Talk:Other Losses/Archives/2023/November

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mhermenMav, Ortolan & user:H.J., I have tried my best to be accomodating to user:H.J. and the new information she has uncovered. I also tried to present this information from the Wikipedia's neutral point of view.

I welcome any suggestions, especially from user:H.J., on how to improve this article or Dwight Eisenhower.

Sincerely, Ed Poor

text from Talk:Dwight D. Eisenhower

user:H.J., unless YOU bring some acceptable proof of this hypothesis that does not come from some Holocaust revisionist website with neo-Nazi links, I will remove your additions every time I see them. Danny

Danny, read again what I had put in last. I took out all reference to Buscue, whose name someone other than me had inserted to begin with. I am stating (and showing the website) by the German Government German Historical Museum with the Missing Person figures of the end of 1947 as 1.8 mill POWs and 1.6 mill civilians, by the Red Cross. The Senator's proof to the Senate for the famine is not known to me, nore do I know if it still exists or if it was destroyed with the records as well. General George Patton, another big player in Germany, by coincidence accidentally died Dec 1945.

Proof on internet are the missing under Allied Control Military Occupation Government. The Allied Control, Eisenhower, had set up and controlled every function in Germany from May 5, 1945 until 1949, after which a limited German Government was allowed to function. If you want to add missing persons to the headline column of the POW's and the Starvation, that would be alright with me.user:H.J.

Proof or no piece. Danny

What do you mean ,proof ? user:H.J.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The proof you tried to bring last night at German POWs was insidious. If you want to condemnd President Eisenhower of genocide, bring proof of your accusations. Danny

I much prefer to have Eisenhower cleared of this. But with the apparent destruction of records over several years and absolutely no one bringing any proof to clear him I can only go by numbers of people in his time, who acused him and not only him, but the administration. Unfortunately. user:H.J.

This is getting ridiculous. People are innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. Claiming something and then saying the proof (records) do not exist (were destroyed) is hardly proof either. The only people you have brought that said anything like that so far are one Senator better known for developing the jukebox, another Senator who also said that White people have the inalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of dead niggers," a neo-Nazi revisionist website, and an author who quotes someone who says he was misquoted. Spare me. Danny
I agree. This page is on my watchlist (as are others that user:H.J. has touched) and I will revert anything that is presented here that does not come with some legit proof. --mav 18:51 Aug 3, 2002 (PDT)

I will leave it in if and only if there is adequate proof of your accusations. Danny

end text from Talk:Dwight D. Eisenhower

Gareth wrote:

I should know better than to stick my oar in on the non-superficial... :)

But I say thank you. In fact, I already incorporated some of Ambrose's stuff to balance what user:H.J. found. --Ed Poor

To User:Ed Poor et al, thank you for putting the seperate section in. While it seems new, it is actually not new at all, rather it has been well covered (up) for decades. Could the personally selected Eisenhower biographer possibly have anything to do with this ? I would like to read official US government statistics and statements, that could clear this up, but is that possible ? It is said that the majority of the US documents on this episode were destroyed in 1947. user:H.J.

Why is this an article in the Wikipedia? IF this information is wroth introducing, which I doubt, it should be under an article on the biography of Eisenhower. It does NOT rate its own separate article. -- Zoe

It was a part of the Eisenhower biography, but for now it has been branched off. user:H.J.

The info here is too detailed for the main article user:H.J. -- now that this topic has its own article a better explanation of the evevents can be presented (NPOV of course rulling the day). --mav

I saw the history below. I don't understand why it rates our attention, let alone all of the smoke and heat. -- Zoe


Zoe, at best this article may become a sub-article of the main Eisenhower one if it is made to conform to NPOV. The reason it was taken out of the main article is because it was too detailed, highly POV, and was more an essay about his actions rather than the actions themselves. Besides the main article is already on the longish side and needs some trimming as is -- the addition of such a large amount of text was not needed. There is already a paragraph lead-in to this sub-article in the main article. -mav

Am I imagining it, or do the numbers keep changing each revision? ;-) Danny

I should note that James Bacque isn't the only author to make these allegations. From "Saving Private Power" (ISBN 188712845x Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: invalid character -- note the x at the end of the ISBN, link won't work):

"Captured Germans held in France under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower were systematically starved," writes David K. Wright (1)...

(1) is p. 70 of A Multi-cultural Portrait of World War II, David K Wright, published by Marshall Cavendish, 1994 ISBN 1854356631, but it doesn't show up in pricescan, so see http://vax1.memphis.lib.tn.us/MARION/AFB-7510

I have not had a chance to read David Wright's books, so I don't know what he references. djk

Wright's book is part of a young adult reference series. It was published after Bacque's book, and there is a good chance that Wright's source for the quote is actually the Bacque book. Wright himself is not an expert, I don't think -- from his list of works, it appears he's a professional textbook writer... without more information, I think we have to discount the value of his support. JHK

In the same vein, Bacque is not a historian but a novelist. Danny
Hence, "Canadian novelist James Bacque wrote..." (see Dwight Eisenhower). --Ed Poor

Regarding

The 13.500.000 food packages received by the International Red Cross designated for the prisoners were left to spoil and returned to the Red Cross.
  1. Does this mean that Eisenhower returned spoiled food to the Red Cross? What would the Red Cross want with spoiled food?
  2. If the 13.5 million food packages were still edible, what did the Red Cross do with them? Did they distribute them to other starving people?
  3. What reason did Eisenhower give for returning the packages.

If these questions are answered, the article will be much better. --Ed Poor

I removed the following: A leading daily even wrote, that Mr. Gollancz did not get the full dept of the policy "On the contrary it (the starvation) is the product of foresight. It was deliberatly planned at Yalta by Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, and the program in all its brutality was later confirmed by Truman, Attlee, and Stalin.... The intent to starve the German people to death is being carried out with a remorselessness unknown in the western world since the Mongol conquest"...

"Denmark had in vain, drawn the attention of Britain, the United States and UNRRA to the facts (that they have increased and ample surplus food stocks nearest to Germany), but have received no reply. There are records, that plenty of food was available in Germany and in Europe, but that it was deliberately not passed on the German civilians, nore to German POW's.

If you have proof of these claims, please show it. Otherwise, it's inappropriate here. Give us the name of the "leading daily" as well, or don't quote them. -- Zoe

I found an eyewitness account [1] by an American GI about a prison camp where 50,000 German soldiers given short rations; some of these prisoners starved to death. Now we just have to account for the other 8,950,000 Bacque was talking about. --Ed Poor

This topic is, at best, a subject that is controversial even among professionals, and at worst, sheer crankery on par with Holocaust Revisionism. There just aren't enough hard facts to warrant an encyclopedia entry. --Marknau

Not only that, but we might all be the victim of propaganda. Consider this source [2] which links its accusations of US genocide to its repudiation of Israel's claim to statehood. *sigh* All roads lead to the Middle East, eh? --Ed Poor

I removed controversial Senator Eastland of Mississippi. It is not my intention to post controversial people. I have/had no idea ,who he is, other that he was a US senator. Does not reflect well on the US senate,does it?, if it is true that he was a racist.

True. Of course, Germany would never elect a racist, would it? Danny

To Ed Poor, on the 50.000 German soldiers reported by one American GI, that was for that one camp, that he was a US POW guard in. There have been many camps with 50.000 or so each (many of them civilians, women and children, who were herded in as well.

I have not seen anyone quoting and posting an official government site, giving clear information.

Why not ?

Is that, because the records were mostly destroyed between 1947- 50, as it is said ? user:H.J.

Or is it possible that it never happened? It's hard to find documentation on something that doesn't exist. -- Zoe
I am against war atrocities. One of the reasons I left the army, abandoning a promising prospective career as an officer, was that I did not want to be put in a position where I would either have to commit an atrocity or face courtmartial. If there is evidence of atrocities, it does not matter to me whether "our side" or "their side" committed them. I still hate atrocities. Exposing them in an encyclopedia MIGHT make it less likely that such atrocities will be repeated. --Ed Poor
I agree, Ed, if there is PROOF of these accusations, then I see no problem in including them, but this is all speculation until proof is presented. -- Zoe

Danny, when Hitler took over the power in 1933, he was put in by International Financiers. The majority Social Democratic Party, SPD of Germany was outlawed when Hitler took over. Hardly a true election. I thought I had stated that in several of my entries. I guess I need to point this out some more.

Odd, the way how so many of our lovely little dictators, such as Noriega, Sadam Hussein, BinLaden, get put into power, isn't it?

To Ed, right now you still have a choice, people then did not, they were drafted.

Zoe, if you want to look for proof, you need to go to the US archives, and go talk to the GI's such as the US POW prison guard Michael Brech, whose testimony was posted here. You can also go and help the 1.7 million German family members find the remains of their loved one. and take a chovel along. user:H.J.

No. YOU are the one making the claims. It is NOT my responsibility to try to prove it or not. If you have proof, YOU provide it. If not, take this out of the Wikipedia. -- Zoe

user:H.J. -- Hitler was elected legally. There is no doubt to this fact. The Nazis recieved a large enough percentage of the vote that they were initially part of a coalition government. The fact that Hitler was appointed Chancellor and that the actions of his government are unpleasant do not make them less legal. The SPD was legally disbanded AFTER Hitler legally came to power. None of this was forced on the German people or rigged. All of the people here are willing to listen to your accusations, but unfortunately, you never really provide very good sources for us to verify what you've said. clearly no one can just take off and visit the archives or talk to ex-guards -- and I doubt that you have, either. So show us verifiable sources -- even on the internet. Just remember that your sources also need to be reliable and in their entirety, too -- not just chunks of speeches or even official reports tthat might be taken out of context. Remember -- ther is an awful lot of what is called Holocaust revisionism perpetrated by people who deny the Holocaust and who still claim that there's an international Jewish conspiracy. People like this will pervert the truth whenever they can, all the while making it plausible. We have to make very sure that the wikipedia does not unwittingly become a publisher of this type of "history".JHK

Thanks, JHK. I was just about to respond, but I see you beat me to it. Danny

Yes, and the Communist rulers of all the eastern European countries were all elected legally too

Will get some websites later, but right now I just happened to glance in for a second user:H.J.

