WITNESS TO HISTORY

Michael Walsh

CHAPTER 22

TO THE VICTORS GO THE SLAVES

Enslavement of Prisoners of War is a violation of the Geneva Convention. Article.75.

Whilst this chapter deals with illegal enslavement, an offence that does not discriminate in respect of a slave's status be he (or she) a Prisoner-of-War, a civilian, a non-national or a child, it should be remembered that with the exception of the Japanese-American citizens and civilians, the enslavement of the vanquished occurred after victory had been won and hostilities ended. Therefore, these slaves were by status in law free men and women, and not prisoners-of-war.

CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN THE SOVIET UNION

Long after the war had ended, Russia which already had a slave population estimated to be at least 20,000,000 souls, was rounding up Germans in the seized territories; mostly men, but women and children too, and marching them eastwards into its gulag slave labor camps.

"German prisoners in Russian hands are estimated to number from four to five millions. When Berlin and Breslau surrendered, the long grey-green columns of prisoners were marched east, downcast and fearful . . .

"toward huge depots near Leningrad, Moscow, Minsk, Stalingrad, Kiev, Kharkov, and Sevastopol. All fit men had to march twenty-two miles a day. Those physically handicapped went in handcarts or carts pulled by spare beasts . . . " - Congressional Report, March, 29th, 1946. p.2864

Although the western allies protested at the illegal, forced and brutal conscription of civilian slaves, and their deportation to foreign lands, the Soviets 'produced a proclamation signed by General Dwight Eisenhower a year earlier which conceded agreement on this point.' The protests stopped. Very few of those millions of enslaved Germans, press-ganged to Stalin's gulags, ever returned.

FORMER PRESIDENT HERBERT HOOVER

"The souls of one quarter of mankind have been seared by the violation of that American promise. The ghosts of the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter now wander amid the clanking chains of a thousand slave camps." - U.S. News, July 18th 1952

"The German Red Cross is still searching for more than half a million human beings who were reported as being missing. According to a Munich published listing of the DKR-Suchdienst (German Red Cross Search Service), there were still open files on 436,641 Wehrmacht servicemen reported missing, and for 147,578 non-military German prisoners. Up to March of this year, 1.74 million missing German soldiers of the German Wehrmacht, and 357,490 non-military German prisoners were registered." - The Voice of German Americans

THE FEW WHO DID RETURN

"German Red Cross girls went at 9.00am on the morning of September, 10th, 1946, to meet a 20-car trainload of returned forced laborers. As the sealed cars were opened by the armed guards who had been riding on top, the girls were greeted with thin, scabby faced men in rags begging for water or hysterically calling for help in removing the dead." - Ralph Franklin Keeling, Gruesome Harvest

A professional nurse reported:

"They had been in the train almost a week travelling about 60 miles from Frankfurt-am-Oder. There had been deaths from starvation; not from starvation just during the ride, but from the hardships of the trip after months of malnutrition in Russian labor camps.

"Almost all of the 800 or 900 in the train were sick or cripples. You might say they were all invalids. With 40 or fifty packed in each of these little boxcars, the sick had to sleep beside the dead on their homeward journey. I did not count them but I am sure we removed more than 25 corpses. Others had to be taken to hospitals. I asked several of the men whether the Russian guards or doctors had done anything on the trip to care for the sick. They said, 'No'." - A professional nurse to Hal Foust, Berlin, August 11th 1946, Chicago Tribune Press Service

"The daily diet in Russian slave camps is soup and lectures on the glories of Communism and the evils of western democracy. The slightest disobedience is penalized by such heavy work that a third of the culprits die within three weeks from exhaustion. A tenth of the slaves died during the first year, according to those who have returned." - Hal Foust, Berlin. August, 11th, 1946. Chicago Tribune Press Service

"German prisoners who were to be turned over to the Russians often committed suicide or tried to incapacitate themselves by slashing their bodies with knives, razors, or bits of glass." - Associated Press, Stockholm, November 30th 1945

CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN EASTERN EUROPE

"Armed Czech women and Jewesses continued hitting the womb of expectant mothers with truncheons until a miscarriage followed, and in one single camp ten German women died daily in this way." - Document. M.6

"In another camp, the inmates were forced to lick the bespattered brains of their fellow prisoners who had been beaten to death. German prisoners were forced to lick up infectious feces from the underwear of their fellow prisoners suffering from dysentery." - Document. No.17

"Shortly before 9.00am they (the Czech National Guard) marched through the streets calling on all Germans to be standing outside their front doors at 9.00 o'clock with one piece of hand luggage each, ready to leave town, forever. Women had ten minutes in which to wake and dress their children, bundle a few possessions into their suitcases and come out on to the pavement.

"Here they were ordered to hand over all their jewelry, watches, furs, and money to their guards, retaining only their wedding rings; then they were marched out of town at gun-point . . . they were pushed into a field for the night . . . which had been turned into a concentration camp. They had only the food which the guards gave them from time to time. They had received no rations . . . "

"A typhus epidemic now rages amongst them, and they are said to be dying at the rate of 100 a day.

"Twenty-five thousand men, women and children made this forced march from Brno . . . " - London Daily Mail, August, 6th, 1945

"There are four concentration camps in the neighborhood and the screaming of maltreated people can be heard by those who reside near by."

"Frightful excesses occurred in Camp Lamsdorf in Upper Silesia, where a camp population of 8,064 Germans were literally decimated through starvation, hard labor and physical maltreatment. One of the surviving German doctors recorded the deaths of 6,488 inmates of Lamsdorf including 628 children." - Alfred deZayas, Nemesis at Potsdam, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London

CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN RUMANIA

30,000 Hungarians, mostly of the professional classes were summarily executed by the invading Soviets and Rumanian Communists. In addition it is estimated that 200,000 Germans and Croats died in Rumanian death camps.

CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN FRANCE

"France, according to the International Red Cross, had 680,000 German soldiers slaving for her in August, 1946. 475,000 of their number had been captured by the United States and later turned over to the French for forced labour." - John Thompson, Chicago Tribune Press, August 24th 1946

LIVING SKELETONS . . . CONDEMNED TO DIE

"In certain (French concentration camps) for German prisoners-of-war, living skeletons may be seen almost like those in German concentration camps, and deaths from undernourishment are numerous. We learn that prisoners have been savagely and systematically beaten and that some of them have been employed in removing mines without protective equipment so that they are condemned to die sooner or later." - Figaro, The Progressive, January 14th 1946

"In a camp for the Sarthe District for 20,000 prisoners, inmates received 900 calories a day; thus twelve die every day in the hospital. Four to five thousand are unable to work at all 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

"In an Orleans camp, the commander received 16 francs a day per head or prisoner to buy food, but he spent only 9 francs, so that prisoners were starving. In the Charante district, 2,500 of the 12,000 camp inmates are sick." - Ralph F. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest, Institute of American Economics

"A witness reports on the camp a Langres. 'I have seen them beaten with rifle butts and kicked with feet in the streets because they broke down of overwork. Two or three of them die with exhaustion every week.

In another camp near Langres, 700 prisoners slowly die of hunger; they have hardly any blankets and not enough straw to sleep on; there is a typhoid epidemic in the camp which has already spread to the neighboring village. In another camp prisoners receive only one meal a day but are expected to continue working. Elsewhere so many have died recently that the cemetery space was exhausted and another cemetery had to be built.

