Eisenhower the "Swedish
"God, I hate the Germans..." --Dwight David Eisenhower
in a letter to his wife in September, 1944
"We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has
witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own
country. Despite these holocausts ..."
|Is this man a war criminal?
|Is this man a jew?
|By renaming POWs as DEFs, he
bypassed the Geneva Convention, a typical jew mentality. |
|Changing his name from Eisenhauer to Eisenhower is a
typical jew tactic. |
A comparison of German censuses of 1946 and 1950 shows the effect
of food shortages. The 1950 census showed 5.7 million people fewer than there should have
been according to the number of people recorded in the 1946 census, minus officially
reported deaths, plus births and "immigrants" (people expelled from the east and
returning prisoners) in the period from 1946 to 1950. The total tally of unacknowledged
deaths among prisoners, refugees and non-expelled civilians comes to about nine million people between 1945 and 1950, far more than the
number who died during the war itself. All of these deaths were surplus to those actually
reported. Moreover, those deaths occurred in peacetime while the world media did not
bother to report of them.
The Missing Holocaust
"I've checked out Churchill's Second World War and the statement
is quite correct not a single mention of Nazi 'gas chambers,' a
'genocide' of the Jews, or of 'six million' Jewish victims of the war.
This is astonishing. How can it be explained?
Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe is a book of 559 pages; the six
volumes of Churchill's Second World War total 4,448 pages; and
de Gaulle's three-volume MÃ©moires de guerre is 2,054 pages. In this
mass of writing, which altogether totals 7,061 pages (not including
the introductory parts), published from 1948 to 1959, one will find
no mention either of Nazi 'gas chambers,' a 'genocide' of the Jews,
or of 'six million' Jewish victims of the war."
Had Jewish Blood
West Point yearbook
West Point was very conscious of any '
Non-White' candidates. It was
obvious from Eisenhower's appearance that he was carrying
another race's blood. The headmaster quizzed him and he admitted
he had Jewish ancestors. His father was a Swedish Jew who
married a Swedish gentile woman.
During World War II when Col. Eisenhower was working for Gen.
Douglas McArthur in the South Pacific, McArthur protested to his
superiors in Washington (DC) that Eisenhower was incompetent and
that he did not want Eisenhower on his staff. In 1943,
Washington not only transferred Col. Eisenhower to Europe but
promoted him over more than 30 more experienced senior officers
to five star general and placed him in charge of all the US
forces in Europe.
Eisenhower Is A derivative Of
Eisenhauer A Jewish Name
Eisenhower Was Considered Incompetent
During World War II when Col. Eisenhower was working
for Gen. Douglas McArthur in the South Pacific, McArthur
protested to his superiors in Washington (DC) that
Eisenhower was incompetent and that he did not want
Eisenhower on his staff. In 1943, Washington not only
transferred Col. Eisenhower to Europe but promoted him
over more than 30 more experienced senior officers to
five star general and placed him in charge of all the US
forces in Europe.
Bernard Baruch was behind Eisenhower
His military promotions on the eve of WWII
and during the war are curious to say the least.
Zionists found an Army officer who had been a
military failure until Bernard Baruch promoted
him to General.
His actions and responsibilities during and
after the war: direct, personal negotiations
with Stalin on the placements of the armies (and
the surrender of territory won by Americans,
with the ceding of that territory to the
Eisenhower flaunts his mistress
West Point was very conscious of any ' Non-White' candidates. It was obvious from
Eisenhower's appearance that he was carrying another race's blood. The headmaster quizzed
him and he admitted he had Jewish ancestors
"It was clear in 1952 that the Republicans would return to the White House. Harry
Truman* had more problems than the Alger Hiss scandal. "Containment" was simply
not working. Sicne the concept's origination, hundreds of millions of people had fallen
under Communist domination. Americans sensed the need for a strong new leader who could
stand up to the Soviets. The favorite of the GOP's rank and file was Senator Robert Taft
of Ohio, the son of the former President, and an outspoken foe of Communism.
Douglas Macarthur openly supported Taft, who entertained plans to make the general his
running mate. It was the Establishment's aversion to this candidacy that brought Dwight D.
In 1941, the year we went to war, Eisenhower or "Ike", was a lieutenant colonel
who had never seen a battle in his life. Yet by 1943 he had become a four-star general and
supreme commander of the Allied forces in Western Europe...After the war Eisenhower
commanded U.S. occupation forces in Germany. He returned home to become US Chief of
Staff...Bernanrd Baruch became a close acquaintance. Althihg he had no academic
background, Eisenhower was made president of Columbia University in 1948. He joined the
Council on Foreign Relations,...
The Establishment knew that to divest Taft and Macarthur of the Republican nomination,
they would have to present a candidate who looked incredibly tough and anti-Communist.
General Eisenhower, who was still wearing an aura of World War II glory, became their
By no stretch of the imagination was Ike a Republican teaditionalist. In fact, until he
ran, he had no party affiliation...At the Republican nominating convention, "dirty
tricks" abounded. The rules for selecting delegates were changed; Taft delegations
from Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas were thrown out and replaced by Eisenhower's
supporters...Once again, the Establishment had succeeded in controlling both
The SHADOWS OF POWER, by James Perloff. pp. 102-103.
* Since the inauguration of perpetual peace by the United Notions, only two Presidents,
Sheeny Truman (20) and a crook from Texas (21), have had the fun of shipping large numbers
of American men to be slaughtered on the other side of the globe, and creating an excuse
for massively increased taxation to bleed the boobs some more.
(20. His father was a Sheeny, his mother, a White woman, so he was not a Jew by orthodox
(21. Johnson, a small-time politician, on whom see J. Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at
Lyndon, was married to and supervised by a Kikess, who probably guided him to power.
His character is adequately shown by the fact that he had or simulated a tantrum when some
Vietnamese boats supposedly fired at an American destroyer, but when the Kikes bombed and
torpedoed the U.S.S. Liberty, killed many American sailors, and tried to sink the little
ship without survivors so that they could blame the Egyptians, Lyndon personally forbade
the ships of the U.S. Navy near the scene to go to the assistance of the ship that had
been detached from their squadron and personally expressed the hope that the Sheenies
would succeed in killing all those stupid American swine on the American naval vessel. He
was not impeached, convicted of high treason, and shot.)
"It is noteworthy that Rabbi Gruenewald ignores the fact that Truman's father was a
Sheeny. The pious rabbi may have been applying the orthodox criterion that the sons of
Jews by White women are not really Jews, or he may have thought it tactless to mention
that Americans, with their simplistic notions of heredity, thought Truman half-Jewish but
were evidently not alarmed. A little later, he likewise makes no mention of the Jews'
share of Franklin Roosevelt.)"
Eisenhower: JEW/NEGRO ANCESTRY
The following document was faxed to Richard Claypool [Head of U.S. Presidential Libraries,
Maryland] on June 16th 2002 , at (301) 837 3218 , concerning Anne Morrow's identity
investigation. A slightly modified version was also faxed on this same date to Harold Holt
[Executive Director, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library , Kansas] , at (785) 263 4218.
"...Anne Morrow & myself have discovered that the name & spelling of
Eisenhower was & has been corrupted from it's original spelling Eisenhauer. Although
your establishment discounts Eisenhower's Jewish &/or Negro ancestry [see; http://www.Palatinepress.com/images/teasleyletter2.gif]
the corruption of the original spelling , to the existing & publicly embraced &
accepted Eisenhower implies the former President's descendents was a Jewish , perhaps even
a German bloodline. This further supports Anne Morrow's story & that she in fact
descended from "old , old blood out of Europe." Anne Morrow & myself have
substantiated that the reason for the Eisenhauer name corruption to Eisenhower was merely
for public relations during World War II & through-out the Cold War , & to cloak
the true heritage & bloodline of Dwight D. Eisenhower. This corruption was positively
reflected & perpetuated most importantly within the confines of education circles.
The names Campbell , Gabbard & Morrow seem to be interlocked & are seemingly
different names for the same bloodline , which is intended to hide the heritage &
origins of an Eisenhauer (Eisenhower) line which extends back into Europe (under most
likely , many other different names)."
The following document was faxed to Richard Claypool [Head of U.S. Presidential
Libraries, Maryland] on June 16th 2002 , at (301) 837 3218 , concerning Anne Morrow's
identity investigation. A slightly modified version was also faxed on this same date to
Harold Holt [Executive Director, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library , Kansas] , at (785) 263
It was Anne Morrow who confided in me , many months ago , after I published a
non-related article in my independently owned & operated publication , BEACHHEAD , her
belief that she was in fact the illegitimiate daughter of former U.S. President Dwight D.
Eisenhower & her biological mother may in fact be Dwight D. Eisenhower's former driver
, Kay Summersby. Rumours were confirmed in 1975 , when Kay Summersby wrote a book titled;
"Past Forgetting; My Love Affair With Dwight D. Eisenhower". It was
Mr.Eisenhower's superior General George Marshall who quashed a plan by Dwight D.
Eisenhower to divorce his wife Mamie & marry Summersby. It has been stated ,
General.Marshall threatened to bust Eisenhower out of the military while fighting in
Europe [World War II] , if he was to go ahead & marry Summersby & divorce Mamie.
As docummented , General George Marshall served in President Truman's Cabinet , as
Secretary of State & then as , Secretary of Defense.
Through my own genealogical research I have established a definite link betweeen the
names Campbell , Gabbard , Morrow & Eisenhower. However , Anne Morrow & myself
have discovered that the name & spelling of Eisenhower was & has been corrupted
from it's original spelling Eisenhauer. Although your establishment discounts Eisenhower's
Jewish &/or Negro ancestry [see; http://www.Palatinepress.com/images/teasleyletter2.gif]
the corruption of the original spelling , to the existing & publicly embraced &
accepted Eisenhower implies the former President's descendents was a Jewish , perhaps even
a German bloodline. This further supports Anne Morrow's story & that she in
fact descended from "old , old blood out of Europe." Anne Morrow & myself
have substantiated that the reason for the Eisenhauer name corruption to Eisenhower was
merely for public relations during World War II & through-out the Cold War , & to
cloak the true heritage & bloodline of Dwight D. Eisenhower. This corruption was
positively reflected & perpetuated most importantly within the confines of education
"General DWIGHT EISENHOWER (appropriately named "The Swedish Jew" by
fellow West Point cadets) was
promoted over the heads of many more qualified officers for a reason. He
agreed, apparently, to exchange America's honor quid pro quo for 5-Stars and glory.
After the war, at the dedication of a New York City park honoring the Bernard Baruch
family, key-note speaker Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, USA-Ret., admitted: As a young unknown
major I took the wisest step of my life. I consulted Mr. Baruch. (General Dwight D.
Eisenhower, U.S. Army), cited by A.K. CHESTERTON, op. cit., The New Unhappy Lords.)
"...it is hard to escape the conclusion that Dwight Eisenhower was a war criminal
of epic proportions. His (DEF) [POW camp] policy killed more Germans in peace than were
killed in the European Theatre.......one Allied officer compared the American camps to
Buchenwald........It is known, and will be documented in my upcoming book in newsprint
format, that the Allies had sufficient stockpiles of food and medicine to care for these
German soldiers. This was deliberately and intentionally denied them."
Professor Revilo P. Oliver (February 1992):
The real influx of savages began in the administration of the filthy mongrel called
Eisenhower, noted for his open and vicious hatred of Germans and dissimulated hatred
of other Aryans, and his scrapping of what was left of the American Constitution.
"Canada was thus ready for the next act in her enemies' program, and one is
reminded of the trick used so effectively in the United States when the Republican Party
was bought to install in the White House "Barney" Baruch's tool, a mongrel named
(5. Eisenhower's mother was probably a quadroon. His features were distinctly Negroid
when he was a cadet at West Point, where he was barely able to "squeak through"
to a commission.)
ALSO: "It is noteworthy that
Rabbi Gruenewald ignores the fact that Truman's father was a Sheeny. The pious rabbi may
have been applying the orthodox criterion that the sons of Jews by White women are not
really Jews, or he may have thought it tactless to mention that Americans, with their
simplistic notions of heredity, thought Truman half-Jewish but were evidently not alarmed.
A little later, he likewise makes no mention of the Jews' share of Franklin
Roosevelt" (REVILO OLIVER) http://www.resist.com/Articles/rpo/1987_Poor_Old_Ronnie.html
The issue of "Life" I have cited contains other significant photographs: the
father of the disgusting creature named Harry Truman was obviously a Sheeny; the
unfortunate mother seems to be a White woman.)
Following WWII, the part negro Eisenhower reclassified surrendering German forces as
"unarmed enemy forces", thus removing them from the protection of the Geneva
Convention which applied to "prisoners of war". This gave them the latitude to
starve to death over one million German "combatants". Read Bacque's Other
Losses. There are two printings. Seek the Canadian version as the American version has
been tainted by jew sanitization.
Kill the Best Gentiles by James Von BrunnThis new book is available for free download of the first six chapters. This
carefully documented treatise exposes the Jews and explains what you must do to protect
your White family. Kill the Best Gentiles! Is a must for every concerned parent and a
manual for every student of World History.
Surf over and check it out at:
15 August 2002
Dear Mr. Maguire
In your article Elite American Political Leadership you mention Eisenhower's nickname
"The Swedish Jew". I am interested to know how he got that nickname. To my
knowledge Eisenhower did not have anything to do with Sweden.
Best Regards -- Mr. J. -- Northern Europa
PS! I am an avid FAEM-reader and have been for the last two years. I have read almost
everything posted on the site. Dear Mr. J.,
<b>Eisenhower was nicknamed "The Swedish Jew" as a cadet at the
United States Military Academy at West Point. In Ike's time USMA cadets were required to
be 100% white and non-negroid, or as close to that as medical doctors and geneological
research could then ascertain. Serious official questions arose about Ike's obvious part
non-white genetic heritage. These appeared to be negroid in origin. "Ike"
explained this away as being due to a Jewish ancestor from Sweden, hence the nickname
"The Swedish Jew". </b>
Military Academy cadets and other officer candidates get to know each other
extremely well during their schooling, provided it's conducted on an intensive basis as
U.S. officer schooling formerly was. Everyone is at close quarters running 24/7. There's
no place to hide character traits in those conditions. Cadet nicknames are usually
extremely descriptive. And when they're keyed to obvious non-white themes it's a warning
signal to look deeper. Here's another example. The U.S. Pacific Fleet commander who
allowed himself to be surprised at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, was nicknamed
"Mustapha" as a midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.
Other "Mustaphas" in Egypt and Syria allowed this to happen to themselves in
The academy and officer training schools (used?) to take official advantage of that close
quarters peer knowledge through an anonymous peer rating mechanism. I knew this as
"Top Five/Bottom Five" and it meant what it said. Officer candidates rated their
platoon fellows on leadership in rank order from Top One to Bottom x. People who
accumulated too many "Bottom Five" rankings were automatically scheduled for
periodic official leadership review boards for enquiry into whether they should be
dismissed without commission. The presumption of such boards used to be such individuals
should be dismissed unless they could prove they were worthy of commission. Very, very few
survived such review boards.
Judeo-Marxist Academics like the military scribbler Weigley and the Jew military
'sociologist' Moscowitz are generally extremely hostile to processes like peer rating and
also to troop election of officers at regimental level and below. The admixture of females
has added feminist hostility to the opposition to such processes. The long-term result is
a corps of military leaders who possess less and less confidence where it really counts.
That's among their soldiers. This has gone so far that the average U.S. ground combat unit
is unusable for its designed purpose.
After long military experience and study the wisdom of both peer ratings and also electing
regimental officers in militia and citizen-soldier units seems more and more profound to
me. I think the only safeguard needed is a veto power for general officers to remove
obvious misfits. You can conduct all the bureaucratic schooling processes you want. But if
an officer does not possess the confidence of his troops they will not follow him in
combat, obey his orders or stay the course in difficult times. Consequently years of
academic training simply go to waste. Electing first and schooling second is probably the
P.S. The leadership qualities required from military leaders and from political leaders
are not identical. Some individuals combine these two attribute sets. Hitler did not
combine these qualities, at least at the lower infantry unit level. This is proven by the
fact he entered the Bavarian Army as a private and emerged after four years of war as a
corporal. Despite this many fellow war veterans from his former battalion willingly
followed him as a political leader, including his former battalion sergeant-major and some
Nineteenth Century America managed to select many men for high office who did combine both
leadership sets in fairly large numbers. This more than anything explains the rapid
conquest of the continent. It was not 'luck'. The old American Republic (long since
vanished) actually conformed very closely in practice to the ideals of the old Roman
Republic in both military process and results. The Roman Republic constitutionally
required that political leaders prove themselves as leaders in war. This was an ideal for
early Americans but not a definite legal requirement. Had the Founding Fathers mandated
this in the Constitution our history would have turned out very differently. Certainly
Canada, Mexico and Cuba would not exist as independent states. Whether this would have
prevented subsequent miscegenation or the Civil War is another question.
