The German Army suffered terribly
during the First World War.
And the German nation also suffered terribly,
especially after the war. The crippling sanctions
enacted by the victors with the Treaty of
Versailles threw the country into serious depression.
There was chaos in the
streets and anarchy in the air.
Communists seized many
cities, including Berlin.
While the great wealth of the nation was
bled away by outrageous war reparations,
or sucked out by unscrupulous politicians,
the average German was impoverished.
Inflation and unemployment soon followed and quickly
destroyed all hope, all confidence, all morality.
German cities were awash in pornography and
prostitution with even starving children being bought
and sold like sex toys. Crime was rampant;
drunkenness and drug addiction were widespread;
suicide rates soared; the
situation seemed hopeless.
And then, things
changed... dramatically.
Soon after the National Socialists were
elected, the German economy sprang to life.
Unemployment was erased. Building boomed. Great
projects began. Confidence burst to life anew.
After years of hunger,
hardship, shame, and degradation,
Germany became a happy,
hopeful nation again.
Germany's transformation from squalor and
misery to a world super power was so incredible
that the 1938 Time Magazine named
Adolf Hitler "Man of the Year."
To many it seemed as if a new cultural, economic, and
political renaissance for all of Europe was at hand.
But others, throughout the world -
envious, powerful, but above all, fearful -
now worked night and day
to take Germany down....
The Second World War was the most deadly and
destructive war in history. For six long years
the unequal struggle pitting Germany against
the world continued, with first one side,
then the other on top. But at last,
overwhelmed, Germany was once more defeated.
This time, however, the Reich was to be punished
not with mere reparations... nor loss of land...
nor with simple decadence and despair; no,
on this occasion Germany was to be subjected
to pure hatred; hatred of the most
vicious, evil and depraved kind imaginable.
Millions upon millions of Germans, many of whom
had nothing to do with the war, were systematically
raped, tortured, slaughtered, and all in the
most sadistic and sickening ways imaginable.
What happened to Germany and its people during
and after World War II has remained the darkest
and best-kept secret
in world history...
until now.
This film is based upon the book by
author and historian, Thomas Goodrich.
Over the past thirty years Goodrich has written
about a number of controversial subjects -
the American Civil War, Abraham
Lincoln, the American Indian wars -
but because World War Two remains
to this very day a pressing issue,
the author feels this is by far
his most urgent and timely book.
Thomas Goodrich: This is the story of the
crimes that were committed against Germany
during and after World War Two. The words you
will hear are those of the victims themselves and
witnesses to the atrocities. There will be
no attempt here to present the viewpoint of
the "other side." Anyone seeking the victor's
version of World War II, need only watch any
Hollywood movie, turn on the TV to any World
War II documentary, or visit any public library.
This film, like the book it is based upon,
does not concern itself with what the Germans
allegedly "did to the world" during the so
- called "Good War." No.
The focus here is instead on what the world did to
the Germans. The crimes detailed herein are so vicious,
so massive, and so evil, that there are no words
in the English language to accurately describe them.
These are crimes that have been buried by
the victors under a mountain of propaganda
and lies for now over 70 years.
This film is dedicated not only to the voiceless
victims of the world's worst war, but also
to future generations.
Our hope is, that if there are enough good people
in the world, are willing to listen and learn
what actually occurred to these innocent victims
- men, women, the old, young, the sick, animals -
then they some day soon
will rise up as one,
and with a united voice demand that
nothing like this ever happens again,
to anyone, anywhere.
TERROR BOMBING
During World War Two, Germany was subjected
to an unrelenting assault from the sky.
The Americans and British called it "carpet-bombing",
"saturation-bombing", or "unrestricted-bombing".
However, the German women and children who
suffered through this nightmare called it
by a simpler, more accurate
name - "Terror-Bombing."
The terror campaign was no accident. It was
the secret plan of British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill and Air Chief Marshal
Arthur Harris to unleash the full power of the
Royal Air Force against German civilians; to
inflict as much damage, to destroy as many homes,
and to kill as many men,
women and children as possible.
Winston Churchill: German cities will be
subjected to an ordeal the like of which
has never been experienced by a country
in continuity, severity or magnitude.
To achieve this end there are no lengths
of violence to which we will not go.
Churchills violence was on full display
during the night of July 24, 1943.
To the residents of Hamburg - a city of over
one million souls - the raid seemed initially
like a standard bombing run. But soon, hundreds
of enemy aircraft began raining down tons
upon tons of high explosives on the very
heart of Hamburg. Schools, churches, hospitals,
homes, ancient art and architecture, all were blown
to bits. The onslaught increased in fury with each
succeeding wave of bombers, building minute
by minute into a fiery, devastating crescendo
And then, the planes suddenly disappeared. The
skies were clear again, and all above was silent.
When the stunned survivors reemerged
from their cellars later that night,
they saw that their once beautiful
city was now a smoldering ruin.
The following day, as firefighters from
throughout northern Germany battled the blaze,
Allied bombers suddenly appeared over Hamburg
again. As planned, the Americans surprised not only
the emergency workers, but columns of
fleeing refugees as well. Thousands perished.
The next night, RAF bombers returned. In
addition to the normal payload of high explosives,
the British sent down tons of
phosphorous bombs to accelerate the fires.
The resulting conflagration ignited a "fire storm."
Hurricane-force winds created by the intense heat
uprooted trees, ripped roofs from buildings and
sucked screaming victims into the raging inferno.
Some who escaped the 150 mph (241 kph) winds
in the streets became mired in melting asphalt
and quickly burst into flames. Those who
had thrown themselves into the citys canals
died of thermal radiation, then, as they
floated on the waters surface, they too ignited.
In the center of the fire-storm, temperatures
reached 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (816 C).
When the great mass of flames joined,
they rose into a column three miles high.
The attacks against Hamburg
continued unabated for another week.
Soon, there was nothing left to destroy.
Appropriately dubbed by the Allies as "Operation
Gomorrah," the raids had been a cold and calculated
attempt to scorch Hamburg and its
people, from the face of the earth.
The plan succeeded. With thirteen square miles
of total destruction, with 750,000 homeless,
with an estimated 60 to 100,000
dead, mostly women and children,
Hamburg, for all intents and
purposes, had ceased to exist.
It was now clear to all that the Allied air war
against Germany had become a war ofmassacre and terror.
The pattern was repeated
time and again across Germany.
All German cities suffered the same. After first
blasting a town to splinters, the Allied bombers quickly
returned in the hope of catching survivors
and rescuers in the open and igniting with
fire bombs all that remained. When the roaring
bombers released their lethal cargo, a veritable
rain of fire descended upon a targeted town.
The thousands of small fires would join together
to form one huge blaze, creating an
intense vortex of wind and flames.
Kate Hoffmeister: I struggled to run
against the wind in the middle of the
street. We couldnt go on across
because the asphalt had melted. There
were people on the roadway, some already dead,
some still lying alive but stuck in the asphalt.
They were on their hands
and knees screaming.
Some miraculously survived the inferno,
reaching safety in rivers, canals and parks.