"In a camp where the prisoners work on the removal of mines, regular food supplies arrive only every second day so that, 'prisoners make themselves a soup of grass and some stolen vegetables'. All prisoners of this camp have contracted tuberculosis  . . . many cases have been reported were men have been so horribly beaten that their limbs were broken. In one camp, men were awakened during the night, called out of their barracks and then shot, 'because of attempted escape.... these are the facts'." - Louis Clair, The Progressive, January 14th 1946

"After we (The United States) had delivered the first 320,000 prisoners, the French returned 2,474 of them to us, claiming that we had given them weaklings. Correspondents described them as, 'a beggar army of pale thin men clad in vermin-infested tatters.' All were pronounced unfit for work - and 19% had to be hospitalized." - Congressional Records, December 11th, 1945. A-5816

Asked to investigate, the International Red Cross agreed that German prisoners-of-war were receiving inhumane treatment from the French. The United States threatened to stop the supply of German prisoners-of-war at which the French protested that the supply must be maintained or they would suffer heavy financial loss.

"It then came out that the French Government was hiring the men out to French employers at an average of 150 francs per day per man. Out of this the government paid each prisoner-of-war 10 francs, and stood the extra daily cost of upkeep estimated at 40 francs. It was making a profit of 100 francs per slave per day, and this over 50 billion francs a year from German prisoner-of-war slaves." - Henry Wales, Paris, March 12th 1946, Chicago Tribune Press Service

"GEE! I HOPE WE DON'T EVER LOSE A WAR!"

"When we (The United States) resumed delivery of slaves, we took pains to make sure that the prisoners-of-war were is satisfactory physical condition. The men would be lined up and examined, their mouths opened and inspected, their chests thumped, their joints tried, their ears, eyes and teeth looked over, as if they were horses being offered for sale. G.Is witnessing the spectacle were heard to remark: 'Gee! I hope we don't ever lose a war." - Ralph F. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest

On December 6th 1946, almost two years after the war had ended, the United States Government demanded the repatriation of German prisoners-of-war that they had given to France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

France pledged to return the 620,000 prisoners-of-war she had been given, but protested vehemently and disclosed that the United States of America on December, 21st, 1945, had 'expressly stipulated that the Germans captured by the U.S. Army and handed over to France were chattels to be used indefinitely for slave labor as part of France's war reparations from Germany.' - Ralph Franklin Keeling, Gruesome Harvest

Pretty rich when it is remembered that France had declared war . . . and carried out acts of war, against a German nation which had never indicated any aggressive tendencies towards France; a Germany that had resolutely turned the other cheek while for six months in 1939 - 1940, France had carried out war against the German nation.

BRITISH CONCENTRATION CAMPS (EUROPE AND GREAT BRITAIN)

"Together with a group of journalists, Moorehead visited the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in 1945, shortly after discontinuation of action. By reason of heavy bombing, road communications had been destroyed and no supplies had reached the camp; typhoid fever ensued and hundreds of prisoners had died as a consequence.

"The allies arrived on the scene and found a terrible situation. They delivered provisions and medicine, cremated the dead and burned down the contaminated barracks. They imprisoned the guards and tortured them and they were so possessed by propaganda about German 'Huns', that they obviously greatly enjoyed to demonstrate their atrocities to the visiting journalists.

"Moorehead reports, 'A young British medical officer and a captain of engineers managed the camp. The captain was in the best of moods. When we approached the cells of gaoled guards, the sergeant lost his temper. The captain said: 'This morning we had an interrogation. I'm afraid the prisoners don't look exactly nice.'

"The cells were opened for the journalists. The prisoners lay there, crumpled, 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." - Cyril Connolly, The Golden Horizon, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London

Note: I have not personally read this book and the account above is a translation from English to German and back again which accounts for grammatical flaw only.

"During the latter half of 1945 (many months after the war's end), I was with British troops guarding suspect 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.

