Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood

by Gunter Bischof

In response to James Bacque's controversial Other Losses, this collection of essays attempts to refute charges that Eisenhower deliberately starved to death German POWs and examines conditions in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807117587
• ISBN13: 9780807117583
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Dealing With Pro-German Revisionists: a Primer

This work examines, and soundly debunks, the claim of James Bacque, who had asserted in his OTHER LOSSES, that the Allies under Eisenhower deliberately starved 800,000--1,000,000 captured German POWs. However, this scholarly work is valuable not only in the refutation of the methodology used by Bacque in his book (and subsequent ones), but also in understanding the fallacious argumentation used by other forms of pro-German revisionism (such as that which insists that 2 million Germans perished during the expulsions from post-WWII Poland). The revisionists are essentially the same. They selectively cite facts and make non sequiturs out of them, misinterpret or misrepresent data, use faulty mathematics, ignore contrary evidence, and, when all else fails, invoke conspiracy theories to explain away unwelcome evidence. Even when using archival or other primary sources, one has to be careful. Earlier-written sources are not necessarily more reliable than later-written ones. This owes to the fact that earlier-written sources may be based on incomplete or erroneous information--something which can find rectification in later-written sources. (Rudiger Overmans, p. 169). The "missing million POWs" is not only a myth. It is impossible. (Overmans, p. 166). The actual number of German dead in Allied hands, during the relevant time period, does not exceed 56,285 at the very most, and is most likely a small fraction of this number. (Cowdrey, pp. 91-92.). In military lingo, "losses" can mean very many things, not only deaths. Is pro-German revisionism, of the type exemplified by Bacque, something intended to reduce the gravity of Nazi crimes by inventing comparable Allied crimes? Bischof thinks so, as he comments: "For Bacque's treatment of a serious historical issue may ultimately have the far more devious outcome of relativizing the unique German responsibility for the destruction of the Jews by way of constructing a nonexistent American holocaust." (p. 199). This entire issue is reminiscent of the one raised by Russian revisionists, who fabricated a "counter-Katyn" in the form of tens of thousands of Russian POWs deliberately starved by the Poles during the 1920 Polish-Bolshevik War. To begin with, unlike the Poles later at Katyn, the Russian captives did not have to be in the position in which they found themselves. Also, there is no evidence of deliberate starvation. The mortality rate of Russians in Polish custody was no higher than expected for POWs in that part of the world at that time.