And results (output) are the real measure of military efficiency (or any other
efficiency). The military stature and efficiency of a state is not measured by the numbers
of troops raised or the percentage of the budget applied to 'military' appropriations;
i.e. inputs. The Neo-con pseudo-patriots of the Judeo-Republican Party (non-veterans to a
womandman) do think in these Communist terms of inputs. If this measurement were valid
then Italy would be one of the military success stories of the 20th Century rather than
one of the premier failures. When judged by this standard of results 19th Century America
was a resounding success as a military state. Twentieth Century America was a military
failure to the point that political loss of territory is now occuring in the Southwest.
P.P.S. Note to the former student of Russell F. Weigley who wrote in to defend him.
In my 1984 edition of Weigley's "History of the United States Army" he devotes
about 40 pages to the War of 1812. He dedicates nearly all of this to harping on the
relatively small Congressional size authorization and even lower actual personnel fill
(about 20,000) of the "Regular Army". In this section Weigley glosses over the
militia contribution in the sentence "this number was exclusive of those men from the
volunteer and common militias who served for short periods against British raids and
invasions in their own districts and who may have numbered in the hundreds of
Then Weigley reverts back to beating to death obscurities like poor Regular Army horse
recruitment and rotten contractor commissary stores. The obscure "Battle of Lundy's
Lane" (actually a minor skirmish around Niagara) receives an extensive autopsy. The
Battles of Put-in Bay, New Orleans and General Harrison's campaign to reconquer the
Northwest are ignored. These large-scale decisive events were commanded by regular
officers leading Weigley's ignored militia.
And New Orleans was decisive despite being fought after 'peace' was signed. Anyone who
thinks the extermination of Britain's best veteran regiments at the hands of frontier
militia didn't exercise a subsequent deterrent effect on British decision-making doesn't
understand how governments arrive at war and peace decisions. The British decision to
negotiate over "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!" in the 1840s was undoubtedly
influenced by that memory.
If Weigley had ever marched even once 20 miles with a 100 pound pack in 100 degree heat he
would have understood something. Even 100,000 perfectly trained regulars alone would have
resulted in American defeat. In the early 19th Century transport proceeded by foot, by
horse or by sea. Since the British had overall naval superiority moving troops by sea
convoy was not possible. This left marching on land. The factors of force/space/time
applied to North America dictated that the early Republic had to rely on 'militia'. This
was especially true when fighting an enemy possessing command of the sea and the choice of
where and when to strike with large amphibious raiding parties. There was no possibility
of a timely counter-concentration of a central reserve at the tactical level, especially
on defense. This comes back to Nathan Bedford Forrest's "he who gets theah fustest
with mostest." Overall numbers are irrelevant in such conditions unless you create a
'nation in arms' as was done by the Militia Act of 1792.
Like I said, Weigley's book is worthless garbage that should be collected up and pulped
We are not impressed. The evidence you have presented
would not make a very good case in eugenics court.
College high-jinks remarks are not at all convincing.
You must have something considerably more substantial.
Also, having a Jew find a shabbos goy does not make such
a protï¿½gï¿½ a Jew. Remember Lord Beaconfield's Coningsby?
One need not be a Jew to be a swine (if we may be allowed
to disparage swine in this disrespectful manner).
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 2:01 PM
Subject: Eisenhower had Jewish blood
Eisenhower had Jewish
One Million German POWs
Killed After WWII By US & France
Environment News Service
Excerpt from - OTHER LOSSES
By James Bacque
June, 1945 US POW camp in Germany
"Starting in April 1945, the United States Army and the French Army
casually annihilated one million [German] men, most of them in
American camps . . . Eisenhower's hatred, passed through the lens of
a compliant military bureaucracy, produced the horror of death camps
unequalled by anything in American history . . . an enormous war
--Col. Ernest F. Fisher, PhD Lt.
101 st Airborne Division, Senior Historian, United States Army
From Stephen R.
I heard this kind of story repeatedly in the late 1940's. Some were
much worse as to numbers involved. I was super patriotic, and told a
kid his relative was a liar.
One Sunday, he came to my house and got me, and I heard a drunken
discourse from his mothers' scarey boyfriend who had been a GI guard.
He became hysterical talking about burying 100's per day. I have no
doubt this was true. He was with some kind of roving death squad.
They arrived at the German POW camps late in 1945, took selected
prisoners from shelters to open fields in mid-Winter. And watched
them in shifts until they were dead.
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 21:03:23 -0500
Subject: Eisenhower's Holocaust: I DON'T like IKE!
From: "Bob Jones" <email@example.com>
IKE, THE KIKE! Eisenhower's Holocaust!
"God, I hate the Germans..." --Dwight David Eisenhower
in a letter to his wife in September, 1944.
First, I want you to picture something in your
mind. You are a German soldier who survived through the
battles of World II. You were not really politically
involved, and your parents were also indifferent to
politics, but suddenly your education was interrupted
and you were drafted into the German army and told
where to fight. Now, in the Spring of 1945, you see
that your country has been demolished by the Allies,
your cities lie in ruins, and half of your family has
been killed or is missing. Now, your unit is being
surrounded, and it is finally time to surrender. The
fact is, there is no other choice.
It has been a long, cold winter. The German army
rations have not been all that good, but you managed to
survive. Spring came late that year, with weeks of cold
rainy weather in demolished Europe. Your boots are
tattered, your uniform is falling apart, and the stress
of surrender and the confusion that lies ahead for you
has your guts being torn out. Now, it is over, you must
surrender or be shot. This is war and the real world.
You are taken as a German Prisoner of War into
American hands. The Americans had 200 such Prisoner of
War camps scattered across Germany. You are marched to
a compound surrounded with barbed wire fences as far as
the eye can see. Thousands upon thousands of your
fellow German soldiers are already in this make-shift
corral. You see no evidence of a latrine and after
three hours of marching through the mud of the spring
rain, the comfort of a latrine is upper-most in your
mind. You are driven through the heavily guarded gate
and find yourself free to move about, and you begin the
futile search for the latrine. Finally, you ask for
directions, and are informed that no such luxury
exists. No more time. You find a place and squat. First
you were exhausted, then hungry, then fearful, and
now--dirty. Hundreds more German prisoners are behind
you, pushing you on, jamming you together and every one
of them searching for the latrine as soon as they could
do so. Now, late in the day, there is no space to even
squat, much less sit down to rest your weary legs. None
of the prisoners, you quickly learn, have had any food
that day, in fact there was no food while in the
American hands that any surviving prisoner can testify
to. No one has eaten any food for weeks, and they are
slowly starving and dying.
But, they can't do this to us! There are the
Geneva Convention rules for the treatment of Prisoners
of War. There must be some mistake! Hope continues
through the night, with no shelter from the cold,
biting rain. Your uniform is sopping wet, and formerly
brave soldiers are weeping all around you, as buddy
after buddy dies from the lack of food, water, sleep
and shelter from the weather. After weeks of this, your
own hope bleeds off into dispair, and finally you
actually begin to envy those who, having surrendered
first manhood and then dignity, now also surrender life
itself. More hopeless weeks go by. Finally, the last
thing you remember is falling, unable to get up, and
lying face down in the mud mixed with the excrement of
those who have gone before.
Your body will be picked up long after it is cold,
and taken to a special tent where your clothing is
stripped off. So that you will be quickly forgotten,
and never again identified, your dog-tag is snipped in
half and your body along with those of your fellow
soldiers are covered with chemicals for rapid
decomposition and buried. You were not one of the
exceptions, for more than one million, seven hundred
thousand German Prisoners of War died from a deliberate
policy of extermination by starvation, exposure, and
disease -under direct orders of General Dwight David
One month before the end of World War 11, General
Eisenhower issued special orders concerning the
treatment of German Prisoners and specific in the
language of those orders was this statement, "Prison
enclosures are to provide no shelter or other
comforts." Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose, who
was given access to the Eisenhower personal letters,
states that he proposed to exterminate the entire
German General Staff, thousands of people, after the
war. Eisenhower, in his personal letters, did not
merely hate the Nazi Regime, and the few who imposed
its will down from the top, but that he hated the
German people as a race. It was his personal intent to
destroy as many of them as he could, and one way was to
wipe out as many prisoners of war as possible. Of
course, that was illegal under International law, so he
issued an order on March 10, 1945 and verified by his
initials on a cable of that date, that German Prisoners
of War be redesignated as "Disarmed Enemy Forces"
called in these reports as DEF. He ordered that these
Germans did not fall under the Geneva Rules, and were
not to be fed or given any water or medical attention.
The Swiss Red Cross was not to inspect the camps, for
under the DEF classification, they had no such
authority or jurisdiction.
Months after the war was officially over,
Eisenhower's special German DEF camps were still in
operation forcing the men into confinement, but denying
that they were prisoners. As soon as the war was over,
General George Patton simply turned his prisoners loose
to fend for themselves and find their way home as best
they could. Eisenhower was furious, and issued a
specific order to Patton, to turn these men over to the
DEF camps. Knowing Patton as we do from history, we
know that these orders were largely ignored, and it may
well be that Patton's untimely and curious death may
have been a result of what he knew about these wretched
Eisenhower DEF camps.
The book, OTHER LOSSES, found its way a few months
ago into the hands of a Canadian news reporter, Peter
Worthington, of the OTTAWA SUN. He did his own research
through contacts he had in Canada, and reported in his
column on September 12,1989 the following, in part:
"...it is hard to escape the conclusion that
Dwight Eisenhower was a war criminal of epic
proportions. His (DEF) policy killed more Germans in
peace than were killed in the European Theatre."
"For years we have blamed the 1.7 million missing
German POW's on the Russians. Until now, no one dug too
deeply ... Witnesses and survivors have been
interviewed by the author; one Allied officer compared
the American camps to Buchenwald."
It is known, and will be documented in my upcoming
book in newsprint format, that the Allies had
sufficient stockpiles of food and medicine to care for
these German soldiers. This was deliberately and
intentionally denied them. Many men died of gangrene
from frostbite due to deliberate exposure. Local German
people who offered these men food, were denied. General
Patton's Third Army was the only command in the
European Theatre to release significant numbers of
Germans. Others, such as Omar Bradley and General
J.C.H. Lee, Commander of Com Z, tried, and ordered the
release of prisoners within a week of the war's end.
However, a SHAEF Order, signed by Eisenhower,
countermanded them on May 15th.
Does that make you angry? What will it take to get
the average apathetic American involved in saving his
country from such traitors at the top? Thirty years
ago, amid the high popularity of Eisenhower, a book was
written setting out the political and moral philosophy;
of Dwight David Eisenhower called, THE POLITICIAN, by
This year is the 107th Anniversary of Eisenhower's
birth in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890, the son of
Jacob David Eisenhower and his wife Ida. Everyone is
all excited about the celebration of this landmark in
the history of "this American patriot." Senator Robert
Dole, in honor of the Commander of the American Death
Camps, proposed that Washington's Dulles Airport be
renamed the Eisenhower Airport!
The UNITED STATES MINT in Philadelphia, PA is
actually issuing a special Eisenhower Centennial Silver
Dollar for only $25 each. They will only mint 4 million
of these collector's items, and veteran's magazines are
promoting these coins under the slogan, "Remember the
Man ... Remember the Times.." Pardon me if I
There will be some veterans who will not be buying
these coins. Two will be Col. James Mason and Col.
Charles Beasley who were in the U.S. Army Medical Corps
who published a paper on the Eisenhower Death Camps in
1950. They stated in part:
"Huddled close together for warmth, behind the
barbed wire was a most awesome sight-- nearly 100,000
haggard, apathetic, dirty, gaunt, blank-staring men
clad in dirty gray uniforms, and standing ankle deep in
mud .... water was a major problem, yet only 200 yards
away the River Rhine was running bankfull."
Another Veteran, who will not be buying any of the
Eisenhower Silver Dollars is Martin Brech of Mahopac,
New York, a semi-retired professor of philosophy at
Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, NY. In 1945, Brech was an
18 year old Private First Class in Company C of the
14th Infantry, assigned as a guard and interpreter at
the Eisenhower Death Camp at Andernach, along the Rhine
River. He stated for SPOTLIGHT, February 12, 1990:
"My protests (regarding treatment of the German
DEF'S) were met with hostility or indifference, and
when I threw our ample rations to them over the barbed
wire. I was threatened, making it clear that it was our
deliberate policy not to adequately feed them."
"When they caught me throwing C- Rations over the
fence, they threatened me with imprisonment. One
Captain told me that he would shoot me if he saw me
again tossing food to the Germans .... Some of the men
were really only boys 13 years of age .... Some of the
prisoners were old men drafted by Hitler in his last
ditch stand .... I understand that average weight of
the prisoners at Andernach was 90 pounds ... I have
received threats ... Nevertheless, this ... has
liberated me, for I may now be heard when I relate the
horrible atrocity I witnessed as a prison guard for one
of 'Ike's death camps' along the Rhine."
Betty Lou Smith Hanson
Note: Remember the photo of Ike's West Point
yearbook picture when he was dubbed "IKE, THE TERRIBLE
SWEDISH JEW"? By the way, he was next, or nearly so, to
the last in his class. This article was first printed
in 1990, but we thought it was meaningfull to reprint
(Note: During Cadet Eisenhower's time at West
Point Academy, Eisenhower was summoned to the office of
the headmaster and was asked some pointed questions. At
the time, it was routine procedure to test a cadet's
blood to insure White racial integrety.
Apparently there was a question of Eisenhower's
racial lineage and this was brought to Eisenhower's
attention by the headmaster. When asked if he was part
Oriental, Eisenhower replied in the negative. After
some discussion, Eisenhower admitted having some Jewish
background. The headmaster then reportedly said,
"That's where you get your Oriental blood?". Although
he was allowed to remain at the academy, word got
around since this was a time in history when non-Whites
were not allowed into the academy.
Later, in Eisenhower's West Point Military Academy
graduating class yearbook, published in 1915,
Eisenhower is identified as a "terrible Swedish Jew."
Wherever Eisenhower went during his military
career, Eisenhower's Jewish background and secondary
manifesting behavior was a concern to his fellow
During World War II when Col. Eisenhower was
working for Gen. Douglas McArthur in the South Pacific,
McArthur protested to his superiors in Washington (DC)
that Eisenhower was incompetent and that he did not
want Eisenhower on his staff.
In 1943, Washington not only transferred Col.
Eisenhower to Europe but promoted him over more than 30
more experienced senior officers to five star general
and placed him in charge of all the US forces in
Europe. Thus it comes as no surprise that General
George Patton, a real Aryan warrior, hated Eisenhower.)
WAR CRIMES - U.S.A. (The Final Truth About WW II)
A Book Review on OTHER LOSSES
by Lt. Col. Gordon "Jack" Mohr, AUS Ret.
". . . there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed: and hid that shall not
be made known." - Matthew 10:26
The Final Truth About World War II
Is America finally about to be thrown a scrap or two of historical truth? If so, have the
Soviet relations of recent months, which has caused its leaders to admit to the murder of
millions of their own people, allowed a few rays of truth to filter down and penetrate the
Iron Curtain which has been erected over World War II, and which has kept vital facts from
Something out of the ordinary seems to be going on within America's ruling circles. Are we
finally to be told the truth about World War II?
Recently a book was written by an eminent Canadian author, James Bacque, of Toronto. It is
titled OTHER LOSSES and deserves the widest possible distribution in the United States,
especially among our veterans who fought World War II. Although Mr. Bacque's book does not
picture America and her allies in a favorable light, it has had an amazing reception in
Canada, although the people of the United States, for the most part have been kept in the
dark about one of the most heinous episodes of World War II, which revolves around the
Supreme Commander of the Allies in Europe, Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower, who was known
during his days at West Point as that "terrible Swedish Jew."
I have my own opinions of Dwight David Eisenhower, opinions formed during the early days
of World War II, from information I received from officers who knew "Ike" before
he became Supreme Commander.
During the days before World War II, "Ike," as he was affectionately called, was
noted as a ''ladies man, and the best damned bridge player on the Post." (Quotation
not mine.) When anyone would mention Ike as a troop commander, it was met with hilarious,
profane skepticism. Then too, my opinions of Ike were formed by the attitude of my
Commanding General, Gen. George Patton, who looked on Eisenhower as a "whimp,"
not worthy of his rank.
