The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe (67 page)

53. CEGES, AA 1311, no. 528.

1. Sulbout, “Les troupes américaines a Liège,” 120–21; CEGES, AA 1311, no. 526, “Rapport de la Sûreté de l’Etat: Opinion publique,” March 5, 1945.
   

2. CEGES, “Rapport de la Sûreté de l’Etat en date du 10–17 February 1945,” AA1311, no. 526; and report on “Esprit public,” February 2, 1945, from Charleroi, AA1311, no. 528.
   

3. These quotations come from a number of regional reports gathered in the files of the High Commission for State Security, compiled by Commissioner Walter Ganshof and his staff, and dated March 9, 11, 16, 17, 18, and 23, 1945. CEGES, AA 1311, no. 526.
   

4. Medical Department, United States Army, Preven-
   

   tive Medicine in World War II, vol. 5, Communicable Diseases (Washington, D.C., 1960), “Incidence Rates for Venereal Diseases, all forms, in the US Army,” 257.
   

5. Preventive Medicine, vol. 5, 143–46.
   

6. PRO, WO 219/3734 and WO 219/3735A, Historical Survey, 21st Army Group, Civil Affairs/Military Govern- ment Branch, December 1944; WO 219/3736A, Histori- cal Survey, 21st Army Group, Civil Affairs/Military Gov- ernment Branch, January–March 1945.
   

7. PRO, WO 219/3737, SHAEF G-5 Public Health Branch, February 6, 1945.
   

8. Preventive Medicine in World War II, vol. 8, report by Major John A. Lewis, December 7, 1945, 332–33.
   

9. CEGES, AA 1311, no. 759, “Appel à la population,” printed in La Presse verviétoise, March 17, 1945.
   

10. CEGES, AA 1311, no. 761, “Prostitution—maladies vénériennes,” March 23, 1945.
    

11. CEGES, AA 1311, no. 526, Report from the police chief of Visé (just north of Liège), September 1, 1945. The tally of civilian deaths was broken down by SHAEF as follows: 13,000 killed due to Allied bombing in 1943–
    

45; 10,000 killed due to V-1 and V-2 bombing (which is likely an overestimate); 7,000 killed in the fighting in 1940 and in the Ardennes. In addition, 6,400 Bel- gian soldiers died in 1940, and 1,264 died in captivity. SHAEF Intelligence Summary, June 6, 1945, CEGES AA 1311, no. 919.

3: Hunger

1. Roscoe C. Blunt, Foot Soldier: A Combat Infantry- man’s War in Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2002), 56.
   

2. SHAEF Fortnightly Report no. 16, May 15, 1945, PRO, WO 202/838.
   

3. Gerhard Hirschfeld, Nazi Rule and Dutch Collabo- ration: The Netherlands under German Occupation, 1940–45, trans. by Louise Wilmot (Oxford, U.K.: Berg, 1988), 12–27. Seyss-Inquart was hanged in October 1946, after being convicted of war crimes at the Nurem- berg tribunal.
   

4. Werner Warmbrunn, The Dutch under German Oc- cupation, 1940–1945 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer- sity Press, 1963), 5–17, 21–34, 61–82. On the figures for Jewish deportations, see Lucy Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933–1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart,
   

   Winston, 1975), 366–68.
   

5. Two reports from within occupied Holland: PRO, FO 371/39329, May 20, 1944, from Ridley Prentice to Po- litical Intelligence Department; quotation from PRO, FO 371/39330, June 5, 1944, from Press Reading Room, Stockholm, to Political Intelligence Department, Lon- don.
   

6. PRO, FO 371/39329, Max Huber, International Com- mittee of the Red Cross, to Field Marshal Sir Philip Chetwode, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the British Red Cross, April 14, 1944; Anthony Eden to Sir Philip Chetwode, June 12, 1944.
   

7. PRO, FO 371/39329, May 20, 1944, from Ridley Pren- tice to Political Intelligence Department, quoting source inside Holland.
   

8. PRO, FO 371/39330, Gerbrandy, personal letter, to Churchill, September 28, 1944.
   

9. PRO, WO 219/2286, September 3, 1944, Memoran- dum by Lt. Gen. Frederick Morgan, “Proposed War Establishments of SHAEF Missions to the Netherlands and Belgium.”
   

