The German victims

Can I use this forum to start a discussion on the German victims of the war. It must be said out of any nationalites in Europe the Germans (I include in this German jews, German Gypsies, Socialist and other oponents of the regime, and also the general civilian population) suffered more losses proportionally than any other country in Europe as a direct result of the Nazi regime, This was further compounded by the Russian treatment in the east (in the stages of the wild and uncontrolable rage of total war) of civilain populations and can we also Include those in the aftermath of the allied (and russian) occupation. German civilians had no more right or chance to protest than their occupied neighbours and very many of them who did suffered the same fate. Very many rules and regulations of the Geneva conventation were purposely broken under occupation (the nazi long having ceased to exist in any form) condemning many innocent people to incredible and unspeakable horrors that would equal the treatment metted out by the Nazis on innocents. Did we win just to out do the nazis in presecution and punishment of innocent civilians ?
Another question If the war was fought to free Europe from tyranny and to liberate Poland and the rest of eastern Europe why did we stop at Berlin?
The largest ever ethnic cleansing operation the world has ever seen was executed on a majority civilian population living in Lands they had occupied since before the crusades on the orders of the Allied command, after all hostilites had ceased. When we consider Yugoslavia and the consequences of the treatment metted out to ethnic Germans after the war that was never punished but celebrated is it any wonder that when the same people who witnessed such atrocites , much of it on public display, as children were happy to repeat this again and again.

As Europes borders widen and Poland and Germany look to each other with growing mistrust (in a recent Polish pole over 48% believe that the Germans will try to take back the eastern terrorities by force) , perhaps now would be the correct time to catalogue the truth of the Wars end and count all the civilian victims in the same way and then we can leave the bitterness and the rewriting of history to suit the victors actions behind us.

 

Dogstar - the victors write the rules (and the history). As for the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from the East, its not much known in the English-speaking world, the landmark World at War TV series barely mentions it. Many people would tell you Dunkirk was the biggest seaborne evacuation of WWII. Despite having quite an interest in WWII I only really learnt about the expulsions while studying Geography in university. We were studying central European settlement patterns in the Middle Ages and when we asked what had happened to these German settlements our lecturer , who just happened to be East Prussian, told us how as a young girl had fled across the ice from the Red Army.

 

It more to do with that Germany did wrong in the first place against other nationalities,plus germans are the "bad" ones in wwII,so to other races,germans don't have any victims of war but of cause there were german victims of wwII but never written in history.

 

My father in law, with his three brothers were /are Sudeten Germans. From a small village called Rothmül near Zwittau now called Svitavy of Oskar Schindler fame, in the Czech republic. There are swathes of information on the murders rapes and thefts of the Sudeten Germans and their property by the Czechs, which post war the allies turned a blind eye to. The same Czech people who were the Sudetens neighbours pre- war. The mass murders of these Sudetens on forced marches from Brno to Austria. From Zwittau to Prague, where they were subjigated into forced labour on the railways. They also had to wear an armband with the letter "N" to show they were ethnic Germans. Its very well documented. Any "war criminals" from the Czech republic for their crimes dont have to worry about prosecution as the Benes decree is still in effect today. The decree states no one will ever be prosecuted for crimes against the Sudetens. A fact that angered a German minister, Otto Tiegel who has demanded a full apology, reparations and the lifting of the decree to allow prosecutions. His argument was that the Czech republic could not be a full member of the European community, until they did. If you want more info on the atrocities, just google Sudetenland. Hope thats helpful.
regards John

 

The Polish suffered the most during the war by a mile.

 

Suggest you search previous threads dogstar. Similar ones exist. Not much different from your last visits.

