Crimes and Mercies (38 page)

35
See Note 1, Chapter III.

36
Overmans also says that at the beginning of 1945, the US army held 300,000 German prisoners,
but he does not give any US Army
source for this
. The top US Army source, the Theater Provost Marshal General, reported that, as of 27 December 1944, the 12th Army Group and the 6th Army Group had together taken over 400,000 German prisoners in the European campaign since 6 June 1944, plus 229,000 more in Tunisia. The official American total is therefore more than double the number reported by Overmans.

37
Erich Maschke, editor,
Zur Geschichte der deutschen
Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges, 15 volumes,
(Bielefeld and Munich, Verlag Ernst and Werner Gieseking, 1962–74).

38
At the end of the war, Germans constituted around 68 per cent of the total Soviet catch of Axis prisoners (Bulanov Report, CSSA, Moscow).
Without the Seal of Secrecy
(colloquially in Moscow, ‘The Red Book’) reports that the total fascist catch at
the end of 1944 was 1,836,996. Allowing for 32 per cent of the catch as non-German, Germans in Soviet captivity numbered about 1,248,000 at the end of 1944. See also Maschke, Vol. XV, pp. 194, 224.

39
From Martin K. Sorge,
The Other Price of Hitler’s War
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986), p. 63. For the missing at 31 March 1945 (1,281,285), see also
Kriegstagebuch des
Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht
, Vol. IV, edited by Percy Ernst Schramm (Frankfurt: Bernard Graefe Verlag, 1961), p. 1515.

40
How can we account for the fact that the Soviets reported more captures than the OKW thought they had lost among the army? The difference can be accounted for in part by the losses among the navy and air force. These amounted to 256,000 for the whole war 1939–January 1945, on all fronts (Sorge, op. cit., p. 63). Since most air force and navy losses were in the west, the eastern component was probably under 50,000. The remainder were probably men estimated as dead by the OKW who were actually alive and captured.

41
For a full description of the massive errors in accounting for prisoners in the west, see Bacque,
Other Losses
, with special reference to Col. Philip A. Lauben, Milton A. Reckord and French Army Captain Julien.

42
Hans von Luck,
Panzer Commander
, with an Introduction by Stephen E. Ambrose (New York: Praeger), p. 214.

43
Captain Harry G. Braun,
Of Islands and Ships
(Alameda, CA, 1991), p. 101.

44
Professor Stefan Karner in
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte
(July 1994).

45
See p. 65. The original title is
Dokumentation der Vertreibung der
Deutschen aus Ost-Mittel Europa
.

46
Galitski,
German POWs and the NKVD
, op. cit.; and Kashirin,
Spravka
, op. cit.

47
Interviews with two German researchers in the CSSA in Moscow, 1992, and with Mme V. Fatiukhina of the Russian Red Cross.

48
Nimmo, op. cit., p. 96.

49
Ibid., p. 95.

50
Letter from William Nimmo to the author, January 1993.

51
MVD report dated 1950 in Archive of the October Revolution, Moscow. Publicly quoted by Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev following research supplied to them by Alexei
Kirichenko, Sector Head, USSR Academy of Sciences, Institute of World Economics and International Relations, Moscow.

52
When questioned as to the possibility that the NKVD records were falsified at some point, the chief prisoner specialist in the CSSA, Ludmilla Nosyreva, said that she did not believe they had been falsified. Anatoly S. Prokopenko, Deputy Head of the Archives Committee of Russia and policy adviser on archival law to Russian president Boris Yeltsin, has said that he does not think that the NKVD records were falsified, although it is likely that one part – the entry for the cause of death on the certificates – was sometimes altered to make it appear more ‘natural’, or less shameful to the Soviets.

53
According to Eddy Reese, one of the senior archivists of the Modern Military Records of the US NARS in Washington, soon after the war, and while the Germans under Dr Bitter were investigating the fate of their missing prisoners, ‘all non-record camp documents were destroyed’. Conversation with the author, Washington, 1987.

54
Years after the publication of
Other Losses
, the Public Records Office has said that the Report is at last available.

55
Report of T. de Faye, Major, Acting Commander, 4th Regiment, Winnipeg Rifles, to HQ 2/7 Canadian Infantry Brigade, 23 November 1945. In RG 24, Vol. 10,976, File 260C7009 D19, NAC.