10. PRO, AIR 8/823, “Interview between the Prime Min-
    

    ister and Dr. Gerbrandy, Prime Minister of the Nether- lands,” October 5, 1944, minutes by Major D. Morton. The Dutch Embassy in Washington had made much the same appeal to the United States Department of State, on October 3. See Secretary of State Hull to Ambassa- dor Winant, October 7, 1944, in Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS] 1944, II: 285–87.
    

11. PRO, WO 8/823: Foreign Office to Secretary, Chiefs of Staff Committee, October 5, 1944; Ministry of Eco- nomic Warfare to Foreign Office, October 2, 1944; Dutch government Memorandum on Food Conditions in Netherlands, Septemer 29, 1944.
    

12. PRO, AIR 8/823, Eisenhower to AGWAR, October 29, 1944.
    

13. PRO, AIR 8/823, Chiefs of Staff Alan Brooke, Charles Portal, Andrew Cunningham, War Cabinet, Chiefs of Staff Committee, November 2, 1944; Eisenhower to
    

    U.K. Base for British Chiefs of Staff, November 6, 1944.
    

14. PRO, WO 106/4419, “Relief Supplies for Holland,” February 11, 1945; “Supplies for the Civilian Population in Holland,” February 22, 1945. On the impact of the Swedish supplies, see Henri A. van der Zee, The Hun- ger Winter: Occupied Holland, 1944–45 (Lincoln: Uni-
    

    versity of Nebraska Press, 1982), 176–78.
    

15. PRO, FO 371/49032, Summary of Drummond Report, February 3, 1945; Attlee to Churchill, February 5, 1945; Queen Wilhelmina to Churchill and Roosevelt, January 15, 1945, in Harry L. Coles and Albert K. Weinberg, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1964), 828–29.
    

16. PRO, FO 371/49403, Memorandum from Netherlands Government to Ambassador Neville Bland, January 1, 1945; FO 371/49404, Reports in Vrij Nederland, sum- marized in Neville Bland to Anthony Eden, January 5, 1945, and January 18, 1945; PRO, FO 371/49404, SHAEF Mission Fortnightly Report for period ending Janu- ary 15, 1945. For an earlier exchange of letters between Gerbrandy and Eisenhower on food supplies, see Coles and Weinberg, Civil Affairs, 827–28.
    

17. PRO, WO 32/16168, Montgomery to Eisenhower, ci- pher message, February 3, 1945; Montgomery to Grigg, February 11, 1945.
    

18. PRO, FO 371/49032, Eisenhower, “Personal to Gener- al Marshall for Combined Chiefs of Staff,” February 14, 1945; Eisenhower to CCS, February 25, 1945; Roosevelt to Churchill, March 1, 1945; Churchill to Roosevelt,
    

    March 2, 1945; Roosevelt to Churchill, March 11, 1945.
    

19. PRO, WO 202/838, Fortnightly Report no. 11, period ending February 28, 1945.
    

20. PRO, WO 321/16168, Richard Law, Foreign Office, to
    

    P. J. Grigg, War Office, February 16, 1945, FRUS 1945; V: 5–8, Hornbeck to Roosevelt, February 21, 1945.
    

21. PRO, WO 106/4419, War Cabinet, Joint Planning Staff, “Relief for Occupied Holland,” March 8, 1945; memorandum for meeting to be held on March 9, “Re- lief for Occupied Holland;” summary of meeting, March 9, 1945; Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945, edited by Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 670; telegram from Chiefs of Staff to General Eisenhower, March 14, 1945; Winston Churchill, Triumph and Trag- edy, vol. 6 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), 410.
    

22. PRO, AIR 20/5005, Eisenhower to War Department, Combined Chiefs of Staff and British Chiefs of Staff, March 27, 1945; PRO, WO 106/4420, War Cabinet, Joint Planning Staff, “Plans for the Liberation of Holland,” April 6, 1945.
    

23. PRO, WO 202/838, SHAEF Mission, Political Intel- ligence Report no. 8, March 31, 1945.
    

24. PRO, AIR 8/823, “Prime Minister to President Roosevelt, Personal and Top Secret,” April 10, 1945; FRUS 1945, V: 20, Roosevelt to Churchill, April 10, 1945; WO 106/4420, Eisenhower to War Office, April 15, 1945.
    