As many of you will remember, Ike was promoted to Supreme Commander in Europe. From
Lieutenant Colonel, in early 1941, Eisenhower was promoted to full Colonel in March 1941,
to Brigadier General (temporary) in September. In February 1942, after he became a
favorite of Gen. George Marshall during the Louisiana Maneuvers, he was appointed
Assistant Chief of the War Plans Division. About this time, Ike became acquainted with the
daughter of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and she introduced her boy friend to
"pappa." Evidently F.D.R. recognized in this young officer, a man who would
agree with his plans and who would do anything to get promoted. This began a rapid spiral
of promotions which by-passed many officers who outranked him and who were much more
qualified for the posts he occupied. He became Chief of Operations Division, War
Department General Staff (March, 1942), to Commanding General of the European Theater of
Operations in June 1942, to Allied Commander in Chief, for the invasion of North Africa
(November, 1942), Sicily, (May 1943), Italy (September, 1943) and finally to his ultimate
designation by President F.D.R. as Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force for the
invasion of Europe.
It was Eisenhower's advise to F.D.R. and Churchill, which caused the war to drag on for
two extra years, resulting in millions of deaths on both sides, and hundreds of billions
of dollars of profit for Eisenhower's racial brethren, the International bankers, who
financed both sides.
In early 1943, General Patton and the British Commander, Gen. Montgomery, presented a plan
to Churchill and F.D.R. which called for the invasion of Europe through the "soft
underbelly of Europe." This would have liberated all the eastern European countries
from Communist control and would have ended the war in 1943.
But Eisenhower's hatred of the Germans, which was openly shown many times during those
terrible days of the war, demanded that as many Germans as possible be made to suffer for
their part in the war.
It might be well to state here, that as early as 1902, International Jewry had a plan for
the destruction of Christianity in Europe.
This called for the destruction, first of Czarist Russia, which took place in 1917, and
then for the destruction of Germany. A war chest of some $2-billion was set aside for this
purpose, long before a man named Adolf Hitler came on the scene. When Churchill and F.D.R.
listened to the advice of Stalin, instead of their two best military leaders, it gave
Stalin two years to establish control over all of Eastern Europe, which is now known as
the Warsaw Pact Nations.
We can see the further treason in Eisenhower's actions, when in 1945, as Patton's armored
forces swept into Germany, they were held back from entering Berlin, and were even ordered
to withdraw to the Western borders of Germany, until Soviet troops could enter Germany.
Any military commander "worth their salt," knows that Patton could have ended
the war on the Eastern border of Germany and that country would have never been divided.
Patton by this time was beginning to realize that a conspiracy existed among the top war
leaders, which were keeping him from the victory he so richly deserved. It was a traumatic
lesson which was to be later repeated with General Douglas MacArthur in Korea, when he was
not allowed to attack enemy positions north of the Yalu River.
The One Worlder's in Washington, D.C., and London had other plans and aided Stalin in his
rape of Eastern Europe and Germany.
It was the "terrible Swedish Jew" Eisenhower, whose open hatred of everything
German, caused him to promote Operation Keelhaul, at the end of the war, where thousands
of anti-Communist fighters, who had surrendered to American forces, were forced at bayonet
point, back to the tender mercies of the Communists. Thousands of them were murdered
outright, or disappeared into the Gulags of Russia.
Eisenhower returned to the States, made a hero by the controlled prostitute press of
America, and his popularity from a populace he had betrayed, was such that he became the
34th President of the United States in 1953.
Eisenhower was quoted at lie war's end as saying: ''I hate war as only a soldier who has
lived through it can only as one who has seen it's brutality, it's futility, it's
Stupidity" But he did not hate it as much as he hated Germans, and he took a terrible
Jewish revenge on over a million surrendered German soldiers and civilians when the war
ended. Praised by the media and the ''kept'' historians, this man was directly responsible
for one of the most reprehensible acts in the history of civilized warfare. One which
should put him in the same class with Atilla the Hun and other barbarians.
The peace which was inflicted on a completely defeated Germany in 1945, was called the
Morgenthau Plan. It was promoted by Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, a Jew,
who later stated that most of the ideas for this plan had come from Eisenhower.
Now, after a tremendous research of over twenty years, the truth about this Jew Commander
of America's forces, who became the 34th President of the United States, can be known.
In 1945, during the post-World War II period, American foreign policy was largely in the
hands of a small group of very powerful Zionists based in Washington, D.C. This secret,
invisible government, which has controlled America for over fifty years, was headed then
by Sen. Herbert Lehman; Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, and Secretary of the
Treasury, Henry Morgenthau. They drew up the "blueprint" for a plan, which the
enthusiastic Eisenhower carried out in Europe, which was the most monstrous policy of hate
and vengeance known in the annals of civilized history.
This policy is still in operation today, fifty years later, where media pundits, twisting,
exaggerating, and even manufacturing historical claims, have hounded, harassed, and had
arrested 70 and 80-year old European war veterans for alleged ''war crimes,'' which were
supposed to have taken place over fifty years ago.
The following article, entitled THE EISENHOWER DEATH CAMPS, was taken from the January
1990 issue of INSTAURATION, a scholarly American monthly. Every American veteran who
served in World War II should know these facts. They are entitled to know how we were lied
to and inveigled into a war for the benefits of the Internationalists. Every American
Legion and Veteran's of foreign War Post in this country, should have this article read to
its them bets, for you see, the same treason was carried out in Korea and then later in
Vietnam. It is we, the veteran's of America, who have the right to know the truth, about
the traitors who were responsible for the murder of our buddies, and the crippling of
hundreds of thousands more, and who are even now laying the groundwork to get your sons
and daughters involved in World War Ill.
The National Archives in Washington, (D.C.) contains an official document called the
Weekly Prisoner of War and Disarmed Enemy Forces Report for the week ending Sept. 8, 1945.
It shows that 1,056,482 German prisoners were then being held by the U.S. Army in the
European theater, of whom 692,895 were still classified as POWs (Prisoners of War) and the
other 363,587 as DEFs (Disarmed Enemy Forces.)
This latter designation was illegal under international law and completely contrary to the
Geneva Convention, to which both the United States and Germany were signatories. A German
soldier designated DEF had no right to any food, shelter, or water in fact, to anything.
Quite often he did not receive even the basic necessities of life and died within days.
In the first week of September 1945, 13,051 of the 363,587 Germans died and were listed
cryptically as "other losses." This was the equivalent of a death rate of 3.6%
per week. At such a rate, all the remaining 350,536 DEFs would have been dead within 28
weeks before the end of the approaching winter.
The civilian death rate immediately outside the American camps in Germany was about 2% per
year, or nearly 100 times lower, despite the greater proportion of older people. Since
adequate supplies were readily available to the American troops at all times, this killing
seems to have been deliberate.
As for the 692,895 German soldiers still falsely listed as POWs, the last of them had
actually been transferred from POW to DEF status a month earlier on August 4, by order of
General Eisenhower. Their death rate quickly quadrupled within weeks, from .2% to .8% per
week. Assuming the latter rate for the week ending September 8, about 5,543 of the
so-called POWs listed in the report as being alive and in American hands had died that
week - all would have died within just over two years.. (The reason this death rate was
lower than 3.6% weekly for the longer-term DEFs was simply that the barbaric treatment of
the DEFs was cumulative, and that some of the American troops refused to go along with
this barbaric treatment.) I recall the winter of 1945, when I was on occupation duty in
Japan. A similar order came from our local U.S. military commander who was known for his
hatred of all Japanese. It did not come from MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo. We were
not allowed to give food of any kind to Japanese civilians, although many of them were on
the verge of starvation. I was commanding a detachment of 28 men, which were guarding a
Japanese Quarter Master dump at the little town of Niski'ya'hama, about eighty miles south
of Osaka. Food in this storehouse was literally spoiling, yet we were not allowed to share
it with the Japanese people. For Christmas rations that year, my detachment received eight
sheep carcasses and 28 turkeys, with no refrigeration for storage. Rather than see this
food go to waste, I shared it with the starving population, and when word leaked out, I
came very close to being court marshaled. It was only the intervention of a high ranking
officer from MacArthur's Headquarters which saved me.
The same thing happened over and over again in Germany, and American officers and
servicemen were court marshaled, on Eisenhower's orders, for sharing their rations with
the starving Germans. If you were a young man, with several small children at home, you
know how these enemy children played on the minds of decent Americans who knew what their
government was doing was wrong. Enemy children have never been enemies, to big hearted
But with a man of unbounded hatred for the Germans, his order of August 4th, made it
impossible for there to be such a thing as a bona fide German POW in American hands on
Instead, there were vast concentrations of men (including some women and children)
starving to death in open, muddy, disease-ridden fields.
In November 1945, Eisenhower returned to Washington. A month later, a slight relaxation
went into effect. Men of conscience such as General George Patton, had no qualms about
killing German soldiers in combat, but he drew a line at the deliberate policy of murder
which was advocated by Eisenhower. I firmly believe this was one of the reasons he met his
untimely death The truth which is now coming out of old records, show that "war
crimes" was by no means a German monopoly, and the "good war," the Jewish
media and historians called it in the United States, was as evil as any conflict in world
Bacque's careful calculations forced hty o conclude:
Eisenhower had deplored the German's useless defense of the Reich in the last months of
the war because of the waste of life. At least ten times as many Germans - undoubtedly
800,000, almost certainly 900,000, and quite possibly a million died in the French and
American camps as were killed in all the combat on the Western front in northwest Europe
from America's entry into the war in December 1941, through April 1945."
Bacque was ably assisted in his research by Col. Ernest F. Fisher, a senior historian for
the U.S. Army, as well as by other highly placed members of the American military. One of
them, Co!. Philip S. Lauben, Chief of the German Affairs branch of SHAEF (Supreme
Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force), stated that, in late 1945, "the Vosges
(northeast France) was just one big death camp (for Germans)."
In spite of everything which has been written about Eisenhower which makes him out to be a
hero, there seems little question that Dwight Eisenhower meets all the qualifications of a
certified war criminal, even if Bacque's figures are off a bit. (If Germany had been the
winner, there is little doubt he would have been tried and found guilty of the most
heinous crimes against mankind.)
Many veterans will get upset with this appraisal of a man they looked on as a "bona
fide" American hero. But the proof for these accusations can be found in what
happened to those Germans who were fortunate enough to surrender to the British and the
Canadians some two million of them. The evidence shows that "almost all continued in
fair health and many were quickly released and sent home or transferred to the French, to
help in the post-war work of reconstruction.
Bacque specifically commends General Patton for behavior towards his POWs it a civilized
manner. His Third Army freed vast numbers of German captives during May 1945, to the
dismay, no doubt, of the Zionists who controlled Washington
Both General Omar Bradley and J. C. H. Lee, Communications Zone (ComZ) Europe, ordered the
release of prisoners within a week of the war's end. This SHAEF order was countermanded by
Eisenhower on May IS, 1945.
While German soldiers from the British and Canadian zones were quickly regaining manr
strength and were helping rebuild Europe, Germans taken by the Americans were dying by the
hundreds of thousands - emaciated figures in diarrhea smeared clothing, huddling pitifully
in watery holes with perhaps a scrap of cardboard over their heads and a rotten potato for
supper. At times many of them were reduced to drinking urine and eating grass.
Did all this happen because of one supremely unprincipled and influential man named
Eisenhower? Or was Ike in turn influenced by a small circle around him or by his superiors
in Washington? Historians will be probing this question for decades to come.
Here are the principle dates by which this infamy will live:
1944: Eisenhower told the British ambassador to Washington that the 3,500 officers of the
German General staff should be ''exterminated.'' He also favored the liquidation of
perhaps 100,000 prominent Germans. Soon after, he wrote to his wife, Mamie: "God, I
hate Germans! Why? Because the German is a beast!" Eisenhower said he was ashamed to
bear a German name.
August 1944: The North American wheat surplus was create greater than at any time in
history, nearly one billion bushels. The U.S. corn surplus and potato crop also reached a
March 10, 1944: A message sent from Eisenhower to the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) of
Britain and the U.S. recommended the creation of an entirely new class of prisoners,
Disarmed Enemy Forces or DEFs. At a press conference in Paris, this same day, Ike said:
"If the Germans were reasoning like normal beings, they would realize the whole
history of the United States and Great Britain is to be generous towards a defeated enemy.
We observe all the laws of the Geneva Convention.''
March 19, 1945: Eisenhower's special assistant, General Everett Hughes, visited the
American supply depots at Naples and Marseille. In both places, he writes, there are
''more stocks than we can ever use. (They) stretch as far as eye can see.''
Spring 1945: The International Red Cross had over 100,000 tons of food stockpiled in
Switzerland. At one point, it sent two trainloads into the American Zone of Germany, but
the food was sent back. The Morgenthau Plan for a ''Carthaginian Peace'' in Germany, to
use the words of Military Governor Lucius Clay, is implemented through the directive JCS
(Joint Chiefs of Staff) 1067, which specifies to Eisenhower the policy he must adopt
towards every institution in Germany. The directive is largely the work of three of Henry
Morgenthau's underlings in the Treasury Department Harry Dexter White, Frank Coe, and
Harry Glasser. White and Glasser were both Jews and all three were Communist ''fellow
April 11, 1945: On the eve of his death, FDR told Morgenthau in Warm Springs, GA:
"Henry, I am with you l00%" When Truman took over, he continued Morgenthau's
"Carthaginian Policy" towards conquered Germany.
April 17, 1945: The Americans opened their enormous Rheinberg Camp, six miles in
circumference, with no food or shelter whatsoever. As in the other big "Rhine
meadow" camps, opened in mid-April, there was initially no latrines and no water. In
some camps, the men were so crowded they could not lie down. Meanwhile, at Camp Kripp,
near Remagen, the half-American Charles von Luttichau determines that his German comrades
are receiving about 5% as much food as their captors." Complaining to the camp
commander, HE SAID: ''Forget the Geneva Convention. You don't have any rights."
Late April 1945: Heinz Janssen, a survivor of the Rheinberg camp, described conditions as
they were at the time. "Amputees slithered like amphibians through the mud , soaking
and freezing. Naked to the skies day after day and night after flight, they lay desperate
in the sand of Rheinberg or sleep exhaustedly into eternity ill their collapsing holes.''
April 26, 1945: The Combined Chiefs of Staff sent a message to Eisenhower, urging him not
to take any more German prisoners after VE Day. He ignored it. The CCS approved of Ike's
proposed DEF status, but only for certain types of German prisoners. The British refused
to go against the Geneva Convention. The CCS orders the illegal DEF status to be kept
strictly secret. By this date, Eisenhower's Quartermaster General of ASHAEF, Gen. Robert
Littlejohn, has already twice reduced the rations to German prisoners. A message to Gen.
George C. Marshall, signed by Ike, mandated: ''No shelter'' for German prisoners, despite
an unusually cold and wet March and April.
May 4, 1945: The first German POWs were transfer-red to DEF status. Mail to and from all
German prisoners was banned for more than a year.
May 8, 1945: Germany surrendered unconditionally. The U.S. State Department wasted no time
dismissing Switzerland as the official Protecting Power for German prisoners, contravening
the Geneva Convention. State also informed the International Red Cross that, with no
Protecting Power to report to, there is no point in sending delegates to the camps. From
this day forward, prisoners held by the U.S. Army had no access to any impartial observer.
The British and Canadians also removed the Swiss protectors, but continued treating their
May, 1945: The American Red Cross reported that more than 98% of Americans captured by the
Germans will be coming home safely, thanks in part to the food parcels sent to them during
the war, which were promptly delivered by the Germans.
May 15, 1945: Eisenhower and Churchill talked about further reducing the rations for the
German POWs. Churchill was informed that the POWs have been getting 2,000 calories per day
(compared to 4,000 for American troops) and that 2,150 was regarded as an absolute minimum
required for sedentary adults living under shelter. Eisenhower failed to tell Churchill
that the U.S. Army was not even feeding many DEFs, and that they were feeding others, much
less than 2,000 calories per day.
Mid-May 1945: The Bingen camp, near Bad Kreuznach in the Rhineland, was now holding
between 200,000 and 400,000 German POWs, with no shelter, food, water, or medicine. The
death rate for prisoners in these U.S. camps were now about 30% per year, according to a
U.S. medical survey.
June 2, 1945: The European Theater Provost Marshal issued two reports. One, the last in a
series of daily reports, logged 2,870,400 POWs on hand. The other, the first report in a
weekly series, dated the same day, logged only 1,836,000. At one point in mid-June, the
prisoner strength on the ration list is given as 1,421,559, despite the evidence of Gen.