56
Approximately 1.4 million were determined missing in the incomplete survey instituted by Dr Bitter. Most Germans living west of the Soviet zone were covered, but fewer than 50 per cent in the Soviet zone were covered.
Pro rata
to population, probably another 300,000 or so were missing without Dr Bitter’s researchers being notified. In addition, nearly 300,000 civilian and paramilitary prisoners were taken. See Appendix 2.

Chapter V: And the Churches Flew Black Flags (pp. 86–106)

1
Diplogerma Multex, Berlin to Moscow, 27 February 1941, FYI. Found in Murphy Papers, Box 69, HIA. There is a typo in the original German, which reads in translation that ‘there will be no neutral commission’. It is clear from the context, which is all
predicated on the existence of such a commission, that this is an error, here corrected.

2
See Dwight Eisenhower,
Crusade in Europe
.

3
Victor Gollancz,
In Darkest Germany
, p. 92.

4
Captain Albert R. Behnke, USN MC, ‘Physiologic and Psychologic Factors in Individual and Group Survival’, June 1958 (Behnke Papers, Box 1, HIA).

5
See Herbert Hoover,
An American Epic
, Vol. IV, and
Addresses
Upon the American Road
, 1945–48.

6
Gustav Stolper,
German Realities
, p. 67.

7
The worst famine in Holland occurred for some people in the winter and spring of 1945, ‘when the calorie value of the official rations fell to 400 per day in the larger western cities’. All the preceding quotes about Holland are from Behnke, op. cit.

8
Montgomery to the British Foreign Office, 27 February 1946, PRO FO 943/452. Quoted in John E. Farquharson,
The Western
Allies and the Politics of Food
, p. 110.

9
Hoover,
The President’s Economic Mission to Germany and Austria
, Human Events Associates, Chicago, 1947, p. 6. Copy at Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa.

10
John D. Unruh,
In the Name of Christ
, p. 146.

11
A. O. Tittmann, letter to Hoover, 30 January 1947, in FEC Papers, Box 3, HIA.

12
From various sources, including the Patterson Papers, Library of Congress; Henry C. Morgenthau,
Germany is Our Problem
; Report on Agricultural Production – Germany, Behnke, op. cit.; OMGUS, Economic Policies, submitted by Members of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, September 1947, p. 19; and Stolper, op. cit.

13
Letter to the author from Ernst Kraemer, Bonn, 30 July 1994. Kraemer was at two camps, Büderich and Rheinberg.

14
Grasett to Smith, June 1945. Box 37, Smith Papers, Carlisle Barracks, PA.

15
Letters from ex-prisoners on file with author.

16
F. Roy Willis,
The French in Germany
, p. 115.

17
The estimates for the total of Germans subject to expulsion varies, but de Zayas has settled on 16.6 million in all categories, including stay-at-homes, dead during flight, and living arrivals. See de Zayas,
Nemesis at Potsdam
. It is highly likely that the death rate among the stay-at-homes during 1945–50 was far
above normal. For example, the figure accepted in 1947 by the (Allied) Council of Foreign Ministers meeting was 400,000 Germans still living in ex-German territory held by Poland. In fact, the Canadian Chargé d’Affaires in Warsaw, K. P. Kirkwood, reported to Ottawa on 28 January 1949 that only 289,000 Germans remained. That is 28 per cent fewer people than formerly believed. RG 25, Vol. 57A, File 7-CA-14, NAC.

18
Emigration was forbidden for most of the period 1945–50. By 1950, around 600,000 had been permitted to emigrate, according to estimates of the Statistisches Bundesamt, Wiesbaden. The USA and Canada were the top destinations for Germans once emigration was permitted after 1950, but a cursory check of US and Canadian immigration figures for the period shows that this 600,000 estimate is far too high. One effect of an excessive estimate is to reduce the number of Germans missing/not accounted for in the 1950 Census. See Note 28, Chapter VI.

19
Stolper, op. cit.

20
See John Gimbel,
Science, Technology and Reparations
; also Michael Balfour and John Mair,
Four-power Control in Germany
and Austria
; also Tomberg,
Report on Economic Conditions in
Germany for 1948
, RG 25, Vol. 3807, NAC.

21
Economic Directorate of Allied Control Authority, Food and Agricultural Co-ordinating Committee paper, 24 July 1946, PRO FO 943/147. Quoted in Farquharson, op. cit., p. 257.

