Crimes and Mercies (37 page)

43
The details are as follows:

All 106th Division figures from Reports of the Surgeon, 106th Division, 18 September 1945, signed Lt. Col. M. S. Belzer. Camp
populations from HQ AdSec Medical Status of PWTE Reports, NARS, and from original US Army ration book of Camp Bretzenheim, Dokumentationsstelle, Bretzenheim, Germany.

44
The population of the camps in the period was as shown above for 1 May–15 June, plus the figure for 7 July given by Colonel Lauben of 170,000.

45
See Bacque,
Other Losses
, Appendix 2.

46
It was Colonel Lauben who told me in 1988 the true meaning of the term ‘other losses’, a category of prisoners in the US Army records. He said that it was almost entirely deaths. Since Lauben was Chief of the German Affairs Branch of SHAEF in 1945, in charge of repatriating prisoners, his word was authoritative. While the BBC was preparing in 1990 a TV documentary on these camps, Col. Lauben received a call from a US Army historian in Washington. The ‘Pentagon official’, as Lauben called him, said that I had misinformed Lauben about my research and about the state of the prisoners. The army historian, who had not been in Germany, also informed Lauben that he had misunderstood his own experiences. He said that the prisoners had not been maltreated, and any who were shown in the column headed ‘Other Losses’ had simply been transferred to another US Army command in Europe. There was no other US Army command in Europe. And, of course, it is an absurd notion that a foreign writer could walk into the home of a US Army officer and make him admit against his will that he had been part of a vast atrocity and cover-up. Clearly, great pressure was brought to bear on Lauben by the Army following his voluntary statements to me. Following this, Lauben issued a statement saying that he had made a mistake when talking to me.

47
An honorable exception: Paul Carell and Günther Bödekker in
Die Gefangenen
press this point hard, without, however, being able to advance anything more than well-founded suspicion of the French and American death figures.

48
See Bacque,
Other Losses
, Chapter 9.

49
Ex-prisoner Hans Goertz of Bonn, in interview with author, Bonn, April 1986.

50
Senator Langer, speech in the US Senate, CRS (microfilm), Vol. 92, Pts 3–4 (29 March 1946), p. 2806. See also
Le Figaro
, 22 and 29 September 1945.

51
Langer, op. cit., pp. 2806–7.

52
 
Werner Waldemar of Toronto, interview. Also from camps in Norway, Paul Herman Bastian of Bad Kreuznach and Rudi Sauer of Laubenheim/Nahe.

53
Bacque,
Other Losses
, p. 266.

54
Armando Boscolo,
Fame in America
(‘Hunger in America’), Chapter XV. Dr Cabito, the doctor in the camp for Italian POWs in Hereford, Texas, wrote a strong letter of protest in August 1945 about continued inadequate rations, which had often descended to 1,500–1,600 calories per day. During an inspection by an American colonel two days before, the mess of the company was reduced to fried skins of potatoes and officers were eating crickets and locusts which had been fried in mineral oil, sold in the ‘Stores’ as hair tonic. His letter was forwarded to the Italian ambassador and the Red Cross representative who finally visited the camp on 28 October 1945.

55
The Patterson Papers, Library of Congress.

56
See Bacque,
Other Losses
.

57
Memo dictated ‘for files’ by General Clark, 30 August 1945. Courtesy of Jane Yates, Archivist, Citadel Archives, Charleston, SC.

58
Interview with the author, Clarksville, Tennessee, March 1988.

59
Memorandum ‘Handling of Prisoners of War in the Communications Zone’ by Lt. Col. Henry W. Allard, June 1946, Archives, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

60
Interview by the author and Elisabeth Bacque with Mr and Mrs Jean-Pierre Pradervand, Switzerland, 1990. From records published in Erich Maschke,
Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des
Zweiten Weltkrieges
, it appears that in 1945 the ICRC did make a few visits to US Army labour camps where German prisoners worked.

61
This story was brought to my attention by Professor Richard Müller of Aachen. It is given in detail in the report of Plemper to the author, November 1991. Heising adds: ‘I am not sure whether I repressed that cruel fact out of my mind or see it in a shadowy way or see it with the eyes of my friend … we tried not to see suffering
in extenso
and dying comrades.’ Letter to the author, November 1991.