I'm sorry, user:H.J. -- what the HELL is your point? If you're saying that communist elections in Eastern Europe were on a par with Hitler's election, that's bullshit. After Communist takeover, there was no attempt to have democratic elections as we understand them in the west -- since ther was only one party, one can hardly expect that those countries would have democratic multi-party elections. Whether you think that's ok (or whether any of us do -- I hardly think any reasonable person believed that people living in the Soviet world had any real political choices or input) is beside the point. The election of Adolf Hitler was free and fair. Period. What you don't seem to understand is that the German electoral system was set up in a way that parties often had to form coalition governments. Hitler certainly did not have a clear majority, but they had a considerable victory which allowed them to have clout in the Reichstag and to ensure Hitler's appointment. There was nothing shifty about it.JHK

I have just removed 8 paragraphs of the speech. This is not the place to put speeches. Also, I removed some of the claims that seemed a little exaggerrated. For instance, 10 thousand pages of testimony with 400 thousand eyewitnesses: that is 40 per page, provided there is nothing else in the documents. With about 30 lines per page, I can only wonder how much evidence they gave. Danny

This James Bacque wrote his book more than ten years ago. Where are the German historians paying any attention to him, pro or con? If there are 1.7 million corpses of starved POWs popping up out of the ground, someone responsible and non-revisionist must have noticed.Ortolan88 18:25 Aug 1, 2002 (PDT)
This site (the Geman Historical Institute) http://www.ghi-dc.org/bulletinF98/bulletin_f98#Fact lists some German historians who think Bacque is wrong. --rmhermen

Also, what's the source for that Patton quote? Source, and date? Vicki Rosenzweig

New York Times, September 22, 1945, "The Nazi thing is just like a Democrat-Republican fight." Patton was strongly against the denazification policy, believing that to remove all Nazis from government posts would cripple Germany. That's for a Patton article, though, but I will fix the quote meanwhile. Ortolan88 20:28 Aug 1, 2002 (PDT)

To Orlolan88, I just found a letter on internet : James Bucque Answers a Critic, which appeared in " The Times Literary Suplement" Aug 20, 1993

Bacque states, that Richard Boyland,senoir archivist at US National Archives recently discovered US Army Reports, that plainly state that the "Other Losses" cathegory of prisoners meant death and escapees. (It is known that escapees were shot right away.) Colonel Philip S. Lauden verified. And Bacque 's book was written with help of an Army person (I do not have the book and cannot think of the name right now).

German Red Cross Records of 1947 48 show, that several million people were missing. Everything was handled by Military Occupation Forces, US, GR. Britain and Soviet Union until 1949. German records cannot give answers. Soviet records are all complete. [[3]]

user:H.J.

Of course several million people were missing. EIGHT million had died in concentration camps, and who knows how many more were killed in battle and bombings? Interesting that the title of your link is "revisionism". -- Zoe
That's not a German historian, that's one guy you can't identify and an Army colonel from somewhere or other. Ortolan88 20:28 Aug 1, 2002 (PDT)
By the way, user:H.J., your link doesn't work. -- Zoe
I broke down the link a little. Try http://www.corax.org/revisionism . In its own words, the site is "Dedicated to examining the disparity between "the Holocaust" as it is commonly known, and the actual historiography of "the Holocaust." It is a Holocaust revisionism site linked with the "Institute for Historical Review," which, in turn, is linked to various Nazi apologists. Hmmm ... Danny

More, the institute's director, Mark Weber (himself a former neo-Nazi), is linked to William Pierce, who recently died. Other prominent neo-Nazis active in the movement include Ernst Zundel of Canada. Quite a group actually. Danny

Did you not read the article on the Bacque book, HJ? The old man you defined "other losses" says that Bacque deliberately twisted his meaning. Also, escaped prisoners on both sides were often shot -- that was one of the things allowed for by the Geneva conventions, just as soldiers dressed as civilians could be treated as spies. Sorry, but you can't legitimately include escaped prisoners in your count. Also, you still owe us (all of us who have asked for sources and evidence we can review ourselves) a bunch of answers -- or is this going to be yet another tedious episode where you refuse to do anything to ease the process besides make accusations against people who question your choice of subject and use of sources? JHK

http://www.google.com type in Richard Boylan, senior archivist US National Archives user:H.J.

And up pops a letter to the editor by, guess who, James Bacque, on that same revisionist web site. Golly, how silly I feel doubting you. Ortolan88 21:13 Aug 1, 2002 (PDT)
So I typed in Richard Boylan, National Archives, and found a bunch of stuff that says he works at the archives and has been helpful...Please try to offer something useful... your credibility is slipping by the minute, HJ. JHK
I'm at the point now where I'm not really intersted in anything user:H.J. has to say on this subject, so if she wants to make changes to this article (or delete it altogether, which would be my preference), I will see what she does and decide on my own whether or not it needs redacting. -- Zoe
user:H.J., you've done it again -- the site you linked to is an anti-semitic Holocaust revisionist site. The article by Bacque is a critique of John Keegan, one of the world's foremost military historians. Please go to that website I told you about and READ about how to evaluate sources before you embarass yourself further. Many of us have suggested this to you again and again, but to no avail. It's getting fairly sad. JHK
Like I said above, it's essentially a Liberty Lobby front. Danny
Here's all you need to know about that site, a putrid and disgusting "satire": http://www.corax.org/revisionism/satire/010215charmin.html
You'd be better off taking my word for it. I don't call things putrid and disgusting lightly. Check the URL for a hint as to the topic and then proceed at your own risk. Ortolan88 21:35 Aug 1, 2002 (PDT)

I don't think this article stands up. Ortolan88 21:35 Aug 1, 2002 (PDT)

You just beat me to it. I had written, Yes, why don't we burry it for another 50 years. user:H.J.

The sad thing is, I don't think user:H.J. believes any of this -- I think she's probably a really nice lady who cares about the truth, but is too wrapped up in her own theories to be bothered by things like legitimate research, etc. JHK

user:H.J. - Why did you remove the assertions of Senator Eastland? His quotes were perhaps the best verifiable source of evidence you found. Is it because you are unwilling to make a link between 1940s Germany and a man who hated Jews? If so, the irony would only be surpassed by your pitifulness. Olof

Olof, no I had moved it to Dwight Eisenhower, from where it was removed by Danny . user:H.J.

But you wrote on this page "I removed controversial Senator Eastland of Mississippi." Furthermore, I can't find any part of the Eisenhower page history which contains the Eastland comments, so I doubt that Danny removed them. Olof

Olof, had glanced and just read senator, while Danny had just removed the section with the senator Homer E. Capehart from Dwight Eisenhower. You are actually looking for senator Eastland. That you can find on History: July 31 16:09, removed by me.

I had meant to delete this part with the Buscque quote, which someone other than me had put in. We had yesterday agreed to take controversial people out. I have tried to take Buscque out from the Dwight Eisenhower article several times, but I guess Danny likes him to be in (he keeps putting it back).

This is getting muddled, but I am definately not sticking my head in the sand as you seem to think. user:H.J.

I put him in because he is the only source you can give. By the way, why did you just remove Slr's contribution to the talk page, user:H.J.? Danny

Danny, I did not remove any comment by Rubenstein, I just looked for it , but cannot find anything, or else i would submit it. Rubenstein, please re-enter your comment.

Here they are, for what they are worth -- I don't know what happened.

Okay, I thought I could follow these exchanges as a relatively disinterest observer. But I finally checked out the web-site that is the source of one of the cited documents making the allegations against the occupying powers in general and Eisenhower in particular.
Did you know that one of the articles at the website is on "the WTC demolition?" Yes, it argues that there was no Arab involvement in the destruction of the WTC; that it was a deliberate demolition executed by Americans. What is the proof? Because the people at this website cannot believe that it could have been otherwise.
I find the article by Bacque to make effectively the same argument. It is written as a sort of mystery-story (in other words, the narrative structure is the author slowly discovering more and more facts that lead him to a certain conclusion) which has some emotional effect but is not, to my way of thinking, at all convincing. The author repeatedly asserts that "documents prove" genocide, or something like it. In my experience, documents do help prove things, but what they prove is often not obvious. Documents, especially the ones cited here, are written under very complex circumstances and seldom can be taken at face value.
user:H.J. raises two questions: How many Germans died under Allied occupation, and why did they die? These are reasonable questions, but the answers are not evident, and contemporary documents need to be analyzed and interpreted in context. The article cited does not do that.
I imagine that what I am writing will be obvious to everyone out there save one. Sorry. Slrubenstein


My source has not been Buscque, someone else put his name in the article.

I had removed it several times. I am just stating, that there were 1.8 mill German POW's missing plus 1.6 mill. German civilians missing during the administration by Eisenhower and the Allied Control Council from May 8, 1945 till the end of 1947. Period. That Buscue has searched records and has brought that to light now, has nothing to do with the facts as they were recorded and stated by the German Historical Institute GHI and Bundesrepublik (on the website I listed) in 1947. user:H.J.

In 1998 the German Historical Institute says that 1 million POW's are not missing and that Bacque's work is awful. http://www.ghi-dc.org/bulletinF98/bulletin_f98#Fact --rmhermen

rmhermen,

just for the record, the German Historical Institute is located in Washington DC user:H.J.