Thousands more, however, did not. When the raids
finally ended and the firestorms began to recede,
rescue workers rushed to free
those still trapped underground.
When would-be rescuers finally broke through
to buried bunkers they often found scenes
of unimaginable horror. In cellars suffering
direct hits, walls were awash in blood,
with bone, brains and body
parts splattered everywhere.
Rescuers who entered some bunkers found
floors covered, in up to a foot of greasy fat,
the victims rendered
down into a dark liquid.
When word first filtered through to the outside
world of the butchery being visited upon the
women and children of Germany by the Royal Air
Force, critics of these war crimes spoke out
Author Vera Brittain: The ruthless mass bombing
of congested cities is as great a threat to
the integrity of the human spirit as anything
which has yet occurred on this planet. There
is no military or political advantage
which can justify this blasphemy.
Although it was considered treasonous for members
of the RAF to criticize the bombing campaign
the conscience of some was overwhelmed
by the hell being unleashed upon Germany.
RAF Aviator: There were people down there being
fried to death in melted asphalt in the roads,
they were being burnt up and we were
shuffling incendiary bombs into this holocaust.
I felt terribly sorry for the people
in that fire I was helping to stoke up.
As a symbol of the Third Reich, and as the most
obvious example of Germanys will to fight on,
more bombs were devoted to
Berlin than any other German city.
It is another place, however, that has become most
widely associated with the terror campaign waged
against Germany
- Dresden.
Since Dresden had suffered only two small raids
in the five years of war, many assumed that the
citys salvation was due to its irreplaceable
treasures - ornate palaces, world-renowned
museums and art galleries, its
towering, centuries-old cathedrals.
Others surmised that since Dresden had almost no heavy industry
- and what little it did have
had no bearing on the war
- the enemy simply did not deem the city a viable target.
To some, the twenty-six thousand Allied POWs interned
within the town appeared a more logical answer.
Still others thought that, perhaps it was the
estimated half million refugees jamming the city,
many who had fled Soviet atrocities in the
East, that kept Dresden safe from bombing.
Despite the dire situation as war closed in,
Dresdeners were determined on the night of
February 13 to enjoy an annual event, known
in America as Mardi Gras, but celebrated in
Germany as "Fashing." Women and children,
along with the few remaining men, many in
costume, flooded the streets of Dresden
to celebrate the event, one last time,
before Germany's looming defeat.
Just before ten p.m. sirens began wailing.
There was no panic. Most residents simply
ignored the sounds. Even had there been any
air raid shelters few would have fled to them
for there seemed little doubt on this cold,
yet cheery night, that like the 171 false
alarms which had preceded it, this
warning too, would end in nothing.
However, instead of the "All Clear" siren, a short
time later Dresden heard another sound, a sound
similar to a rolling earthquake. As wave after
wave of RAF bombers appeared overhead, thousands
of bombs tumbled down.
Added to the normal payload of high explosives,
hundreds of two- and four-ton "block-buster" bombs
slammed into Dresden, obliterating entire
neighborhoods. Ancient cathedrals, palaces
and museums were reduced to rubble within
seconds. At the railroad station, hundreds
of individuals who had refused to leave their
highly coveted train seats were blown to bits.
At the huge indoor circus, spectators, performers
and animals were slaughtered by blast and
hissing shrapnel. Well-marked hospitals were
targeted. In the streets, on the sidewalks,
atop the bridges over the Elbe River,
costumed revelers with nowhere to run,
were slain by the thousands.
Without let-up, the massacre continued.
And then, the roar above ceased, the explosions
stopped, and there was quiet once more.
Several minutes later, the welcomed silence was
broken, by the even more welcome sound of the
"All Clear" signal. What had seemed an all
- night trial by fire had actually occurred in just
under half an hour. In those thirty minutes,
however, one of the worlds most beautiful
architectural treasures
had all but vanished.
Fire brigades from surrounding towns arrived.
Red Cross workers spread out to help the victims.
Families screamed for missing loved ones. For
many, the end of the world had seemingly arrived.
No one, however, was at all emotionally
prepared for what came next....
At 1:30 a.m., the earth began to tremble once
again. As more than a thousand bombers roared
overhead, a rain of death showered down on
Dresden. In addition to explosives, the second
wave brought tons of incendiary bombs. In a
matter of minutes, the thousands of fire bombs
ignited the debris and a racing furnace of
flame erupted. Unfamiliar with the bombing
raids and fire storms, most Dresdeners reacted
slowly. Many sought safety in cellars again,
not realizing that the terrific heat
would transform their havens into ovens.
Others ran for safety through the streets, only
to become mired in melting asphalt or sucked
into the roaring furnace. Copper roofs melted,
sending down streams of molten metal upon
the people below.
Throughout the night, the fiery hell that
was Dresden claimed victims by the thousands,
by the tens of thousands, and
by the hundreds of thousands.
The following day, when the fires had
cooled, rescue workers went to work.
Rescue worker: Never would I have thought
that death could come to so many people in
so many different ways. Sometimes the
victims looked like ordinary people apparently
peacefully sleeping; the faces of others were
racked with pain, the bodies stripped almost
naked by the tornado; there were wretched
refugees from the East clad only in rags,
and people from the Opera in all their
finery; here the victim was a shapeless slab,
there a layer of ashes. Across the city, along
the streets wafted the unmistakable stench
of decaying flesh.
Indeed, of all the hideous scents wafting
through Dresden - sulfur, gas, sewage -
the heavy stench of
cooked flesh blanketed all.
What were at first mistaken to be thousands
of burnt logs scattered about the streets
were soon found to be charred corpses glued to
the surface, each reduced to roughly three feet.
Rescue worker: One shape I will never forget
was the remains of what had apparently been
a mother and a child. They had shriveled and
charred into one piece, and had been stuck
rigidly to the asphalt. They had just been
prised up. The child must have been underneath
the mother, because you could still clearly see
its shape, with its mothers arms clasped around it.
Aware that those in the old city would flee
the flames to the open spaces, the RAF had
hurled hundreds of high explosive bombs into
the huge central park. Here, the slaughter
was ghastly - torn-off limbs, mutilated torsos,
heads blown from their bodies and hurled away.
The nightmare was everywhere.
Red Cross Worker: I went down on my knees,
trembled and cried. Several women lay
there with their bellies burst open, and one
could see the babies for they were hanging
half outside. Many of the babies were
mutilated. Scenes like that one I saw everywhere
and very slowly one became
numbed. One acted like a zombie.
The next morning, word spread that survivors
should assemble in the city park. As the suffering
mass climbed over the debris and the dead,
they reached the park as well as the grassy
banks of the Elbe. Some found missing
loved ones. Most, however, did not.
And then, shattering the calm, came the sounds once more
- the roar of engines overhead.
As US bombers began blasting the rubble to dust,
American fighter planes zeroed in on the thousands
of refugees at the park, along
the river and in other open spaces.
Even zoo animals which had miraculously
managed to survive the bombing raids,
were strafed and slaughtered. A weeping zoo
keeper watched as an American pilot chased down and
shot his last remaining giraffe.
Although the raid lasted only ten minutes, the
Americans returned the next day, and the next,
and the next, seemingly determined that not a
single living thing should survive in Dresden.