25. Imperial War Museum, 94/51/1 Miss Margaret von Lenip, December 25, 1945.
    

26. Liedewij Hawke and Elly Dull in Lance Goddard, ed., Canada and the Liberation of the Netherlands (To- ronto: Goddard Press, 2005), 140–42; Margaretha Vasa- lis, diary excerpt, in Max Nord, ed., Thank You, Canada (Amsterdam: N.V. De Arbeiderspers, 1967), 125.
    

27. David Kaufman, ed., A Liberation Album: Canadians in the Netherlands, 1944–45 (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1980), 50–55.
    

28. G. C. E. Burger, J. C. Drummond, and H. R. Stan- stead, eds., Malnutrition and Starvation in Western Netherlands, September 1944–July 1945 (The Hague: General State Printing Office, 1948), 20–24.
    

29. Henri van der Zee, Hunger Winter, 148–50; Tram conductor, thirty-nine years old, Rotterdam, diary en- try of April 22, 1945, published in the collection Dag- boek Fragmenten, 1940–1945 (Amsterdam: Rijksinsti- tuut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, 1954), 599–600. For
    

    additional details from this tragic collection, see pages 448, 452–53, 557–60, 563–64, and 606.
    

30. The most comprehensive account is C. P. Stacey, Official History, Canadian Army in the Second World War, vol. 3, The Victory Campaign, 1944–45 (Ottawa: The Queen’s Printer, 1960). A more recent and nuanced account is Terry Copp, Cinderella Army: The Canadians in Northwest Europe, 1944–45 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). Overall Canadian casualties be- tween June 6, 1944, and the end of the war were 44,339. Of these, 11,336 were killed. Stacey, Victory Campaign, 611. Copp provides a chart of Canadian losses in north- west Europe, week by week, in Cinderella Army, 302–3.
    

31. PRO, FO 106/4420, Prime Minister to Mr. Eden, in Washington, April 16, 1945; and transcript of Seyss-In- quart discussions with Dutch, April 12, 1945.
    

32. PRO, WO 106/4420, Secretary of War and Combined Chiefs of Staff to Eisenhower, April 23, 1945; Eisen- hower to Chiefs of Staff, April 23, 1945; Eisenhower to War Office, April 24; Eisenhower to Combined Chiefs of Staff and British Chiefs of Staff, April 27 and April 29.
    

33. PRO, WO 106/4420, British Chiefs of Staff meeting minutes, April 30, 1945; EXFOR REAR Q to SHAEF G-4,
    

    May [3?] 1945; AIR 8/823, Air Staff SHAEF to Bomber Command and Air Ministry, Whitehall, April 28, 1945; Francis de Guingand, Operation Victory (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947), 445–47.
    

34. The details of the Achterveld meeting come from a Canadian report on the conference, PRO, WO 205/1073, “Col. Sellors’ Report, 1st Canadian Corps, Intelligence Summary no. 290, May 6, 1945, Achterveld Conference,” which contains General Smith’s bon mot to Seyss-In- quart; and de Guingand, Operation Victory, 450–53.
    

35. For an excellent eyewitness account of the surren- der, see “Freedom for Holland; Surrender by Blaskow- itz,” Times (London), May 7, 1945.
    

36. PRO, WO 205/1074, “Brief Historical Outline of the Occupation of N.W. Holland by 1st Canadian Corps,” undated.
    

37. Lance Goddard, ed., Canada and the Liberation of the Netherlands (Toronto: Goddard Press, 2005), 212–
    

14. See also Max Nord, ed., Thank You, Canada.

1. PRO, WO 32/11704, SHAEF G-5 Branch, “Report on Tour of NW Holland, May 10–15, 1945,” prepared by Brigadier L. F. Field, Deputy Chief, Economics Branch.
   

2. “Relief for Holland,” Times, May 7, 1945.
   