And it is the source you quoted. Which does not support but denies your accusation. Including these professors: Wilfried Mausbach (GHI), Hans-Jürgen Schröder (University of Giessen), Christof Strauß (University of Heidelberg),

who sure aren't Americans. This is a dead issue, user:H.J. - give it up. --rmhermen

user:H.J. & rmhermen, I put in James Bacque because the first 'pedia accusation of Eisenhower-caused genocide appeared to have been taken, point by point, from an Bacque article I found on the web. I like to cite sources, because it helps the reader evaluate the relibility of claims. I think Bacque is incorrect, and I think that readers who follow the link to his article will quickly realize that Bacque is incorrect. (For those who are slow, there's always Stephen Ambrose; perhaps I should add more of Ambrose's rebuttal to this article.) --Ed Poor

If user:H.J. wasn't quoting Bacque, quite possible, because she doesn't spell his name right, then she wasn't quoting anybody at all except herself and her nasty web sites. Sorry user:H.J., but we folks have been very courteous and forbearing, giving the benefit of the doubt, looking at your sources, and the article doesn't stand up. Maybe it happened, there were lots of people killed in huge batches in the 20th century, innocent civilians, Russian kulaks, Polish army officers, Rwandans, soldiers on the Western front, citizens of Dresden, citizens of Nanking, Japanese POWs and slave laborers, German POWs starved to death by the Russians, who declared them to have no status at all and simply locked them up to die, rerurning Russian POWs who were killed by their own country because they had seen too much of "the good life" as German POWs, citizens of Tokyo and two other Japanese cities, and millions more. Some of these were killed by people I consider my "enemies", some of these were killed by people I consider "on my side", but it's all horrible and unjustified to me, and maybe Eisenhower killed German POWs too, but there is evidence for all the other instances I mention, but we are still waiting for your evidence on this one.
I say boil it down to a paragraph or two and move along, pending actual evidence.Ortolan88 13:04 Aug 2, 2002 (PDT)

Better to keep it in, as a prime example of historical revisionism or perhas even of a hoax. It reminds me of Bart Testa's article "Making crime seem natural", which analyzed a 5-part series of newspaper articles that purported to chronicle the seduction, brainwashing and ultimate rescue of a young Canadian man from the clutches of the "Moon cult". Testa found all the dramatic elements which Slrubenstein began alluding to. (Sorry, the article isn't on line; it's a chapter in a book I read not long after joining the Unification Church.) *sigh* As the poet says, "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." --Ed Poor

I just read the quote from the Capehart speech. It says nothing about a German famine. It is about a Europe-wide famine which user:H.J. seems to claim didn't happen. And no where does it mention German POW's. --rmhermen

rmhermen , Read Dwight Eisenhower and Marshall Plan

Mr. President, the cynical and savage repudiation of these solemn declarations (It is not the intention of the Allies to destroy or enslave the German people) ,which has resulted in a major catastrophe, cannot be explained in terms of ignorance or incompetence. This repudiation, not only of the Potsdam Declaration, but also of every law of God and men, has been deliberately engineered with such a malevolent cunning, and with such diabolical skill, that the American people themselves have been caught in an international death trap.... For nine months now this administration has been carrying on a deliberate policy of mass starvation without any distinction between the innocent and the helpless and the guilty alike... The first issue has been and continues to be purely humanitarian. This vicious clique within this administration that has been responsible for the policies and practices which have made a madhouse of central Europe has not only betrayed our American principles, but they continue to betray the GIs who have suffered and died, and they continue to betray the American GIs who have to continue their dirty work for them." The senator also stated: "The fact can no longer be supprssed, namely, the fact that it has been and continues to be, the deliberate policy of a confidential and conspiratorial clique within the policy-making corcles of this government to draw and quarter a nation now reduced to abject misery."(referring to the Four sectors of military occupation government of German.

I had posted the senator's comments early on in the Eisenhower debate, but it was removed and changed around. It was not only the POW's who were (alledged deliberately) starved. user:H.J.

I told you I read it -- it still doesn't say anything about Americans deliberately starving German POW's. If you bothered to read any of the rebutals of Bacque work, you would have seen that displaced person in France were being fed the same ration as German POW's or German civilians. Just because one American senator said so doesn't make it true. --rmhermen
For example, user:H.J., Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconson claimed to have a list of the names of those people in government who were communists. He even waved it in the air so the press could see that he had it. His allegations caused one of the most egregious offenses against American civil liberties in US history -- and there was no list at the time McCarthy claimed to have it!!! JHK
German POWs were fed the same rations that the US Army was providing to the civilian population.

Aren't the relevant conventions that you have to feed POWs the same rations as you feed your own soldiers? Or do they postdate WW2? Curiosity only... Martin 23:52 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The Geneva Conventions were in effect at this time. Pizza Puzzle

It is POV to imply that Bacque is "not a professional historian"; he makes money writing about history, he IS a professional historian. It is also POV to state that he is a "historical revionist" - that is a conntoted term of disparagement and should be attributed to somebody, such as Ambrose.Pizza Puzzle

I was just watching a WWII film and saw a column of German POWs that went for miles; as always when I see such footage, I do wonder what happaned to all those POWs. Although I havent taken any effort to look at this topic, I find it strange that I have never found any information on the treatment of German POWs, in continental Europe, during the war. All I have found are a couple of brief references to POW camps in Wisconsin and England. Pizza Puzzle

When I was stationed in the Air Force in Germany (way too many years ago), my roommate and I went into a local gasthaus where there was a table where a group of the local regulars sat. While my roommate and I were there, one of the elderly locals got up and walked past where we were sitting. On his way back, he stopped and sat down next to us. He could tell from our military haircuts that we were Americans, and he said, "America! I love America! It is my second home! I was a prisoner of war in Texas!" :) RickK 00:02 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Rant

There were 380,000 germans in this country as POWs...75 thousand went home at the end of the war..many stayed here....the rest were sent back in 1946..where they remained as POWs in British and French camps until 1949 or 1950............. http://www.traces.org/2002conference.lcarlson.html

again....this type of genocide could not be hidden...would be impossible to hide from the general public...all horrors are found out...certainly sooner than 50 years later.....World War II happenned..and many people who fought it are still alive...as are their siblings and children.....the history of this is really not old enough for the "revisionists" to make such claims..they should wait another 50 years or so..to be sure all the participants are dead and buried before they start to rewrite history.....make something up about the Civil War, World War I or something..that way there are no survivors left to argue with..and you can pretend you are so knowledgable to the ignorant who care to listen.........

let me see...Eisenhower killed millions of german prisoners...ok...where are the photos of this..and the witnesses..there were many who witnessed the Germans killing jews etc...many pictures..many leftover possessions.......this is as ridiculous as me saying that..let me think of a good one..all the US Military Police were drag queens who liked little boys.....where are the bodies...would be hard to hide millions of bodies...hmmm...where are their clothes?..hmmm...where are all the GI's who took part in this genocide?..certainly one would have come forward..besides the non-credible ones I have seen....two out of how many that would have been killing them....my question is why?..why would anyone come up with this sort of nonsense?....better yet..where are all the relatives of the so called dead german prisoners?..surely they would have spoken out about why their loved ones never returned home from American POW camps...and millions were killed?...how many did we have over here...........if millions were killed..then millions of germans would have been outraged..as they would have found out...my gosh our governemnt can keep that a secret.no...no government can keep mass genocide a secret....even the execution of only a few hundred prisoners by the germans could be kept a secret..and there always survivors..plese fine the bodies..or did eisenhower cremate all of them?

ridiculous —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ferach (talk • contribs) 17:22, 26 July 2003


If he really think that from 3,3 Mln German POW captured by Soviets only about 426 000 or so died? They were common GULAG prisoners!At liest 30% of them perished.It seems Bacque is a GULAG revisionist. I am not comfortable with this article at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.86.22.112 (talk) 00:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC) User: RobNZ;10th Jan 2008. From what I have read it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Germany was in a pretty bad state after capitulation. Troops were exhausted, people were hungry, the Dutch were staving, the cities were flattened, nothing was much was working. While the magnitude can always be debated there is a lack of discussion about what happened to the German POW in Germany and other places after the war. I first became aware of their plight about 30 years ago after reading a book "Iron Coffins" which documents first hand the experince of a U Boat Captain. In his book he was talks about his time in a camp post War under the French and it certainly was not pleasant, other reports back up the premise that the French were worse than the British and Americans. From what else I have read by the likes of Anthoney Beavour and Max Hastings it was clearly a a nasty time. There was certainly a time when the USA administration was very verbally at least ruhtless towards the Germans, Yalta confernece reports were very concerning with Stalin and Roosevelt's rhetoric re the treatment of Germany post war were very concerning to Churchill according to Anthony Beavour. I have alos read personal accounts of others who were subjetced to being palced in open field etc and subject to short rations. I think it is important to have this discussion and for this to be published because there is a distinct gap of research and missing records don't help. After all the philosophy I believe is that two wrongs don't mean a right and sweeping this under the carpet would be wrong. I have been interested in this because my late father was in WW2 with the New Zealand 20th Battalion and saw action in North Africa Greece Crete and Italy. He was wounded and taken prisoner of war but was fortunate enough to escape before being transported to Germany. He always said he was treated well by the Germans, in fact he said that the medical attention improved significantly once they took over the hospital that he was in. In 1945 many of the German soldiers also suffered from disease and malnutrition even before being taken prisoner, the scale of the numbers would be a nightmare logistically for even today. One thing for sure is that I would rather have been in a US Camp than a French or even worse Soviet one. They did live in open fields for long periods with no shelter and little food or ammentities. One of the encouraging things that came later was the helping hand to reconstruct Germany via the Marshall plan so the US eventually came to its senses, perhaps once it had finally figured out that the next Hitler was Stalin. Please remember that the war was supposed to be about democrasy and there for tolorence and different perspectives should be welcome. Rob from New Zealand —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.246.24.51 (talk) 02:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Everyone Abused POWs

My grandfather personally witnessed the British shooting a captured, disarmed soldier for picking up a cigarette. However, his stay in England as a POW was otherwise uneventful (although much longer than it should have been). A coworker of mine who was stationed in Germany (I am American, BTW) once told me a story about an old bus driver he knew on base who used to toss a cigarette butt between two German POWS just to see them fight over it. According to him, this guy once saw a POW stab another to death in such a fight- this to demonstrate what animals the Germans are. So Americans still have their issues about the war, still to this day. All that hatred has to go somewhere. People need to feel they have something over you. The victors write the history books. What I have to say, well, that's just some family heirloom or an old wives' tale.

Still, you would think that the horrible conditions in the Soviet-sector German refugee camps would make it into some American book somewhere. You would think that 1000 German children starving to death _per day_ would attract somebody's attention. You would think that the French policy of randomly killing German boys (some as young as 8 or 9 years of age- they were deathly afraid of ex-NAPOLA and AHS students) would warrant some kind of outcry by even the West German government. But no. The Germans were always too interested in making nice with everybody and still are; a completely misguided, obescient, and sickening worldview on their part.

