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American atrocities in Europe after World War II

Realist | 21.04.2003 09:40

After World War II American forces held about three and a half million German prisoners of war and many German civilians in camps for months with no shelter and little food or water. At least 750,000 of these prisoners died of disease, exposure and starvation!

Most of these prisoners had been fleeing westwards to escape from advancing Russian forces and thought that they were heading to safety after fleeing to escape the brutal revenge that they thought the Russian forces would inflict on them.

Those captured by French and British forces were treated relatively well being given plenty of food and shelter. But those captured by American forces were deliberitly denied enough food, or water and shelter and were kept in open enclosures surrounded by barbed wire. This was in clear breach of the Geneva convention. The full story of this atrocity can be read in the book called "other losses" and is one of the forgotten atrocities of World War II.

Realist

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

double post from the right-wing stooge

21.04.2003 09:54

Racist Realist- what makes you think that we want to read this again? anti-americanism sucks. Class war! Not Race war!

Ste


Victors don't commit war crimes, stupid

21.04.2003 10:25

Didn't you know that winners of wars never commit war crimes?

The US and UK didn't really recruit ex-Nazis to fight "Communism" after World War 2 either.

 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Blowback_CSimpson.html

Willy


Almost right, but what's your point?

21.04.2003 11:58

Well Realist's basic point is more or less right, amazingly enough. There were war crimes committed by both sides in WW2, and the ones that the Germans committed that the Allies didn't were the ones we prosecuted at Nuremberg.
In fact, there were cases of Germans being acquitted when they brought their British counterparts to the witness stand to say that we'd committed the same crime, too.

Some points, though. James Bacque's book has decent anecdotal evidence of the goings on in American POW camps, but his estimate of the german soldiers (1 million) who died is a massive over-exaggeration. Real historians can rip that bit of the book to shreds.

And despite what you say, the French were every bit as brutal in their treatment of German POWs as the Americans. After all, Germany had been occupying their country for 4 years. That's mentioned in James Bacques' book, too, you must have skipped that part.

And I'm not sure what you're trying to do by posting this here. Are you some Nazi trying to point out that some Germans were victims of the Allies in WW2, therefore Naziism is not that bad, or are you trying to make us believe that Americans are genetically inclined towards committing war atrocities?

Aim Here


Anything goes!

21.04.2003 13:03

I think what realist is trying to say is that the US CAN DO ANYTHING IT LIKES AND THE REST OF THE WORLD WILL FALL INTO LINE.This was proven by the mass slaughter in Iraq which the US appears to have gotten away with scot-free.The time is fast approaching when we will have to stand up to the US threat or else be trampled under foot same as the poor Iraqi people!

John


Realist or Xenophobe?

21.04.2003 17:31

What "Realist" is actually trying to do is to generate anti-american feeling which will make the anti-war movement look like a bunch of racist idiots. Which ironically, is what "Realist" is.

mark


Anti war idiots

21.04.2003 21:18

Well, in the west we have prooved that we are bunch of racists hven't we.

a more than 1.5 million marched in London before 'our boyz' went in and thats it... the next march had barely 10,000 pathetic combination of the usual muslim assciation of Britain, Socialist worker Party paper sellers and few 'streets a beach' ..whatever you want to them.....


Btw, it is not anti-american instead anti-USA and anti-UK and anti-racsits-white-west-centric setiments I am trying to whip up!
There might be others doing similar things and I I wish them all the best.

ram


4 realist

21.04.2003 21:25

Get real!

It is the second White War. Not a World War. Most of the world became free because the aggressors of the time fucked each other up.

Whatever happened there in terms of human suffering is bad though.
But as much as we do not seem to care about the numbers of Iraqi and Iranian soldiers who died in the middle eastern oil wars I do not think too much of who killed who in postwar Germany as soldiers.
All soldiers and armies have to die off!

ram


Obvious

22.04.2003 03:01

I thought it was obvious the point Realist was making. Just like in this Iraqi war, as in the second world war, aren't the yanks suppose to be the good guys?

If so, why have they always behaved like war criminals. Why do they break every rule in the book and are never accountable for their actions.

NSN


This isn't news

23.04.2003 14:59

This is history.

I don't really see how this is relevant to current world problems, or how it relates to current US policy.

I wasn't aware this was a news history site.

Lets stick with the program.

andy


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