Chapter IV: A Holiday in Hell (pp. 62–85)

1
 
Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
The Gulag Archipelago
, p. 525.

2
Captain V. P. Galitski,
German POWs and the NKVD
. The administration for the camps for POWs and internees, the ‘Gupwi’, was separate from the Gulag. Very little has been written about this administration compared to the Gulag. For excellent first-hand accounts of German prisoners in Soviet hands see Ernst H. Segschneider (ed.),
Jahre im Abseits. Erinnerungen an die
Kriegsgefangenschaft
, and Dietmar Sauermann and Renate Brockpähler,
‘Eigentlich wollte ich ja alles vergessen …’.
Erinnerungen an die Kriegsgefangenschaft, 1942–1955
.

3
Interview with Galitski, Moscow, 16 May 1993, translator Martin Reesink.

4
Article by Galitski in
Military Historical Journal
for 1993, issue No. 2.

5
From the article by Galitski in
VIZh
(
Voenno-Istoricheski
Zhurnal
), 1993, No. 2, p. 18, quoting an interview between G. Kurtz and Karl-Heinz Friser.

6
 
TskhDIK
, F. 47p, op. 22, d. 1, 1. 97, Moscow. See also Galitski in
VIZh
, op. cit. p. 22.

7
Author’s estimate. Galitski believes that the number of dead between 1941 and 1944 was somewhat higher, perhaps as high as 250,000, which would mean that the post-war death rate would be reduced.

8
Document E, NKVD order of 18 October 1944, ‘To Improve Production’, CSSA. The order specifies more rations for the weak and sick, less for criminals and automatic arrest categories.

9
Konrad Adenauer,
Erinnerungen, 1953–1955
, p. 451.

10
It may be objected that these reports cannot be trusted because experience shows that Western Allied reports of adequate rations for post-war prisoners were seldom true. Both the French and the Americans have officially reported that adequate rations were fed to prisoners who were in fact starving. However, these French and American reports have been widely publicized and deposited in, for example, national archives such as the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz. The difference is that the Soviet reports were kept secret for forty years in the KGB archives because they formed part of a series of documents that, taken all together, reveal a grotesque atrocity. This information
was never revealed by the Soviets while they were in power. In general the Soviet documents can be trusted.

11
Anton Chekhov,
The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin
, p. 108.

12
Interview with Galitski, Moscow, May 1993.

13
Interview with Alex Adourian, Toronto, January 1993.

14
Letter from Hans J. Mürbe, a former prisoner in Canada. With the author. See also Henry Faulk,
Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen
in Großbritannien – Re-education
(Munich, 1970).

15
Edward Norbeck, ‘Eddoko: A Narrative of Japanese Prisoners of War in Russia’ in
Rice University Studies
(Houston, TX), Vol. 57, No. 1 (Winter 1971), p. 19.

16
Dmitri Volkogonov,
Lenin
(New York: Free Press), p. 29. Volkogonov also told me similar things during an interview at Staraya Ploshschad in Moscow on 17 May 1993.

17
W. Anders,
An Army in Exile
(London: Macmillan).

18
Louis Fitzgibbon,
Katyn: A Crime Without a Parallel
, p. 183.

19
Politburo Minutes, 5 March 1940, File No. P.13/144, Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, Moscow. With thanks to Dmitri Volkogonov.

20
F-2, Op. I, D.259, in the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, Moscow. With thanks to Dmitri Volkogonov.

21
See Nikolai Tolstoy,
The Minister and the Massacres
; also Tolstoy,
Victims of Yalta
; also Elfrieda and Peter Dyck,
Up from the Rubble
.

22
In conversation with the author, 1993 and 1994. Nikolai Tolstoy’s book,
The Minister and the Massacres
, London: Century Hutchinson, 1986, gives details of the story. See also Tolstoy, ‘The Application of International Law to Forced Repatriation from Austria in 1945,’ Ed. Karner, Reiter and Schopfler,
Kalter
Krieg: Beitrage zur Ost-West-Konfrontation 1945 bis 1990
, Graz: 2002.