If America had been exposed to anything like this, we would still be waging WW2 until the last of us were dead. Maybe that's why people are still so suspicious of the Germans, one because of a secret fear of reprisal, but also out of loathing for a people who could take such outlandish abuse lying down. Don't get me wrong, I'm not pro-Nazi in any way, but there are certain things that people simply shouldn't swallow... if you do, it reflects badly on you.

Who cares about the Nazis?


My grandfather was in the first infantry division to meet the Russian forces in Germany. He said it made him feel proud that Germans civilians were trying to reach US troops to surrender, rather than be left to the Russians. His unit was processing so many POWs and civilians that the Russians advanced farther than the US commanders had wanted. He said the surrenders were slowing them down way more than any German opposition. Clearly there were a ton of POWs to deal with. After the German surrender, his unit did house-to-house searches for weapons. He said they had to confiscate any guns, including antiques and hunting rifles, and destroy them. After that, they did security patrols. He said during the winter food shortage was a big problem. He said they had extra food but were ordered not to give it to civilians, but he said they sometimes gave out the MREs they didn't like anyway. He said the there were lots of families with lots of kids, and the poor families before had relied on hunting. He said he used to go hunting and leave the game on the porches of families he thought needed food. He said if *they* had been caught, they were supposed to be shot, but would have probably just been disciplined. So, from my grandfather's account, there was a order that anyone providing food to German civilians would be shot. But he couldn't have done what he did without some help or at least indifference of some sort from other solders... you can't shoot a deer, drag it into town, and dump it on a doorstep without anyone knowing. I know every unit and every place in German was probably different, and just because his superiors probably ignored what he and some other solders were doing doesn't mean it was the same everywhere else. But, he did say he thought there was some unreasonable desire from higher up to make Germans civilians suffer from hunger.


Was there a point to all this babbling? If there's something in the article that needs improvement, describe it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.183.223.98 (talk) 19:21, 26 May 2008 (UTC)


I don't quite see how this could be described as "babbling". Thank you for your thoughtful and self-critical contribution, it's appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.181.154.5 (talk) 00:11, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

One point; it is demonstrably untrue to say that 'victors write the history books'. This is one of those cheap-cynical, third-hand ideas that get tossed about and repeated by the unthinking. It should be clear that *everyone* writes history books. It is just that in unfree countries, only one side is heard. But that does not have to be the winning side, if the unfree govt. lost the war in question. 76.2.154.213 (talk) 04:31, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Glad to see that someone else realizes that history is NOT always written by the victors, as any real understanding of the historiography of, say, the American Civil War would prove. Vietnam War, anyone? Cheers to your common sense, which I fear is becoming more and more uncommon.172.190.48.243 (talk) 04:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Senator Capehart

I pulled this from an old Wikipedia entry on Capehart.

Homer E. Capehart From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Revision as of 08:46, 31 July 2002; view current revision ← Older revision | Newer revision →

Senator Homer E. Capehart of Indiana addressed the United States Senate February 5, 1946 concerning this United States administration, which has been carrying on the deliberate policy of mass starvation (of Germans)without any distinction between the innocent and the helpless and the guilty alike."...

The senator said in part:

"The fact can no longer be suppressed, namely, the fact that is has been and continues to be, the deliberate policy of a confidential and conspiratorial clique within the policy-making circles of this government to draw and quarter a nation now reduced to abject misery...'In this process this clique, like a pack of hyenas struggling over the bloody entrails of a corpse, and inspired by a sadistic and fanatic hatred, are determined to destroy the German nation and the German people, no matter what the consequences."... "At Potsdam the representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Socialist Republics solemnly signed the following declaration of principles and purposes: "It is not the intention of the Allies to destroy or enslave the German people."

"Mr. President, the cynical and savage repudiation of these solemn declarations which has resulted in a major catastrophe, cannot be explained in terms of ignorance or incompetence. This repudiation, not only of the Potsdam Declaration, but also of every law of God and men, has been deliberately engineered with such a malevolent cunning, and with such diabolic skill, that the American people themselves have been caught in an international death trap."...

For nine months now this administration has been carrying on a deliberate policy of mass starvation without any distinction between the innocent and the helpless and the guilty alike."...

The first issue has been and continues to be merely humanitarian. This vicious clique within this administration that has been responsible for the policies and practices which have made a madhouse of central Europe has not only betrayed our American principles, but they have betrayed the GI's who have suffered and died, and they continue to betray the American GIs who have to continue their dirty work for them."...

"The second issue that is involved is the effect this tragedy in Germany has already had on the other European countries. Those who have been responsible for this deliberate destruction of the German state and this crimimal mass starvation of the German people have been so zealous in their hatred that all other interests and concerns have been subordinated to this one obsession of revenge. In order to accomplish this it mattered not if the liberated countries in Europe suffered and starved. To this point this clique of conspirators have addressed themselves:'Germany is to be destroyed. What happens to other countries of Europe in the process is of secondary importance."

Senator Homer. E Caphart of Indiana's remarks were interspersed with a mass of supporting evidence.

Conspiracy-minded isolationist(at that time) Senator making wild charges about the Administrations motives to damage it - a lot of this 'supporting evidence' is found in bios of the Senator, and turns out to be accounts of incidents in occupied Germay. Not a sign of any evidence for Capehart's charges as to motivation. Why not put in references to some of this stuff, so readers can see what is involved? 76.2.154.213 (talk) 04:59, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

The Morgenthau Plan

I think this page would benefit from being put in context. The pages:

Expulsion of Germans after World War II

and the

Morgenthau Plan

Should give an idea of what else whas going on at the time, and where Eisenhower might have gotten his ideas, if indeed he was the criminal some people claim.

I realy don't know how to enter the links in the article though. Maybe it needs a section "further reading"?


Eisenhower and Morgenthau Plan

The Morgenthau Plan was a plan for the occupation of Germany after her surrender. It advocated partitioning of Germany into two nations, annexation of her main natural resources, the destruction of all heavy industry and mining, the conversion of the new "east" and "south" -german nations into primarily agricultural with some light industry. In his book Germany is Our Problem Morgenthau outlines his plan, including the part that Germans be utilised for forced labor outside its borders as reparations.

Eisenhower seems to have approved of this plan to the extent that he released 1000 free copies to his military officials in occupied Germany.

Dietrich is refering to a Stephen Ambrose book for Eisenhowers free release of a thousand copies of the Morgenthau Plan to the military officials in occupied Germany. John Dietrich. The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (2002) pg. 27.

Eisenhower later insisted that the free distribution did not "constitude approval or disapproval of the views expressed.". Ambrose concludes that "There can be little doubt, however, that at the time, Eisenhower definitively did approve, just as there can be little doubt that in the August 1944 conversation Eisenhower gave Morgenthau at least some of his ideas on the treatment of Germany."

Dietrich references the following: Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, p.422.

Stor stark7 16:59, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Reality of Eisenhower and American Policy

I removed the following: This was mainly because Ike was a political general and not a fighting man himself during the war, therefore didn't understand the link between soldiers on the battle field that his fighting generals did. He was merely carrying out the policies of the US Government without regard to Geneva protocol, especially with regards to the up and coming Nuremberg Trials and the treatment of many officers who would testify.

It is a personal conclusion that is not warrented by anything in the article or referenced. My reason for his hostility to German POWs, seeing the death camps, has been widely documented.Arodb 20:50, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Not to mention that it ignores that Eisenhower already had 30 years in the military before the war started -in the infantry, tanks during WWI, etc. Rmhermen 00:47, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Marked as POV

The heading of the article begins not with a review of Eisenhower and German POWs, but with a summary of the allegations issued by one extremely controversial author. Bacque's views may deserve a discussion on Wikipedia, but the overview of this article should lay out the broad outline of the debate, not present one side and relegate the well-supported majority position to a section after the table of contents.

This is hardly the only problem with this article; I'll be documenting the rest, and hopefully rewriting a great deal of it, in the coming weeks. But for the time being, the article's structure is totally non-NPOV in that it gives undue space and prominence to one historical position.

Please sign any responses to this comment.

Rocketfairy 02:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Re-write the intro paragraph, then. Put the Bacque info in a subsection. I also don't think that belongs in the intro either. Anyway, you were flagging the entire article as POV, not the section.Ernham 03:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the directions; in the meanwhile, there is an outstanding POV dispute about the article (I note you still haven't answered any of my concerns about framing), and Template:POV-check makes it clear that Template:POV is the appropriate tag for an article with such a dispute.
To recap my issues: The article starts not with an overall discussion of the subject and the supported points of view, but with "allegations". If it is a page about Bacque's views, it should be retitled; if it is a page about Eisenhower and German POWs, it should be comprehensive and not given such staggeringly unequal prominence to one point of view. Yes, the article should be edited; in the meanwhile, the POV tag helps put readers and editors on notice that the page needs work. Rocketfairy 03:40, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
You don't like the intro paragraph? Change it. I tire of playing these games with you and sounding like a broken record. The wiki has both POVs, the intro is poorly written and predominantly deals with one side of the POVs. So fix it. Puttin POV on the wiki does not fix it.Ernham 21:02, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

A POV tag -- indicating a dispute, since there obviously is one -- is appropriate in the interim, while I edit the intro. The intro (probably the most widely read part of the article) gives undue prominence and weight to the minority position, and virtually none to the majority, contra WP:WEIGHT.

If you don't like the POV tag, resolve the POV dispute. --Rocketfairy 21:06, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Wrong title

The article should be renamed:

  • Eisenhauer represented USA. He wasn't the king of Germany.
  • What happened to the POWs? and according to the title.