 

I thought with the 5.9 millions jews (a good percentage were German) including the others for example poltical prisoners in the Reich,Handicapped people, add to that those civilians killed by either the Russians in the east, The Sudetens killed by czechs at the end of the war, The swabians killed by Hungarains; The Annihilation of the Yugoslavian Germans, The civilians killed by non military means by the allies after the war ended, starvation , disease, the enslavement in the Gulags etc , The deaths of the army conscripts we must be up to around a figure of over 10 Million not including those that died in allied bombing. All of these were like it or not victims of the nazi regime.


It's not always the Victors that write the history look at the spanish civil war.

I have been to the Sudeten lands and I know a little of their fate, I also had an aquaitance that was the grandson of the Last free Czech prime minister before the war.

 

You will have to provide examples of this. Us outdo the Nazis?

Eastern Europe was liberated, by the Russian allies. Mission accomplished. Now if you are complaining about the Soviet oppression afterwards, well, I'm doubt FDR or Churchill had a crystal ball.....thought Churchill did have his doubts. Nevertheless, the goal was to rid Europe of the nazis.

 

Churchill knew the proposed fate of the eastern Germans. I'll find the sources tomorrow and post some. As for the treatment and enslavement of German civilians it was the IRC reports of august 1945 and 1946 which codemned the allied powers. Again a bit tried tonight i'll do the necessare tomorrow.

 

I have a feeling someone has been reading and giving credit to the discredited book Other Losses by James Bacque. I would suggest they consult the book Eisenhower and the German POWS: Facts Against Falsehoods. The allegation originated with a Canadian novelist (not historian) called James Bacque and has been totally discredited.

See:

Stephen Ambrose: A Review of 'Other Losses'

Bacque uses a fairly classic method to propagate a myth. He extracts a few highly selective small facts that can be pointed to in order to give his work of fiction a wash of credibility. From this he is able to extrapolate a very large lie, while at the same time ignoring large bodies of contrary evidence and the mitigating contextual circumstances.

Take for instance the reclassification of POW's to DEF's (Disarmed Enemy Forces). Yes; this was done so that he was not required to feed them as required by the Geneva convention, but it was hardly a general policy of starvation. IIRC the common daily ration of American soldiers for WWII was about 3500 to 4000 cal/day. If the Geneva Convention was adhered to visa vie the POW's then he (Eisenhower) would have to feed them TWO AND A HALF TIMES MORE food than the civilian population in occupied Europe, and he was responsible for them as well. In no way could this be justified considering the dire food situation of the second half of 1945. Without the reclassification of the POW's to DEFs then a very large number of civilians (German, French, Dutch, Belgian, Danish etc.) would indeed have starved to death.

As a point to note. German POW's held in camps in the US and Canada tended to eat better than Canadian and American servicemen serving abroad or the civilians outside the camps themselves. POWs under the Geneva POW treatment requirements were given ration A status in America as well as those held in Europe. This is from the US Army's Quartermaster site:

The A ration at the time, may be defined as the finest food available for feeding troops who have the benefit of organized kitchens and refrigeration facilities. Seasonal and regional food preferences, environmental factors, racial and economic food habits, food waste and nutritional loss are the problems now under study, and on which data are being accumulated.

How issued?
It is issued in kind, and no ration savings are allowed. For. troops in the field, this ration issued as often as circumstances will permit.

Master-Menu as basis for issue
The kitchen personnel is furnished, by OQMG (Office of Quartermaster General), a Master Menu covering a 30-day period. This menu serves as a guide for the preparation of 3 nutritionally balanced and palatable meals a day. Based on the Master Menu, specific quantities of available foods are issued daily, per 100 men, for preparation and consumption.

Components of the A ration

The food items supplied in the A ration are of the grocery-store type, and will normally contain a maximum of perishable items. The ration is made up of approximately 200 items, including fresh meats, fresh fruits and vegetables, and dairy products. Due to the fact that this ration contains perishables, it may normally be utilized only where refrigeration is available.

