I have a grasp of the historical backdrop, but the specifics of the POW camps run by the Western Allies was new to me.

I found the book fascinating as it reads like a dramatized conspiracy, but it is the facts that are interesting, the conclussions seem suspect almost from the outset.

Bacque points to the documented reduction of caloric allotments for prisoners to approximately 1,500 a day, where the Geneva Convention requires POWs be fed at the same rate as Garrison Troops (approx 3,000 calories a day). Clearly in light of the food shortages that were well documented in post-war europe we can conclude that this was, as you point out, an effort to conserve limited food (the western Allies had over 4,000,000 Germans in captivity at this time, thats a significant drain on their resources).

The other cornerstone of Bacques theory is the less well documented statement that German POWs/DEFs were housed in large, rudimentary enclosures lacking shelter and medical services. This is supported by his statistical death rate of 30% among US and French POW/DEFs, and little else.

It does occur to me that had 4,000,000 prisoners been subjected to these conditions, and 1,000,000 die as a result, more than a few of the remaining 3,000,000 would have been a little vocal about these conditions. At the very least we might have expected to see some significant anti-American attitudes in the immediate post-war years.

The figures that are clear is the 1.4 million missing persons were known by the German red cross in 1957. These include all fronts.

If we assume the Russian (350,000) and American (55,000) numbers are correct, then Bacques theory seems to hold some water. There are, after all, a missing Million people there.

This of course assumes both the American and Russian numbers are accurate. Somehow I find it difficult to believe either would be entirely forthcoming during the cold war.

To assume the Russians were responsible for the death of a mere 350,000 POWs seems foolish in light of the brutal treatment of their own citizens, not to mention their penchant for brutality (the Katyn Massacre springs to mind, but there are no shortage of examples as you are aware) to foreign citizens and soldiers.

My feeling is that both sides played down the deaths in their own camps, but while there are no white knights in war, the Russians undoubtedly had the superior record when it came to human rights abuses.

Besides, whats a million POWs or so when so many Russian citizens disappeared into the Gulags?

Dad: Good link, the rebuttal seems to touch on most of the points brought up in Ambroses review. I think the shortcomings in Bacques theory are fairly obvious after reading either or both.

For the west, the issues of supplying the POWs was pretty touchy. First, the little known fact about Western Europe in the mid-40s was that they nearly starved to death. Britain ended up feeding all of the western countries, essentially on it’s own. It’s hard to justify in a near post-war situation feeding the enemy while your people starve. On top of the POWs and the civilian populations of the non-German countries, the West also had pretty large armies of occupation to support.

Second, they had to make sure that Germany didn’t rearm and rise again in the next twenty years. Remember, in the 1920’s and early 30’s, Germany was broke, militarily insignificant and essentially a non-threat, then in less than a decade, wiped out France, hobbled the British Empire and fought the Soviet Union nearly over the edge. In comparison terms, this would be like Quebec being able to restore the borders of New France by 2016, starting today(Which would mean all of Quebec, most of southern Ontario, NB, NS, the Ohio River Valley and Louisiana). I’d say that it would be a real fear in the minds of both east and west that the Germans might rise again very quickly. I don’t think that either side wanted to have to come back in the 1960’s…again.