Xx236 15:27, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Especially since the content on the page includes forced labor and food policy issues that extend well beyond Eisenhower. Perhaps the specific charges against Ike should be on their own page, with overall charges against against the allies on another page. Gomm 15:58, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Ok, this was a headache maker. There are both merits and demerits to your argument. My main concern is that all things are interconnected in various ways.
Take the forced labor issues. Bacque charged that a large number of those transferred to France for forced labor died in French hands. Therefore we need a section explaining the forced labor. The Eisenhower connection is that he was involved in forced labor as regards the transfer of forced labor to France.
Or take the food issue. Bacque charged that the prisoners in the camps run by Eisenhower were deliberately starved by Eisenhower. Ambrose responded that there was a global food shortage, and that anyway the prisoners were given the same rations as were given to German civilians. Therefore it is important to have a section on food policy in occupied Germany.
My take is that we do not need any splitting up, but rather a restructure of the article. I've been planning to do it for a long time, but it just feels overwhelming, and might actually require reading both Bacques book, and Ambroses Eisenhower center proceedings to have a clear idea of what is the best structure. My feeling is that what is lacking is a clear understanding of what specific points Bacque charged and what Ambroses defence was for each. The article should start with that intro to the dispute together with what appears to be current consensus, then each Bacque charge right next to Ambrose rebuttal and also include a section with undisputed context information for each sub-topic they battled about.--Stor stark7 Speak 16:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
I too have considered how this article may be better structured, but (like you) find it a bit overwhelming. If you have not yet done so, I would strongly urge to you read Bacque's book - I have, and discovered that there is much evidence to support his claims. I would also caution against giving Ambrose's comments too much credibility in this article; his reputation as a reliable historian is now somewhat questionable, and he did admit that he was not well versed in this particular topic. Logicman1966 (talk) 14:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


Question

"German infant mortality rate was twice that of other nations in Western Europe until the close of 1948" And what was the infant mortality rate in nations destroyed by Germany in Eastern Europe ? It would be interesting to know. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.27.70.170 (talk) 19:13, 21 April 2007 (UTC).


The article should be renamed

Allegations of James Bacque regarding Eisenhower and German POWs —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.27.70.170 (talk)

Agreed--or merged with James Bacque. --Rocketfairy 22:09, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Disagree: Bacque brought topics to the surface that "reputable" historians failed to address either through sheer incompetence, or more likely because of cowardice, i.e. fear that it might harm their career to touch such an emotional/controversial subject. That Bacque, presumably, overestimated the number casualties does not detract from the fact that U.S. treatment of POW's is a notable enough topic that it merits space here as its own topic. I think the name is just fine. --Stor stark7 Talk 23:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
No doubt there's a need for a general page on the topic, but this page doesn't provide a general overview; it is about Bacque's theories, as well as mainstream reactions to them. As before, it (including everything in the intro) is about his theories, not about the topic overall. Either the article should be reframed to conform with WP:WEIGHT or its actual topic should be clarified. --Rocketfairy 01:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
The article would benefit from being restructured, true. As it is, the only Bacque related text is in the short intro, while there is a large "Defence of Eisenhower subsection further down. The rest of the article is taken from other scholarly sources and just describes the situation. My suggestion is that we create a "controversy" subsection where we state Bacques and Ambroses positions, and only mention Bacque in the intro as the one who forced the topic to the surface. The rest of the intro should be devoted to what is actually established and was never challenged by Abbrose (I think), e.g. the U.S. refusal to allow the Red Cross to visit the camps, the use of the Soldiers for forced labor, relabeling them as Disarmed Enemy Forces in order to circumvent the Geneva conventions, much higher mortality rates amongst U.S. captives than amongst British captives etc. I still think Eisenhower's name should be included in the title, since as far as I can tell he basically had the final say on topics such as whether German soldiers should be handed over to the French and Russians. Since much of Ambroses refutal of Bacques cassualty figures rests on the food situation, apparently not touching the other deprivations, I think having a section on the general German food situation is also important. Reading the headings of the letters in response to Ambroses review of Bacque was interesting by the way [4]--Stor stark7 Talk 14:16, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Not only Bacque !

This article implies that Bacque (and perhaps one or two others) is the only person making these claims against Eisenhower - this is incorrect. I am currently undertaking further research on this topic, and can already add the following people to the list :

1. Martin Brech – he wrote the book “In Eisenhower's Death Camps: A U.S. Prison Guard's Story”, in which he describes his personal experiences in Germany after the war.

2. Colonel Ernest F. Fisher, 101st Airborne Division, Senior Historian, United States Army – he wrote "Starting in April 1945, the United States Army and the French Army casually annihilated one million [German] men, most of them in American camps . . . Eisenhower's hatred, passed through the lens of a compliant military bureaucracy, produced the horror of death camps unequalled by anything in American history . . . an enormous war crime."

3. General Robert Littlejohn - in a memorandum, he informed Eisenhower that 1,550,000 Germans who were supposed to be receiving U.S. army rations were getting nothing.

4. Colonel James Mason and Colonel Charles Beasley, U.S. Army Medical Corps – they published a paper on the US prison camps in 1950, including the following description : "Huddled close together for warmth, behind the barbed wire was a most awesome sight; nearly 100,000 haggard, apathetic, dirty, gaunt, blank-staring men clad in dirty gray uniforms, and standing ankle deep in mud."

5. Max Huber, head of the International Red Cross – he wrote a letter to the U.S. State Department describing American interference in efforts to save starving Germans. Some months later he received a response, falsely claiming that giving Red Cross food to enemy personnel was forbidden.

6. Jean-Pierre Pradervand, head of the International Red Cross delegations in France - in late 1945 he told Henry W. Dunning (an American Red Cross official) that conditions in the French camps were worse, in many instances, than anything seen in the former Nazi camps.

And the list is still growing...

It is quite disgraceful that there appears to be an on-going deliberate attempt to cover up the atrocities committed by the US army in Germany after the war. I welcome further discussion, after which I intend to add the above material (and more) to the article.Logicman1966 12:45, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

This article is complete BS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.202.129.54 (talk) 21:42, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Freedom of Information - UK sources

[British sources on starvation of Germans http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/apr/03/uk.freedomofinformation] What Allies in UK hid from the public for many decades, some evidence nevertheless remains

Also read wikipedia Bad Nenndorf. British were courtmarshalled for this —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.137.201.57 (talk) 19:32, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Handing prisoners between allies

See also Talk:Allied war crimes during World War II/Archive 4#Niall_Ferguson

I have removed this sentence: "Violating the Geneva Convention of 1929, large numbers of German prisoners were transferred between the Allies." Because it is not true that it violated Geneva Convention (1929). Article 12 paragraph 2 was added to the Third_Geneva_Convention (1949) to cover this case see the ICRC commentary on the 12 Article paragraph 2 "The Conference of Government Experts gave immediate support to the proposal to prohibit any transfer of prisoners of war from a Power which was a party to the Convention to one which was not" (and if it had been in force during 1945 would have prohibited transfer from the Western Allies to the USSR which was not a signatory to the 1929 Geneva Convention). But the new article explicitly allows for the transfer between allies who are also signatories of the Geneva conventions. --Philip Baird Shearer 22:10, 18 August 2007 (UTC)


Diction

"offers by Western European nations to trade food for desperately needed German coal and machinery were rejected. Neither the Italians nor the Dutch could sell the vegetables that they had previously sold in Germany, with the consequence that the Dutch had to destroy considerable proportions of their crop. Denmark offered 150 tons of lard a month; Turkey offered hazelnuts"

Turkey isn't a Western European nation. It isn't even a European nation.

194.46.229.92 (talk) 20:09, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

---Turkey isn't a European nation? That's up for debate, and there is no clear right or wrong side on that debate. However, excluding Turkey completely from Europe is problematic. ~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.195.83.239 (talk) 18:00, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

A short obseration

I read "Other Losses" here in Canada immediately after publication. I remembering well my own childhood experiences in the British zone with lack of food in the post-war years. Raising livestock for protein was stictly 'verboten' and harshly punished with harsh penalties. We survived on the Canadian chocolate rations that my mother took in barter payment from Canadian military personnel. I watched playmates be deformed with rickets from near starvation.

When the book broke I asked my father -- a Luftwaffe squadron leader and base commander who served in northern Norway -- what had happened at the end of the war to his squadron. Not knowing anything about James Baque's book, he told me that he managed to fly his entire command down to Denmark for the surrender. There they were separated and shipped to the allied POW and DEF camps depending on where they had come from. After he was finally released from a British camp with some ration cards he regrouped the family near Oldenburg. He then tried hard to find his comrades. Having lost only a handful of people who served on the base during the war itself, it bothered him bitterly to the end of his life that, almost half of those he surrendered alive in Denmark in 1945 never made it home. Tracing them with the help of those that did survive, he knows that most of those that went into the US DEF camps (which I believe were in the Rhineland area) were sent into slave labour service in France and handed over to Soviets in the eastern zone never to be heard from again.

I can't attest to the veracity of the claims of Baque's book, only report what my father told me. 64.56.235.32 (talk) 22:53, 28 June 2008 (UTC) GMS

You can read some comments to Ambroses NYT review of Baqcues book here[5], some of them would seem to confirm at least part of Bacques claims.
As for Denmark, soldiers were not the only ones to get the short end of the stick there. A Legacy of Dead German Children, and [6], [7].
As to the slave labor, this documentary snippet shows an example of it [8], if you know Norwegian you learn from the narrator that after having made them clear a field the British soldiers then forced the Germans to walk back and forth over it to detonate any remaining blinds, often with their feet.--Stor stark7 Speak 14:34, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

To Say This Article is a Mess Would Be A Huge Understatement

Just to start with, it's incredibly oddly titled "Eisenhower and German POWs", while much of the article has nothing to do with German POWs. And it actually goes downhill from there. I think the title was an attempt to capture the title of Ambrose's book "Eisenhower and the German POWs", though that would make it even more odd for a Wikipedia article title.

Literally almost all of a large section of the article purporting to chronicle the entirety of food policy history in post-war Allied Germany essentially just parroted an essay by a Canadian named Richard Dominic that was originally from his PHd dissertation. It was thrown in as a chapter in a book published in 2003, the best source of which is a link to a Word document on some guy's website. Maybe he threw it up into Google Books, too. Moreover, this section of the article contained even citation errors from this virtually unknown essay.