J.C.H. Lee and others that there were about 4 million. This bizarre bookkeeping persisted
throughout 1945 in all branches of the occupying army. The apparent purpose was to obscure
the death toll by means of an indecipherable mass of conflicting Statistics. (One of
Bacque's greatest coups has been to decipher them.)
Mid - June, 1945: British "Tommies" took over the huge Rheinberg camp from the
Americans, saving many thousands of German lives. The final act of the ''Yanks"
before the British took charge, was to bulldoze one section flat while the men were still
living in their holes in the ground. Meanwhile, a team of doctors from the U.S. Army
Medical Corps completed a survey of some of the smaller Rhineland camps, holding some
80,000 POWs (not DEFs). They found a death rate 80 times higher than anything they have
known in their professional career.
July, 1945: Eisenhower becomes military governor of the U.S. Zone in Germany. He continued
to turn back all relief teams from Switzerland, the U.S. and elsewhere.
July 10, 1945: A French Army unit under Gen. Rousseau, took over the Dietersheim camp
(near Mainz) from the Americans. He found 32,000 men and women of all ages in a moribund
(dying) State. Another French officer Capt .Julien, was taking command 17 days later and
found a vast mire ''peopled with living skeletons, male and female, huddling under scraps
of wet card board ." Horrified, Julien wrote: 'This is just like the photographs of
Buchenwald and Dachau.
July 20, 1945: Gen. Littlejohn received a memo stating, "These men, German POWs are
authorized a maximum of 1,150 calories for the non-workers and 1,850 for workers.''
(Remember, it takes 2,000 calories of keep a sedentary adult alive.
July 26, 1945: The International Red Cross proposed restoring mail service to German POWs.
Fearing that the reality of the death camps might come to light, the U. S. War Department
rejected the idea.
August 4, 1945: Eisenhower ordered that all remaining German POWs be stripper of their
rights, thus reducing them to DEF status.
August 27, 1945: In a long memorandum, Gen. Littlejohn informed Eisenhower that 1,550,000
Germans who supposedly were getting U.S. ARMY RATIONS, WERE RECEIVING NOTHING. Ike turned
a deaf ear to his report and the death rate continued to climb.
August 30, 1945: Max Huber, head of the International Red Cross, wrote a stinging letter
to the U.S. State Department about American interference in efforts to save starving
Germans. Some months later, an evasive response, signed ''Eisenhower,'' arrived in
Washington, falsely claiming that giving Red Cross food to enemy personnel was forbidden.
Thousands of train cars loaded with decaying food were sent back to Geneva arid to sources
in Paris and Brussels. Huber apologized for tying up the French rail system because of the
food which was being returned by the Americans.
By this time, more than 2-million German men had been discharged into American custody,
including thousands of priests, ministers, doctors, and professors. Not one single camp
commander or guard was questioned by the Allied press corps and the controlled media of
the U.S. concerning conditions in these hell holes.
It might be well, to stop right here and ask this question: ''Is anyone who reads this
horrifying account, so naive as to believe that the American people would have put up with
these barbaric actions by its chief military men if they had known about it? Do you think
that the politicians who were in the forefront of those who kept these facts from
Americans would have lasted very long in office, if the truth had been known? Do you think
that millions of Americans would show such concern for the Holocaust of the Jews, if they
knew that it was Jewish hatred for their fellow kinsmen, that were killing over a million
Germans? I sincerely doubt it! That's why these facts have been kept from the American
people for almost fifty years.
Late Summer, 1945: Jean-Pierre Pradervand, head of the International Red Cross delegations
in France, told Henry W. Dunning, an American Red Cross official, that conditions in the
French camps are worse, in many instances, than anything seen in the former Nazi camps.
Pradervand showed Dunning pictures of the living skeletons. Dunning explained all this to
the American Red Cross in Washington, which informed key government officials.
Nevertheless, the cover-up continued. Pradervand also informed Charles De Gaulle that
one-third of the prisoners handed over to France by the Americans will die soon without a
radical change in treatment. De Gaulle showed no interest and the prisoners continued to
September 27, 1945: Pradervand's pictures of German living skeletons were shown to
Eisenhower in his office.
September 30, 1945 - October 1: The French newspaper, Le Monde, ran a story which began:
"As one speaks today of Dachau, in ten years people throughout the world will speak
about camps such as Saint Paul d'Egiaux.''
October 11,13, 14, 15, 20: The New York Times ran a cover-up report of the death camps by
star newsman Drew Middleton. Interviewed by Bacque in 1988, Middleton admitted that he
never actually visited any of the 50 U.S. camps located within 40 miles of his Frankfurt
desk, but was only 'driven by,' as he was being debriefed by the military."
December 1945: Eisenhower returned to the States and the U.S. Army allowed the first
relief shipment to enter the American sector.
1947 - 1950's: Nearly all the surviving records of the Rhineland death camps were
destroyed. The West German government concluded that 1.7-million German soldiers were
alive at the wars' end, and who were known to have been in fair health, and disappeared.
The Western Allies pinned virtually all the blame on the Soviets.
1950: The first German edition of ALLHERERTE KRIEGSVERBRECHEN is published. Never
translated into English, the book gives eye-witness descriptions of the conditions which
prevailed in the American camps.
1960s - 1972: The West German Foreign Office, under Willy Brandt subsidized books denying
the atrocities in American POW camps and the high death rate.
1980: The International Committee of the Red Cross refuses to open its archives to James
Bacque and other investigators into Allied atrocities. To this day, the ICRC has remained
silent on the subject, despite the visits of Pradervand and other Red Cross delegates to
many methhe camps.
September 1989: James Bacque's book on the American death camps, "Other Losses,"
published by Stoddard, a Canadian Publishing House, was released, after being refused by
more than 30 American publishers. Saturday night, one of Canada's most respected
magazines. simultaneously published a summary of this book as its lead story and within
days Canada was buzzing about Gen. Eisenhower's war crimes. Why is it that we have heard
little or nothing of this in the United States?
As American citizens, many of us who served in the American Armed Forces during World War
II, and a great many of us who are of German heritage, should demand of our leaders in
Washington, D.C. that the truth about this War be made known.
With accurate information of what really happened, instead of Zionist propaganda, just
possibly we might be able to avert World War III, which is now being planned by these same
It is interesting to note, that it has been proven in recent years, that many of the
pictures taken in Germany during WW II, purporting to be Jewish victims of ''racial
extermination,'' were actually pictures of German civilians who had died under American
(Most of the information in this article came from the March 1990, CANADIAN INTELLIGENCE
SERVICE. Their mut Wly intelligence newsletter is available from the above address)
City Hall & Market Square in Gotha
The city of Gotha is mostly known to Americans, if at all, as the first headquarters of
the American Army, set up by General Eisenhower in April 1945, and as the site of one of
the Prisoner of War camps where captured German soldiers were treated in a barbaric
fashion with total disregard to the rules of civilized warfare. Eisenhower mentioned Gotha
in his book "Crusade in Europe," as the nearest city to the "horror
camp" at Ohrdruf-Nord, the first concentration camp to be discovered by American
soldiers in April 1945, but he failed to mention his own notorious POW camp located near
On March 10, 1945 as World War II was coming to an end, General Eisenhower signed an order
creating the status of Disarmed Enemy Forces for the German Prisoners of War who would
soon be surrendering to the Americans. This order was a violation of the Geneva Convention
because it allowed Eisenhower to disregard the rules for the treatment of Prisoners of
War. It allowed him to starve the German POWs, deny them the right to send and receive
letters, receive Red Cross packages or packages from Germany civilians. All these rights
were enjoyed by the prisoners in the Nazi POW camps and even in the notorious
concentration camps. Eisenhower signed this order before he had even seen the horrors of
the concentration camps, which so affected him.
James Bacque wrote in his book Other Losses: "There were no tents in the Gotha DEF
camp, only the usual barbed wire fences round a field soon churned to mud. On the first
day, they received a small ration of food, which was then cut in half. In order to get it,
they were forced to run a gauntlet. Hunched over, they ran between lines of guards who hit
them with sticks as they scurried towards their food. On April 27, they were transferred
to the U.S. camp at Heidesheim further west where there was no food at all for days, then
On May 8, 1945 the German army surrendered to General Eisenhower, who refused to shake
hands with the German General, as is customary. The neutral country of Switzerland was
removed as the Protecting Power for German prisoners, which violated the Geneva
Convention. General Patton quickly released the prisoners who had surrendered to his Third
Army, but General Eisenhower held his POWs until the end of 1946, forcing them to live on
starvation rations. Red Cross packages sent to the POW camps were returned. The POW camps
had no barracks or tents. The German prisoners were forced to dig holes in the ground for
shelter, as the picture below shows. Even though the American army had plenty of tents,
the prisoners lived for months in their holes. When it rained, the holes collapsed and the
German POWs had to dig holes for shelter
After 1947 most of the records of the POW camps were destroyed by the U.S. government,
according to James Bacque who wrote Other Losses. The Germans determined that 1,700,000
soldiers who were alive at the end of the war and had surrendered to the Allies, never
returned home. All of the Allied countries denied responsibility, and the families were
never told what had happened to their loved ones.
Ironically, Gotha also holds a place in history as the birthplace of the Socialist
Worker's Party of Germany in 1875. The very house, called the Haus am Tivoli, where August
Bebel and others got together to form this new leftist political party, is at the
intersection of Cosmartstrasse, but it is closed to tourists. A plaque was placed outside
the house by the Communist East German government, commemorating this as the place where a
"glorious moment in the history of the German working class" took place. Karl
Marx wrote a scathing paper called "Critique of the Gotha Programme" in which he
criticized the new party as a sell-out of the proletariat and the Communist party, which
he had popularized in 1848 with his "Communist Manifesto." In 1890, the name of
the party was changed to the Social Democratic Party, which is still one of the largest
political parties in Germany today.
It was the Social Democrats who declared a Republic in Germany on November 9, 1918, forced
the Kaiser to abdicate, and then signed the Armistice which ended World War I. The Nazis
referred to the Social Democrats as the "November Criminals" and called their
actions the "Dolchstoss" (Stab in the Back). The claim that Germany had lost
World War I on the battlefield was called "The Big Lie" by Hitler in his book,
"Mein Kampf." The harsh peace treaty signed by the Social Democrats at
Versailles insured that another war would soon follow.
Eisenhower's Starvation Order
[Allied POW Camp] http://netjunk.com/users/library/camp.jpg
Never had so many people been put in prison. The size of the Allied captures was
unprecedented in all history. The Soviets took prisoner some 3.5 million Europeans, the
Americans about 6.1 million, the British about 2.4 million, the Canadians about 300,000,
the French around 200,000. Uncounted millions of Japanese entered American captivity in
1945, plus about 640,000 entering Soviet captivity. [Above: A U.S. Army soldier stands
guard over thousands of German POWs at Sinzig-Remagen, spring 1945.]
As soon as Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, the American Military Governor, General
Eisenhower, sent out an "urgent courier" throughout the huge area that he
commanded, making it a crime punishable by death for German civilians to feed prisoners.
It was even a death-penalty crime to gather food together in one place to take it to
prisoners ... The order was sent in German to the provincial governments, ordering them to
distribute it immediately to local governments. Copies of the orders were discovered
recently in several villages near the Rhine ... The message [which Bacque reproduces]
reads in part: "... under no circumstances may food supplies be assembled among the
local inhabitants in order to deliver them to the prisoners of war. Those who violate this
command and nevertheless try to circumvent this blockade to allow something to come to the
prisoners place themselves in danger of being shot...."
Eisenhower's order was also posted in English, German and Polish on the bulletin board of
Military Government Headquarters in Bavaria, signed by the Chief of Staff of the Military
Governor of Bavaria. Later it was posted in Polish in Straubing and Regensburg, where
there were many Polish guard companies at nearby camps. One US Army officer who read the
posted order in May 1945 has written that it was "the intention of Army command
regarding the German POW camps in the US Zone from May 1945 through the end of 1947 to
exterminate as many POWs as the traffic would bear without international scrutiny."
... The [American] army's policy was to starve [German] prisoners, according to several
American soldiers who were there. Martin Brech, retired professor of philosophy at Mercy
college in New York, who was a guard at Andernach in 1945, has said that he was told by an
officer that "it is our policy that these men not be fed." The 50,000 to 60,000
men in Andernach were starving, living with no shelter in holes in the ground, trying to
nourish themselves on grass. When Brech smuggled bread to them through the wire, he was
ordered to stop by an officer. Later, Brech sneaked more food to them, was caught, and
told by the same officer, "If you do that again, you'll be shot." Brech saw
bodies go out of the camp "by the truckload" but he was never told how many
there were, where they were buried, or how.
... The prisoner Paul Schmitt was shot in the American camp at Bretzenheim after coming
close to the wire to see his wife and young son who were bringing him a basket of food.
The French followed suit: Agnes Spira was shot by French guards at Dietersheim in July
1945 for taking food to prisoners. The memorial to her in nearby Buedesheim, written by
one of her chidren, reads: "On the 31st of July 1945, my mother was suddenly and
unexpectedly torn from me because of her good deed toward the imprisoned soldiers."
The entry in the Catholic church register says simply: "A tragic demise, shot in
Dietersheim on 31.07.1945. Buried on 03.08.1945." Martin Brech watched in amazement
as one officer at Andernach stood on a hillside firing shots towards German women running
away from him in the valley below.
The prisoner Hans Scharf ... was watching as a German woman with her two children came
towards an American guard in the camp at Bad Kreuznach, carrying a wine bottle. She asked
the guard to give the bottle to her husband, who was just inside the wire. The guard
upended the bottle into his own mouth, and when it was empty, threw it on the ground and
killed the prisoner with five shots.
Many prisoners and German civilians saw the American guards burn the food brought by
civilian women. One former prisoner described it recently: "At first, the women from
the nearby town brought food into the camp. The American soldiers took everything away
from the women, threw it in a heap and poured gasoline [benzine] over it and burned
it." Eisenhower himself ordered that the food be destroyed, according to the writer
Karl Vogel, who was the German camp commander appointed by the Americans in Camp 8 at
Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Although the prisoners were getting only 800 calories per day, the
Americans were destroying food outside the camp gate.
James Bacque, Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation,
1944-1950, pp. 41-45, 94-95. Crimes and Mercies can be purchased from The Institute for
Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659. $18.95 postpaid (CA sales tax
Vae Victis - Blow to the loser After the transport over the Atlantic, many prisoners
where locked in "cages". It were extremely bad conditions there. In the book
"Other losses" written by James Bacque he claimed, that Eisenhower was primarily
responsible for the catastrophe in the cages. Eisenhower let the German soldiers starve
despite sufficient reinforcements, just due to his feelings of personal revenge. General
Eisenhower was in his own words on a "crusade in Europe". The Canadian Bacque
estimates, that about 1 million soldiers died in US custody. The anthology by Bishop and
Ambrose tries to refute the thesis of James Bacque. They doubt that there where 1 million
casualties. How many men exactly died in the cages, fact is that the SHAEF had with 5
million prisoners a considerable problem at the end of the war. An objective report, of
the 11 to 12 million German prisoners of war in 20 custody states, is a publication of the
"scientific commission for the documentation of the destiny of the German prisoners
of the second World War". With up to 16 employees and important scientists, that
commission became 400.000 statements of men returned from captivity, 50.000 reports as
well and own interviews, published in 22 volumes at more than 10.000 printed pages. After
ten years work, when the study had been finished, the (socialist) Westgerman chancellor
Herbert Frahm, better known under his pseudonym "Willy Brand", ordered that this
report had to be closed and prohibited publishing. He wanted to avoid a public discussion
in Germany or even worst in the foreign countries. In his opinion people could get the
impression, that a crosscheck would be opened about the injustice of the Allies against
the injustice of the Nazis. He was scared that this could endanger the foreign policy
turned toward reconciliation. However, it cannot be that the wrong of one site is discreet
and the wrong of the other site get accused again and again.
