Posted on 07/24/2020 4:13:05 PM PDT by dmam2011
The military indiscriminately took enough of my Grandfather’s farm for a POW camp to render it inconsequential, paid him little as they condemned it. There were lots of other places not nearly so useful or valuable so why that one? WTH knows?
Our prisoners were extremely well treated and the ones of the Germans... not. There was no quid pro quo on that.
We should know how the Japs tortured and impressed our people as slave labor and then starved them to death or killed them brutally. The Japs have no excuse for what they did and I have no forgiveness. They are a crude and cruel society for what they did. I need to be convinced they have changed, regret and repent. At this date I am not convinced. We, McArthur, created modern Japan as we did Germany and much of the rest of Europe.
At least some people in liberated Europe still remember what our boys and other’s boys did. Generations have kept the tradition of respect and remembrance alive in some places. That will probably not go on much longer. Even we are forgetting. It only takes 3 or 4 generations for memories to fade and disappear.
Interesting story.
The Japs have no excuse for their inhumane brutality. I remain to be convinced they are not still that way or at least capable of that.
I have a younger brother who actually believes that we provoked the war with the Japs. He is from another generation.
He is also apparently pretty ignorant. Our Dad was a Navy fighter pilot in the War. I don’t get some people.
An accurate knowledge of history is not an option for me and should not for anyone else.
Oh my. Tough.
I think your story is inaccurate.
Evidence? That is a lot of soldiers.
We took less than 500,000 Germans prisoners during the war. The Soviets took 3,000,000.
We never had 2,000,000 German troops as prisoners to “turn over to the French” according to records and historians.
Give me some facts to justify your wild claims.
I didn’t get your name. Fritz is it?
Ask the civilian contractors at Wake about civilian imprisonment. Oh, right, you can’t, they were all worked to death or executed along with the Marines there.
Check with the people of Singapore. Some of them survived being “guests” of the japs.
Go study some more. Yalta was a necessary compromise and the fellow you are responding to is not accurate.
Sequoyah101, You can call me John. Where on earth did you get the 500,000 figure? (It may have been as high as 10 million) Here is just some of my sources. It is understandable that you want to accept the orthodox version of WWII. If you are told that American fighter pilots were ordered to fire on columns of fleeing women and children you will simply not believe it. However, accuracy in reporting history has an important value. We learn from it. The fraud perpetrated on the American public should alert it to future propaganda attempts. Read Diana West’s American Betrayal.
In 1947 Byrnes recorded, “I regret to say that Germans and Japanese still are being held in Allied hands for the use of labor.” Later he recalled, “. . .it is a deplorable fact that thousands of Germans and Japanese are still being held as enforced laborers in violation of solemn international pledges.” (James Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1947, p. 29)
According to Edward Peterson, Eisenhower turned over “some hundreds of thousands [of prisoners] who had fled to the Americans to avoid being taken prisoner by the Russians . . . in May [1945] to the Red Army in a gesture of friendship.” (Edward Peterson, The American Occupation of Germany - Retreat to Victory, p. 116.)
Stephen E. Ambrose provided a simple explanation for this transfer of prisoners of war: “What happened is simple enough: the Allies could not afford to feed the millions of German prisoners at the same level at which they were able to feed German civilians, not to mention the civilians of the liberated countries of Western Europe.” (Steven Ambrose, “Ike and the Disappearing Atrocities,” New York Times Book Review, February 24, 1991.)
Secretary of State Byrnes gave a similar explanation. “In the closing days of the war against Germany we took so many prisoners it was difficult to care for them behind the lines, and guarding them required so many troops that General Eisenhower decided to transfer many of them to the custody of the liberated nations. But these prisoners surrendered to the United States Army and we therefore retained responsibility.” (James Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1947), p. 167)
A State Department memo from the Secretary of State to the U.S. Ambassador in France dated February 25, 1947 mentions 740,000 prisoners transferred to France in July 1945.
In July 1945 SHAEF agreed to provide 1.3 million prisoners for labor in France. (United States Department of State / Foreign relations of the United States, 1947. The British Commonwealth; Europe, 1947, p. 627, http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1947v03&page=627&isize=text)
There you have it. Unfortunately I’m afraid your mind is made up and facts do not impress you.
You’re right. Your facts don’t impress me and not only is my mind made up, I don’t care about a defeated german army after the war. I accept your data but really don’t care about it. We treated prisoners of war from battle well. So we put some german soldiers to work cleaning up the mess they made. What is wrong with that?