23
G. F. Krivosheyev (ed.),
Without the Seal of Secrecy
, p. 390.

24
V. P. Galitski presented these figures in a paper given at a conference at Massey College, University of Toronto, on 19 May 1996. Galitski has written his Master’s thesis on the topic. An NKVD report signed by Colonel Bulanov reports 356,687 Germans died (Report of the Chief of the Prison Department, NKVD, 28 April 1956, CSSA).

25
Kashirin,
Spravka
, op. cit. Galitski points out that the Soviets counted Austrians separately from Germans, although the Germans regarded the two as one. Since 1945, the nations have
been separate, and therefore have counted their dead separately. The difference of some 27,000 prisoners dead is probably accounted for by different criteria for deciding who was a German. For instance, were ethnic Germans from Alsace-Lorraine regarded as Germans? The difference of 27,000 is approximately 1 per cent of the total take, or 6 per cent of the deaths.

26
See William F. Nimmo,
Behind a Curtain of Silence
.

27
UN
Yearbook
1951, p. 564. The figure is lower than the missing figure used elsewhere in this book (1.4 million) partly because the continuing investigation revealed more prisoners missing than thought when the UN submission was made, and mainly because the German government calculated the almost 300,000 captive civilians separately from the soldiers. The true total of missing Germans was therefore above 1.4 million.

28
For full details, see Appendices 2 and 7.

29
Interview with the author, Munich, June 1991.

30
See Kurt W. Böhme,
Gesucht Wird
(Munich: Suddeutscher-Verlag, 1970).

31
Dr Bitter was founder of the Ausschuß für Kriegsgefangenenfrage, which under the authority of three German
Länder
(provinces) investigated the fate of missing German prisoners. Dr Bitter began this investigation in 1947. When the Federal government took over in 1950, Dr Bitter continued her contributions. A copy of the eventual Federal government report was deposited by the German government with the United Nations in New York (see UN Library). The version in the author’s possession was given him by Dr Bitter. It is entitled
German Prisoners of War and
Missing Members of the Wehrmacht (Second World War), Part 1,
Volume 1, Third Revised and Completed Edition
, 30 June 1953.

32
Interviews with Dr Bitter in 1991, by telephone and in person. Tapes and transcripts with the author. Dr Bitter went on to say: ‘We didn’t know exactly where they were, they could have been in any camp. They could have been dead. These were more or less theoretical calculations … the time when a missing person had been last seen could have been many months before the end of the war. Yes, oh yes. In Russia, they could have been … and they could have been also among those who had been especially captured by the Americans, for whom there were no camps, you see … they put them in fields and let them [hesitation] … in
very bad conditions for a few months and so and many died and so on …’ And in another conversation with the author she said, ‘
C’est pas certain que les prisonniers disparus étaient en mains Russes
’ (‘It is not certain that the vanished prisoners were in Russian hands’). For another example, see Arthur L. Smith, one of the major proponents of the ‘dead in the east’ theory, in
Die ‘vermis-ste
Million’. Zum Schicksal deutscher Kriegsgefangener nach dem
Zweiten Weltkrieg
(Munich, 1992). According to one member of the Volksbund der Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the German agency in charge of finding and maintaining German war graves in Russia, this book makes ‘no relevant research contribution’. Letter to Lotte Börgmann of Rheinberg, July 1994.

33
Professor Stefan Karner of the University of Graz, Austria, has said that perhaps 800,000 of the missing Germans are accounted for by ‘disappearance’ between capture at the front and arrival at the base prison camp. He refers to this himself as a ‘
Schaetzung
’, or estimate: ‘Die Schaetzung von mindestens 800,000 vor der Registrierung verstorbener deutscher Kriegsgefangener basiert auf Erfahrungen mit der von mir durchgeführten Erhebung österre-icher, luxemburgischer, Sudtiroler und französischer Kriegsgefangener’ in
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte
, 3 July 1994, p. 449. See also Appendix 2.

34
Bischof and Ambrose,
Eisenhower and the German POWs
, p. 144.