While German citizens were starving it would have been more inhumane to continue to feed POWs at those ration levels than to put them on the same rations as their civilian counterparts? Also, Bacque tried to include those men who were released and sent home as "missing" from the roles, and they could only be dead if they were "missing". They aren’t missing from the roles because they died, but because they were old men (go home and take care of your grandkids), or children themselves (go home and get back in school).

I have refutation of the IRC inspections being denied, and their food trains being diverted as well, if anyone is interested. Bacque makes a great "show" of this, without explaining where the food went.

 

Well hold off posting any more "accusations" until then. Also, what IRC reports. Giving a title and dates means nothing. If you have them, then post scans, links or exact reference numbers. Your future posts better be listing these sources.

 

Wellcome interventions chaps. Facts are always best..

 

(Warning, long post follows that some people may find boring.)

You could be right it depends if you have access to figures i havent seen which you might. But just looking at raw numbers, the Russians probably take the dubious honor here. Estimated Russians, civilian and military, killed directly and indirectly (starvation and exposure to weather, disease caused by disruption of sanitary services and other factors) by the German invasion: 20 million.

Churchill and Patton, an odd pair, were both all in favor of not stopping in Berlin but continuing the allied drive eastward through eastern europe until the Russians were driven back to the pre-war border. Patton was the loudest proponent of this idea, as shown in the 1970 movie, if he hadn't fatefully died in a car crash, of all things, Truman probably would have had to sack him because he wouldn't shut up about it.

The answer seems to be that the alliance between the sworn enemies of Russian communism and western capitalism, pretty much ended the moment the war did. Truman and Churchill knew how war-weary their countries were, and when Germany surrendered in May 1945, there was still Japan to finish off. By the time Japan quit the war in August, everybody just wanted to forget the whole bloody mess and go home, especially the millions of allied soldiers (10 million US servicemen alone).

The alternative scenario i think, might be pretty close to this: Truman listens to Patton and Churchill, confers with congress about what a swell idea it is to invade Eastern Europe to drive the Russkis out, and puts Patton as Supreme Commander of the debacle, i mean Operation. Troops freed up from fighting the Japs are sent to Europe, the British amazingly buy in too, and the allies assemble their considerable forces in central Germany. The probable Russian response?

-Stalin gives a radio address to the Russian people and the Red Army telling them all of this, and how he was right about the treacherous capitalists all along.
-The Red Army nods its collective head and simply begins preparing for war again, against the allies this time, just as ordered to by Uncle Joe.
-Stalin knows the bulk of his army is still there already and begins sending more divisions.
-He also knows the supply lines and rail system are already in place and begins using that to resupply his forces to repel the evil capitalist invaders and everyone in Russia carries on as if the war had never ended (because it hadn't).

The US and allies then respond right back, maybe something like this:

-Seeing all this, Truman then is all but forced to threaten to nuke Russia if they dont get out of Eastern Europe.
- Stalin stands firm and says if nuked, he will attack Western Europe with nerve gas in retaliation (the closest equivalent thing to a nuke he has.)

If a schlub like me can piece it all together as just one possible scenario, (and i welcome any criticism of my argument) certainly people like Truman, Churchill and Stalin must also have talked the matter out in great detail with their own experts also.

The nightmare scenario i described is probably the reason, and the answer to your question: War weariness and obtuse, obstinate commies. Simply handing eastern Europe to the Russkis without a fight, to occupy as a "buffer zone" for the next 45 years, was seen as preferable to all out war, AGAIN.

Note that Poland was one of the nations that suffered the absolute worst during WW2, for 50 years! They traded German occupation for Russian ditto and weren't free again until almost the end of the century. Note also that Poland joined NATO as soon as they were certain they had shaken off the Soviet yoke for good, in 1999 (along with Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia now Czech Republic)

 

No I haven't read the book by James Bacque but It would seem that the mention of any allied suspect action doesn't rest well with many contributors to this site. I have read other posts concerning German atrocites but no requests for sources. Try reading the following ,The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945, which is a good source of Crimes commited by the soviets but also includes some incidents of allied crimes. Having had many records destroyed, at the end of the war, and the rest being kept in the US record of archives for many years prior to its sending to the Bundesarchive. It can only be seen as a snapshot of investigations but there is enough meat left of the corpse .