"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. - A.W Perkins, Holland-on-Sea. Daily Mail, 22nd April 1995

"Great Britain in August, 1946, 15-months after the war's end, according to the International Red Cross, had 460,000 German prisoners-of-war slaving for her." - John Thompson, Geneva, August 24th 1946. Chicago Tribune Press Service

" . . . and in the case of France bringing in a handsome profit for the War Office. 'Upon embarking from our ports the prisoners were given to understand that they were being sent home; when they learned upon arrival at British and French ports that they were to be worked indefinitely as slaves, they became sullen. As one British officer said: 'It takes us several weeks to bring them around to where they will work hard.' - Arthur Veysey, London, May 28th 1956. Chicago Tribune Press Service

In Britain, among other projects, the prisoners-of-war were forced to build in Kensington Gardens a British victory celebration camp to house 24,000 Empire troops who marched in the Empire's Victory Day Parade. One foreman remarked: 'I guess the Jerries are preparing to celebrate their own downfall. It does seem as though it is laying it on a bit thick.'

Needless to say, all of these abuses were grossly illegal under international law to which Britain was a signatory, and of course contrary to all human standards of civilized behavior.

One wonders at the double standards displayed when whilst at the one time the victors were putting Germans on trial - and executing them, for the use of forced labor, albeit with prisoners not protected by convention, the victors were themselves enslaving prisoners under much harsher conditions . . . prisoners who were protected under mutually agreed conventions . . . and, long after the war had ended.

£250 MILLION A YEAR FROM SLAVERY

"The British Government nets over $250,000,000 each year from its German slaves, hiring them out at up to $20 a week, and paying the slaves up to 20 cents a day. The prisoners are never given cash but are provided with credits instead.

In March, 1946, 140,000 prisoners-of-war were working on farms which earned the government $14 a week per prisoner, 24,000 on housing and bomb damage projects, 22,000 on the railways; others in odd jobs or waiting on G.I brides awaiting shipment to America."

According to Members of Parliament at the time, 130,000 German prisoners-of-war are held in Belgian camps.

"The prisoners lived through the winter in tents and slept on bare ground under one blanket each. They say they are underfed and beaten and kicked by the guards. Many have no underclothes or boots."- Chicago Tribune Service, London, May 19th 1946

"Such were the desperate straits of the German prisoners -of-war that an increasing number of them were escaping from British slave camps... with British civilian aid. Accounts of the chases by Military Police are reminiscent of pre-Civil War pursuits by fleeing Negro fugitives." - Chicago Tribune Press Service, London, August 27th 1946

"By mid-September, public indignation had reached such a pitch that the British War Office announced that plans were underway to release 15,000 prisoners per month, on a selective basis, and promises were made to improve conditions in the camps." - John Wilhelm, London, September 12th 1946

"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." - Arthur Veysey, London, May 28th 1946

THE UNITED STATES

At Dachau, "Three hundred SS camp guards were quickly neutralized." - U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower

The term neutralized of course is a sanitized way of saying that the prisoners-of-war were rounded up and machine-gunned in groups. An account of the mass murder of German prisoners-of-war at Dachau has 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, 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, which have since been published.

Nothing, absolutely nothing justifies the casual mass murder of prisoners-of-war by whomsoever; not even the allegations of 'gas chambers at Dachau' which have since been disproved, even by Jewish 'holocaust' researchers.

1,000 PRISONERS-OF-WAR SLAUGHTERED A YEAR AFTER THE WAR'S END

"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, persons appearing on the state television claimed last night.

"The tale was one of several told by former members of an Israeli force which captured and executed Nazi war criminals after the end of World War Two." - Toronto Daily Star, March 9th 1968

Note: The 'Nazi war criminals' are in fact German prisoners-of-war, who had never been tried or found guilty of any crime.

"At Dachau 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 refused to be repatriated under the new American ruling.