Regarding the entire article, rather than the facts being added to various other Wikipedia articles about post-war Germany, this article appears to just throw together a few scholars claims of some sort of War Crimes violations related to overall conditions in post-war Germany, with a humorously tiny "Defense of Eisenhower" section thrown in at the bottom perhaps in some sort of odd attempt to add "balance". As if this were the place for some sort of debate.

In short, the existence of this article is about as appropriate for an encyclopedia (i.e., Wikipedia) as an internet bulletin board post from an argument on post-war Germany.

It should almost certainly be deleted, with its contents merged into the appropriate articles on the many actual Encyclopedic subjects on post-war Germany, and any discussions of controversy added there where appropriate.Mosedschurte (talk) 11:03, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I can't really decipher what the book is about due to all of the other references discrediting "Other Losses". It makes it very hard to find out what is in the book and what isn't. A good start in my humble opinion would be to break the article up as previously suggested, leaving the information about what the book is about as it is, and then adding a section underneath with critics views...MrAnderson7 (talk) 22:14, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Just did that. I didn't even realize it, but there wasn't even a section discusses the claims of Other Losses. There was sort of a weird section with information about the Morgenthau plan, etc.Mosedschurte (talk) 00:30, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Is this article about Baque?

Is this article about the alleged abuse of German POWs or about some douchbag french canadian novelist (note: not historian) that no one has ever heard of? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.63.88.111 (talk) 01:58, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Evidently, you've heard of him, and know enough about him to leave snide POV comments on this talk page: (1) He's a douchbag [sic]; (2) He's french canadian [sic]; and (3) He's a novelist, not an historian. Now, go find a forum other than Wikipedia to spew your opinions and misspellings. 71.116.123.109 (talk) 17:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposed changes to section - Reliability of Bacque's claims

I propose making 2 changes to this section :

1. significantly prune down the length of the quote from Ambrose; much of it is fluff and does not add value to the article. He was not considered an expert on this subject, and as an aside, his credibility is somewhat questionable.

2. break the section into 2 parts, eg. "evidence supporting Bacque's claims", and "evidence contradicting Bacque's claims". At the moment it's all jumbled together. On that note, we also need a separate section that properly summarises Bacque's claims.

Any objections to these changes? Logicman1966 (talk) 23:59, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Are there really any historians who support Bacque's claims? The impression I have at the moment is there aren't. Mangoe (talk) 15:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Although you would not know it from the article, historians who reject Bacque's claims appear to be a minority and many of the critics are not historians. Colonel Ernest Fisher who was a senior historian at the US Army Center for Military History in Washington contributed much of the research and supports the claims as do many notable war historians (Tolstoy, Hoffmann, De Zayas etc). In fact the main critic of the book Stephen Ambrose also intially supported the claims and admits he hasn't done any research on the subject himself but relies on other critics. A big plus for the book is that the claims in the book, made by Bacque in regards to prisoners in Soviet custody, were confirmed when the KGB released it's files after the book was published. Of course that doesn't mean Bacque's other claims are proven. Wayne (talk) 21:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Just to qualify what I said. Historians largely accept Bacque's claims. The numbers in those claims are disputed which would still be the case if he had said only a few thousand died. Bacque makes no claim the numbers are exact, they are his estimates and as valid as any made by his critics until research can prove otherwise. Wayne (talk) 00:13, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
This is just utterly false in virtually every regard, and that you stated "as do many notable war historians" followed by Nikolai Dmitrievich Tolstoy-Miloslavsky and Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, well, that pretty much says it all. Back int he world of real historians, what they support is the idea that that conditions were extremely harsh, especially in the the Rheinwiesenlager. But this was known, oh, 40 years ago, and laid out in a much more professional manner than Bacque. In terms of:
  • Bacque's overlal death count: zero credible historians.
  • Bacque's analysis of the "other losses" column in the weekly reports: zero credible historians
  • Bacque's charge that Eisenhower was behind the non-GC designation (DEF for U.S.) for some nefarious purpose: zero credible historians
  • Bacque's charge that anything remotely like a massive holocaust like this could have occurred just in terms of hiding the bodies, let alone the massive cover up that it would have required: zero credible historians.
The cold hard reality in terms of academic reputation now is that James Bacque is a novelist who dabbled in historical waters, sold a bunch of books initially and then was so eviscerated by the historians that examined his work, that he's essentially viewed as a historical clown to whom serious historians no longer even pay attention.Mosedschurte (talk) 23:18, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
No Mosedschurte, it is you who are wrong. "zero credible historians"? - what about Colonel Ernest Fisher? He was for many years a senior historian with the United States Army Center for Military History in Washington; he completely endorses Bacque's claims. If you had actually read the book 'Other Losses' you would know that it containes an extensive list of references, many of them official US Army documents or statements from witnesses. Your so-called 'serious historians' are notorious for simply parroting what their colleagues say, and for maintaining the status quo by sticking to previously accepted versions of history. Logicman1966 (talk) 23:56, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
The article relies too much on the New Orleans conference. It should be pared down quite a bit. Other historians views should get more coverage. What is overlooked is that Ambrose, as director of the Eisenhower museum, has a conflict of interest as do many historians from the U.S. I know from bitter personal experience (from writing a mini bio on MacArthur) that American historians don't want to hear anything negative about Americans. Bacque's follow up book repeats the claims yet is generally accepted by historians as it provides considerably more evidence in support although he is still accused of exaggerating the numbers. For example many POWs are recorded as transfered to hospitals yet the hospitals own detailed records have no record of their arrival. In mid 1945 the total of POWs in U.S. camps was arbitrarily reduced by 1 million. Bretzenheim camp is just one example of why..when it was turned over to the French, U.S. records listed 210,000 inmates, the French counted only 170,000 so the number was altered without any records existing of the fate of the missing 40,000. Bacque may be exagerating but no one else, including his critics, are doing any research to find the correct numbers. Wayne (talk) 03:12, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Re: "has a conflict of interest as do many historians from the U.S. I know from bitter personal experience (from writing a mini bio on MacArthur) that American historians don't want to hear anything negative about Americans."
You've seriously got to be kidding. And the claim that " Bacque's follow up book repeats the claims yet is generally accepted by historians" is a serious laugh. How on Earth can you with a straight face claim that it is "generally accepted by historians" that the "other losses" column in U.S. army weekly reports was actually a "body count" of the death of nearly one million soldiers covered up by the entirety of the U.S. and British staffs and administrative armies, German soldiers and media, etc. with no bodies and the like. Where is this flood of like-minded historians making these claims of about the "other losses" columns and figuring out where the bodies must be hidden?

Check that. I just noticed your 9/11 conspiracy article edits. This conversation clearly isn't going anywhere.Mosedschurte (talk) 03:42, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
If you had "noticed my 9/11 conspiracy article edits" a little more closely you would have noticed that almost all my edits are still in the article. Also you need to read what people write. I said the numbers were disputed which shoots down most of your diatribe. You are not American are you? Wayne (talk) 02:44, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
It's amazing what can found by searching. Stephen Ambrose was given a draft copy of Other Losses in 1988 and asked to write the foreword. He wrote to Bacque:

Quote:I have now read Other Losses and wish I had not. I have had nightmares every night since I started reading. You have a sensational if appalling story and it can no longer be suppressed, and I suppose (in truth I know) it must be published... I must withdraw my offer to write a Foreword; I just can't do it to Ike. I quarrel with many of your interpretations, [but] I am not arguing with the basic truth of your discovery.

Ambrose then helped Bacque edit the book. Ambrose was given the final manuscript in 1989 by Colonel Fisher and told him that the book would destroy my life's work but that he supported it's claims which he did publicly for a short time. After the book was published Ambrose was interviewed by Dan Rather and fully supported the claims (Time Magazine October 1989). In February 1990, he dropped his support for the book and convened the New Orleans panel in December, but he also later told various people that the New Orleans panel could find nothing to rebut the book but that they preferred their own estimates to Bacques. I have much more material but need time to work on what is relevant and how to fit it in the article in a NPOV fashion. Wayne (talk) 07:18, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
This is very old, but I find it amazing the credence Wayne gives to Bacque's claims here. All you have is his word here. No copy of the letter in which Ambrose wrote those extraordinary comments? Not even a photograph or other secondhand version of it? We are to take Bacque at his word that this exists but he somehow neglected to retain the record (he who purports to be a historian, of all things!). There is a clear pattern evident here, of Bacque uncovering wonderful "smoking gun" type statements that oh so perfectly support his position only for subsequent research to determine that he misrepresented the facts. See the purported comments by John Foster and Phillip Lauben that were disavowed, and which especially in the latter case were integral to Bacque's argument. But you are ready to take him at his word when it comes to the highly inflammatory but somehow undocumented quotes of Ambrose?? I'm sure if we asked the author he would have all sorts of other neat "quotes" on hand to include in the article Sekraan (talk) 15:35, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
I have an issue with the lack of citation for any historians who support the credibility of the book "Colonel Ernest F. Fisher...argues that the claims are accurate." Where and when does this information come from? Furthermore, what evidence does he have to offer? Zerosprite (talk) comment added by Zerosprite (talk • contribs) 21:03, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Removal of section 'treatment of prisoners'

Mosedschurte, I notice that you have deleted the section 'treatment of prisoners' which I added only a few hours ago. Why did you do that? Yes, you did move much of the material to other sections, but it's not as clear any more. This is an important topic that I believe deserves its own section. Indeed, I was just about to add more material to it.

Of more concern, a number of statements such as - "The US camps consisted of open fields surrounded by barbed wire; no shelter of any kind was provided. The prisoners slept on the ground in the open, even though the US army had plenty of surplus tents." have disappeared altogether. Why? Again, this is important stuff, because it is further evidence against the ridiculously low 'official' US Army death rate in the camps.