3. “Food in Germany for 60 Days; People’s Health Good,” Times, May 23, 1945. “I think they were rather inclined to exaggerate the conditions of starvation,” sniffed Francis de Guingand in his memoir, and blamed Gerbrandy for his “propaganda” effort. Operation Vic- tory, 438; PRO, WO 202/838, SHAEF Mission, Fort- nightly Report No. 16, period ending May 15, 1945; WO 32/11704, reports by M. B. Knowles and Anthony Lousa- da of the Ministries of Food and Production respective- ly, filed on May 19 and 22, 1945; Military Government Branch, Main HQ, First Canadian Army, Weekly Report no. 27, period May 13–19, 1945, NARA, RG 331, SHAEF G-5, Entry 47, box 27.
   

4. Burger, Drummond, and Stanstead, Malnutrition and Starvation, 28–43; 48–57; Netherlands District, Weekly Progress Report no. 1, May 20, 1945, “Progress of Relief and Rehabilitation in the Provinces of North and South Holland and Utrecht,” NARA, RG 331, SHAEF G-5, Entry 47, box 27.
   

5. PRO, FO 371/49406, Memo by Sir Paul Grey, first secretary of the British Embassy in the Hague, sent to Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin by Sir Neville Bland, September 25, 1945.
   

6. M. J. L. Dols and D. J. A. M. van Arcken, “Food Sup- ply and Nutrition in the Netherlands during and Im- mediately after World War II,” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 24, 4 (Oct. 1946), 352. C. Banning’s analysis suggests that 10,000 people died of malnutrition, at a minimum. “Food Shortage and Public Health,” special issue on “ The Netherlands during the German Occu- pation,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 245 (May 1946), 93–110.
   

PART II: INTO GERMANY

Prologue: Armies of Justice

1. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Battleground Berlin: Dia- ries, 1945–48, trans. by Anna Boerresen (New York: Paragon House, 1990), 6, 9.
   

2. William Walton, “G.I. Wisdom,” Time, February 5, 1945; Ralph G. Martin, “ What Kind of Peace? The Sol- dier’s Viewpoint,” New York Times, March 11, 1945.
   

3. Nikolai Tikhonov, “Liberation Army,” February 16, 1945, in S. Krasilshchik, World War II Dispatches from the Soviet Front, trans. by Nina Bouis (New York: Sphinx Press, 1985), 322–23.
   

4: Red Storm in the East

1. Ilya Ehrenburg, The War: 1941–1945 (vol. 5 of Men, Years—Life), trans. by Tatiana Shebunina (New York: World Publishing Company, 1964), 188.
   

2. For a discussion of the problems in determining the number of Soviet war dead, see John Erickson, “Red Army Battlefield Performance, 1941–45: The System and the Soldier,” in Paul Addison and Angus Calder, eds., Time to Kill: The Soldier’s Experience of War in the West, 1939–1945 (London: Pimlico, 1997), 233–48.
   

3. For U.S. war casualties, see Congressional Research Service, “American War and Military Operations Ca- sualties: Lists and Statistics,” June 2007, available at http://www.fas.org
   / sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf.
   

4. Ilya Ehrenburg, “On the First Day,” June 22, 1941, in
   

   S. Krasilshchik, ed., World War II Dispatches from the Soviet Front (New York: Sphinx, 1985), 5–7. Alexander Werth, a Russian-born journalist for the Sunday Times of London, and a man who spent almost the entire war in Russia, recalled the importance of “Ehrenburg’s ar- ticles in Pravda and Red Star—brilliant and eloquent diatribes against the Germans, which were very popu- lar in the Army.” Russia at War, 1941–1945 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964), 274.
   

5. Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Har- vard University Press, 2004), 7–8.
   

6. On Hitler’s war aims in Russia, see Jürgen Förster, “Hitler Turns East: German War Policy in 1940 and 1941,” in Bernd Wegner, From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia and the World, 1939–1941 (Oxford, U.K.: Berghahn Books, 1997), 115–33; Military directive of De- cember 18, 1940, in J. Noakes and G. Pridham, eds., Na- zism 1919–1945, vol. 3, Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination: A Documentary Reader (Exeter, U.K.: University of Exeter Press, 1988), 809. For the origins of Barbarrosa, see Horst Boog et al., eds., Germany and the Second World War, vol. 4, The Attack on the Soviet Union (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1998). Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. by Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 652–53, 662; Förster, “Hitler Turns East,” 131; and Förster’s chapter, “Operation Barbarossa as a War of Conquest and Annihilation,” in Boog, Germany and the Second World War, vol. 4, 481–