 

Dogstar if you want a good discussion on a very hot subject you should be very careful not to start a flame war.
Historical research is OK, but IMO an open forum is a very difficult place for to discuss subjects that require long posts to keep a "balanced" approach and just one off color remark will result in somebody going balistic and a closed thread.

Some allied actions, like the fire bombing of cities or the behaviour of some units (not just soviet) in "liberated territories" are questionable but Germans did the same and nothing the allies did matches the holocaust for cold blooded inhumanity.

Germany was the aggressor not the victim even if millions of individual Germans were victims of something they could have done very little to prevent. The deportations and "ethnic cleansings" that followed the war are mostly ignored by the general public, we may have a case of "winners write history" here but it's a very difficult subject. While there's no way possible wrongs that happened 50 years ago can be made right now two generations are too little for resentment to cool down completely so anybody that brings it up is automatically suspect of attempting to stir up trouble for some personal agenda (especially if he's a politician ).

BTW I think the "Russians" (though a lot of the victims were USSR citizens but not strictly speaking Russians) suffered the worst casualies by far.

 

"Very many rules and regulations of the Geneva conventation were purposely broken under occupation (the nazi long having ceased to exist in any form) condemning many innocent people to incredible and unspeakable horrors that would equal the treatment metted out by the Nazis on innocents."

I disagree with statement. On the US/UK side, I am not aware of deliberate massed executions of German civilians as reprisal, or sending extermination teams to kill ethnic Germans. The latter was a depth even the maligned Red Army did not sink to.

For example, after the Battle of Berlin, a particularly brutal campaign marked with atavistic treatment of civilians on the part of the Russians, the Red Army still made it a priority to feed the survivors of the city. The Germans on the other hand planned to starve Leningrad and Moscow.

The Germans never extended Geneva Convention protections to the Russians during WWII and SS units frequently shot civilians and POWs. As for the de-Nazification program ... quite a few blatantly guilty German war criminals were pardoned or paroled after serving token prison sentences. The Western Allies were lenient.

 

Dogstar if you dont like to produce sources when asked, fine but dont wander off to other lines asking why others are not. Many are. Concentrate on proving your own. Ask others for sources in threads by all means. Dont though make this an excuse for not providing your own when asked to back up your thoughts.

 

Tired old soldier raises good points. However I see no evidence of anyone going balistic. A request for sources has been made. Its either responded to or not and if not then members can ellude to that what they will. Its not rocket science.

 

German losses both military and civvies. 6M
Polish 6M
Ukraine 8M
Russian, Belorussians, Lithuanian, Estonian and Latvian 19M

Per capita it would be the Polish who took the worst losses.
Looking into what happened to the population I'd say the Poles came out worst there aswell. Very little fighting happened in Russia, it was in Belarus and Ukraine that most atrocites happened as far as the USSR is concerned.


As for treatment after the war. Comparing what treatment the Germans got in the west to what happened in the east is quite absurd.

 

I'm not quite sure where you pulled this out of...anyone?

When it comes to the number of murders, horrors etc caused by the nazis during the war...then then nothing comes close to what the soviet union went through...

But who's to say that a russian suffering is any different than a pole, a jew, or a french man and so on?

All affected parts of europe went through their own hell during the war. To be perfectly honest...I don't feel much pain or sympathy for the german people (that generation) and half my family is "pure blooded" (whatever that means) german. Some relatives back then supported the nazi war effort. Where there innocent german people caught in the cross fire of it all? Of course!

But let's not every forget who gave the nazi's their power...I don't care about the situation or anything else...the majortiy of the Germans supported hitler and nazis. I don't see why they didn't deserve to suffer the concequences of their actions afterwards....