Please discuss further, otherwise I will put the material back in. Logicman1966 (talk) 10:32, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect. The text you added was moved to prisoner deaths section of the Other Losses claims seciton, where the other text directly addressing that issue was, for the simple reason that the conditions therein was the purported reason that those prisoners died.Mosedschurte (talk) 15:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately you have reworded it to deny Bacques claims. As a large part of the section disputes the authenticiy of Bacques eyewitness accounts see if you can incorporate this account by an eyewitness, who appears to be authentic, into the section. Wayne (talk) 19:13, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Villa as a source

I have started to examine more closely the claims made by Villa, and notice that he often distorts/misrepresents what Bacque actually said. I must conclude that either [a] he is sloppy and careless in attention to detail, or [b] has a deliberate agenda to discredit Bacque. Either way, I call into question Villa's value as a source. I am going to go through the whole article and carefully check each of Villa's claims, and correct those that are wrong. Logicman1966 (talk) 00:44, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Let me get this straight: you're questioning an actual professor of history at the University of Ottawa specializing in World War II history who has won multiple historical book prizes and the AHA's Birdsall prize regarding a book by a amateur-historian novelist alleging a mass conspiracy behind the secret holocaust-like death of one million Germans? There's a new one. And guess what, you won't be "correcting" anything Villa says, as that's the source, and we'll be going to ANI if you think you can replace the source's words with your own. That's reality.Mosedschurte (talk) 00:54, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Academics are regularly found to be corrupt, deal with the historical facts please not claims of credentials. 142.46.214.106 (talk) 05:59, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Good God, I just looked at your "edit" and you inserted the phrase that "However, this is a complete misinterpretation of what Bacque actually says; on the subject of myths, Bacque states 'the vast crimes of the gulags were hidden behind Stalin's smiling portait painted six storeys high'", which not only was utterly bizarre and entirely mischaracterized Villa's statement, but it had absolutely nothing to do with anything in the paragraph.Mosedschurte (talk) 00:59, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
You didn't bother to properly check what I wrote; I DID NOT mischaracterise Villa's statement, what I am saying is that Villa has misquoted Bacque. Let's be very clear here - Villa claims that Bacque said that the gulags were a myth invented by the US. But Bacque has NEVER SAID such a thing. The quote I added to the article is taken directly from Other Losses; that is what he actually says about gulags and myths.
That Villa is a professor of history is immaterial; if he misrepresents what somebody says, then he's wrong. I AM NOT replacing the source's words with my own, I am providing a quote directly from Bacque to demonstrate that Villa misrepresented him (not the only time, either). Do you agree that Villa got it wrong? Logicman1966 (talk) 01:19, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
It's not that their existence was a myth, but that their scale was myth as part of the alleged cover up of the conspiracy. And by inserting your own interpretation that he's wrong, you would have been, of course, injecting your own interpretation into a Wikipedia article. Mosedschurte (talk) 01:33, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
I note that you have made a subtle change to the text ("the Soviet gulags were a myth" → "the scale of Soviet gulags were a myth"). That's better, but still not right. At least you have conceded that the original text was WRONG, that was my objective. The quote from Bacque that I added (which you now deleted) is the ONLY reference to gulags and myths in the entire book. If you are saying that Bacque claims the size/number of gulags was EXAGGERATED (better wording of that sentence), where does he say this? What he does say is that the US tried to blame a disproportionally large number of German POW deaths on the Soviets. Logicman1966 (talk) 01:51, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
First of all, it's not me saying it, it's Villa. Second, if we were to jump in with our own versions of mischaracterizations into this article, the "Claims of Other Losses" section would literally be chock full of links to the things Bacque has mischaracterized, some of which are in the criticism section. Rather, we're just leaving it with Bacque's claims. If you'd like to add related information in the "Related Information" section, feel free, but do not mischaracterize Villa's claims.Mosedschurte (talk) 01:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Villa may be a good historian in regards to his own books but he has been known to misquote authors he disagrees with. The most public was his criticism and misquoting of a Gar Alperovitz book critical of Trumans use of the Bomb on Japan that some historians condemned as "outrageous and unscholarly" behaviour by Villa. As a critic he may not a reliable source so possibly should not be used. Wayne (talk) 18:15, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Food Shortages

This section presents Bacque's claim in a POV fashion that implies all his claims are disputed. My edit includes a cite confirming these claims are in the book but also uses cites that predate Bacque for the claims themselves to show they are not Bacques own claims. The section then continues with how Bacque interprets these claims to support his own. This in my mind is much more NPOV than the original text. Mosedschurte has reverted my edit twice, [9] and [10] by saying the claims are not in the book. Please support your reasoning when it is clear that they are.

This is a problem for the entire article. The claims throughout the artical are all presented as Bacques own even when he is only repeating claims made by other reliable sources. As most of the article concentrates on debunking his claims, this effectively also casts doubt on the claims that are not widely disputed that he uses to support his own which is very POV as it gives undue weight to criticism of his book. Wayne (talk) 05:20, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Please Stop putting other sources in the "Claims Of Other Losses" Section

While beyond straight-forward, this now must be explained. This section is only for claims of the book. Not supporting material from other sources or other facts. I'm not sure how much more simple it can be made than that.Mosedschurte (talk) 18:36, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

You are overlooking that what you are reverting ARE NOT claims OF the book but data that Bacque uses in his book to support his claims, which is not only made clear in my edit but the edit also mentions that other historians use the same data to come to other conclusions. You are presenting it as Bacques own claims when they are not. I do applaud your moving some of the edit to a new section but it avoids the problem and is not a tidy way of writting. In the same revert you also deleted my edit in the Related information#Other Evidence of German POW deaths section and this section is clearly not for claims of the book. I'll try to compromise but something needs to be done about attributing everything to Bacque instead of just his own claims. Wayne (talk) 05:36, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Still needs work

I am gradually adding more material to the section which covers the claims made in the book. It's slowly getting better, but there are 2 things that concern me about this article in general -

1) the article implies that it is Bacque alone versus all professional historians, which is simply not true. Bacque's critics scrupulously avoid any mention of Fisher (a US Army man and a respected historian), who supports 100% the claims made in Other Losses. There are also other historians who quietly support at least some of Bacque's claims. Bacque has a handful of outspoken critics, the main two being Ambrose (a plagiarist and self-confessed 'story-teller') and Villa (known to misquote authors he disagrees with).

2) the article implies that a number of important events cited in the book (eg. the US preventing Red Cross aid from reaching the camps) which are fact and can be independantly verified, are just unsubstantiated claims made by Bacque. It also fails to mention that Bacque draws from original documents, including from the US Army, to support his claims. Logicman1966 (talk) 09:43, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I looked at the word count. Bacque's book (the claims):20%, Other sources on the situation: 21% and Critism: 59% of the article. This is a bit overboard having critism taking up almost three times more space than what it criticizes. I almost fell asleep by the time I reached the end. Do we really need several paragraphs criticizing Bacque for not accusing any British officers? Do we need two quotes of 300 words each when a summary half that size would suffice? Do we need the same criticism repeated multiple times just because different people said the same thing? A lot of trimming can be done without losing any detail. Wayne (talk) 17:04, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Intro

Mosedschurte, I agree with WLRoss that it's not appropriate to have that material in the intro; it's already covered in the body of the article, and it makes the intro overly long (I could just as easily argue for adding some statements from Fisher to the intro). Therefore, I have taken the material out. This seems to have been back and forth a few times, can we please leave it as it is. Logicman1966 (talk) 23:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I've reworded the intro a little to mention the panel. I disagree with Mosedschurte's reversion and especially as his comment states: rv move of other non-book info to the middle (this is obviously an article on the book). I agree that this is an article on the book and as such, independant material that either supports or dismisses Bacques claims should be presented before criticism. Wayne (talk) 08:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
Actually, it's not "independant material that either supports or dismisses Bacques claims", it's just other material on prisoner deaths generally, without reference to Bacque. This article isn't about that history, though the book covers some of it. Rather, it's about the book itself. Let's please keep the article focused on the actual book and not move other historical facts in before sections actually discussing the book. Sources actually addressing the Other Losses book itself -- the topic of this article -- are the primary focus of the article over sources addressing general facts also referred to (or not) in the book. They would be the primary focus in an article on prisoner deaths in World War II. That's not this article. This article is on a historical book, sources addressing related historical facts do not take precedence over those actually addressing the book.Mosedschurte (talk) 02:56, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
The article is not Critism of Other Losses either. If it was, you would be right. The historical facts give background to the book and the articles primary focus should not be critism with the historical facts giving background to the critism which is how the article reads at the moment.Wayne (talk) 18:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Layout of the article

It sounds like we need to come to an agreement on what the overall layout of the article should look like. (The previous thread was started by me to actually talk about the contents of the intro, which appears to be settled now.)

My suggestion for an improved layout would be –

1. claims of Other Losses 2. other supporting evidence 3. criticism from the New Orleans panel 4. other rebutting evidence

At present item 2 does not exist (some supporting evidence is mixed up with other stuff in ‘other evidence’); I believe it should come straight after item 1. As I said in the above thread 'Still needs work', the current layout and tone of the article implies that it is Bacque alone versus all professional historians, and that all the available evidence contradicts Bacque.

Any comments? Logicman1966 (talk) 00:03, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I am going to take the approach of "silence is consent" here. I'll give it a few more days, if there are no further discussions or comments then I will implement the revised structure as mentioned above. Logicman1966 (talk) 23:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


Allegations that Eisenhower hated Germans (associated with "Other Losses" among other sources)

I've read online allegations that Eisenhower hated Germans as a race, something I find hard to believe due to the fact that Eisenhower itself is a German surname, although possible. Why would someone hate his or her own ethnic group? He might have hated the Nazis, true, but if he had anti-German racism, as opposed to mere anti-Nazi biases, it would have made Ike a "self-hating German-American". Also, it's a bit tough for me to believe in a genocide by Ike against Germans when many of the proponents of this theory appear to be Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites. That being said, such claims should be looked into and either proved or disproved. — Rickyrab | Talk 07:49, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The same page argues that Eisenhower was of partially Jewish ancestry, thus "explaining away" the ethnicity question. However, this proves not to be true - Ike was of Mennonite stock, of a German ancestry. — Rickyrab | Talk 07:55, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Bacque and Fisher (2 major proponents of this theory) definitely cannot be described as either holocaust deniers or anti-Semites..... Logicman1966 (talk) 12:46, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Lead Zerosprite (talk)

Re [11]

1. The lede is supposed to summarize the contents of the article. Fisher is not mention - except once in an irrelevant context - in the body of the article. As such he does not belong in the lede.