22
De Zayas, op. cit., p. 8.

23
Ibid., p. 10.

24
Robert Greer, ‘Letter from Berlin’ in
Reading
, February 1946, pp. 27–8. Robert Greer is the pseudonym for Robert Greer Allen, then a lieutenant in the Canadian Army seconded to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Germany in 1945. He became a distinguished producer and administrator for CBC TV, Toronto. His article was adapted from a letter to his wife.

25
Johannes Kaps (ed.),
The Tragedy of Silesia, 1945–1946
, p. 189.

26
Theodor Schieder (ed.), ‘The Expulsion of the German Population from Czechoslovakia’ in
Documents on the Expulsions of
the Germans from Eastern Central Europe
, Vol. IV, p. 459.

27
Ibid., pp. 453 et seq.

28
Ibid., pp. 399–409.

29
Ibid., p. 431.

30
Ibid., p. 449.

31
Ibid., p. 449.

32
Kaps, op. cit., p. 189.

33
Ibid., p. 195.

34
Ibid., p. 223.

35
Ibid., p. 228.

36
Hugo Rasmus,
Schattenjahre in Potulitz
, p. 55.

37
Interview with Dr Martha Kent, Phoenix, 1997.

38
Letter from Dr Kent; see also Rasmus, op. cit.

39
Rasmus, op. cit., p. 151.

40
Ibid., p. 189.

41
Kaps, op. cit., p. 324.

42
Ibid., pp. 526 et seq.

43
Solzhenitsyn,
Prussian Nights
, translated by Robert Conquest, p. 39.

Chapter VI: Death and Transfiguration (pp. 107–134)

1
Konrad Adenauer,
Memoirs, 1945–1953
, translated by Beate Ruhm von Oppen, p. 148.

2
Health and Medical Affairs, MG Report, December 1947. In Behnke Papers, HIA.

3
Census and mortality reports of Statistisches Bundesamt, Wiesbaden.

4
Health and Medical Affairs, Military Governor’s Report, p. 10, December 1947. In Behnke Papers, op. cit.

5
Brian R. Mitchell,
International Historical Statistics
. Mitchell has reported his German sources to be either the UN
Yearbook
or the Statistisches Bundesamt.

6
See Bacque,
Other Losses
, Epilogue One.

7
Lucius Clay,
The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay
, p. 97.

8
Resolution by the German Physicians, Brüggen, in Behnke Papers, op. cit.

9
Gustav Stolper,
German Realities
, p. 31.

10
If the predicted 2.5 million did die in the Soviet zone in the six months to spring 1946, the death rate for the period would be 135%%. This is more than ten times the pre-war rate for Germany.

11
Statistiches Bundesamt,
Bevölkerung und Kultur
, Reihe 2:
Natürliche Bevölkerungsbewegung
, p. 33. Also Statistisches Bundesamt,
Bevölkerung und Wirtschaft, 1872–1972
, p. 90.

12
When asked in October 1994 for his published source for the death rate, Mitchell replied that he was unable to say whether it was the UN
Yearbook
or the Statistisches Bundesamt. He agreed that the primary source was probably the Allied Control Council. It was in this correspondence that he expressed his reservations about the ‘official death rate’.

13
Statistisches Bundesamt,
Bevölkerung und Wirtschaft,
1872–1972
, p. 90, gives 12.2 per thousand per year, and
Natürliche Bevölkerungsbewegung
, p. 33, gives 12.1.

14
Alfred de Zayas saw this letter in the ICRC archives in Geneva when he was doing research for a book. He asked for permission to photocopy the letter, which was refused. The ICRC has several times refused entry to the present author to their archives, on the grounds that they never open their archives to writers. Not only has de Zayas been given permission, but also two other writers.

15
Council of Foreign Ministers Meeting, Moscow, April 1947. In Murphy Papers, HIA.

16
Johannes Kaps (ed.),
The Tragedy of Silesia, 1945–1946
, p. 224.

17
Ibid., p. 237.

18
Ibid., p. 252.

19
Ibid., p. 276.

20
Ibid., pp. 403–12.

21
Ibid., p. 443.

22
Konrad Adenauer,
Memoirs, 1945–1953
, p. 48. Adenauer gives a lower figure for expellee arrivals than appears elsewhere in the present work because he was speaking in March 1949, whereas the cut-off date used for expellees in this work is September 1950. In the years 1949–50, at least 600,000 more expellees arrived.