Germany's armed forces must become the best-equipped military force in Europe, says Scholz | DW News

Your link does not even load. It's just hanging.

You do know that documents can be forged and that authentic documents can be taken out of context and used to try and make an argument that they do not actually support, don't you? Again, I see no critical thinking on your part whatsoever. You just come at me with kooky claims and obviously treat them as gospel.

 

First of all, I'd like to have a civil and pleasant exchange about what can be a volatile topic.

If I understand you correctly, you are unpersuaded by eyewitness accounts, documents, photographic evidence, testimony from the investigating officer and Red Cross assessments.

How can you believe such horrible things about the Germans and not the Americans?

Thanks,

 

I am unpersuaded by cherry-picked whatever tied to a bogus claim about Eisenhower's policies and motives. I'm not debating the matter of prisoners of war being mistreated, which is separate from what Eisenhower may have said or done.

 

Yet you'll believe any cherry picked nonsense tied to any bogus claims as long as they demonize the Germans?

My question was:

"How can you believe such horrible things about the Germans and not the Americans?"

Please stop being evasive.

 

You don't know what I believe and what I don't. I endeavor to base my beliefs on the facts and avoid getting carried away. For starters, I don't believe any horrible things about the Germans, though I accept the known historical facts where the Nazi regime is concerned. Sadly, such regimes are universal and universally evil and cruel.

 

Because the Germans have a history of murderous actions in war time. Americans do not.

 

"

Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood
. Louisiana State University Press, $24.95 (258pp) ISBN 978-0-8071-1758-3
In a 1989 study entitled Other Losses , novelist James Bacque contended that Gen. Eisenhower, commander of the American occupation forces in Germany, starved to death a million German prisoners of war in 1945 as an act of revenge. In 1990 the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans invited historians to a conference to examine these charges; this volume contains essays by eight who attended, including Ambrose and Bischof (the Center's director and associate director, respectively). The conferees concluded that there was widespread mistreatment of German prisoners by Allies in 1945, but that it was not the result of a directive from Eisenhower, although he had expressed his hatred of the Germans throughout the war. The texts published here effectively refute Bacque's arguments and dismiss his book as the work of a sloppy amateur who wrenched material out of context and misquoted eyewitnesses. Illustrations. ( Nov. )"
https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8071-1758-3

 

Stephen Ambrose is a paid pimp for the fraudulent Eisenhower shrine who was nowhere near Eisenhower's Death Camps.
I can only guess the qualifications of the dilettante "historians" he cherry picked.

Meanwhile, eyewitnesses who were there confirm Bacque's findings:

Martin Brech's eyewitness account:
"In 'Eisenhower’s Death Camps': A U.S. Prison Guard Remembers"
http://www.whale.to/b/in_eisenhowers.html


"Additional Witnesses to the American and French POW Camps"
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2018...ed-starved-in-allied-run-concentration-camps/

EXCERPT "German POWs were frequently afforded no shelter, with available supplies, under orders, deliberately withheld from them in stockpiles close by. Even access to the nearby Rhine River for water and hygienic bathing was denied. They tried to create toilet trenches, many weak and frail men fell into them and died. Other men were simply buried alive by the Allies who drove bulldozers over them under the cover of night. Why at night? Didn’t the Allies want this glorious vengeance filmed for posterity?"


EXCERPT "The French newspaper Le Figaro reported the horrific conditions of the prisoner camps in September 1945. The newspaper had been convinced by the testimony of impeccable witnesses, such as a priest, Father Le Meur, who had actually seen the prisoners starving in the camps. Le Figaro’s reporter, Serge Bromberger, wrote:

“The most serious source confirmed that the physical state of the prisoners was worse than deplorable. People were talking a horrifying death rate, not from sickness but starvation, and of men who weighed an average 35-45 kilos [80-100 pounds]. At first we doubted the truth of all this, but appeals came to us from many sources and we could not disregard the testimony of Father Le Meur, Assistant General Chaplain to the prisoners.” CONTINUED


It's incredible how many people are so gullible as to think that only foreign governments use propaganda when America's Hollywood - Holocaust Industry propaganda has so effectively duped millions into believing that only the "other" side commits war crimes.

 

Ambrose got it about right. The charges against Eisenhower are rather obvious Nazi propaganda.

