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CRIMES AND
MERCIES
The Fate of German Civilians
Under Allied Occupation,
1944–1950
JAMES BACQUE
To Herbert Hoover
and
Reverend John F. Davidson
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PREFACE
FOREWORD BY DR. ALFRED DE ZAYAS
INTRODUCTION
I: A PIRATICAL STATE
II: THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM?
III: ‘FROM THERE NO PRISONER RETURNED’
IV: A HOLIDAY IN HELL
V: AND THE CHURCHES FLEW BLACK FLAGS
VI: DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION
VII: THE VICTORY OF THE MERCIFUL
VIII: HISTORY AND FORGETTING
APPENDICES
NOTES
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
p. xxx Map showing the division and control of Germany immediately after the Second World War. Source: The Oder–Neisse Problem by Friedrich von Wilpert (Bonn, Atlantic-Forum, 1962).
p. xxxi Map showing the expulsion of Germans from their eastern homelands. Source: The Oder–Neisse Problem by Friedrich von Wilpert (Bonn, Atlantic-Forum, 1962).
p. 42–3 German local governments were ordered by the US Army to warn citizens that feeding prisoners was a crime punishable by death. This order was found in the 1980s in the archives of the village of Langenlonsheim by Jakob Zacher.
p. 96–7 Printed notice for Germans to be expelled from Kraslice, in the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. Source: Sudetendeutsches Bild-archiv, Munich.
p. 127 This memorandum by Robert Murphy, Chief Political adviser to US Military Governor of Germany from 1945, was kept secret until the 1990s. Murphy predicts an excess of deaths over births of at least 2,000,000. Source: Hoover Institution, Stanford.
Plate section (following p.128)
1 . Henry Morgenthau, US Secretary of the Treasury. His Morgenthau Plan for the destruction of German industry led to the deaths of millions of Germans years after the war’s end. (US Army)
2. The Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945, where the transfers of millions of Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were approved. Truman is in the foreground, with his back to camera; Stalin is seated further to the right and Churchill is across the table on the left. (US Army) 3.
US President Harry Truman (left) greets Herbert Hoover on 28 May 1945, before a 45-minute meeting during which they discussed world food relief. (Acme International/Bettman Archive)
4. In September 1945, US Secretary of War Robert Patterson and President Harry Truman controlled the most powerful military machine in human history. They soon used it for a huge food-relief campaign. (US Library of Congress)
5. Norman Robertson, Under-Secretary of External Affairs for Canada, led the Canadian food aid programme from 1945. Later he became Ambassador to the United States. (Herb Nott/Ontario Archive)
6. William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada. He worked with Norman Robertson and Herbert Hoover to bring Canadian wheat to starving people around the world. (Gilbert Milne/Ontario Archive)
7. Painting by prisoner Kurt Spillman of the French camp at Thorée-les-Pins, near La Flèche, in early spring 1945. ‘We arrived about 6 a.m. in a snowstorm. The dead lying on the right are comrades who suffocated during the journey. US soldiers look on as we are beaten by the French support troops.’ (Kurt Spillman)
8. US soldier guarding camp at Sinzig, on the Rhine near Remagen, spring 1945. Millions of Axis prisoners were herded into open fields and kept for months without sufficient food, water or shelter. (US National Archive 111-SC-204919)
9. Aerial view of the infamous Russian camp at Vorkuta, two thousand miles north-east of Moscow, between the Barents Sea and the northern peaks of the Urals. (Hoover Institution)
10. On these tiny pages (shown actual size) the names of dead Austrian prisoners were written. Rudolf Haberfellner (now of Toronto) risked his life to smuggle this notebook out of his camp at Novo Troitsk, USSR. (Rudolf Haberfellner)
11. The Allies deprived Germany of chemical fertilizers, so this farmer near Bamburg uses liquid manure. The cows drawing the wooden tanks also provided milk and, when too old to work, meat for the hungry. (US Army)
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