me to undress them and to follow him with the girls. We walked through the yard to the former factory kitchen, which was completely cleared out except for some tables along the window wall. It was dreadfully cold and the unfortunate girls trembled. In the huge tiled room several Russians waited for us who were obviously making obscene remarks, because every word was followed by loud laughter.
"The Commissar then directed me to watch how one makes sissies out of 'The Master Race'.
"Now two Poles, clad in trousers only, entered the room. At their sight the girls cried out. Briskly, they seized the first of the two girls and bent her over with her back over the edge of the table until her joints cracked.
"I almost fainted when one of the men pulled his knife and cut off her right breast in the presence of the other girls. I have never heard a human being scream as desperately as this young woman. After this 'operation' both men stabbed her several times in the abdomen, accompanied again by the howling of the Russians
"The next girl cried for mercy, in vain; since she was exceptionally pretty. I had the impression that the 'work' was carried out very slowly. The other three girls were completely broken down, cried for their mothers and begged for a speedy death, but also fate them overtook.
"The last of the girls was still half a child, with barely developed breasts; one tore the flesh literally from her ribs until the white bone appeared.
"Again, five girls were brought in. This time, they had selected carefully. All were developed and pretty. When they saw the bodies of their predecessors, they began to cry and scream. Weak as they were, they tried to defend themselves but to no avail; the Poles became more cruel every time.
"One of the girls, they cut open her womb and trunk over the full length; poured a can of machine oil into the mutilated body and tried to set fire to it. Another was shot in the genitals by a Russian, before they cut off her breasts.
"A great howling began when someone brought a saw from a tool box. Now, using the saw, they set to work to tear the breasts of the girls to pieces, which in a short period of time led to the floor being flooded with blood. A blood rage seized the Russians.
"Continuously one of them brought more and more girls.
"Like in a red fog, I saw the gruesome happenings again and again and I perceived the inhuman screaming at the torture of their breasts and the loud groaning at the mutilation of their private parts.
"When my legs failed me, I was forced into a chair. The Commissar persistently watched me to make sure I was looking toward the torture scenes. In fact, when I had to vomit, they even paused with their tortures. "
"One girl had not undressed completely, she may have been somewhat older than the rest of the girls who were about 17-years old. One of the torturers soaked her bra with oil and ignited it and, while she cried out, another drove a thin iron rod into her vagina until it emerged at her navel
"In the yard they liquidated entire groups of girls, after they had selected the prettiest ones for the torture room. The air was filled with the death cries of many hundreds of girls. But in view of what happened here, the slaughter outside could be considered more humane. It was a dreadful fact that not one of the girls brought into the torture room lost her consciousness.
"In their horror all were equal in their expressions. It was always the same; the begging for mercy, the high-pitched scream when their breasts were cut and their genitals mutilated.
"Several times the slaughter was interrupted to sweep out the blood and to clear away the corpses.
"That evening I sank into a severe nerve fever. From then on I lack any recollection until the moment I awoke in a military hospital. German troops had recaptured Neustettin temporarily, and had thus liberated us. As I learned later, approximately 2,000 girls were murdered during the first three days of the first round of Russian occupation." Mrs. Leonora Geier, nee Cavoa
This documented and authoritative account was not an isolated act of barbarism carried out by Russians and Poles. It was one small incident of many thousands recorded, being part of a predetermined allied policy that had as its aim the destruction of Germany as a competitive nation; territorial dismemberment, deportation and genocide to reduce its population.
POPE X11
"....the plight of millions who must answer to the hideous appellation of 'expellees'." Pope Pius X11, October 3rd 1949 to American Congressional Committee
"The Potsdam Conference sanctions the principle of transferment. That is, the elimination of minorities. It is contrary to the law of nature to remove millions and millions of people from their homes." Pope X11. Observatore Romano, August 1945
ADMIRAL DANIEL LEAHY, AMBASSADOR TO THE VICHY GOVERNMENT
"I felt sorry for the German people. We were planning - and we had the force to carry out our plans - to obliterate a once mighty nation. I had an uneasy feeling that those eighty million Germans some how or other would live to fight again."