I’m only interested in prisoners taken in combat. It is not usual and customary for the victors to take over the welfare of a defeated army.
The world had of course just finished a long horrible war to defeat a gang of sorry bastards that could not just live and let live. Instead they had to go out and try to conquer the world. By the time the war was over we were all sick of their crap and sick of war. They are lucky we wanted to go home or we would have just shot all the bastards. Maybe we should have but we are better than that.
The germans murdered and raped their way across the Soviet Union killing millions in the process. The Russians earned more than a pound of flesh of any sort. Hitler started the bloody mess and german soldiers followed, willingly just like the german people went along with the atrocities committed against the Jews.
So I ask, what would you have expected we do in addition to having rebuilt the entirety of Europe and Japan?
Europe and Germany especially was bombed to hell and what wasn’t bombed was blown up or run over. The economy was in a shambles. I doubt very much if discussing the Morgenthau plan in 1944 starved anyone or crippled the economy any more than it was already.
I read about your book. The Morgenthau Plan didn’t get off the ground and the Marshall Plan replaced it and was executed of course as you well know. It benefited millions who should say thank you to the Allies and especially the US for kicking their asses and making them the success they are today. Sometimes people provide answers and commentary to things that never happened and never became a problem to begin with. Hand wringing. I guess at least they may be interesting to someone but they become academic to most of us. I guess foreign relations wonks at places like Foggy Bottom have time to ponder these things while the rest of the world goes out and just does something.
The figure of less than 500,000 is for captured by the US during combat and removed to the US and other places as POWs. If you want to include the whole former german army after the war as POWs to be interred you may as well include the civilians in your count of hidden atrocities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_United_States
Just like always, the victors get to write the histories and the rest complain, pick holes and write revisionist history because hindsight is perfect and things could have maybe gone better. As for lessons learned and after action reviews, they have a shelf life and are only as good as the last guy who read them. History and the truth are important. It is best to get it right when it is first written before the trail gets cold. Since most people are busy just doing today I guess it is good to have a few who can take the time to accumulate a study of these things and guide us honestly when it is important.
We won, they lost and thank God for that. I shudder to think what they would have done to us had the roles been reversed.
Have a nice life.
I’m glad to hear that you are not impressed by facts. These are not my facts. They are simply facts. They are the things that rational human being use to form an opinion. I’m glad you clarified your statement, “We took less than 500,000 Germans prisoners during the war.” It sounded like 500,000 captured. Actually we only took 25 German prisoners during the war. Let me clarify that statement. We only took 25 left handed vegetarians prisoner. “We treated prisoners of war from battle well.” Many German POWs had fond memories of their imprisonment in the U.S. They were put to work and were not in danger of being killed in combat. Not all were happy though. Many Russians captured in German uniforms attempted suicide when they were informed they were going back to the USSR. “We put some german soldiers to work cleaning up the mess they made. What is wrong with that?” The Geneva convention. Watch the movie Land of Mine about kids clearing mine fields in violation of the Convention. “The germans murdered and raped their way across the Soviet Union killing millions in the process.” How many Russians were killed by the Russians? “The Morgenthau Plan didn’t get off the ground and the Marshall Plan replaced it.” How does something that didn’t get off the ground get replaced. The Marshall Plan was instituted in 1947 because France and Italy were on the verge of electing Communist governments. The destruction of the European economy designed by Soviet agent Harry Dexter White was working perfectly until then.
There were also prisoner of war camps in Wisconsin and in the South. The camps in Wisconsin were practically idyllic for German prisoners because a lot of Wisconsinites were first and second generation Germans themselves.
The camps in the South reached a point were those German POWs who proved not to be a problem were allowed to go into towns and stroll around, go shopping and go to movie houses where to the consternation of black residents they were allowed to sit in the “Whites Only’’ sections.
I hope I didn’t come across as somehow being an apologist for Japanese brutality in WWII...because there isn’t any excuse for that. When you learn of what they did, there is an element of sadism to it. Makes one shudder to think of it.
“The Japanese were brainwashed by their leaders. We are all susceptible to it, but the Japanese really took to it.”
So were the Germans and Italians.
In sports, athletics, politics and the military you need to feel like you can win. That makes a lot of us vulnerable.
Today, the Muslims, our liberals and BLMers may be most susceptible to brainwashing.
I’ll keep you in mind with the military stuff.
A new one featuring Joe Beyrle was uploaded today. Interesting guy.
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