<http://home.arcor.de/kriegsgefangen/photos/rheinwiese.gif> In this air picture of
the "Rheinwiesenlager" represents every dot a German soldier sitting on the bare
field for month. They graved holes to be protected of the wind at least. Some drowned in
their foxhole when it rained strongly because they were too weak to creep out, died by
their war wounds, by diarrhea, starved..... A horrible catastrophe. The viable prisoners
where obliged to forced labor in France and England for many years. To this the Americans
submitted to the French powers approx. 800.000 men. The need of the prisoners was
particularly great in France. This doesn't have to be explained by revenge, hate or
prejudices but we must consider, that large portions of France were destroyed and the
Frenchmen had to suffer under a lack of food also. On 8-21-1945 the ICRC wrote a
memorandum, that the life of 200.000 German POW's in French custody where immediately
endangered, 2000 would hardly recover, 2000 could take no food and had to be fed
artificially and 600.000 men had only inadequate accommodations what dangers their life in
the approaching winter. Like on a slave market, farmers chose their workers. Thigh, arms
and teeth were examined but the soldiers had not to be naked during that procedure like in
Russia. A speedy dismissal was offered to soldiers who voluntarily reported for mine
clearing commands in view to their highly dangerous job. But, the explanation was even
given in writing, the soldiers who risked their life day for day were sent to the coal
mines later. That made the prisoners so brittle that some recruited to the Foreign Legion
either and died for France on battle-fields in Alger or Indochina, mutilated their self or
tried an escape like 171.029 POW did.
THE WORST ATROCITY OF
WORLD WAR II
By CHRISTIAN BORLEIS
As soon as World War II ended, the United States began shipping food to the hundreds of
millions of people acing starvation as a result
of the war. Unprecedented in world history; this massive program fulfilled the highest
ideals. Our generosity seemed to have no limit. We fed former enemies Italy and Japan as
well as a new enemy, the Soviet Union. Only Germany was left out.
It is well known that for the next 50 years the Allies hanged and incarcerated Nazis for
their alleged crimes, the murder of 6 million Jews and their alleged criminal conduct of
war. The crimes against the Jews seemed to be well documented but were a concoction. The
verdict of guilty was a requisite of hanging the political and military leadership and
also to justify the ravaging of the vanquished enemy.
Far worse than the crimes against the Jews and the pretended general war crimes by the
Germans was in fact the National Socialist philosophy, which was intolerable to the
international bankers. National Socialism stood against the international capitalism of
the West and the communism of the East. Between those superpowers National Socialism
emerged, forged by a determined leader to liberate a demoralised country
The cruelty imposed on defeated Germany was nothing new to the Germans. They had
experienced a hunger blockade after World War I. During those eight months eight hundred
thousand people died. The Allies didnt even allow the German fishing fleet to go to
<http://abbc.com/nj/images/muknd.gif> This child looks at you, and to all those who
enjoyed the terrible slaughters of Germans as "the only just war of the
He doesn't need words - the little face says it all
The above foto was taken in Bromberg (West Prussia) on January 22, 1945. It shows a German
mother with her little boy. The two were unable to flee Ehrenburg's genocidal Red troops
(Morgenthau raged in the west). Ehrenburg's hordes then proceeded to liberate the helpless
boy's mother from Hitler. This liberating orgy of rape also "liberated her of her
life". For three days and nights the sobbing child clung to his dead mother's hair,
until the last strength left his exhausted little body. Heads together, the two, united
forever, lay on scorched German earth.
The occupying Allied armies carved 25 percent of Germanys most fertile land
(Silesia, Pomerania, East Prussia and Bohemia) and placed it under Russian and Polish
control, forcibly expelling at least 8 (and some claim 12) million people into what
remained of Germany It has been forgotten that the Allies kept millions of prisoners in
forced labour camps. International charitable aid to Germany was banned for another year,
then restricted for more than one year. When it was permitted, it came too late for
millions of people.
The Allies slashed production of oil, tractors, steel and products essential to an
industrial nation. They cut fertiliser production by 82 percent They undervalued German
exports, depriving Germans of
cash needed to buy food. During the next three years following the end of the war
Germanys industrial production fell by 75 percent. The loss of fertile land and the
drop in fertiliser supplies caused agricultural production to fall by 65 percent Sixty
million people began to starve.
The mass expulsions from one part of Germany to another, approved at the Allied victory
conference at Potsdam in July and August 1945, were enforced with a maximum of brutality.
In the West, the plan to dismantle German industrial capacity began at the headquarters of
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower in August of 1944. Eisenhower prescribed a treatment for Germany
that would be "good and hard," giving as his reason that "the whole German
population is synthetic [sic] paranoid."
With 13 percent of Germanys heavy industry destroyed during the war, an additional 3
percent was dismantled afterward, according to German statistics.
But it was the Jewish World Organisation and the Zionist World Congress which saved
Germany from this fate of industrial destruction. It was thought that the Germans could be
made to pay restitution for the "enormous crime of genocide." In order to commit
them to that task they would need to keep the remaining industry intact. The German
industrial capacity was restored to aid Israel.
Nov. 11, 1944 young German Josef Wende was murdered by the Allied-Armies for wearing a
The government of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer conducted a massive survey about the deaths
of German prisoners of war in Allied camps. It was found that some 1.4 million died in
captivity. The fall of the Soviet empire in 1989 provided a spectacular test of the truth;
the KGB archives were opened for historical scrutiny and the reports from KGB Col. I.
Bulanov revealed that 460,000 German POWs had died in Soviet camps alone. In addition, the
KGB records show that the Soviets had also imprisoned hundreds of thousands of German
civilians, of whom thousands died.
Documents from the National Archives in Ottawa, Moscow, Washington and Stanford, Conn.,
recently revealed that the Allies not only destroyed most major industry but also reduced
German food production.
A comparison of German censuses of 1946 and 1950 shows the effect of food shortages. The
1950 census showed 5.7 million people fewer than there should have been according to the
number of people recorded in the 1946 census, minus officially reported deaths, plus
births and "immigrants" (people expelled from the east and returning prisoners)
in the period from 1946 to 1950. The total tally of unacknowledged deaths among prisoners,
refugees and non-expelled civilians comes to about nine million
people between 1945 and 1950, far more than the number who died during the war itself. All
of these deaths were surplus to those actually reported. Moreover, those deaths occurred
in peacetime while the world media did not bother to report of them.
Courtesy of THE DECKERT-DISPATCH, P.O. Box 101117, D-69451 WEINHEIM, GERMANY
The Torah-True-Jews proclaim: "[The Zionists] provoked and increased anti-Semitism in
Europe which led to the Second World War ... The world-wide boycott against Germany in
1933 and the later all-out declaration of war against Germany, initiated by the Zionist
leaders and the World Jewish Congress ... The Role of Zionism in the Holocaust ... The
Zionist leaders: 'Spiritually and Physically Responsible'." (www.jewsnotzionists.org)
In 'Eisenhower's Death Camps': Part I -- A U.S. Prison Guard's Story
In October 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the U.S. army. Largely because of the
"Battle of the Bulge," my training was cut short. My furlough was halved, and I
was sent overseas immediately. Upon arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded
into box cars and shipped to the front. When we got there, I was suffering increasingly
severe symptoms of mononucleosis, and was sent to a hospital in Belgium. Since
mononucleosis was then known as the "kissing disease," I mailed a letter of
thanks to my girlfriend.
By the time I left the hospital, the outfit I had trained with in Spartanburg, South
Carolina was deep inside Germany, so, despite my protests, I was placed in a "repo
depot (replacement depot). I lost interest in the units to which I was assigned and don't
recall all of them: non-combat units were ridiculed at that time. My separation
qualification record states I was mostly with Company C, 14th Infantry Regiment, during my
seventeen-month stay in Germany, but I remember being transferred to other outfits also.
In late March or early April 1945, I was sent to guard a POW camp near Andernach along the
Rhine. I had four years of high school German, so I was able to talk to the prisoners,
although this was forbidden. Gradually, however, I was used as an interpreter and asked to
ferret out members of the S.S. (I found none.)
In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by
barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure I did not see until later. The
men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets; many had no coats. They slept in the mud,
wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring and
their misery from exposure alone was evident.
Even more shocking was to see the prisoners throwing grass and weeds into a tin can
containing a thin soup. They told me they did this to help ease their hunger pains.
Quickly, they grew emaciated. Dysentery raged, and soon they were sleeping in their own
excrement, too weak and crowded to reach the slit trenches. Many were begging for food,
sickening and dying before our eyes. We had ample food and supplies, but did nothing to
help them, including no medical assistance.
Outraged, I protested to my officers and was met with hostility or bland indifference.
When pressed, they explained they were under strict orders from "higher up." No
officer would dare do this to 50,000 men if he felt that it was "out of line,"
leaving him open to charges. Realizing my protests were useless, I asked a friend working
in the kitchen if he could slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too said they
were under strict orders to severely ration the prisoners' food and that these orders came
from "higher up." But he said they had more food than they knew what to do with
and would sneak me some.
When I threw this food over the barbed wire to the prisoners, I was caught and threatened
with imprisonment. I repeated the "offense," and one officer angrily threatened
to shoot me. I assumed this was a bluff until I encountered a captain on a hill above the
Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When
I asked, Why?," he mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol
was empty. I saw the women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any
had been hit.
This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded killers filled with moralistic
hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination; another
expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars and
Stripes, played up the German concentration camps, complete with photos of emaciated
bodies; this amplified our self-righteous cruelty and made it easier to imitate behavior
we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to
prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians.
These prisoners, I found out, were mostly farmers and workingmen, as simple and ignorant
as many of our own troops. As time went on, more of them lapsed into a zombie-like state
of listlessness, while others tried to escape in a demented or suicidal fashion, running
through open fields in broad daylight towards the Rhine to quench their thirst. They were
mowed down.Some prisoners were as eager for cigarettes as for food, saying they took the
edge off their hunger. Accordingly, enterprising G.I. "Yankee traders" were
acquiring hordes of watches and rings in exchange for handfuls of cigarettes or less. When
I began throwing cartons of cigarettes to the prisoners to ruin this trade, I was
threatened by rank-and-file G.I.s too.
The only bright spot in this gloomy picture came one night when.I was put on the
"graveyard shift," from two to four A.M. Actually, there was a graveyard on the
uphill side of this enclosure, not many yards away. My superiors had forgotten to give me
a flashlight and I hadn't bothered to ask for one, disgusted as I was with the whole
situation by that time. It was a fairly bright night and I soon became aware of a prisoner
crawling under the wires towards the graveyard. We were supposed to shoot escapees on
sight, so I started to get up from the ground to warn him to get back. Suddenly I noticed
another prisoner crawling from the graveyard back to the enclosure. They were risking
their lives to get to the graveyard for something; I had to investigate.
When I entered the gloom of this shrubby, tree-shaded cemetery, I felt completely
vulnerable, but somehow curiosity kept me moving. Despite my caution, I tripped over the
legs of someone in a prone position. Whipping my rifle around while stumbling and trying
to regain composure of mind and body, I soon was relieved I hadn't reflexively fired. The
figure sat up. Gradually, I could see the beautiful but terror-stricken face of a woman
with a picnic basket nearby. German civilians were not allowed to feed, nor even come near
the prisoners, so I quickly assured her I approved of what she was doing, not to be
afraid, and that I would leave the graveyard to get out of the way.
I did so immediately and sat down, leaning against a tree at the edge of the cemetery to
be inconspicuous and not frighten the prisoners. I imagined then, and still do now, what
it would be like to meet a beautiful woman with a picnic basket, under those conditions as
a prisoner. I have never forgotten her face.
Eventually, more prisoners crawled back to the enclosure. I saw they were dragging food to
their comrades and could only admire their courage and devotion.
On May 8, V.E. Day, I decided to celebrate with some prisoners I was guarding who were
baking bread the other prisoners occasionally received. This group had all the bread they
could eat, and shared the jovial mood generated by the end of the war. We all thought we
were going home soon, a pathetic hope on their part. We were in what was to become the
French zone, where I soon would witness the brutality of the French soldiers when we
transferred our prisoners to them for their slave labor camps.
On this day, however, we were happy.
As a gesture of friendliness, I emptied my rifle and stood it in the corner, even allowing
them to play with it at theirs! request. This thoroughly "broke the ice," and
soon we were singing songs we taught each other or I had learned in high school German
("Du, du liegst mir im Herzen"). Out of gratitude, they baked me a special small
loaf of sweet bread, the only possible present they had left to offer. I stuffed it in my
"Eisenhower jacket" and snuck it back to my barracks, eating it when I had
privacy. I have never tasted more delicious bread, nor felt a deeper sense of communion
while eating it. I believe a cosmic sense of Christ (the Oneness of all Being) revealed
its normally hidden presence to me on that occasion, influencing my later decision to
major in philosophy and religion.
Shortly afterwards, some of our weak and sickly prisoners were marched off by French
soldiers to their camp. We were riding on a truck behind this column. Temporarily, it
slowed down and dropped back, perhaps because the driver was as shocked as I was. Whenever
a German prisoner staggered or dropped back, he was hit on the head with a club until he
died. The bodies were rolled to the side of the road to be picked up by another truck. For
many, this quick death might have been preferable to slow starvation in our "killing
When I finally saw the German women in a separate enclosure, I asked why we were holding
them prisoner. I was told they were "camp followers," selected as breeding stock
for the S.S. to create a super-race. I spoke to some and must say I never met a more
spirited or attractive group of women. I certainly didn't think they deserved
I was used increasingly as an interpreter, and was able to prevent some particularly
unfortunate arrests. One rather amusing incident involved an old farmer who was being
dragged away by several M.P.s. I was told he had a "fancy Nazi medal," which
they showed me. Fortunately, I had a chart identifying such medals. He'd been awarded it
for having five children! Perhaps his wife was somewhat relieved to get him "off her
back," but I didn't think one of our death camps was a fair punishment for his
contribution to Germany. The M.P.s agreed and released him to continue his "dirty
Famine began to spread among the German civilians also. It was a common sight to see
German women up to their elbows in our garbage cans looking for something edible -- that
is, if they weren't chased away.
When I interviewed mayors of small towns and villages, I was told their supply of food had
been taken away by "displaced persons" (foreigners who had worked in Germany),
who packed the food on trucks and drove away. When I reported this, the response was a
shrug. I never saw any Red Cross at the camp or helping civilians, although their coffee
and doughnut stands were available everywhere else for us. In the meantime, the Germans
had to rely on the sharing of hidden stores until the next harvest.
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 faced smashed with a rifle butt and was then raped by
two G.I.s. Even the French complained that the rapes, looting and drunken destructiveness
on the part of our troops was excessive. In Le Havre, we'd been given booklets warning us
that the German soldiers had maintained a high standard of behavior with French civilians
who were peaceful, and that we should do the same. In this we failed miserably.
"So what?" some would say. "The enemy's atrocities were worse than
ours." It is true that I experienced only the end of the war, when we were already
the victors. The German opportunity for atrocities had faded; ours was at hand. But two
wrongs don't make a right. Rather than copying our enemy's crimes, we should aim once and
for all to break the cycle of hatred and vengeance that has plagued and distorted human
history. This is why I am speaking out now, forty-five years after the crime. We can never
prevent individual war crimes, but we can, if enough of us speak out, influence government
policy. We can reject government propaganda that depicts our enemies as subhuman and
encourages the kind of outrages I witnessed. We can protest the bombing of civilian
targets, which still goes on today. And we can refuse ever to condone our government's
murder of unarmed and defeated prisoners of war.
I realize it is difficult for the average citizen to admit witnessing a crime of this
magnitude, especially if implicated himself. Even G.I.s sympathetic to the victims were
afraid to complain and get into trouble, they told me. And the danger has not ceased.
Since I spoke out a few weeks ago, I have received threatening calls and had my mailbox
smashed. But its been worth it. Writing about these atrocities has been a catharsis of
feeling suppressed too long, a liberation, and perhaps will remind other witnesses that
"the truth will make us free, have no fear." We may even learn a supreme lesson
from all this: only love can conquer all.
Eisenhower was nicknamed "The Swedish Jew" as a cadet at the United States
Military Academy at West Point. In Ike's time USMA cadets were required to be 100%
white and non-negroid, or as close to that as medical doctors and geneological research
could then ascertain. Serious official questions arose about Ike's obvious part
non-white genetic heritage. These appeared to be negroid in origin.
"Ike" explained this away as being due to a Jewish ancestor from Sweden, hence
the nickname "The Swedish Jew".
Military Academy cadets and other officer candidates get to know each other extremely
well during their schooling, provided it's conducted on an intensive basis as U.S. officer
schooling formerly was. Everyone is at close quarters running 24/7. There's no
place to hide character traits in those conditions. Cadet nicknames are usually
extremely descriptive. And when they're keyed to obvious non-white themes it's a
warning signal to look deeper. Here's another example. The U.S. Pacific Fleet
commander who allowed himself to be surprised at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel,
was nicknamed "Mustapha" as a midshipmen at the United States Naval
Academy at Annapolis. Other "Mustaphas" in Egypt and Syria allowed this to
happen to themselves in 1967.