One of the horrors for those who had survived
the nightmare was recovery of the dead.
Initially, bodies were pitchforked onto trucks
and wagons, and then take to shallow graves on the
outskirts of Dresden. It soon
became clear that such a slow process
could never handle the enormous amount of
bodies, so huge grills were fashioned from
girders in various parts of town and corpses
were stacked on them like logs. When the piles
reached roughly ten feet high and thirty feet
wide, flame throwers were used to ignite the mass.
One month after the massacre, the Dresden Chief
of Police reported that over 200,000 bodies
had been recovered from the ruins. Later,
the International Red Cross estimated
that 275,000 had died in the raids. Because of
the incredible density of Dresdens population
on the night of February 13th14th, because
thousands of victims were refugees with no
records, and because many bodies either lay
buried forever in the ruins or had simply
melted like wax, other estimates, which place
the death toll at 300,000 to 400,000 may well
be closer to the mark.
More people died during the
firebombing of Dresden than during the
nuclear bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki combined.
RAF crewman: To just fly over it without opposition
felt like murder. I felt it was a cowardly war.
Working in tandem with the terror bombing of
German cities was the "targets of opportunity"
policy upon the countryside. Under this order,
anything moving in the Reich was fair game
for Allied fighter planes. Ships, trucks,
cars, trains, ambulances, women shopping on
bicycles, farmers in fields, animals in pastures,
even children in school yards, were targets
of Allied aircraft.
In a flagrant attempt to widen the war, American
bombers even attacked Zurich, Basel, and other
targets in neutral Switzerland. Additionally,
Winston Churchill made plans to saturate German
cities with poison gas and kill those women
and children yet alive amid the rubble.
When advisers pointed out that Adolf Hitler might
reply in kind with his own stockpiles of chemical
weapons, the murderous plan was shelved.
Meanwhile, the hell raining from the clouds
mirrored an ongoing hell rising from the mud.
As Germans soon came to realize, the Allied
powers sought not only the physical destruction
of Germany, but the spiritual
massacre of the nation as well.
THE RAPE OF GERMANY
The evil swept in from the East. There were
constant rumors and hints about what might
be expected should the Soviet Union overrun
Germany. Most Germans, however, remained hopeful.
Such notions of "Asiatic hordes", many
felt, were merely the governments attempt
to harden their will to resist.
Thus it was, that on the night of October
20th, 1944, as the village of Nemmersdorf and
other communities nearest the front slept in
imagined security, the unthinkable occurred.
After punching a hole through the German line,
the Red Army suddenly burst into the Reich
and swarmed over the countryside. After several
days of desperate fighting the German Wehrmacht
regrouped, launched a furious counterattack,
and eventually drove the Red Army across
the border. What German troops soon found
was staggering. It was at Nemmersdorf where
stunned soldiers first
viewed hell on earth.
Along the roads, fleeing refugees had been
overtaken by the communists; the people were
pulled from their carts, raped,
then murdered on the spot.
A witness: In the farmyard further down the
road stood a cart, to which four naked women
were nailed through their hands in a
cruciform position. Beyond stood a barn
and to each of its two doors a naked woman was
nailed through the hands, in a crucified posture.
In the dwellings we found a total of seventy
- two women, including children,
and one old man, 74, all dead, all murdered
in a bestial manner, except only a few who
had bullet holes in their necks.
Some babies had their heads bashed in.
In one room we found a woman,
84 years old, sitting on a sofa,
half of whose head had been
sheared off with an ax or a spade.
Old men who had tried to protect their wives,
daughters and granddaughters, were themselves
knocked down, then sawed in half. Fifty French
POWs and Polish workers who had instinctively
stepped in to protect the
people were castrated and killed.
Staggered by the enormity of the crime, German
authorities requested that neutral observers
from Spain, Sweden and Switzerland view the
sickening carnage close up. However, when
the visitors filed their reports and word finally
reached the outside world, there was only silence.
By the winter of 1944, the vicious propaganda
war waged against Germany had been won.
By that late stage of the conflict, the
war of words had reached such evil extremes
that few individuals beyond the Reichs
borders were concerned about brained German
babies or crucified German women. By the final
months of the war, the enemy to be destroyed
was not merely Adolf Hitler, the Nazi
Party or even the soldiers in the field.
By the final months of the war, the aim of the
approaching Allies was nothing less than the utter
extinction of the German nation
- every man, every woman, every child.
Fueling the flames of hate was the Jewish
propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg. One of the most
influential men in the Soviet Union, Ehrenburg
made sure his message of evil reached every
soldier in the Red Army by ordering that leaflets
be dropped from airplanes onto the front lines.
Ehrenburg's directive: Kill them all, men,
old men, children and the women, after you
have amused yourself with them! Kill. Nothing
in Germany is guiltless, neither the living
nor the yet unborn. Break the racial
pride of the German woman. Take her as your
legitimate booty. Kill, you brave
soldiers of the victorious Soviet Army.
Soon, as the Red Army forced the Wehrmacht
back in the east, millions of German civilians
suffered the same ghastly fate
as the victims of Nemmesdorf.
Although first encounters with Soviet shock
troops were truly traumatic, it was the second
wave of soldiers who delivered hell on earth.
In numerous instances, before troops pushed on
they turned to the helpless
civilians and warned:
The Mongols are coming. Very
bad men. You go quick. Go quick.
Terrified by the news, many Germans did attempt
to flee. Most, however, found themselves trapped.
Other than destroy liquor and hide young girls,
most could only watch the clock and pray that
their worst fears were unfounded. After a
wait of sometimes days, but normally hours,
the dreaded second wave arrived.
Composed largely of Mongols and other Asians,
as well as convicts, these men who formed
the second wave of troops were regarded, even
by their own comrades, as utterly merciless.
Leading this group were the Communist commissars,
the fanatical political officers composed
almost exclusively of Jews. These hate- filled
individuals acted as the more-than- willing
orchestrators of the horrors
that befell the German people.
Of all the methods used to express its
hatred, the Red Army said it best with rape.
Rape Survivor: And when the first Russians
came, the combat troops, they came in and
wanted to see everything, asked about weapons,
and soldiers, looked at everything closely,
didn't find anything, and were very friendly,
and just left. Then the next lot arrived.
The next one took me outside straight away. My
mother wanted to throw herself in front of me,
but she was pushed back. And then they took
me upstairs, and as I tried to defend myself,
he showed me his gun. And then when I
came back down, I was.. well, shocked,
but I was just happy that I was still alive.
They said, "Woman, Come!" They said it in German,
"Frau kommen!" in German. We were
the prize. It was always like that.
From eight to eighty years old, healthy or
ill, indoors or out, in fields, on sidewalks,
against walls, the defilement, torture, and
murder of German women continued unabated.
Merely because a female had been raped once
was also no guarantee she would not be assaulted
again... and again... and again.
A victim: The Russians were coming and going
the whole time and they kept eyeing us greedily.