EISENHOWER
"Our primary purpose is destruction of as many Germans as possible. I expect to destroy every German west of the Rhine and within that area in which we are attacking." General Eisenhower. J. Kingsley Smith (INS) Paris. February 24th 1945
INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN ECONOMICS
"The sacking of Germany after her unconditional surrender will go down in history as one of the most monstrous acts of modern times. Its excess beggars description and its magnitude defies condemnation." Ralph F. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest, 1947. Institute of American Economics
THE BACKGROUND TO THESE TERRIBLE DEEDS
In the final two years of the Second World War, Communist Russia, the United States and Britain were drawing up plans for the dismemberment of Europe, the amputation of 25% of German territory, and the handing over of half of Europe to the Soviet Union.
This policy would mean the forced expulsion of 15,000,000 Germans from their traditional homelands in East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, Eastern Brandenburg, the Sudetenland, pre-war Poland, Hungary, Rumania and Yugoslavia.
Its purpose was to remove the 'problem of German minorities', the desire to reward the USSR with territory, the destruction of Germany as a major European commercial rival to Britain and France, compensation for Poland, and the desire to punish the conquered Germans. These expulsions continued until 1949 - four years after the war formally ending.
A BLUNDER WITHOUT EQUAL
Posterity will probably regard the Second World War as a blunder without equal resulting in a tragedy that defies parallel, the results of which will scar the face of humanity for all time.
On the face of it, war had been declared for the purpose of defending, what many agreed at the time was indefensible; Poland's continued acquisition of territorial booty;
"... that very Poland which with hyena appetite only six months before, joined in the pillage and destruction of the Czechoslovak state." - Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Vol.1, pp. 311/312
It was a war that left Europe in ruins, millions dead, the British Empire in meltdown and Britain burdened with a war debt that would keep prosperity at bay for decades. Poland far from being freed on having served its purpose was handed over to the despotic Soviet Union, as were eleven other European nations. None of the stated aims of the war had been achieved.
On the other hand, the real (and largely unstated) aims of the war were in their final stages. The elimination of Germany as a competitive trading nation, which by position and population threatened the interests of Britain and France. Germany was to be dismembered and her population reduced through deportation, mass starvation, genocide and dispersal among neighboring states.
No right thinking person could possibly collude in such an appalling tragedy. Thus it was necessary to disguise the real aims of the war by pretence of defending the national integrity of a nation. To conceal the deportations, starvation, slavery and mass murder, and finally to cast Germany in such an evil light that few would be prepared to defend it. This process goes on today and every day.
ALFRED DeZAYAS
"It is in a sense astonishing that 34 years after the war so little is known outside Germany about this unhappy sequel. Even less has been discussed about the role that the United States and Great Britain played in authorizing the expulsions." - Alfred M. DeZayas, Nemesis at Potsdam
"The disaster that befell this area (eastern Germany) with the entry of the Soviet forces has no parallel in modern European experience. There were considerable sections of it where, to judge by all existing evidence, scarcely a man, woman or child of the indigenous population was left alive after the initial passage of the Soviet forces." - George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1967 Vol.1, p265
WORKING TOGETHER IN GENOCIDE; STALIN AND CHURCHILL
"We were unable to go into eastern Germany because of the policies of the Russian Government, but from authentic reports received, both in person and through the Press, conditions there, due to the policies of the Soviet Government and the conduct of the Soviet armies, are horrible beyond human comprehension.
"In fact, by eyewitness accounts, loot, pillage, pestilence and rape, wholesale murder and human suffering form one of the most terrible chapters in human history.
"Words are incapable of adequately picturing conditions there. The virtue of womanhood and the value of human life are civilized man's most sacred possessions, yet they are the very cheapest things in Russian-occupied Germany today. . .