"'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." - Douglas Botting, In The Ruins of The Reich, George Allen & Unwin, London

1,200 GERMAN POW's STARVED TO DEATH

"After the U.S 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." - Roger Boyes, The Times, 7th March 1995

S.S MEN JEER AMERICANS INVOLVED IN ATROCITIES

"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." - Douglas Botting, In The Ruins of The Reich, George Allen & Unwin, London

"The official International Red Cross Report in August, 1946, showed that the United States Government, through its military branch in the German zone, was exacting forced labour from 284,000 captives, 140,000 of them in the occupation zone, 100,000 in France, 30,000 in Italy, and 14,000 in Belgium." - John Thompson, Geneva, Chicago Tribune Press

PAGAN ROME

"Our administration, along with our allies, both the godless ones and the professed Christians, is trying to turn the clock back to the times of Pagan Rome. It has undertaken to build a brave new world on the principles of anti-Christ." - Uncle Sam. Slave Dealer, Chicago Tribune, February 20th 1946

"According to the International Red Cross, slave holdings in other countries were; Yugoslavia 80,000, Belgium 48,000, Czechoslovakia 45,000, Luxembourg 4,000, and 14,000 in Belgium." - John Thompson, Geneva, Chicago Tribune Press Service

The Chicago Tribune Press Service (Geneva. May 30th 1946) carried a pitiful story. It told of how toys made by prisoners -of-war in American camps, cigarette rations, even hand-made shoes, were 'congesting warehouses here in Geneva' because the International Red Cross is not permitted to operate in defeated Germany and to distribute them to starving German families they are intended for.

RACIST CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN THE UNITED STATES

In the United States in 1942, 112,985 innocent civilians of Japanese descent or family connection; two-thirds of them American by birth, were rounded up and placed in concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. There were no charges laid against them; they were held without hearing or trial.

Their only 'crime' was to be all or part of Japanese racial descent. Their personal possessions; farms, businesses, property and savings were confiscated. The value has been estimated at $400,000,000.

"After the war, this loss was settled at approximately 10 cents on the dollar." - Time Magazine, February 17th 1967

"... calls the 'ten relocation centers' a euphemism for concentration camps." - Time Magazine, February 17th 1967

"We should feel equally ashamed of our treatment of our West Coast citizens of Japanese extraction." - Major General Harry H. Vaughan, U.S. Army

 "Our worst wartime mistake... a tragic and serious mistake... almost incredible. Its motivation and impact on our system of law deny every value of democracy." = Professor Eugene V. Rostow, Under Secretary for Political U.S. Affairs

"Without precedent in American history... the first time that the United States Government condemned a large group of people to barbed wire enclosures - the first event in which danger to the nation's welfare was determined by group characteristics rather than by individual guilt... the first program in which Race alone determined whether an American would remain free or incarcerated." - Dr. Morton Grodzins, Americans Betrayed, University of Chicago Press, 1949

Dr, Morton Grodzins went on to say:

"No charges were ever filed against these persons, and no guilt was ever attributed to them. The test was ancestry, applied with the greatest rigidity. Evacuation swept into guarded camps, orphans, foster children from white homes, Japanese married to Caucasians, the offspring of such marriages, persons who were unaware of their Japanese ancestry, and American citizens 'with as little as one-sixteenth Japanese blood."

Judge Frank Murphy, described the round-ups and detentions as: "An ugly abyss of racism" and the court's upholding of it as "legislation of racism."

It is revealing to note the Jewish-American support for this 'ugly abyss of racism', not the least Walter Lippman, America's top political commentator who suggested ways by which the United States Constitution could be by-passed and legalized by Justice Felix Frankfurter, an Austrian Jew.

CIVILIAN SLAVES

"Many of the slaves in fact had never served in the German armed forces. They included German seamen illegally seized by the Americans before they entered the war, U.S-German citizens, and German civilians who had previously lived in South American countries. Even anti-Nazi Germans who had returned from America to help families and friends in dire need were 'nabbed for enslavement.' - The Chicago Daily Tribune, March 14th 1946

CONDEMNATION

THE POPE ON PRISONERS-OF-WAR AS SLAVES

"... we remember with profound sorrow all those who, although the end of the war has been proclaimed, must this year again pass the beautiful season in a foreign land and feel ... the torment of their uncertain lot and of their separation from parents, wives, children, brothers, sisters; all their dear ones."