The nights were dreadful because we were
never safe for a moment. The women were raped,
not once or twice but ten, twenty, thirty and
a hundred times, and it was all the same to
the Russians whether they raped mere children
or old women. The youngest victim in the row
houses where we lived was ten years of
age and the oldest one was over seventy.
The women of Germany not only had to endure
this onslaught of rape, torture, and murder,
but also, the humiliation of having
it witnessed by friends and family.
A witness: These atrocities were not committed
secretly or in hidden corners but in public,
in churches, on the streets, and on the
squares. Mothers were raped in the presence of
their children, girls were
raped in front of their brothers.
When even violated corpses could no longer
be of use, sticks, iron bars and telephone
receivers were commonly
rammed into their vaginas.
Jewish commissars had a special desire to
defile the churches of Germany. Soon after
the fall of Danzig, hundreds of desperate
females pleaded with an officer for protection.
The Soviet pointed to a Catholic cathedral.
After the women were safely inside, the officer
yelled to his men, pointed to the church,
and with bells ringing and organ pipes roaring
the horror continued all night. Some women
and girls inside, some as young as 8 years old,
were raped more than thirty times. Little boys
who tried to shield their mothers were shot.
When Soviet soldiers captured the city of
Neustettin in February 1945, they discovered
several large camps of the Womens Reich
Labor Service, an organization composed mostly
of girls who worked on various projects from
nursing to street repair. After re-capturing
the area, the German soldiers were horrified
by what had happened to the 2,500 females.
German soldier: We had never seen anything like it
- utterly, unbelievably monstrous!
Naked, dead women lay in many of the rooms.
Swastikas had been cut into their abdomens,
in some the intestines bulged out, breasts were
cut up, faces beaten to a pulp and swollen puffy.
Others had been tied to the furniture
by their hands and feet, and massacred.
A broomstick protruded from the vagina
of one, a besom from that of another.
The mothers had to witness how their ten and
twelve-year-old daughters were raped by some 20 men;
the daughters in turn saw their mothers
being raped, even their grandmothers.
Women who tried to resist were brutally
tortured to death. There was no mercy.
The women we liberated were in a state almost
impossible to describe. Their faces had a confused,
vacant look. Some were beyond speaking to, ran
up and down and moaned the same sentences over
and over again.
Having seen the consequences of these
bestial atrocities, we were terribly
agitated and determined to fight. We knew the
war was past winning; but it was our obligation
and sacred duty to fight
to the very last bullet.
While its men fought furiously in the East,
Germany was also trying to stave off invasion
from the West. Unfortunately, the invaders
on this front often did not behave any better
than their Soviet Allies; battlefield newsmen
to the west simply did not report the crimes.
As tens of thousands of German rape victims
could attest, there was no safety among the
American and British.
Millions massacred, millions raped, millions already enslaved
- but this was only the beginning
of Germanys nightmare.
THE BALTIC MASSACRE
With the German army in headlong retreat,
hordes of Red soldiers swarmed into
Greater Germany during
the last winter of the war.
As word of the Soviet
breakthrough spread,
millions of Germans hastily packed
and fled into the freezing weather.
Most merely packed farm carts, hitched horses
or cows, and set off as fast as their animals
would take them. Already bitterly cold, several
days after the "treks" began the temperature plunged.
As a result, little children and
infants dropped by the thousands.
With the earth hard as rock, tiny holes
dug in the snowbanks served as graves.
A young mother: It was so terribly cold, and
the wind was like ice the snow was falling
and nothing warm to eat, no milk and nothing.
I tried to give Gabi the breast, behind a
house, but she didnt take it because
everything was so cold. Many women tried that,
and some froze their breasts.
Given the chaotic conditions, and with freezing
refugees clogging the way, many treks were
quickly overhauled by the Russians. Some Soviet
tanks crashed straight through the columns,
squashing all in their path. After heavy traffic, the victims
- men, women, children, animals,
all
- were pressed together as flat as cardboard. Those terrified survivors who had scattered to
the icy countryside fell easy prey.
As always, for females the
living death soon began.
For millions of Germans cut off on the Baltic coast, only one avenue of escape remained
- the sea.
As isolated Wehrmacht units desperately defended
their shrinking Baltic beach-heads, millions
of refugees poured into the coastal enclaves.
With their backs literally to the sea, only
the slow and treacherous evacuation by boat was
an option. Consequently, at Memel, Konigsberg,
Danzig, and other besieged cauldrons,
the situation was appalling.
Juergen Thorwald: Every alley, every street
was packed with their vehicles. People were
waiting in every harbor shed, in every wind
- sheltered corner. Among them stood their beasts, bleating,
snorting, lowing. The pregnant women
giving birth somewhere in a corner, on the
ground, in a barracks. Some of them had
been raped on their flight, and now they
were trembling for fear they would give birth
to a monster. The strangely pale faces of
girls going up and down the streets asking
for a doctor. The wounded and the sick,
in constant fear they would be left behind, concealing
weapons under their blankets to force someone
to take them along, or to end their
own lives if the Russians came.
The orphans who had been saved from their asylum
somewhere at the last moment and tossed onto carts
with nothing around them but a blanket, and who
were now lying on the floors with frozen limbs.
The old people who had lain down in some
doorway at night, and had not awakened.
And the wild-eyed insane ones who rushed
from house to house, from wagon to wagon,
crying for their mothers
or their children.
Over it all the gray sky, snow, frost,
and thaw.. and thaw and frost and snow,
and the chill, killing wet.
When a long-sought vessel finally tied up
and lowered the walkways, pandemonium erupted
on the docks. Because of an order granting
priority to those with children, the latter
became more valuable than gold. Once adults
had boarded, they often tossed infants to
relatives or friends below in hopes they might
also board. Many babies died, of course, either
falling into the freezing water
or smashing onto the docks below.
Nearby, terribly wounded soldiers
quietly awaited their turn to board.
For those who sailed from the besieged
ports, their prayers appeared answered;
for those left standing behind, their doom seemed
sealed. Many men, "in a surge of madness," shot
themselves. Crazed mothers, with starvation
gnawing and the red terror looming, found
cyanide and poisoned their children, then
themselves. Old people merely crawled into
snow banks, fell
asleep, and never awoke.
Unfortunately, for thousands of refugees, there
was no escaping the nightmare, even at sea.
While many refugee ships successfully traversed
the treacherous Baltic, Allied bombers were
often the first to greet them when they docked.
At Swinemunde in northern Germany, the arrival
of a freighter loaded with evacuees coincided
almost exactly with an Allied air raid.
Hardly had the ship docked when a direct hit sent it to
the bottom, taking 2,000 screaming passengers with it.
On January 30, 1945, over 60,000
refugees crowded the docks of Gotenhafen,
desperately trying to board the Wilhelm Gustloff,
a former cruise liner designed to accommodate
two thousand passengers and crew. By the time the
beautiful white ship cast off, she had taken on as many
as six to eight thousand refugees.
As the Gustloff backed away from the port, her
path was blocked by smaller craft all jammed
with passengers begging to come aboard. Nets
were lowered, and an additional two thousand
refugees scrambled up. Strained far beyond
its limits, the tightly-sealed ship filled
with a hot, nauseating stench of urine, excrement,
and vomit. The groans of severely wounded
soldiers and the screams of separated
families added to the ghastly horror.