"Thousands of people have been murdered, thousands of women violated, and conditions horrible, beyond civilized human comprehension prevail." Senator Eastland, December, 4th, Congressional Record
FIELD MARSHALL MONTGOMERY
"From their behavior it soon became clear that the Russians, though a fine fighting race, were in fact barbarous Asiatics who had never enjoyed a civilization comparable to that of the rest of Europe.
"Their approach to every problem was utterly different from ours and their behavior, especially in their treatment of women, was abhorrent to us. In certain sectors of the Russian zone there were practically no Germans left. . . "
INVASION FROM THE EAST
In October, 1944, the Red Army first entered German territory - the village of Nemmersdorf in East Prussia. What was to happen there was to be repeated in thousands of villages, towns and communities throughout eastern Germany. This 'ethnic cleansing' policy carried out by Stalin with the full approval of both Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt, would result in the murder of an estimated 3,000,000 German civilians.
"When in October, 1944, Russian units. . . broke through German defenses and advanced as far as Nemmersdorf, they tortured civilians in many villages south of Gumbinnen, nailed some on barn doors and shot many others. A large number of women were raped. The Russian soldiers also shot some fifty French prisoners-of-war. The effected villages were reoccupied by German forces within forty-eight hours." Major-General Erich Dethleffsen, Chief of Staff, German Fourth Army testimony to American Tribunal
DR. HEINRICH AMBERGERr
"On the road through Nemmersdorf, I saw a whole trek of refugees had been rolled over by Russian tanks; not only the wagons and teams, but also a goodly number of civilians, mostly women and children, had been squashed flat by the tanks. At the edge of the road and in the farm yards lay quantities of corpses of civilians who evidently had not all been killed in the course of military operations but rather had been murdered systematically.
"On the edge of the street an old woman sat hunched up, killed by a bullet in the back of the neck.
"Not far away lay a baby of only four months, killed by a shot at close range through the forehead. . . a number of men, with no other marks of fatal wounds, had been killed by blows with shovels or gun butts; their faces were completely smashed.
"At least one man was nailed to a barn door.
"Yet, not only in Nemmersdorf itself, but also in the nearby villages between Angerapp and Rominten similar cases were noted after these villages were cleared of Russian troops.
"Neither in Nemmersdorf nor in the other places did I find a single living German civilian despite the fact that the Russian invasion had come as such a surprise that no appreciable number of civilians could have fled. . . " Dr. Heinrich Amberger
KARL POTREK
"At the edge of town, on the left side of the road, stand the large inn, Weisser Krug. . . in the farm yard further down the road stood a cart, to which four naked women were nailed through their hands in a cruciform position.
"Behind the Weisser Krug towards Gumbinnen is a square with a monument to the Unknown Soldier. Beyond it is another large inn, Roter Krug. Near it, parallel to the road, stood a barn and to each of its doors a naked woman was nailed through the hands, in a crucified posture.
"In the dwellings we found a total of seventy-two women, including children and one old man, 74, all dead. . . all murdered in a bestial manner, except only for a few who had bullet holes in their necks.
"Some babies had their heads bashed in.
"In one room we found a woman, 84 years old, sitting on a sofa. . . half of whose head had been sheared off with an axe or a spade.
"We carried the corpses to the village cemetery where they lay to await a foreign medical commission. In the meantime, a nurse from Insterburg came, a native of Nemmersdorf, who looked for her parents.
"Among the corpses were her mother, 72, and her father, 74, the only man among the dead. She also established that all the dead were Nemmersdorfers. On the fourth day the bodies were buried in two graves.
"Only the following day did the medical commission arrive, and the tombs had to be reopened. This foreign commission unanimously established that all of the women, even the woman of 84 years had been raped." Karl Potrek
"The women who had been surprised in the village, including several nuns, had been herded together by the Russians, raped and gravely abused. The women had been bestially stabbed or shot.