"Documentary evidence of deaths[edit]
Other Losses asserts that roughly a million German prisoners—the "Missing Million"—disappeared between two reports issued on June 2, 1945, with one (the last of the daily reports) totaling prisoners in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) in U.S. custody at 2,870,400, while the other (the first of the weekly reports) gives the figure as 1,836,000 prisoners in the Communication Zone (COM Z).[23][47] As a consequence of this, according to Quartermaster Reports the number of rations issued to the camps was reduced by 900,000.[48] Historian Albert Cowdrey states that the reason for this is simply that COM Z is a subordinate of the ETO, and its figures omit prisoners held by other armies.[47] In fact, Cowdrey states that the two documents further both cite exactly the same number of total prisoners in the ETO: 3,193,747.[47] Cowdrey concludes "[t]o judge by these documents, there was no Missing Million. There was not even a missing one."[47][49]

Of prisoners in French custody, the historian Rudiger Overmans wrote that, while the total number of prisoners dying in French custody might have exceeded the official statistic of 21,000, no evidence exists that it was hundreds of thousands of deaths higher than that figure, as Bacque claims.[53] Overmans states that, in addition to the various problems with the Bacque's "death rate" calculations regarding the Rheinwiesenlager transit camps, he ignores that these camps were managed almost entirely by Germans and falsely claimed that no record existed of the handover of the camps to the French in June and July 1945, when detailed records of the handover exist.[54] ...

Overmans states that Bacque's claim that the 800,000 to 1,000,000 missing prisoners were originally German soldiers that fled from the east into western hands contradicts Soviet POW evidence "well established that we can exclude the idea of an extra million hiding somewhere in the figures."[55] ... Overmans further states that, as evidence that Germans believed that missing veterans were mostly in the west, Bacque relies on a statement by Konrad Adenauer that turns out in the minutes of the purported meeting to be a "statement related to a TASS report concerning the POWs in the Soviet Union. So much for Bacque's careful use of sources."[56]

Plausibility of avoiding repercussion[edit]
Overmans states that, comporting with the most basic matters of common sense, "if indeed 726,000 soldiers had died in the American camps (Bacque's number excluding those who supposedly died in French custody or after discharge), what became of the bodies?"[56] Given that the Rheinwiesenlager stretched along 200 kilometers of the Rhine river, "Bacque's 726,000 dead would mean roughly 3,600 dead per kilometer or 5,800 per mile – better than one corpse per foot. Yet despite the widespread construction work carried out after the war, not a single one of these legions of dead was found."[56] ...

Other Losses argues that Eisenhower's staff must have been implicated, charging "[t]he squalor of the camps came from the moral squalor polluting the higher levels of the army."[9][59] Villa states that "[p]erhaps realizing that he already has a thesis involving a massive American conspiracy, Bacque is careful to exclude British officers from any participation or even knowledge of the crime. Although in his vast indictment, Bacque has included virtually Eisenhower's entire staff, all the doctors and personnel running the camps, the press who failed to uncover the monstrous crime and a whole generation of knowing but silent Germans, he has included not a single Briton."[59] Villa notes that Bacque ignores that SHAEF was a fully integrated Anglo-American command, and many of Eisenhower's top officers were Britons who would have also had to cover up the conspiracy.[59]...

...Regarding the overall bureaucracy within which Eisenhower had to operate, Villa stated that "Although the average reader of Other Losses would never know it, there was a constellation of authorities to whom Eisenhower had to report his actions. Examining the situation as of May 8, 1945, when his murderous policy is said to have gone into full gear, no responsible historian could ignore the many limitations on Eisenhower's authority that made it impossible for him to carry out an independent policy in Germany."[44]

Methodology[edit]
Cowdrey stated that Bacque's methodology for determining just the "Other Losses" figures was also "slipshod", with Bacque filling gaps in the records where no "other losses" were recorded by "comput[ing] the number of deaths by applying the death rate given in Army statistics for another period to the known number of prisoners at hand."[62] Cowdrey states that the "rate given in Army statistics" turned out to be a "rate invented by Bacque himself."[62] Cowdrey states that, with regard to Bacque's attempt to analyze a U.S. Army hospital record document, Bacque not only missed an obvious typo throwing his calculations off by 10, but he also badly erred in the math used to tabulate purported death rates of 30%, which he attempts to use to support his claim that the "other losses" column in the weekly army reports reflects a body count.[63] Cowdrey concludes that "the mathematical blunders of Other Losses are elementary. One turns from them feeling only embarrassment for the author who naively grounds his thesis upon them."[64]

Historian Rolf Steininger stated that Bacque's claim that the failure to publish the 1960s and 1970s German Maschke Commission finding death figures to be a "cover up" contradicts that the entire 22 volume series was actually published in 1972 without any restrictions, to which only an oblique reference is made in an Other Losses endnote.[65] ...