But the worst was yet to come.
At approximately 9 p.m., three heavy thuds
rocked the Gustloff. Panic-stricken, thousands
below deck stampeded through the narrow
passageways, crushing and clawing in a mad attempt
to reach safety. Most lifeboats were frozen solid
and even those that could be freed were mishandled
in the panic, spilling their screaming occupants
into the icy black sea. Within a few minutes,
those in the water were dead.
While thousands of freezing people pressed
along the decks, loud speakers blared words
of comfort, assuring passengers that the
ship would not sink and help was on the way.
Convinced that the sealed bulkheads had held and
that indeed, the ship would remain afloat, many
refugees fled indoors once more to escape the razor
sharp winds and 20 degree (-29 C) temperature.
The respite proved brief, however.
At ten oclock a heavy tremor ripped the Gustloff
as the bulkheads broke and the sea rushed in.
Within seconds, the big ship began to roll
on its side, then plunged beneath the waves.
When rescue ships later reached the scene,
they pulled from the icy waters a mere nine
hundred survivors. All else - roughly seven
to nine thousand men, women and children -
were lost.
As many more incidents would prove, the sinking
of the Gustloff was no mistake. In a deliberate
attempt to kill as many refugees as possible,
Soviet submarines struck again and again at
the slow-moving ships.
Soon after midnight on February 10th, an old
luxury liner, the General Stueben, was plowing
through the icy, black Baltic. Heavily weighed
down with refugees and wounded soldiers, the
ship was in the midst of its second such evacuation
in less than a fortnight. Just before one a.m.,
two torpedoes slammed into the ship's
side. As the Stuebens stern rose high out
of the water, hundreds leaped overboard, including
some who were torn to pieces by the still-turning
propellers. Within seven minutes, the ship
plunged beneath the waves, swiftly silencing
a final mass scream that seemed to arise from
a single voice. Of the 3,500 passengers aboard,
only a few hundred survived.
Goodrich: Like some great wild animal, the
Red Army moved closer to the heart of Germany.
In countless German cities and towns the pattern
repeated itself. The bloody nightmare which
enveloped the Baltic coast was typical of
that which transpired wherever the Soviets
occupied German soil. In many places
- Silesia, Prussia, Pomerania, in the German communities
of Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Poland, Hungary
- a similar horror had been in progress for weeks.
There, the ghastly atrocities actually
increased, as if Red soldiers were in a mad race
with one another to see who could destroy,
murder and, above all, who could rape the most.
Meanwhile, the American and British forces
punched through the German lines in the West.
Unlike the East Front, however, German soldiers were
well aware that the foes they faced in the west were
signatories of the Geneva Convention. Under
this agreement, captured or surrendering German
soldiers were protected by law. With the Red
Army roaring across Germany from the east,
many Germans secretly hoped that the Americans
might occupy what remained of the Reich before
the communists did. It was no
secret that Germans, high and low,
considered the Americans and
British the lesser of two evils.
Unfortunately, they
were not always right.
DEFEAT IN THE WES In the Spring of 1945, as Berliners prepared to
defend the capital from the encircling Soviet army,
Germans to the west also
fought to halt the Allied tide.
Unlike the howling savagery to the
east, fraught with nightmarish ferocity,
defeat in the west came methodically, relentlessly
and, judged by the standards of the east,
almost silently.
As the Western front crept closer, civilians
anxiously awaited the Allied arrival.
Unlike the terrified trekkers to the east, relatively
few Germans in the west abandoned their homes.
The racial and cultural ties with the enemy,
particularly the Americans, were simply too
strong to arouse the same
terror as the Soviets did.
Far from fleeing the advancing Allies,
many civilians actually ran to greet them.
Little did the Germans realize that
because of a decade of Jewish propaganda,
the Americans were perhaps even more hate
- filled than the Soviets.
Unlike the wild and almost unimaginable Red
Army, US military commanders might have easily
prevented crimes committed against
helpless civilians had they only willed it.
In most cases, however, they did not.
Leading the charge against the German people
was General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man whose
hatred of all things German was well known.
In much the same vein as Stalin and Roosevelt,
Eisenhower advocated the outright massacre
of German army officers, Nazi Party members
and others. In all, according to the Allied
commander, at least 100,000 German leaders
should be "exterminated."
Not surprisingly, such sentiment from above
quickly filtered down. "The only good German
is a dead German," became the pervasive sentiment.
"Take no prisoners," was the tacit understanding.
By the tens of thousands, captured or surrendering
Germans were simply slaughtered on the spot.
As American forces swept toward Munich in
late April, 1945, most German guards at the
concentration camp near Dachau fled. Despite
signs at the gate warning, "No entrance -
typhus epidemic," several hundred German soldiers
were ordered to the prison to maintain order
and arrange the transfer of over
30,000 prisoners to the Allies.
When the Americans reached Dachau the following
day, they were horrified by what they saw.
Outside the prison sat rail cars
full of diseased and starved corpses.
Inside the camp, a room piled high with naked
and emaciated bodies was also discovered.
Unhinged by the nightmare, certain
that Dachau was proof of the atrocities
they had heard so much about in America,
officers turned their enraged troops loose
on the now disarmed German soldiers.
A US soldier: The men were deliberately
wounding guards. A lot of guards were shot
in the legs so they couldnt move. They
were then turned over to the inmates.
One was beheaded with a bayonet.
Others were ripped apart limb by limb.
While the tortures were in progress, a lieutenant
forced over 300 captive Germans up against a wall,
planted two machine-guns, then ordered his
men to open fire. Those still alive when
the fusillade ended were forced to stand amid
the carnage while the machine-gunners reloaded.
In all, over five hundred helpless German
soldiers were slaughtered in cold blood.
As a final touch, the citizens of Dachau were
forced to bury the thousands of corpses in
the camp, thereby assuring the
death of many more from disease.
Few Americans noticed, because few cared,
but conditions in German cities and towns were
not much better than that at Dachau. Because
of the round-the-clock American and British
air attacks week after week, very little food
and almost no medicine was arriving anywhere
in Germany. Virtually none reached the numerous
concentration camps, where, during the last days,
disease and starvation swept
away the inmates by the thousands.
The incident at Dachau was merely one
of many massacres committed by US troops.
US Soldier: We had been held up at a little
town. We were supposed to just walk through it,
and the Germans stopped us dead. We just
couldn't crack it. Eventually artillery came in,
sort of leveled the houses. They finally
surrendered, and they came out, and sort of lined up.
Per usual, no one knew what was going
on. We had a new battalion commander,
just graduated from West Point, and he lined
them up, and said, "I want you to shoot them."
And I was horrified. Quite a few of us were
horrified. And I went to him and told him,
you know, that this was against all international
law, and humanity. My good buddy, who I'd
spent so much time with, grabbed me, and said
"This nut will shoot you. You better knock
this off." And he got enough guys, and they
shot these.. about twenty five prisoners.
It was a terrible thing to see, and I talked
to a lot of my buddies who had shot these guys,
and they were horrified too.