The academy and officer training schools (used?) to take official advantage of that
close quarters peer knowledge through an anonymous peer rating mechanism. I knew
this as "Top Five/Bottom Five" and it meant what it said. Officer
candidates rated their platoon fellows on leadership in rank order from Top One to Bottom
x. People who accumulated too many "Bottom Five" rankings were
automatically scheduled for periodic official leadership review boards for enquiry into
whether they should be dismissed without commission. The presumption of such boards
used to be such individuals should be dismissed unless they could prove they were worthy
of commission. Very, very few survived such review boards.
Judeo-Marxist Academics like the military scribbler Weigley and the Jew military
'sociologist' Moscowitz are generally extremely hostile to processes like peer rating and
also to troop election of officers at regimental level and below. The admixture of
females has added feminist hostility to the opposition to such processes. The
long-term result is a corps of military leaders who possess less and less confidence where
it really counts. That's among their soldiers. This has gone so far that the
average U.S. ground combat unit is unusable for its designed purpose.
After long military experience and study the wisdom of both peer ratings and also
electing regimental officers in militia and citizen-soldier units seems more and more
profound to me. I think the only safeguard needed is a veto power for general
officers to remove obvious misfits. You can conduct all the bureaucratic schooling
processes you want. But if an officer does not possess the confidence of his troops
they will not follow him in combat, obey his orders or stay the course in difficult times.
Consequently years of academic training simply go to waste. Electing first
and schooling second is probably the best way.
P.S. The leadership qualities required from military leaders and from political
leaders are not identical. Some individuals combine these two attribute sets.
Hitler did not combine these qualities, at least at the lower infantry unit level.
This is proven by the fact he entered the Bavarian Army as a private and emerged after
four years of war as a corporal. Despite this many fellow war veterans from his
former battalion willingly followed him as a political leader, including his
former battalion sergeant-major and some officers.
Nineteenth Century America managed to select many men for high office who did combine
both leadership sets in fairly large numbers. This more than anything explains the
rapid conquest of the continent. It was not 'luck'. The old American Republic
(long since vanished) actually conformed very closely in practice to the ideals of
the old Roman Republic in both military process and results. The Roman
Republic constitutionally required that political leaders prove themselves as leaders in
war. This was an ideal for early Americans but not a definite legal requirement.
Had the Founding Fathers mandated this in the Constitution our history would have
turned out very differently. Certainly Canada, Mexico and Cuba would not exist as
independent states. Whether this would have prevented subsequent miscegenation or the
Civil War is another question.
And results (output) are the real measure of military efficiency (or any other
efficiency). The military stature and efficiency of a state is not measured by the
numbers of troops raised or the percentage of the budget applied to 'military'
appropriations; i.e. inputs. The Neo-con pseudo-patriots of the Judeo-Republican
Party (non-veterans to a womandman) do think in these Communist terms of inputs. If
this measurement were valid then Italy would be one of the military success stories of the
20th Century rather than one of the premier failures. When judged by this standard
of results 19th Century America was a resounding success as a military state.
Twentieth Century America was a military failure to the point that political loss of
territory is now occuring in the Southwest.
P.P.S. Note to the former student of Russell F. Weigley who wrote in to defend
In my 1984 edition of Weigley's "History of the United States Army" he
devotes about 40 pages to the War of 1812. He dedicates nearly all of this to
harping on the relatively small Congressional size authorization and even lower actual
personnel fill (about 20,000) of the "Regular Army". In this section
Weigley glosses over the militia contribution in the sentence "this number was
exclusive of those men from the volunteer and common militias who served for short periods
against British raids and invasions in their own districts and who may have numbered in
the hundreds of thousands."
Then Weigley reverts back to beating to death obscurities like poor Regular Army horse
recruitment and rotten contractor commissary stores. The obscure "Battle of
Lundy's Lane" (actually a minor skirmish around Niagara) receives an extensive
autopsy. The Battles of Put-in Bay, New Orleans and General Harrison's campaign to
reconquer the Northwest are ignored. These large-scale decisive events were
commanded by regular officers leading Weigley's ignored militia.
And New Orleans was decisive despite being fought after 'peace' was signed.
Anyone who thinks the extermination of Britain's best veteran regiments at the hands of
frontier militia didn't exercise a subsequent deterrent effect on British decision-making
doesn't understand how governments arrive at war and peace decisions. The British
decision to negotiate over "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!" in the 1840s was
undoubtedly influenced by that memory.
If Weigley had ever marched even once 20 miles with a 100 pound pack in 100 degree heat
he would have understood something. Even 100,000 perfectly trained regulars alone
would have resulted in American defeat. In the early 19th Century transport
proceeded by foot, by horse or by sea. Since the British had overall naval
superiority moving troops by sea convoy was not possible. This left marching on
land. The factors of force/space/time applied to North America dictated that the
early Republic had to rely on 'militia'. This was especially true when fighting an
enemy possessing command of the sea and the choice of where and when to strike with large
amphibious raiding parties. There was no possibility of a timely
counter-concentration of a central reserve at the tactical level, especially on defense.
This comes back to Nathan Bedford Forrest's "he who gets theah fustest with
mostest." Overall numbers are irrelevant in such conditions unless you
create a 'nation in arms' as was done by the Militia Act of 1792.
Like I said, Weigley's book is worthless garbage that should be collected up and
 A U.S. PRISON GUARD AT ONE OF "IKE'S DEATH CAMPS"
By Martin Brech
FORTY-FIVE years ago, I witnessed an atrocity: the deliberate starvation of German POWs
by our own army. History, written by the victors, suppressed all news of this atrocity
until James Bacque, a Canadian author, published his brilliant expose, OTHER LOSSES. This
book is a best seller in Canada, a sensation in Europe, yet is virtually unavailable
(censored?) in the U.S. Our major booksellers told me their distributors are not handling
it. When I prevailed upon a small, independent bookstore to order direct from Canada, the
publisher told them they would be the only store in New York State to carry the book. This
in 'the land of the free'?"
Fortunately, Pat Buchanan called attention to OTHER LOSSES in his January 10, 1990
column. He wrote:
"Conclusion: the U.S. Army killed ten times as many Germans in POW camps as we did
on battlefields from Normandy to V.E. day. (German POWs) had their rations cut below
survival level until they were dying at rates up to 30% of exposure, starvation and
neglect... Red Cross food trains were turned back and U.S. food shipments sat on the
docks...One French officer said the U.S. camps reminded him of Dachau and Buchenwald...The
book blames Eisenhower. 'The German is a beast,' Ike had written... But that was not how
the Canadians and British felt, who treated their prisoners justly...It was not the view
of General Mark Clark, nor of Patton...Ignoring the book is not enough."
Pat Buchanan's courageous column inspired me to help end the cover-up of the atrocity I
had witnessed. I wrote letters to several newspapers which were, of necessity, short and
incomplete. Now I would like to finally free more of my painful memories, hoping to be
heard, so that this will help us to acknowledge our share in the "banality of
evil", cleansing ourselves with the truth. Perhaps we as a nation may then put this
behind us with some integrity and with some hope for redemption.
In October 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the army while a student at the
NYS College of Forestry. Largely due to the "Battle of the Bulge", my training
was cut short, my furlough cut in half, and I was then immediately sent overseas. Upon
arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into boxcars and shipped to the front.
By the time we reached it, I had developed mononucleosis severely enough to be sent to a
hospital in Belgium.
By the time I left the hospital, the unit I had trained with in Spartenburg, South
Carolina was so deeply into Germany that I warn placed in a "repo depo" (a
replacement depot) despite my protests. I then lost interest in which units I was assigned
to because non-combat units were generally not respected. My separation qualification
record states that I served mostly with the 14th Infantry Regiment, during which time I
guarded prisoners of war and served as an interpreter. During my seventeen month stay in
Germany, I was transferred to other outfits also.
In late March or early April 1945, I was assigned to help guard a POW camp near
Andernach along the Rhine. I had four years of high school German, so I was able to talk
to the prisoners, although this was forbidden.
Gradually, however, I was used as an interpreter and asked to ferret out the S.S. (I
In Andernach, between 50,000 and 65,000 prisoners, ranging in age from very young teens
to very old men, were crowded together in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The
women were kept in a separate enclosure which I did not see until later. The men I guarded
had no tents or other shelter, no blankets and many had no coats. Inadequate numbers of
slit trenches were provided for excrement, and so the men lived and slept in the mud and
increasing filth during a cold, wet spring. Their misery from exposure alone was evident.
It was even more shocking to see them eating grass, sometimes throwing it into a tin
can containing a thin soup. They told me they did this hoping to ease their hunger pains.
Soon their emaciation was evident. Dysentery raged and, too weak and crowded to reach the
slit trenches, they were increasingly sleeping in excrement. I saw no sign of provision
for water, so the thin soup was their food and water for the day. Some days there was
bread, less than a slice each. Other days there was nothing.
The sight of so many men desperate for food and water, sickening and dying before our
eyes, is indescribable. Even now, I can only think of it momentarily.
We had ample food and supplies that could have been shared more humanely, and we could
have offered some medical assistance, but did nothing. Only the dead were quickly and
efficiently taken care of: hauled away to mass graves.
My outrage reached the point that I protested to my officers, but I was met with
hostility or bland indifference. When pressed, they explained they were under strict
orders from "higher up". No officer would dare to systematically do this to over
50,000 prisoners if he felt he was violating general policy and subject to court martial.
The term "war criminal" was just beginning to come into fashion.
Realizing my protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could
slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too repeated that they were under strict
orders to severely ration the prisoners' food, and that these orders came from
"higher up". But he said they had more food than they knew what to do with and
would sneak me some.
When I threw this food over the barbed wires to the prisoners I was caught and
threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the "offense", and one officer
threatened to shoot me. I naturally assumed this was a bluff, but I began to have some
doubts after I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of
German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, "Why?" he
mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty. I saw the
women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any had been hit.
This is when I more fully realized I was dealing with some cold-blooded killers filled
with moralistic hatred. They considered the Germans sub-human and worthy of extermination;
another expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars
& Stripes, played up the Nazi concentration camps, complete with photographs of
emaciated bodies; this amplified our self-righteous cruelty and made it easier to imitate
behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were
trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians. At
least, many combat soldiers told me later they would not have tolerated this, for they
combined hatred with respect for a courageous enemy.
The prisoners I spoke to were mostly simple farmers and workingmen, as ignorant, albeit
nationalistic, as many of our own troops. I heard many versions of "my country, right
or wrong, my country," which we still hear in our own country today.
As time went on, many of them lapsed into a Zombie-like state of listlessness. Others,
maddened by thirst, tried to escape in a desperate or suicidal fashion, running through
open fields in broad daylight towards the Rhine to quench their thirst. They were mowed
Some prisoners were extremely eager for cigarettes, saying they took the edge off their
hunger. Accordingly, some enterprising G.I. "Yankee traders" were acquiring
hordes of wrist watches and rings in exchange for handfuls of cigarettes or less. When I
began throwing cartons of cigar-ettes to the prisoners to ruin this trade, I found myself
threatened by rank-and-file G.I.s also. At least this taught me an indelible lesson: how
wrong majorities and authorities can be.
A bright spot in this gloomy picture came, oddly enough, one night when I was put on
the "graveyard shift", from two to four A.M. Actually, there was a graveyard on
the uphill side of this enclosure, not many yards away. My superiors had forgotten to give
me a flashlight and I hadn't bothered to ask, being disgusted with the whole situation by
that time. It was a fairly bright night and I soon became aware of a prisoner crawling
under the wires to the graveyard. We were supposed to shoot escapees on sight, so I
started to get up to warn him to get back. Suddenly I noticed another prisoner crawling
from the graveyard back to the enclosure. They were risking their lives to get to the
graveyard for something; I had to investigate.
When I entered the gloom of this shrubby, tree-shaded cemetery, I never felt more
vulnerable, but somehow curiosity kept me going. Despite my caution, I tripped over the
legs of someone in a prone position. Whipping my rifle around while stumbling and trying
to regain composure of mind and body, I soon was relieved I hadn't reflexively fired. The
figure sat up, moving erratically. Gradually I could see the beautiful but terror-stricken
face of a woman with a picnic basket nearby. German civilians were not allowed to feed,
nor even come near, the prisoners, so I quickly assured her I approved of what she was
doing, not to be afraid, and that I would leave the graveyard to get out of the way,
telling no one.
I left the graveyard as quickly as possible and sat down, leaning against a tree at the
edge CF the cemetary to be inconspicuous and not frighten the prisoners. I imagined then,
and often since, what it would be like to be a prisoner under those conditions and meet a
beautiful woman with a picnic basket. I never saw her again, but I have never forgotten
While I watched, more prisoners crawled to and from the enclosure. I saw they were
dragging food back to their comrades and could only admire their courage and devotion. As
I walked back to my quarters at the end of my shift, a nightingale and I were singing --
both felt a touch of spring.
(I originally did not intend to reveal the following incident, for it moves into a
realm termed "mystical". However, for me, it was an extremely significant
experience, changing my life, providing a light no darkness can extinguish. It must be
told, hoping it will foster understanding.)
On May 8, V.E. day, I decided to celebrate with some prisoners I was guarding who were
baking bread, meager amounts of which the other prisoners occasionally received. This
group had all the bread they could eat, and shared the jovial mood generated by the end of
the war. We all thought we would be going home soon, a pathetic hope on their part. We
were in what was to become the French zone, and I later witnessed the brutality of the
French soldiers when we transferred our prisoners to them for their slave labor camps (see
However, on this day we were happy.
After chatting with them about the potentials of peace for the rest of our lives, I
decided to risk a gesture of trust that objectively would seem foolish. I emptied my rifle
and stood it in the corner. They tested me further by asking to play with it, and I
agreed. Intuitively I felt I could rely on their sense of honor not to attack me, for they
knew they too were being tested. This thoroughly 'broke the ice', and soon we were singing
songs we taught each other or I had learned in high school German ("Du, du, liegst
mir im Herzen"). Out of gratitude, they secretly baked a small sweet bread and
insisted I take it, explaining it was the only possible gift they had left to offer.
Expressing my gratitude with a lump in my throat, I put it in my tight "Eisenhower
jacket" so I could sneak it back to my barracks. I later found an opportunity to eat
Never had bread tasted more delicious, nor conveyed to me a deeper sense of communion
while eating it. A wonderful feeling pervaded me, gently opening me to an intimation of
the Oneness of all Being. Through those prisoners I sensed the ~cosmic presence of what
has been called the Christ, Buddha-nature, or, perhaps most aptly, the Ineffable:
cosmically present, but hidden and apparently separate, until revealed in the wholeness of
the giving of the self. Even within the horror humans had created, I was taught a path to
redemption may open by taking a first, tentative step in the direction of love,
understanding and forgiveness. This above all the prisoners taught me: not only are we all
potentially humane humans, there is divinity within us waiting for us to dissolve the
defensive shield of ego. I was pleased to discover later the words of Matthew 25:34-46,
expressing the potential within prisoners and all who are at our mercy.
Shortly after this experience I was plunged into even greater horror. Some of our weak
and sickly prisoners were being marched off by French soldiers to their camp. The truck we
were on first passed another truck picking up bodies along the side of the road, and then
came up behind a slowly moving column of men. Temporarily we slowed down and remained
behind, perhaps because the driver was as shocked as I was. The French soldiers were
apparently incensed at the poor condition of our prisoners, not only for labor but for
marching to another camp. Whenever a prisoner staggered or dropped back, the French
clubbed him to death and then dragged him to the side of the road. For many, this quick
death might have been preferable to their prolonged suffering. Even gas would have been
more merciful than our murder by neglect in our slow 'killing fields'.
When I saw the German women held in a separate enclosure, I asked why we were keeping
them. I was told they were "camp followers", selected as breeding stock for the
S.S. to create a super-race. We provided them with tents but they were extremely hungry. I
spoke to some and must say they were still spirited and attractive. However, I believe I
was objective enough when I told all concerned that I didn't think they deserved our
As an interpreter, I was able to prevent some particularly unfortunate arrests. One
somewhat amusing incident occurred during a pre-dawn raid we conducted on a town to
discover Nazis or arms. An old farmer was being dragged away by some soldiers. I was told
he had a "fancy Nazi medal", which they showed to me. Fortunately, I had a chart
identifying such medals. He had been awarded it for having five or more children! Perhaps
his wife was somewhat relieved to get him "off her back", but I didn't think one
of our 'death camps' was a fair punishment for his contribution to Germany. The soldiers
agreed and released him to continue his "dirty work".