"The Army (Wehrmacht) immediately invited the neutral Press. Reporters from Switzerland and Sweden as well as some Spaniards and Frenchmen from the occupied parts of France came to witness the frightful scene." - Captain Emil Herminghaus
"The Russians. . . swept the native population clean in a manner that has no parallel since the days of the Asiatic hordes." - George F. Kennan
"Expulsion is the method which, so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting." - Winston Churchill, December 15th 1944, House of Commons
"The transference of several millions of people would have to be effected from the East to the West or the North, as well as the expulsion of Germans - because of what is proposed; the total expulsion of the Germans - from the area to be acquired by Poland in the West and the North." Winston Churchill, House of Commons, December 15th 1944
ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN
"In Allenstein, which had been taken almost without a fight, the sacking and raping lasted for weeks."
Dr. ALBERT SCHWEITZER
"The most grievous violation of the right based on historical evolution and of any human right in general is to deprive populations of the right to occupy the country where they live by compelling them to settle elsewhere.
"The fact that the victorious powers decided at the end of the Second World War to impose this fate on hundreds of thousands of human beings, and what is more, in a most cruel manner, shows how little they were aware of the challenge facing them, to re-establish prosperity and, as far as possible, the rule of law." Dr. Albert Schweitzer on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, November 4th 1954
REAR ADMIRAL HENRY C. FLANAGAN, U.S.N. Commander
"Had the originators of the War Crimes Trials doctrine been in any degree motivated by justice and the desire to punish the perpetrators of extreme atrocities in time of war they would have at least made some attempt to bring to trial the hundreds of Russian officials for perpetrating the most heinous atrocities ever afflicted upon civilized peoples, against the Poles and Germans and no doubt against all other people who have at any time been under Russian control."
LORD CURZON
"A thoroughly bad and vicious solution, for which the world will pay a heavy penalty for a hundred years to come." - Lord Curzon, British Foreign Minister, 1919 - 1924
VICTOR GOLLANCZ
"If the conscience of men ever again becomes sensitive, these expulsions will be remembered to the undying shame of all who committed or connived at them... the Germans were expelled, not just with an absence of over-nice consideration but with the very maximum of brutality." Our Threatened Values, 1946, p.96
ROBERT MURPHY
"Knowledge that they are the victim of a harsh political decision carried out with the utmost ruthlessness and disregard for the humanities does not cushion the effect . . . it would be most unfortunate were the record to indicate that we are the particeps to methods we have often condemned in other instances." - Robert Murphy, U.S. Political Adviser to Germany
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"In Eastern Europe now mass deportations are being carried out by our allies on an unprecedented scale, and an apparently deliberate attempt is being made to exterminate many millions of Germans, not by gas, but by depriving them of their homes and of food, leaving them to die by slow and agonizing starvation.
"This is not an act of war, but as part of a deliberate policy of 'peace'...." Bertrand Russell, The Times, October 19th 1945
FLEEING THE RED ARMY
"Sometimes six or eight hours were necessary to cross the ice, sometimes even longer. Exhaustion and exposure took its toll of lives, especially among the very young and the very old. Babies froze and were left by their mothers on the ice, old women fell from their wagons - dead.
"But a touch of the macabre would still be added by low-flying Russian planes, which mercilessly machine-gunned the refugees and bombed the ice so many a wagon train sank through the broken ice and disappeared in the waters of the Haff. Horses drowned, people drowned. It was an unimaginable trial against despair." - Alfred deZayas, Nemesis at Potsdam
Note: The Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims of the German Government holds eight volumes of 600 - 1,000 pages each, of detailed documentation; eye-witness accounts, many of them backed by neutral observers, which is still 'classified' and held in archives with their publication forbidden.
ALFRED M DeZAYAS, AUTHORITY ON THE EXPULSIONS
"Although not officially taboo in America or Great Britain, the facts of the German expulsion were never given adequate coverage in the Press. As a consequence, most Americans and Britons do not know that there was an expulsion at all, much less that western authorization of the principle of compulsory population transfers made the American and British Governments accomplices in one of the most inhuman enterprises in the history of Western civilization."
Next -- Chapter 17 -- HOGAN'S HEROES