Unaware of the deep hatred the Allies harbored
for them, when proud SS units surrendered,
they naively assumed that they would be accorded
respect as the unsurpassed fighters that they
had proven to be. As soon as they were
disarmed, most were slaughtered where they stood.
For those members of the German military lucky
enough to survive capture, death often awaited
behind the lines, where thousands more perished.
With General Eisenhower turning a blind eye
to the Geneva Convention, only the threat
of retaliation against Allied POWs still held
in Germany prevented a massacre
of prodigious proportions.
Soon after US combat soldiers moved out of a
community and the rear echelon troops moved in,
the reality of occupation became clear to the
German citizens. The second wave of soldiers,
wanting to experience a bit of war on
their own, took out their aggression on
the helpless Germans by looting,
raping, killing, and destroying.
In many towns, the invaders unlocked jails,
prisons and concentration camps and invited
the inmates to join in the revelry.
Amy Schrott: They just opened up the camps
and let them go. The Russians and Poles were
looting the houses and killing the
shopkeepers. Then they began raping the girls.
Similar mayhem engulfed most towns in western
Germany as Americans and British pushed onward.
US sergeant: Our own Army and the British
Army have done their share of looting
and raping. We too are
considered an army of rapists.
Although brutal rapes persisted against defenseless
females, the Allied troops quickly discovered
that hunger was a powerful incentive to sexual
surrender. Although sex could be bought for
a bit of food, a cigarette or a bar of soap,
some victors preferred to take what they wanted,
whenever and wherever they pleased.
American soldier: Hunger made German women
more available, but despite this, rape was
prevalent and often accompanied by additional
violence. In particular I remember an eighteen-year old
woman who had the side of her face smashed
with a rifle butt and was then raped by two GIs
Even the French complained that the rapes,
looting and drunken destructiveness on the
part of our troops was excessive.
Despite the numerous atrocities committed
on the western front, such savagery never
became officially sanctioned. Considering the
blood-thirsty propaganda from the primarily
Jewish-owned media, as well as the active
incitement of their political and military
leaders, the average British and American
soldier comported himself amazingly well,
and certainly far, far better
than his Soviet counterpart.
Although the Allies in the West might have
easily pushed on to Berlin, they were ordered
to halt just short of their goal. As a token
of their great love and gratitude, Roosevelt
and Churchill had already awarded the
German capital to Stalin as a prize.
After days of hopeless fighting in which little
boys fought, and all too often died, like men
Berlin was finally overwhelmed on May 2nd.
And with the suicide of Adolf Hitler, the
war effectively ended. Now that there was
virtually no chance for reprisals against
Americans held in German POW camps, Eisenhower's
pathological hatred of Germans was given free rein.
DEATH CAMPS
With the final capitulation in May, 1945,
the supreme allied commander found himself
in control of over five million ragged, weary,
but living, enemy soldiers. Since Eisenhower
could not kill more armed Germans in war,
the American desk general decided to kill
disarmed Germans in peace.
Because the Geneva Convention guaranteed POWs
the same food, shelter and medical attention
as their captors, Eisenhower simply circumvented the
treaty by creating his own category for prisoners.
Under this reclassification, German
soldiers were no longer considered POWs, but
DEFs - Disarmed Enemy Forces. With this
sleight-of-hand, and in direct violation of the Geneva
Convention, Eisenhower could now deal in secret
with those in his power, free from the prying eyes of
the outside world.
Even before the wars end, thousands of
German POWs had died in American captivity
from starvation, neglect, and,
in many cases, outright murder.
With the German surrender and the threat of
retaliation against Allied POWs entirely erased,
deaths in the American concentration
camps accelerated dramatically.
While tens of thousands died of starvation and
thirst, hundreds of thousands more perished from
overcrowding and disease.
German prisoner: Its incomprehensible to
me how we could stand for many, many days
without sitting, without lying down, just
standing there, totally soaked. During the
day we marched around, huddled together to
try to warm each other a bit. The latrines
were just logs flung over ditches next to
the barbed wire fences. To sleep, all we could
do was to dig out a hole in the ground with
our hands, then cling together in the hole.
Because of illness, the men had to defecate
on the ground. Soon, many of us were too weak
to take off our trousers first. So our clothing
was infected, and so was the mud where we
had to walk and sit and lie down. There was
no water at all at first, except the rain.
More than half the days we had no food at
all. On the rest, we got a little K ration.
I could see from the package that they were
giving us one tenth of the rations that they
issued to their own men. I complained to
the American camp commander that he was
breaking the Geneva Convention, but he just said,
"Forget the Convention. You havent any rights."
Within a few days, some of the men who
had gone healthy into the camps were dead.
I saw our men dragging many dead bodies to
the gate of the camp, where they were thrown
loose on top of each other onto
trucks, which took them away.
As if their plight were not already hideous
enough, prisoners occasionally became the
targets of drunken guards who sprayed
the camps with machine-gun fire.
At one compound, amused guards formed lines
and beat prisoners with clubs and sticks as
they ran the gauntlet for their paltry rations.
At another camp of 5,200 men, ten to thirty
bodies were hauled away every day. Prisoners
who did not succumb to hunger or disease often
died of thirst. Many men were forced to drink
their own urine even though streams ran a
few feet from the barbed wire.
There was no lack of food or shelter among
the victorious Allies. Actually, American
supply depots were bursting at the seams.
Instead of allowing even a trickle of this
bounty to reach the compounds, the starvation
diet was further reduced. Within full view
of some camps, Americans would sadistically
burn food that they could not eat themselves.
Civilians from nearby villages and towns,
themselves starving, were prevented at gunpoint
from passing their own meager fare
through the fence to prisoners.
Horrified by the silent, secret massacre,
the International Red Cross, which had over
100,000 tons of food stored in Switzerland,
tried to intercede. When two trains filled
with supplies reached the camps, however,
they were turned back by American officers.
Many people found no justification whatsoever
in the massacre of helpless prisoners, especially
since the German government had lived up to
the Geneva Convention, as one American put it,
"to a tee."
The Red Cross reported that ninety-nine
percent of American prisoners
of war in Germany have survived and were on
their way home. Nevertheless, Eisenhowers
murderous program continued apace. Some upright
generals, such as General George Patton, opposed
these murderous measures, but
Eisenhower quickly overruled them.
While continuing to deny the Red Cross and
other relief agencies access to the camps,
Eisenhower stressed among his camp commanders
the need for secrecy. To prevent the gruesome
details from reaching the outside world,
and sidetrack those that did, counter-rumors
were circulated stating that, far from mistreating
and murdering prisoners, camp commanders were
actually turning back released Germans who
tried to slip back in for food and shelter.
Unlike their capitalist counterparts, the
Soviet communists made little effort to hide
their crimes. Hundreds of thousands of Germans
toiled in the forests and mines of Siberia.
The captives were slaves pure and simple
and no attempt was made to disguise the fact.
For the enslaved Germans, male and female,
the odds of surviving the Soviet gulags were
even worse than escaping the American death
camps. A trip to Siberia was tantamount to
a death sentence. What little food the slaves
received was intended merely to maintain their
strength until they were worked to death.