Referring to them as ''children' still held in prison,' he prayed. 'May they receive and be comforted by our wish - shared by all who cherish the sense of man's brotherhood - to see them regularly and speedily restored to their anxious families and to their normal peacetime occupations'

Pope Pius X11, Christmas Eve allocution, 1945

THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS ROUNDLY CONDEMNED THE SYSTEM OF USING PRISONERS-OF-WAR AS SLAVES

"The United States, Britain and France, nearly a year after peace is violating international Red Cross agreements they solemnly signed in 1929."

The Report went on to roundly condemn the transport and use of slaves; their being used in clearing mine-fields, sweeping sea mines, destroying surplus ammunition and razing shattered buildings which contravenes International Red Cross Agreements and the terms of the Geneva Convention.

An International Red Cross official stated:

"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 livestock." - Henry Wales, Geneva, April 13th 1946

"It is an iniquitous system and an evil precedent because it is wide open to abuses with difficulty in establishing responsibility. German soldiers are not common law convicts - they were drafted to fight in a national army on patriotic grounds and could not refuse military service any more than Americans could. It is manifestly unjust to buy and sell them for political reasons as the American Negroes were a century ago." - Henry Wales, Geneva, April 13th 1946 Chicago Tribune Press

GERMANY'S PRISONERS-OF-WAR

In sharp contrast with the allied treatment of German captives was the far better treatment received by allied prisoners-of-war when in German hands:

"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 have respected the Red Cross." - Alan Wood, War Front Correspondent, Daily Express, February 4th 1945

"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 maladministration of their American prison camps was very uncommon." - Lieutenant Newton L. Marguiles; Assistant Judge Advocate of Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, April 27th 1945

"My service during World War 11 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 in 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 firmly believe that the 'war crimes trials' were ill conceived, vindictively executed, and served only to lower the dignity and prestige of America. I know of no general officer who approved of them." - Major General Robert W. Grow, USA. Commander, 6th Armored Division in Europe. World War 11

It is true to say that German treatment of Russian prisoners-of-war was harsh, but as Ralph Franklin Keeling pointed out in his acclaimed study, Gruesome Harvest Russia was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention despite Germany's invitation for her to become so. Therefore Russia had no right to be protected by its terms.

Furthermore, whilst Russian prisoners were treated more badly than say British prisoners-of-war, it is equally true to say that Germans who fell into Russian hands were often summarily executed, not unusually after being mutilated. Those who survived were enslaved without hope of release, of which virtually all died through deprivation.

Excessive treatment towards Russians held in German camps rarely involved conscript prisoners-of-war; but was aimed almost exclusively at saboteurs, German traitors, members of the resistance and underground, spies, etc. Such captives then and now proudly owned up to excesses of atrocity that themselves were contrary to convention both formal and basically human.

Ralph F. Keeling goes on to say that the allied enslavement's have also been justified by the allies on the grounds that the Germans themselves exacted forced labor from foreign workers . . .

"but it is also true that, except for special cases such as prisoners-of-war coming under the Geneva Convention, they were for the most part well paid and fed well." - Gruesome Harvest

"Of those forced laborers in the Reich, Dr. James Pollack, who for fourteen months served with the Allied Military Government, said: 'I think some of the persons found themselves better off than at any time in their lives before'." - - James M. Haswell, Washington, August 27th 1946. Chicago Daily News

"A mass of evidence proves that this is true and that allied war propaganda to the contrary was greatly exaggerated." - Ralph F. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest

"What did the Germans do to get efficient production from forced labor that we were not able to do with Germans working down the mines? They fed their help and fed them well." - Max H. Forester, Chief of Allied Military Government and Mining Division, July 1946

"Conditions of slave labor in Britain, France and Russia, menace world peace and they destroy world trade." - The American Federation of Labour, 1946

Next -- Chapter 23 -- THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!