2. To state that there is a "debate" is inaccurate and POV. There's one guy apparently, Fisher, who finds (or did find) the claims credible. There's a dozen or so respectable historians on the other side who all think the book's bunk. That's not a debate, that's just the fact that you can always find at least one person to support any kind of position in the world.

3. The extensive criticisms and debunking of the book which is very notable and significant and which rightly occupies a good portion of this article, needs to be made more prominent in the lede which right not appears to try and downplay it as much as possible. Volunteer Marek  07:56, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Fisher is far more reliable than Ambrose and his background makes him relevant as a supporter of Bacque as well as the fact that Fisher was Bacques main researcher. This article has serious nuetrality issues that need addressing. The criticism is too prominent with many claims being made that are debunked by records (ie: the false claim Ebensee was not a prison camp), irrelevant (ie: talking MIA when Bacque is discussing POW) and personal attacks against him (ie: no previous historical experience when he has a BA in History). Just because someone said it, if it is not true, it should not be used in the criticism section. Many historians support Bacque as did Ambrose right up till he was employed by the US army to lecture at the War College. In fact I believe Ambrose edited the first edition of Other Losses and is quoted as saying of the book: "I quarrel with many of your interpretations, [but] I am not arguing with the basic truth of your discovery." Eight people debunking a book is neither "notable" nor "significant" when just as many have come out in support. Then we have Ambrose admitting he didn't do any research to support his critism.Wayne (talk) 17:59, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Another problem is the frequent use of The book claims and Bacque states for claims that are public record. Using this terminology implies the claims are disputed.Wayne (talk) 18:09, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Fisher is far more reliable than Ambrose - according to who? And it's not just Ambrose it's pretty much any historian that has taken a look at the book. The fact that Fisher "was Bacques main researcher" actually only casts doubt on the usefulness of his opinion here, rather than the opposite. The idea that the "criticism... are debunked by records" appears to be original research.. Many historians support Bacque - like who? Since the book makes some far out claims, which are disputed by majority of historians, and which are seen as really nothing more than conspiracy theories, the use of "book claims" "Bacque states" is entirely appropriate. Volunteer Marek  18:53, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I suggest you read the wikipedia pages for those "reliable" historians such as Ambrose and Villa. I doubt Villa is even reliable enough to be used as a critic. Ambrose also has a conflict of interest as his life work is pretty much invalidated if Bacque is correct and he actually said as much himself. Who are these "majority" of historians? Bacque's work is pretty much accepted by the majority of historians as he is a legitimate historian who has done the research. So what if he has made claims not accepted by some historians, that is standard for any historical research where there is a lack of evidence clearly supporting any position. I dont accept all his claims either but I support his right to make them. Read the History wars for a debate similar to Other Losses. No one calls anyone a conspiracy theorist in that debate despite some of the claims made being far more outrageous than any made by Bacque, the evidence is put forward for people to make up their own minds and that is what this article should do rather than trying to debunk the book using diatribe and inaccurate claims.Wayne (talk) 00:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Lest We Forget...

This article is about the book as the subject. Any claims in the book could easily be moved to another article "Claims made by..." type thing. I agree that more text may be used to refute the book but that doesn't make the article POV to one side. It could easily take more text to refute statements by the simple fact that the entire text of the book is not in this article. Please feel free to comment in this section. If no consensus is reached, or there is minimal discussion then the tag should not be replaced. I am going to remove it now in good faith. Please don't revert without good cause.--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:59, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Recent restoration of the POV version

Re [12]

First, I *have* read the discussion. In fact, except for Wayne I was the last person discussing this article. If you advise somebody to read the talk page who has in fact been active in talk page discussion then it's pretty much obvious that you haven't bothered to read the talk page yourself.

Second, there's no consensus anywhere on this page for the highly POV version that Canoe1967 restored. Certainly there's no consensus for including bogus info about the book supposedly being suppressed (?????). There is no consensus anywhere here for massive removal of view critical of this work. There is no consensus for the disparaging of historians, like Ambrose, who have been critical of the book. There is also no consensus for the UNDUE weight that is being given to lesser known or unknown historians who have supposedly been supportive of it. There is no consensus for cherry picking quotes from historians to make it appear like their reviews were more favorable then they actually were. There is no consensus for weaseling the negative descriptions of the methodology of the book with these cherry picked quotes. And there is no consensus for the inclusion of numerous pieces of original research and synthesis strewn throughout the text.

The only thing I see in the above is that there might be some support (editor above calls it 'silent support') for some restructuring and moving around of how the info is presented. But then change that, rather than restore POV text.VolunteerMarek 22:33, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

@Canoe1967. Yes you did make many constructive edits but you replaced your disputed text in the same edit. It would be too time consuming to separate them, hence the revert of the entire edit. Please edit in only the constructive edits such as the grammar and wikilinks etc and edit the text separately so it can be dealt with easily by either indivual reversion or discussion here in Talk. Wayne (talk) 06:21, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
@Wayne/WLRoss. If you will notice, I made only one actual edit to the article. I removed the POV tag. Other editors were actually repairing/ruining the article. If you consider my reverts as edits, then so be it. Bye x2, although I still hope the article is brought up to an acceptable level.--Canoe1967 (talk) 06:32, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
If I misconstrued I apologise as I only looked at the most recent changes which seemed to be reversions of your new edits as the editors said in their comment that they were restoring the previous version. The previous version being that of January 29, 2011‎ I now find. Having now read your edit it seems you have only replaced long standing text deleted without reason. Apparently some one deleted references that provide support for Baque. Basic NPOV: If a claim is made that is disputed by a RS, then you have to balance it with the RS that supports it if one is available and is relevant. Wayne (talk) 07:07, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Apology graciously accepted. I only actually edit articles when I can do it correctly. I just came across this one from the help desk and assumed the POV tag was stale since no edits had been done in a while. Editing controversial articles like this are not my style in WP, although I feel I am a very good mediator for both sides with them. Many seem to spend too much time in discussion instead of actually improving the article.--Canoe1967 (talk) 07:30, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposal for splitting the article

I don't know if I can explain this easily. This article is about the book as the subject, not a discussion on the the factuality of its content. The book article could be trimmed right down with a re-direct to "See main article--> Controversy of content" type thing. The article on the bible does not get treated at all like this. I won't say anymore at this point and let others think and comment on my proposal.--Canoe1967 (talk) 23:11, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it's a good proposal, and in fact one of the main problems with the article as is, is that it tries to engage in polemics with the book's critics on the subject matter itself.VolunteerMarek 23:17, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
It seems we have a revert war going on. My only point has been to have this article as an article on the book, not the content of the book. I have had no major revisions happen to me that were ever settled against my edits. WP has far more important articles that I am going to spend my time on. I hope the editors of this article can focus on the same. I won't be assisting on further help with this article unless asked. Bye for now, although I do hope the article is brought to an acceptable state by those that are actually concerned about its fate.--Canoe1967 (talk) 06:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:

This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
  1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
  2. It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
  3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 00:19, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Removal of WP:SYNTH material, and material referenced to an unreliable source

I have just removed the 'Other related information' section as it appears to be WP:SYNTH given that the material is not directly related back to the topic of this article, which is the book (as opposed to the issues the book covers, which have their own articles). I have also removed material referenced to the book The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet influence on American postwar policy as it appears to be an unreliable source - please see Talk:Morgenthau Plan#The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy. Nick-D (talk) 23:11, 11 October 2014 (UTC)


RE: Ambrose - he appears to be to close emotionally to Eisenhower to have a reliable opinion. German army records should be able to narrow down how many soldiers never made it home after capture. We seem to have good estimates on Soviet capture/death rates. 2601:181:8301:4510:7453:B1FF:884D:5647 (talk) 01:47, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

A Modest Proposal

~ One might expect a Wikipedia article about a book to be about... well, the book. Especially if one were not familiar with how Wikipedia actually works.
~ Instead, you have an article about the book titled Claims of <Book>, 9706 visible characters at this time. This article is followed by an article over 3X as long (33557 visible characters) titled Criticisms of <Book>, about eight people (led by Eisenhower's thoroughly-discredited hagiographer) who really, really hated the book and its author. One might wonder about the title contrast... were it not for the fact these articles are followed by Other evidence, a 5478-visible-character article which might be more accurately titled "Criticism from People Who Hate <Book> Even More, And an Apologetic for Destroying All the Records" and makes the anti-book content just over 4X the length of the article on the book.
~ Perhaps the badly-in-need-of-trimming trilogy could be reduced to "Fuck James Bacque, and fuck his book too". That would be much more intellectually honest, and would probably satisfy the article's current owner(s). Mind you, it's not an ideal solution - but pigs are more likely to evolve wings in the next ten years than anyone is to be willing and able to spend the time required to beat a POV-owned article down to only being slanted. 2001:558:600A:5B:3552:477F:31AA:33CD (talk) 11:05, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

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Was there a deliberate policy of starving Post War Germany?

In the current article, it states "Other Losses charges that hundreds of thousands of German prisoners that had fled the Eastern front were designated as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" in order to avoid recognition under The Geneva Convention (1929), for the purpose of carrying out their deaths through disease or slow starvation." This suggests a deliberate and planned motivation similar to Nazi Germany's Final Solution to the Jewish Question. If this is correct, what evidence is there of a series of policy decisions, agreed upon by the Allies, to conduct such a campaign? I have struggled to understand why Wikipedia is prepared to give this conspiracy theory book such time and space.
The lack of verifiable references to support the book's theory of a deliberate postwar Allied genocide suggests to me the whole article should be reviewed and drastically diminished. For the record, Logicman1966 attests, "Bacque and Fisher (2 major proponents of this theory) definitely cannot be described as either holocaust deniers or anti-Semites". While Bacque may not be a Holocaust denier or antisemitic, the book has been referred to by people who are Nazi apologists, Holocaust deniers and antisemites as credible evidence of Allied war crimes. Zerosprite (talk)
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