Much the same might be said of the 600,000
German slaves held by the French.
Ultimately, no fewer than 800,000 German prisoners
died in the American and French death camps.
Indeed, Recent estimates place the death toll
at upwards of 1.5 million. And thus, in "peace,"
did Eisenhower murder at least ten times the
number of German soldiers than were killed
on the whole Western Front
during the whole of the war.
With the once mighty Wehrmacht now disarmed
and enslaved, and with their leaders either
dead or awaiting trial for war crimes, the
old men, women and children who remained in
the dismembered Reich now found themselves
utterly at the mercy of the victors. Unfortunately,
never in the history of the
world was mercy in shorter supply.
THE PURGE
Soon after their victory in Europe, the
Allied purge of Nazi Party members commenced.
In theory, "de-Nazification" was a simple
transplanting of Party officials with those
of democratic, socialist
or communist underpinnings.
In practice, the purge became little more
than a cloak for rape, torture and death.
All adult Germans were compelled to register
at the nearest Allied headquarters and complete
a lengthy questionnaire on past activities.
While many nervous citizens were detained
then and there, most returned home, convinced
that the terrible ordeal was over. For millions,
however, the trial had just begun. Few German
adults, Nazi or not, escaped the dreaded knock
on the door.
Many people were arrested multiple times,
including Leni Riefenstahl, a talented young
woman who was perhaps the worlds most artistic
film-maker. Because her epic documentaries -
Triumph of the Will and Olympia
- seemed to glorify not only Germany, but National Socialism,
and because of her close relationship with
an admiring Adolf Hitler, Leni was of great
interest to the Allies.
Leni Riefenstahl: Neither my husband nor
my mother nor any of my three assistants had
ever joined the Nazi Party, nor had any of
us been politically active. No charges had
ever been filed against us, yet we were
at the mercy of the Allies and had no legal
protection of any kind.
As Leni and others quickly discovered,
the "softening up" process began soon after
arrival at an Allied prison. Brutally beaten, raped
repeatedly, crammed into dark, overheated cells,
victims nervously awaited
their "interrogations".
A German man: The purpose of these interrogations
is not to worm out of the people what they
knew, which would be uninteresting anyway,
but to extort from them special statements.
The methods resorted to are extremely primitive;
people are beaten up until they confess to
having been members of the Nazi Party. The
authorities simply assume that, basically,
everybody has belonged to the Party. Many
people die during and after these interrogations,
while others, who admit at once their party
membership, are treated more leniently.
Generally, after enduring blackened eyes,
broken bones, rape, electric shock to breasts,
or, in the case of men, smashed testicles, only
those who took their own lives or died during
torture failed to sign confessions.
Since most intelligence officers accompanying
US and British forces were Jewish refugees
who had fled Germany in the 1930s, their knowledge
of the language and culture was superb. With
old scores to settle, the presence of these
men insured that there would be no mercy shown
to Nazis
- or any German, for that matter.
A young German woman: Both officers who
took our testimony were former German Jews.
One kicked me in the back and the other hit
me. The terrible thing was, the German men
had to watch. That was a horrible, horrible
experience. That must have been terrible
for them. When I went outside, several of
them stood there with tears running down their
cheeks. What could they have
done? They could do nothing.
During the Nazi war crimes trial at
Nuremburg, almost any method that would
obtain a "confession" was employed. Understandably,
after several such sessions even the strongest
submitted and signed papers incriminating
themselves and others. In addition to testimony
given under torture, those who might have
spoken in defense of the accused were threatened
with torture and death themselves. Moreover,
hired "witnesses" were paid by the Americans
to parrot the prosecutions charges.
Horrific as de-Nazification was in the British,
French and, especially, the American Zones,
it was nothing compared to what took place
in Poland, behind Soviet lines. In hundreds
of concentration camps sponsored by something
called the "Office of State Security,"
thousands of Germans - male and female, old and
young, high and low, Nazi and nonNazi - were
rounded up and imprisoned. Staffed and run by
Jews, with help from the Poles, Czechs, Russians,
and other former concentration camp inmates,
the prisons were little better than vast torture
chambers where dying was a thing to be prolonged,
not hastened. While those with blond hair,
blue eyes and handsome features were first
to go, anyone who spoke German would do.
For these vengeful camp operators, no torture,
no sadism, no depravity, no evil, seemed too
monstrous to inflict on those now in their
power. Some Germans were forced to crawl naked
on all fours and eat their own excrement
as well as that of others. Many were drowned
in open latrines. Hundreds were herded into
buildings and burned to death or sealed in
caskets and buried alive.
Near Lamsdorf, German women were forced to
disinter bodies from a Polish burial site,
then kiss and "make love" to
the putrid, rotting corpses.
Not surprisingly, the mortality rate at the
concentration camps was staggering and of
those rare individuals who did leave with
their lives, few could any longer be called
human.
Meanwhile, as the judicial charade was in
progress behind prison walls, tortures of
another kind stalked the "liberated" German
people as the Allied victors enacted their
plan to divide, loot, and
utterly destroy conquered Germany.
In late 1944, the so-called "Morgenthau
Plan" was endorsed by President Roosevelt,
making the Jewish prewar demand for German
extermination official. Named for Roosevelts
Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau,
but actually conceived by the secretarys
top aide, Harry Dexter White - both of whom
were Jewish - the program called for the complete
destruction of Germany after victory had been
won. In addition to the dismantling or destruction
of heavy industry and the permanent closure
of mines, the Morgenthau Plan called for a
reduction of the Reichs land area by one
half. As many knew, this act guaranteed that
roughly two thirds of the German population,
or fifty million people, would soon die of
starvation. With the remnant of the population
reduced to subsistence farming, and with the
shrunken nation totally at the mercy of hostile
European neighbors, it was estimated that
within two generations
Germany would cease to exist.
When Roosevelts successor, Harry Truman,
met at Potsdam with Stalin and the new British
prime minister, Clement Attlee, in July 1945,
most of the teeth in Morgenthaus murderous
scheme remained on the table. With the signature
of the Big Three, the plan went into effect.
Stalins methodical looting in the Russian
Occupation Zone became prodigious. Steel mills,
grain mills, lumber mills, sugar and oil refineries,
chemical plants, optical works, shoe factories,
and other heavy industries were taken apart
down to the last nut and bolt and sent east
to the Soviet Union where they were reassembled.
Those factories allowed to remain in Germany
were to operate solely for the benefit of
Russia. Electric and steam locomotives, their
rolling stock, and even the tracks
they ran on were likewise sent east.
Unlike its primitive Soviet ally, the United
States had no need for German plants and factories.
Nevertheless, the Americans were far and
away the most zealous at destroying Germanys
ability to recover.
While the US may have spurned German industry,
they had a great interest in the Reichs
hoard of treasure. Billions of dollars in
gold, silver and currency, as well as priceless
paintings, sculptures and other art works
were plucked from their hiding places in caves,
tunnels and salt mines and
shipped across the Atlantic.
Additionally, and of far greater damage to Germanys
future, was the "mental dismantling" of the Reich.