Bischof said that while "most scholarly reviewers of Bacque's book have pointed out that Bacque fails to establish the proper historical context", "worse, the historical records that Bacque did use are amateurishly misrepresented and often misleading or wrong. Once Bacque's endnotes are checked, frequent misreadings of documents are easily discernible."[67] As an example, Bischof states that Bacque charged that General Mark Clark's raising of caloric intake in the Ebensee camp was "trying to exculpate himself before history" of Eisenhower's scheme to exterminate Germans.[67] Bischof states that Bacque fails to tell his readers, first, that Ebensee was not even an Allied prisoner of war camp, but a camp for displaced persons that was actually housing Polish Jews liberated from a nearby concentration camp, ...

Oral sources[edit]
Regarding oral histories, Bischof concludes that "Bacque abuses the process through his highly selective presentation of oral histories and memoir literature."[69] Other Losses cited Colonel Phillip S. Lauben as the source for the claim that the "other losses" weekly report column covered up deaths. The New Orleans panel noted that Lauben himself twice has since repudiated this.[49] ... Mr Bacque read to me the USFET POW figures for discharge and transfers to other national zones. It seemed to me that, after accounting for transfers and discharges, there was nothing left to make up the grand total except deaths and escapes. I.e.: the term OTHER LOSSES. I was mistaken ... many POWs were transferred from one U.S. Command to another U.S. Command. This left one with a loss and the other with a gain."[51]

Bacque described his other witness, John Foster, as a camp guard "in charge of the work detail of fifty men, Germans and Americans, who did nothing all day but drag bodies out of the camp."[70] Bischof cites a researcher for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) who tracked down Foster who told the researcher that "he never was a member of a burial detail, he never buried a body in his life. And he's unaware of any such activity in any camps."[70] When the CBC interviewer confronted Bacque with Foster's denial, Bacque responded "well, he's wrong. He's just wrong."[70]

Context of food shortage[edit]
Historian James Tent concludes that "James Bacque might be willing to relegate the world food shortage to the category of myth. Few others will do so. Perhaps he can try the interviewing techniques that he employed in Other Losses—namely putting words in the mouths of selective eyewitnesses."[71] ...


While Other Losses claims that the United States dismissed the Swiss Government from its role as a protecting power,[78] Villa states that Bacque ignores that it was the Soviets that had vetoed permitting the continued existence of the German government in May 1945, ..."[79]

Bischof stated that, even in Bacque's later released American edition, "Bacque refuses to address the overwhelming evidence that there had been a great shortage of food in central Europe, ... Bischof states "the opposite is true", citing the large amounts of U.S. Army GARDA Aid, without which "German and Austrian civilians would have had a much tougher time surviving the hunger months of 1945 and 1946."[80]" Wiki

 

You were careful not to mention the other eyewitness accounts that confirm the horrible conditions of Eisenhower's true Death Camps but accept anything that any holocaust survivor says without question.

Why the double standard?

 

Those were the times before Human Rights issues were as prevalent as modern times. It is easy for the deceivers to look at the past and point fingers when the world was a totally different variation of society and thought processes. The world has evolved since then.

 

I still remember the good old days when Durandal would post articles straight from RT.

Now he makes his bones as an apologist for the liberal world order.

My, how times have changed.

 

Germany is going to struggle heating their homes this winter. They should probably focus more on the welfare of their people than on being lapdogs for the US.

 

You went from regularly posting articles from RT to parroting NATO propaganda almost overnight. Give it a few more months and you will switch back again.

 

Live and learn.

 

The two are not exclusive.

 

You learned nothing. You just went from spewing one form of propaganda to another.

 

They are in this case. Without Russian gas and oil, Germany will shiver through the winter. But Russian oil and gas will never return to Germany if they keep acting as lapdogs for the US empire. They cannot have it both ways. Their choice is between warm homes and brainless militarism. Naturally, they will make the wrong choice.

 

Why do you call it "brainless militarism"?

 

Because there is no benefit to it, and because it is taking precedence over far more important things, like ensuring that all Germans have enough energy to survive the winter.

 

If you say so.

 

German politicians think it is more important to back a foreign government's war against its own people, than it is to make sure their citizens have enough energy for the winter. That is how openly contemptuous liberals are of their subjects. And the worst part about it? The average citizen in these liberal countries just bends over and grabs their ankles. They would rather watch their own grandmother shiver to death than go against the current "thing".

 

Wear more clothes.

 

That would keep people warm. Again, I find it hilarious that Russians, who live in a far colder country, don't have natural gas lines to 1\3rd of all of their households yet people don't freeze routinely in winter. Yet they are falsely claiming that far warmer countries are some how going to freeze in mass. It is a really dumb propaganda line.

Like I said, a pellet stove is $500 and a entire ton of pellets is about $250. That will heat a whole single family home for five months. That is really not that expensive and doesn't require any natural gas. You can even use it for cooking or heating water.

 

It has nothing to do with what I say. That's what you did. You went from one extreme to the other. You simply blow with the wind.