Famine was spreading amongst German civilians also. It was a common sight to see German
women up to their elbows in our garbage cans looking for something edible -- that is, when
they weren't chased away.
When I interviewed mayors of small towns and villages, I was told their supply of food
had been taken away by "displaced persons" (foreigners who had worked in
Germany), who packed the food on trucks and drove away. When I reported this, the response
was a shrug or an expression of helplessness.
Although the Red Cross coffee and doughnut stands were available everywhere for us, I
never saw any Red Cross in the prison camps or helping the civilians. While my girlfriend
had all the "contraband" doughnuts she could eat, most Germans had to share
their meager hidden stores and wait until the next harvest.
This hunger undoubtedly made many German women more "available", but, despite
this, rape was incredibly prevalent and often accompanied by additional violence. I
particularly remember a charming eighteen year old girl who had several unsuccessful
suitors and was "just friends" with me, who had the side of her face smashed
with a rifle butt and was then raped by two G.I.s. The casual shooting of German civilians
also continued, usually by drunken soldiers who would tell of this as something amusing.
All too many G.I.s gave the impression they were 1ike animals released from cages, free to
do what they liked because they were dealing with yet a lower species of animal, a reverse
racism, inflamed by our propaganda. However, even the French complained to me that our
rape and drunken destructive behavior in their country was excessive. When we had arrived
in Le Havre, we had been given booklets instructing us that the Germans had maintained a
high standard of behavior with French civilians who were peaceful, and that we should do
the same. In this we failed miserably.
So what? we might still say. The enemies' atrocities were worse than ours. Certainly my
experiences were only of the last phases of the war, when we were already clearly the
victors. The Nazi opportunity for atrocities had faded and ours was unleashed. But we
might have learned the simple lesson that two wrongs do not make a right. Perhaps we might
even have broken the cycle of vengeful retaliation and unbridled hatred, fed by racism,
that has plagued human history and blighted human potential all to long. Instead, we
committed our own atrocities and now are clinging to a cover-up. That is why I am speaking
out now, forty-five years after the crime. We can never prevent individual war crimes, but
we can, if enough of us speak out, influence government policy. We can reject government
propaganda that depicts our enemies as subhuman and encourages the kinds of outrages I
witnessed. We can protest the bombing of civilian targets, which still goes on today. (I
will never forget the sickly sweet smell of rotting human flesh rising from the shattered
remains of the cities and towns I entered.) And we can refuse ever to condone our
government' s murder of unarmed and defeated prisoners of war.
I realized it's difficult to admit witnessing a crime of this magnitude, especially if
implicated oneself. Even G.I .s sympathetic to the victims told me they were afraid to
oppose so massive a policy that would surely seek to cover its tracks. I never heard this
directly from an officer, but it was the belief of the rank-and-file G.I.s I spoke to that
we were not to "talk" because, first, no one would believe us, and second, we
would surely get into trouble. They all insisted it was better not to talk, and slowly I
too realized it would be futile and dangerous. That is, until now, thanks to James Bacque
and Pat Buchanan. This is not to say the danger has passed. Since I "spoke out"
recently, my mailbox has been smashed and I have received threatening phone calls. But I
believe it is worth the risk. Writing about these atrocities has been a atharsis of
feelings suppressed too long, a liberation, and perhaps will remind other witnesses and
citizens -that "the truth shall make us free, have no fear." And, in any case,
"the truth shall out".
We may even learn a supreme lesson from all this: Hate is self- destructive; only love
can conquer and evolve all as One.
Martin Brech (Adjunct Professor, Philosophy & Religion, Mercy College; Ex-G.I.,
Ike and the
Times Book Review, February 24, 1991
the publication of a historical monograph on a subject ordinarily of interest only to a
few specialists - the treatment of prisoners of war - received so much attention or
excited so much anger as James Bacque's "Other Losses." Published in 1989 in
Canada, it was the subject of a cover story in the popular Canadian magazine Saturday
Night, of a British Broadcasting Corporation documentary, of two German television
documentaries and of a coming Canadian Broadcasting Network documentary. (The Canadian
book, I should say immediately, carries a jacket blurb from me that was taken out of
context and used without permission) It has been discussed on American television, in Time
magazine and in many other news media outlets. In its German edition, it was a runaway
best seller. The British edition elicited major reviews in the Times Literary Supliment
and elsewhere. Prima Publishing of California intendes to publish the book in May, which
could fan the flames in the United States.
for the notoriety is the author's conclusion that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, as head of
the American occupation of Germany in 1945, deliberately starved to death German prisoners
of war in staggering numbers. Mr. Bacque charges that "the victims undoubtedly number
over 800,000, almost certainly over 800,000 and quite likely over a million. Their deaths
were knowingly caused by army officers who had sufficient resources to keep the prisoners
method, according to Mr. Bacque, was simple: he changed the designation of the prisoners
from "Prisoners of War" (P.O.W.), required by the Geneva Convention to be fed
the same rations as American G.I.'s, to "Disarmed Enemy Forces" (D.E.F.), which
allowed him to cut their rations to starvation level. Mr. Bacque says the D.E.F. were also
denied medical supplies and shelter. They died by the hundreds of thousands. Their deaths
were covered up on Army records by listing them as "other looses" on charts
showing weekly totals of prisoners on hand, numbers discharged and so forth.
is Mr. Bacque by his discovery of this heinous crime that he has been quoted in a wire
service interview as saying Americans "should take down every statue of Eisenhower,
and every photograph of him and annul his memory from American history as best they can,
except to say, 'Here was a man who did very evil things that we're ashamed of.'"
Questions immediately arise. If there were a million dead, where are the bodies? Did
Eisenhower have such vast power that he could order starvation on a mass scale and keep it
a secret? Was the undoubted suffering in the camps, especially the transit camps along the
Rhine, the result of Eisenhower's policy or the result of the chaotic conditions that
prevailed in Europe in the spring and summer of 1945?
a Canadian novelist with no previous historical research or writing experience, says in
his introduction: "Doubtless many scholars will find faults in this book, which are
only mine. I welcome their criticism and their further research, which may help to restore
to us the truth after a long night of lies." Last December, the Eisenhower Center at
the University of New Orleans invited some leading experts on the period to examine the
charges. The conference participants, including me, plan to publish the papers in book
conclusion was that Mr. Bacque had made a major historical discovery. There _was_
wdiespread mistreatment of German prisoners in the spring and summer of 1945. Men were
beaten, denied water, forced to live in open camps without shelter, given inadequate food
rations and inadequate medical care. Their mail was withheld. In some cases prisoners made
a "soup" of water and grass in order to deal with their hunger. Men did die
needlessly and inexcusably. This must be confronted, and it is to Mr. Bacque's credit that
he forces us to do so.
conclusion was that when scholars do the necessary research, they will find Mr. Bacque's
work to be worse than worthless. It is seriously - nay, spectacularly - flawed in its most
fundamental aspects. Mr. Bacque misuses documents; he misreads documents; he ignores
contrary evidence; his statistical methodology is hopelessly compromised; he makes no
attempt to look at comparative contexts; he puts words into the mouth of his principal
source; he ignores a readily available and absolutely critical source that decisively
deals with his central accusation; and, as a consequence of these and and other
shortcomings, he reaches conclusions and makes charges that are demonstrably absurd.
its assessment of Mr. Bacque's findings, however, the conference - along with the book
itself - raises a larger issue: how are readers who are not experts to judge a work that
makes new, startling, indeed outrageious, claims? Without the knowledge or the time to
investigate, how are they to know if an author has finally revealed the truth "after
a long night of lies," or is simply misleading an unwary public?
As for Mr.
Bacque's claims, the most immediate question is that of Eisenhower's motive: why on earth
would Ike do such a thing? Mr. Bacque answers that Eisenhower hated the Germans. Now it is
absolutely true that in the spring of 1945, Eisenhower's anger at the Germans was very
great. He never attempted to hide these feelings. In "Crusade in Europe,"
published in 1948, he wrote, "In my personal reactions, as the months of conflict
wore on, I grew constantly more bitter against the Germans." He relates that he
signed tens of thousands of letters of condolence to the wives and mothers of his fallen
men, and he wrote, "I know of no more effective means of developing an undying hatred
of those responsible for aggressive war than to assume the obligation of attemption to
express sympathy to families bereaved by it." The uncovering of the concentration
camps added to his emotion.
was an enthusiastic supporter of denazification, but not because he hated the Germans or
believed in collective guilt. To the contrary, he believed that there were Germans who
were committed to democracy and that the task of the occupation was to find them and bring
them to the fore. In a speech in Frankfurt in 1945, he declared "The success or
failure of this occupation will be judged by the character of the Germans 50 years from
now. Proof will come when they begin to run a democracy of their own and we are going to
give the Germans a chance to do that, in time." This does not sound like a man who
simultaneously was directing the death by starvation of one million young Germans.
completely misunderstands Eisenhower's position and activity in the occupation. He puts
full responsibility on Eisenhower for every policy decision, never recognizing that he had
superiors from whom he took policy directives and orders - specifically, the Army Chief of
Staff, the European Advisory Commission, acting in the name and with the authority of the
British, Soviet and American Governments, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Combined Chiefs
of Staff, that is, the American Joint Chiefs and the British Chiefs of Staff; and the
heads of the British and American Governments. The report at the New Orleans conference on
the diplomatic background, by Brian Villa of the University of Ottawa, noted that the
policy of Eisenhower's superiors was to impress upon the Germans the fact of their defeat,
the fact that they had brought it on themselves and in other ways to "treat 'em
rough." Denazification was one aspect of that policy. Another was that German
prisoners would not be fed at a higher level than German civilians, than the civilians of
the liberated nations, or than the displaced persons (DPs).
that is central to Mr. Bacque's accusation is his contention that there was no European
food shortage in 1945. He points to warehouses in Germany full of food. He says that the
Red Cross had food available. One of his most daming pieces of evidence is that a train
from Geneva loaded with food parcels sent by the Red Cross to feed German prisoners was
forced to turn back.
shocking - food was available, men were hungry and American officers ordered the train to
return to Geneva. But there was a reason: the Allied Governments had decided that Red
Cross food parcels would be used to feed displaced persons, of whom there were more than
two million in Germany, and the orders to Eisenhower on this policy were explicit. So DPs
got those food parcels. It is painful beyond description to have to set food priorities in
a hungry world, but it had to be done, and who could argue with the decision?
conference report on the food situation in Germany, James Tent of the University of Alabama
- Brimingham says there was no question that there were severe shortages. Still, as Mr.
Tent points out, there was food stocked in warehouses that was not distributed to
prisoners living on a near-starvation diet. Again, this is shocking, until the reason is
noted. The Allied Governments were fearful of famine in the winter of 1945-46, and they
were stockpiling food. Even with the reserves, they barely got through the winter, and it
was three years before the European foot shortage was overcome.
myth was Eisenhower's nightmare. No food shortage? Eisenhower wrote the Chief of Staff,
Gen. George C. Marshall, in Februayr 1945: "I am very much concerned about the food
situation... We now have no reserves on the Continent of supplies for the civil
And here is
Eisenhower writing to the Combined Chiefs of Staff on April 25, 1945: "Unless
immediate steps are taken to develop to the fullest extent possible the food resources in
order to provide the minimum wants of the German population, widespread chaos, starvation
and disease are inevitable during the coming winter."
These - and
many, many similar messages - went out before the surrender. After the first week of May,
all of Eisenhower's calculations as to how many people he would be required to feed in
occupied Germany became woefully inadequate. He had badly underestimated, for two reasons.
First, the number of German soldiers surrendering to the Western Allies far exceeded what
was expected (more than five million, instead of the anticipated three million) because of
the onrush of German soldiers across the Elbe River to escape the Russians. So too with
German civilians - there were millions fleeing from east to west, about 13 million
altogether, and they became Eisenhower's responsibility. Eisenhower faced shortages even
before he learned that there were 17 million more people to feed in Germany than he had
shortage? This is the report of the Military Governor for Germany in July 1945: "The
food situation throughout Western Germany is perhaps the most serious problem of the
occupation. The average food consumption in the Western Zones is now about one-third below
the generally accepted subsistence level." The September report declares, "Food
from indigenous sources was not available to meet the present authorized ration level for
the normal consumer, of 1,550 calories per day."
says that the prisoners were receiving 1,550 calories a day, and he contends that such a
ration means slow starvation. He apparently never looked at what civilians were getting,
in Germany or in the liberated countries. In Paris in 1945, the calorie level was 1,550
for civilians. It was only slightly higher in Briatin, where rationing continued. It was
much lower in Russia, where rationing also continued. As noted, the official ration for
German civilians was 1,550, but often not met. In Vienna in the summer of 1945 the
official ration sometimes fell to 500.
such a thing as common sense. Anyone who was in Europe in the summer of 1945 would be
flabbergasted to hear that there was no food shortage.
Mr. Bacque, Eisenhower personally, secretly, and with sinister intent changed the status
of surrendered German soldiers from prisoners of war to disarmed enemy forces. In fact,
the change in designation was a policy matter. The decision was made not by Eisenhower but
by his superiors, specifically by the European Advisory Commission. Nor was any attempt
made to keep it secret. All those involved acted with the authority of the British,
Russian and American Governments, and they were perfectly straightforward about the reason
for the change in status.
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, and not to mention as
well the displaced persons. But the United States and other Allied nations had signed the
Geneva Convention, which had the force of a treaty. They did not wish to violate it, so
they used the new designation of "Disarmed Enemy Forces." The orders to the
field commanders were straighforward: do not feed the DEF's at a higher scale than German
to another of Mr. Bacque's conclusions, he arrives at his sensational figure of one
million dead through a system of analysis that has left almost everyone who has tried to
check his statistics and methods befuddled. He did make one mistake because of a typing
error by a clerk. He saw a figure of 70,000 prisoners in an Army medical report and then
calculated the total death rate for all prisoners in American hands on the basis of that
number and the 21,000 deaths also mentioned in the report. That is, he arrived at his most
basic conclusion, a death rate in all camps of 30 percent, by dividing the 21,000 deaths
by the 70,000 prisoners. However, the 70,000 figure should have been 10 times higher. All
other figures in the document make it clear that the correct number of prisoners was
700,000. This would make the death rate not 30 percent but 3 percent.
In fact, as
Albert Cowdrey of the Department of the Army's Center of Military History reported to the
conference, the overall death rate among German prisoners was 1 percent.
Cowdrey's conclusion, strongly supported by another conference participant, Maj. Ruediger
Overmans of the German Office of Military History in Freiburg (who is writing the final
volume of the official Germany history of the war), is that the total death by all causes
of German prisoners in American hands could not have been greater than 56,000.
there is the matter of the column of figures in the weekly reports of the United States
Army Theater Provost Marshal entitled "Other Losses." It is here that Mr. Bacque
finds his "missing million."
the "other losses?" Mr. Bacque interviewed Philip S. Lauben, a retired Army
colonel who was a member of the German Affairs Branch of Eisenhower's headquarters in
1945. He writes that Colonel Lauben told him "other losses" meant "deaths
many escapes?" Mr. Bacque asked.
very minor," Colonel Lauben replied. Mr. Bacque says they were less than one-tenth of
1 percent, with no explanation of how he arrived at such a figure.
Cameron, the producer of the BBC documentary about "Other Losses," told the
conference that he had obtained from Mr. Bacque the tape of the interview. It seemed clear
to Mr. Cameron that Mr. Bacque had got an old man to agree with words that Mr. Bacque used
and then put in his mouth. Mr. Cameron did his own on-camera interview with Colonel
Lauben; in it, Colonel Lauben said he was misled by Mr. Bacque and was wrong about the
meaning of the term "other losses."
Hawkins of CNN wanted to do an interview with Colonel Lauben. Colonel Lauben turned him
down, explaining in a letter "I'm not being difficult. I am 91 years old, legally
blind, and my memory has lapsed to a point where it is quite unreliable. Furthermore I am
under regular medical care. Often during my talk with Mr. Bacque I reminded him that my
memory had deteriorated badly during the 40 odd years since 1945.
Bacque read to me figures...It seemed to me that, after accounting for transfers and
discharges, there was nothing left to make up the grand total except deaths and escapes,
i.e. the term 'Other Losses.' I was mistaken."