Tons of secret documents revealing Germanys
tremendous organizational talent in business and
industry were simply stolen.
Hundreds of the greatest scientists
in the world were likewise "compelled"
to immigrate by the victors.
One man opposed to the vengeance-minded
program was George Patton.
Patton: Evidently the virus started by
Morgenthau of a Semitic revenge against
all Germans is still working. I cant
see how Americans can sink so low.
During the first postwar years Germany was
little better than a vast concentration camp.
Coinciding with the ruthless Allied program
of denazification and "reeducation," was
the American and British policy of non
- fraternization, segregating the victors from the vanquished,
in an effort to further degrade and demonize
Germans and crush what little pride and respect
One year after wars end, the former Reich
still had urban-dwellers clinging precariously
to their caves and cracks for shelter. In
Berlin alone, an estimated 50,000 orphans
struggled to survive.
British witness: Some of them, one-eyed or
one-legged veterans of seven or so, many so
deranged by the bombing and the Russian attack
that they screamed at the sight of any uniform,
even a Salvation Army one.
While occupation troops dined on five-course
meals complete with fried sole, Dutch steak
and ice cream, thousands of starving children
felt fortunate if a potato peel or crust of
moldy bread was unearthed. Children who could
not live by their wits, died. Those who didnt
starve or freeze, were crushed by the walls
of their caves or torn to shreds by unexploded
bombs which lay scattered
across Germany by the ton.
On their own, orphans aged fast, and little
girls aged fastest of all. Like their older
sisters, the children soon discovered that
selling themselves could stave off starvation.
A dreaded concern
- not only for those who were selling themselves, but for the millions
of rape victims
- was unwanted pregnancy. Thousands who were in fact pregnant sought
and found abortions. Thousands more lived
in dreadful suspense, their lives utterly
shattered in every way imaginable.
At length, Allied soldiers, reporters, and
others began to recoil at the ruthless reign
of terror transpiring in Germany.
Historian Ralph Keeling: While the
Germans around them starve, wear rags, and
live in hovels, the American aristocrats
live in often unaccustomed ease and luxury.
They live in the finest houses from which they drove
the Germans; they swagger about in fine liveries
and gorge themselves on diets three
times as great as they allow the Germans.
When we tell the Germans their low rations are
necessary because food is so short, they naturally
either think we are lying to them or regard
us as inhuman for taking the lions share
of the short supplies while
they and their children starve.
Even as the chorus of critics over the sadistic
treatment of Germany grew, a nightmare of
almost unbelievable proportions was
developing behind the Iron Curtain.
ETHNIC CLEANSING
Winston Churchill: Never mind the five or
more million Germans. Stalin will see to them.
With a wave of the hand and a puff of
his cigar the British Prime Minister
thus condoned one of the greatest
massacres in human history.
With an understanding reached at Yalta, then
signed into law at Potsdam, the Soviet Union
swallowed vast chunks of German and Polish
territory in the east. In return, Poland itself
devoured large tracts of the former Reich in
the west, including much of Prussia, Pomerania
and the extremely rich,
industrialized province of Silesia.
Despite solemn reassurances by the Allied
leaders that the mass expulsions would be
carried out in an "orderly and humane"
manner, shattering glass and splintering doors
were usually the first sounds a victim heard,
soon followed by angry shouts to clear the
home in thirty, ten, even five minutes.
Thus, by tens and twenties, by hundreds and
thousands, homeless Germans now began trudging
west with no clear goal in mind. Except for
those able-bodied individuals held as slaves
and young girls retained for sex, roughly
eleven million trekkers took to the roads.
Thus began the greatest
death march in history.
A witness: As they left town in an endless
procession, Polish soldiers fell upon them,
beating and flogging them in a blind rage.
Robbed of all they possessed and literally
stripped of the last of their belongings,
these poor creatures trudged along in
the wind and the rain, with no roof or shelter
over their heads, not knowing where they would
find a new abode.
Of the roughly eleven million victims hurled
from their homes in eastern Germany, an estimated
two million, mostly women and children, perished.
Equally as horrifying, though less well known,
were the nearly one million Germans who died
during similar expulsions in Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia.
Additionally, an estimated four million more
ethnic Germans were sent east to the Soviet
Union where the odds of surviving as slaves
were worse than as refugees.
Austin J. App: To slice three or four ancient
provinces from a country, then loot and plunder
nine million people of their houses, farms,
cattle, furniture, and even clothing, and then
expel them "from the land they have
inhabited for 700 years" with no distinction
between the innocent and the guilty, to
drive them like unwanted beasts on foot
to far-off provinces, unprotected, shelterless,
and starving is an atrocity so vast that history
records none vaster.
While Western leaders such as Winston Churchill
later feigned surprise at the tragedy they
had wrought in eastern Germany, little was
said about the deliberate starvation of the
rest of the Reich, and utter silence prevailed
concerning the Allied torture chambers in
Germany, the on-the-spot massacre of Nazi
Party members and SS troops, the death camps
run by Eisenhower, or the hellish Jewish
torture pens in Poland. Taken as a whole, it is a
certainty that far more Germans died during
the first two years of "peace" than died
during the previous six years of war.
CONCLUSION
Goodrich: World War Two was the world's worst
war. World War Two was the world's worst war
because of the evil that was unleashed on
millions of helpless men, women and children;
the Allied war waged against Germany, both
during and after the war, were evils so vicious
and so depraved that truly, words have
not yet been invented to describe them.
While one might estimate the incredible
loss of life during and after World War II,
it s almost impossible to calculate the physical
and psychological suffering caused by the
rape, torture and degradation
of the German nation.
Unlike their victims, the victors faced no
post-war prison camps, no slavery, no torture,
no starvation, no rapes, no trials for their
numerous war crimes, and no vilification campaign
that persists to this very day. Quite the
opposite. For the victors, American generals
became American presidents, British prime
ministers became British Knights, Allied soldiers
became the "Greatest Generation," and the
winning side claimed complete and utter
control over the history of World War Two.
Not surprisingly, in the winner's expert hands
the evil crime that was World War Two was quickly
transformed into the "Crusade in Europe," the "War to
End Evil," and the "Good War." Year after
year, decade after decade, a mountain of movies,
tv shows, articles, and books are released
with the sole intent of heaping crime and
guilt on the heads of the victims. At the
same time the victors have elevated themselves
to paragons of virtue by hiding the very real
crimes they committed both during and after the war.
Anyone who can say that the actions of the
Allies were justified hopefully has never
witnessed a screaming child running like
a living torch through a flaming street,
never watched as a man drank his own urine to
stay alive even as a river ran just beyond his
prison fence, never heard the animal shrieks
of the tortured as their genitals are mutilated
or the groans of a bleeding woman begging
for a bullet while the line awaiting its turn
grows longer
- hopefully these people have never seen such things, for only then can
one understand how they might parrot
over and over again the standard refrain,
"they got exactly what they deserved"..
and never lose a moments sleep.
Still, if there is one central truth that
was born of World War Two it is that clearly,
there is no such thing as a "Good War."
Those who say differently are either those
who profit politically or financially from
war, or those who have never witnessed war
up close, in all its horror.