Bacque's only witness for the charge that "other losses" was a cover-up term for
deaths has twice repudiated what Mr. Bacque maintains that he said.
were the "other losses?" In many cases they were transfers from one zone to
another, something that was regularly done for a variety of reasons, none of them
sinister, and all duly recorded in footnotes on the weekly reports.
greatest number of "other losses" is revealed in the August 1945 Report of the
Military Governor. (These monthly reports are in the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan.,
in the National Archives in Washington and elsewhere; they are a basic source on every
aspect of the occupation, including food shortages and prisoners. Mr. Bacque did not cite
them and there is no evidence he examined them.) The August report lists the numbers of
disarmed enemy forces discharged by American forces and those transferred to the British
and French for forced labor.
continues: "An additional group of 663,576 are listed as 'other losses,' consisting
largely of members of the Volksturm [Peoples' Militia], released without formal
little imagination to see what happened here. The People's Militia consisted of older men
(up to 80 years of age, mainly World War I veterans) and boys of 16 or sometimes less.
American guards and camp authorities told the old men to go home and take care of their
grandchildren, the boys to go home and return to school. Along with the transfers to other
zones that Mr. Bacque ignores, these people account for all the "missing
Mr. Bacque is wrong on every major charge and nearly all his minor ones. Eisenhower was
not a Hitler, he did not run death camps, German prisoners did not die by the hundreds of
thousands, there was a severe food shortage in 1945, there was nothing sinister or secret
about the "disarmed enemy forces" designation or about the column "other
losses." Mr. Bacque's "missing million" were old men and young boys in the
Mr. Bacque makes a point that is irrefutable: some American G.I.'s and their officers were
capable of acting in almost as brutal a manner as the Nazis. We did not have a monopoly on
virtue. He has challenged us to reopen the question, to do the research required, to get
at the full truth. For that contribution, he deserves thanks. But as to how he presented
his discovery, I turn again to Albert Cowdrey: "Surely the author has reason to be
satisfied with his achievement. He has no reputation as a historian to lose, and
"Other Losses" can only enhance his standing as a writer of fiction." There
remains, finally, the larger issue. It took a conference of experts to challenge Mr.
Bacque's charges. Individual scholars have hesitated to take him on because to do so
required checking through his research - in effect, rewriting his book. Instead, many of
them have said in their reviews in Britain, France, Germany and Canada that they cannot
believe what Mr. Bacque says about Eisenhower is true, but they cannot disprove it. Mr.
Bacque has all the paraphernalia of scholarship; it looks impressive enough to bamboozle
even scholars. Under these circumstances, what is a lay reader to do? I suggest that he or
she trust common sense. As when confronting the Holocaust-never-happened school, ask the
obvious questions. If the answers aren't clear, the charges have not been proved. In Mr.
Bacque's case, two such questions are: Where are the bodies? and Is this book consistent
with our picture of Eisenhower's character as we know it from innumberable other sources?
Ultimately, in cases such as this one, it is often the obvious questions that bring us
closest to the truth.
War I Germany yields two significant examples of the effective use of
nonviolence. In 1920, a pro-monarchist faction led by Dr. Wolfgang Kapp attempted to seize
control of the Weimar government. German generals, sympathetic to the coup, refused to
assist the civilian government, and many police actively sided with Kapp's forces. In
response, President Theodor Ebert called a general strike and bureaucratic
non-cooperation. While the military eventually came to the aid of the elected government,
nonviolent resistance acted as the chief obstacle to Kapp's seizure of power.
second instance of the use of nonviolence came during the
so-called Ruhrkampf from 1923 to 1925. When Germany defaulted on its
war reparation payments, French and Belgian troops entered the Ruhr -- one of Germany's
chief industrial centers -- to extract the payments by force. Strikes and civilian and
bureaucratic obstruction made the occupation so costly that the French and Belgians
withdrew without net gain.
some of the most famous cases of nonviolent resistance were carried out
against foreign powers: colonial North America and India against the British [[would
British government agree that it was a foreign power]]; Germany against France
and Belgium in the Ruhrkampf; and Hungary against the rule of the Austrian Empire.
Studies Review Volume 9, Number 1 Summer 1994
LITERATURE OF NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE AND CIVILIAN-BASED DEFENSE
neglected but useful perspective comes from the tradition of
nonviolent resistance. While almost exclusively associated with Gandhi,
the idea has a long history of theory and practice. This
bibliographic essay outlines the contours of this
tradition, beginning with its roots in the more general theory of
resistance to tyranny; it then explores the theory and practice of
nonviolent resistance and its implications for classical liberal social
Thought: Violent and Nonviolent
survey of the history of theories justifying resistance to tyranny is
Oscar Jszi and John D. Lewis, "Against the Tyrant: The Tradition and
Theory of Tyrannicide" (Glencoe, IL: Free Press,
1957). While it focuses on the question of tyrannicide,
it actually covers a much wider ground. Unsurprisingly, the concepts of
tyranny and justified resistance to authority simultaneously arose in
ancient Greece. Plato and Aristotle discussed tyranny
without commenting on the permissibility of resistance
to the state, but the histories of Xenophon and Herodotus openly
sympathized with instances of tyrannicide. Romans also considered
tyrannicide. Cicero, Plutarch, Seneca, and Polybius explicitly endorsed
it. Presumably, they would have endorsed less
drastic resistance to authority as well. Christian philosophers
such as Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham endorsed a limited right to
resistance against tyranny. Finally, during the Italian Renaissance, the
revival of classical authors led to a parallel revival of
interest in the right of resistance against unjust
of resistance appeared in its modern form and won profound practical
significance during the Protestant Reformation. While Martin Luther
and John Calvin denied the right of resistance in any form, their
intellectual heirs -- especially Calvin's -- questioned the
doctrine that all "powers that be are ordained of God"
(Romans 13:1) and considered justifications for rebellion against political
and religious persecution.
Calvinists radicalized first. John Ponet, successively Bishop
of Rochester and of Winchester, defended resistance and tyrannicide in
his book "A Shorte Treatise of Politike Power" (1556;
reprinted in Winthrop S. Hudson, "John
Ponet" (1516?-1556), Advocate of Limited Monarchy [Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1942]). The Scottish Calvinist John Knox turned radically
against passive resistance and defended the right to establish the true religion
by force if necessary. Knox's English compatriot Christopher
Goodman took a similar line.
Hotman's "Francogallia" (1573; trans. J. H. M. Salmon and ed. Ralph
E. Giesey, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972; Julian H.
Franklin, trans. and ed., "Constitutionalism
and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by
Hotman, Beza, and Mornay" [New York: Pegasus, 1969], 47-96) initiated
the genre of French Calvinist resistance -- or
"monarchomach" -- literature. In it he argued that
historically, the French monarch had been limited, subject to both
election and deposition by the people. "It has been
sufficiently demonstrated, we believe," Hotman
concludes in the third edition, "that the kings of France have not been
granted unmeasured and unlimited power by their countrymen, and cannot be
considered absolute" ("Constitutionalism and Resistance,"
Beza's "Right of Magistrates" (1574; "Constitutionalism and Resistance,"
97-135) gave this historical critique a firmer theoretical background.
individual rebellion, he gave special weight to the right of lesser
magistrates to rebel against a tyrant. He countenanced
individual rebellion only against tyrants without legitimate
titles -- but, only if the resistance of lesser magistrates failed.
Plessis-Mornay, in his "Defence of Liberty Against Tyrants" (1579;
"Constitutionalism and Resistance," 137-99) essentially drew the
same conclusions, emphasizing that the people,
not the king, are properly the owners of the kingdom. Julian
Franklin has abridged and commented upon all three works in his Constitutionalism and
Resistance. Franklin emphasizes that the Calvinist resistance
literature needed to avoid radical conclusions to convince moderate
Catholics to join the Huguenot cause. Quentin Skinner's "The Foundations of Modern
Political Thought," vol. 2, "The Age of
Reformation" (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1978) contains an extensive discussion of Hotman, Beza, and Mornay, as
well as lesser-known Calvinist authors and comments on their Lutheran,
Catholic Scholastic, and humanist predecessors. For a
general treatment of Huguenot thought, see Michael Walzer, "The
Revolution of the Saints" (New York: Atheneum,
Calvinists' interest in the right of resistance spread to broader
humanist thinker George Buchanan defended the right to resist tyranny
not on partisan religious grounds but on the basis of social contract theory
and Aristotle's politics. "Powers of the Crown of Scotland"
(1579; trans. C. F. Arrowood, Austin: Texas
University Press, 1949) is his most famous book; I. D. McFarlane, in
his "Buchanan" (London: Duckworth, 1981), offers a more detailed
treatment of his thought. At the same time, Catholics
like Juan de Mariana and Francisco Surez validated the right of resistance against
tyranny. Using state of nature theory and the idea that rulers' power
is delegated rather than inherent, both of these Jesuit thinkers
justified some form of the right of resistance. Surez stood behind the classical
distinction between the usurper and the tyrant-by-conduct. While it was
permissible to use violence against a usurper, such could be justified
against a tyrant-by-conduct in only the most extreme situations.
Mariana took a more extreme view; he bypassed the dichotomy between the two types of
unjust rulers and argued for every individual's right to kill a tyrant. Most of Surez's
thought on resistance is in his "Tractatus de legibus" (1612; translated in
"Selections from Three Works of Francisco
Surez" [New York: Oxford University Press, 1944]). Mariana's
chief work in this area is "The King and the Education of the
King" (1599; ed. and trans. George Albert
Moore, Washington, DC: Country Dollar Press, 1948).
It should be
emphasized that the monarchomachs chiefly justified resistance as
such, rather than nonviolent resistance. Their principal contemporary critics
are Jean Bodin and William Barclay.
"On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from 'The Six
Books of the Commonwealth and Barclay, "The Kingdom and the
Regal Power". Both argue that this was more likely
to lead to endless bloodshed and further tyranny than
context, Etienne de La Boetie's "Discourse on Voluntary
Servitude" (1577; trans. Harry Kurz, 1942; reprinted as "The
Politics of Obedience: 'The Discourse of Voluntary
Servitude'" [New York: Free Life Editions, 1975]) appeared,
promoting the efficacy of nonviolent resistance. Anticipating David
Hume's "Of the First Principles of Government" (1777; reprinted as
"Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary", ed.
Eugene F. Miller, rev. ed.[Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987],
32-36), La Boetie saw that the rule of a tiny minority over society
was possible only if the majority voluntarily accepted it.
one step further, La Boetie argued that the social consensus theory implied that it could
overthrow tyranny peaceably if the majority withdrew its consent. "It is
therefore," he wrote, "the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring
about their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their
servitude" (La Boetie, 50).
Boetie's arguments for mass civil disobedience seem more moderate than the
Huguenot justification for violent resistance, he is, in every other respect,
far more radical. All tyrants, he argued, whether by inheritance, force
of arms, or elections, are equally bad and, therefore, equally
permissible to resist. Perhaps most significant, La
Boetie justified resistance not through custom or national tradition
but because "freedom is our natural state" (La Boetie, 57).
explained the oppressed state of mankind with a theory of ideology and caste exploitation.
The former, he contended, suppresses humanity's natural urge for
freedom; the latter develops as a tyrant fortifies power by privileging a pyramid of
originality of La Boetie's theory, it exerted little influence on
subsequent theorists who continued to equate resistance with violence. Thus,
the three pillars of seventeenth-century British resistance theory --
Locke, Sidney, and Milton -- focused chiefly on
violent revolution. John Locke, in his "Essay concerning
Civil Government," the second of the "Two Treatises of Government"
(1689; student ed., ed. Peter Laslett, New York: Cambridge University Press,
1988), not only justified rebellion against tyranny but also assumed
that physical force existed as the necessary means to subdue a tyrant.
While more moderate than Locke on many questions,
Algernon Sidney in his "Discourses concerning Government"
(1698; reprint, ed. Thomas G. West, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1990)
militantly advocated violent revolution against tyrants. And
John Milton in his book "The Tenure of Kings
and Magistrates" (1649; reprinted in "Political Writings,"
ed. Martin Dzelzainis [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991],
1-48), defended the right of the people to execute a
tyrant if the established watchdogs failed to manage him effectively.
nineteenth century produced two significant theorists of nonviolent
resistance: Henry David Thoreau and Count Leo Tolstoy.
famous essay "Civil Disobedience" (1849;
reprinted in "On Civil Disobedience: American Essays, Old
and New,' ed. Robert A. Goldwin [Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969], 11-31),
he argued that the individual had a moral duty to resist unjust acts of
government. While not primarily a work on collective
action, Thoreau noted that "[i]f the alternative
is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the
State will not hesitate which to choose. . . . When the subject has
refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his
office, then the revolution is accomplished" ("On Civil
Disobedience," 21). One can find Tolstoy's arguments on nonviolence in
the compilation "Tolstoy's Writings on Civil
Disobedience and Non-Violence" (New York: Bergman, 1967).
Unlike Thoreau, who largely treated his conclusions as simply the
consistent application of Jeffersonian principles,
Tolstoy based his condemnations of violence on the
philosophy presented in the New Testament. His most notable essays on
the issue of non-violence include "Patriotism, or Peace?"
which argued that the general renunciation of
patriotism was a precondition of international peace and his
"Notes for Officers" and "Notes for Soldiers",
which argued that members of the military had a duty
to resign their posts and obey their consciences rather than the state. For more
on Tolstoy's political thought, see his "The Law of Violence and
the Law of Love" (New York: Rudolph Field, 1948), in which he favorably
cited the work of La Boetie on the efficacy of nonviolent struggle
"A Letter to a Hindu: The Subjection of India -- Its Cause and
Cure" in "Tolstoy Centenary Edition," vol. 21,
"Recollections and Essays" (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1937) significantly influenced the twentieth-century's preeminent
exponent of nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi began his lifetime
interest in nonviolence when, as a lawyer in South
Africa, he used nonviolence to help repeal governmental
discrimination against the Indian minority. He later acquired world
fame for his leadership of the nonviolent struggle for Indian independence
from the British. One can find a good sampling of Gandhi's writings in
his "Non-Violent Resistance (Satyagraha)" (New York: Schocken
Books, 1951). While Gandhi's advocacy of nonviolence was chiefly religious and
deontological, he also defended its practicality.
Not only will nonviolence win more public support than violence,
he argued, but it also has a greater chance to convert one's opponents
and succeed with minimal casualties. In a typical
passage, Gandhi wrote that a "civil resister never
uses arms and hence is harmless to a State that is at all willing to
listen to the voice of public opinion. He is dangerous for an
autocratic state, for he brings about its fall by
engaging public opinion upon the matter for which he resists the
State" (Gandhi, 174). Elsewhere, echoing La Boetie, Gandhi stated
that in "politics, its [power's] use is based upon the immutable
maxim that government of the people is possible only so long as they
consent either consciously or unconsciously to be governed"
for difficult reading because he mixed religious ideas with more
practical observations. Gene Sharp does a good job of disentangling these two
strains in his "Gandhi as a Political Strategist" (Boston:
Porter Sargent, 1979). If one ignores Gandhi's
religious views and focuses on his discussion of practical strategic questions, one finds
a shrewd and insightful thinker in the tradition of La Boetie. Several
of Sharp's interpretive essays -- especially "Gandhi on the Theory
of Voluntary Servitude" -- bring together the bits and pieces of
Gandhi's theory of nonviolent resistance. For
further writings on Gandhi's philosophy which emphasize his mystical
side, see Raghavan N. Iyer, "The Moral and Political Thought
of Mahatma Gandhi"
Resistance: Theory and History
There can be
little doubt that today's foremost thinker sympathetic to nonviolent
resistance is Gene Sharp. With an eye toward practical strategy rather than
philosophy, his major work "The Politics of Nonviolent Action"
(Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973) covers virtually
every aspect of the theory and history of nonviolent resistance
to government. In the opening of the book, Sharp carefully crafts his
arguments as an extensive discussion of the nature of power. He draws on
the long tradition of thinkers who argue that ideology
and consent -- whether grudging or enthusiastic --
rather than brute force are the ultimate basis of political power. If a
large enough segment of the population refuses to comply with the government, it will lose
its ability to rule. Merely the threat of non-compliance is often
serious enough to provoke the government to redress grievances.
Moreover, when governments use violence against protesters who are
clearly committed to nonviolence, they undermine their ideological
foundations and often make uncontested rule even more difficult. He
cites such diverse thinkers as Auguste Comte, Etienne de La Boetie,
David Hume, Gaetano Mosca, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Max Weber, Jeremy
Bentham, Montesquieu, and Niccol Machiavelli.
distinguishes between three stages of nonviolence: protest and persuasion;
social, economic, and political non-cooperation; and nonviolent intervention.
Normally a movement begins with the first stage and gradually escalates
until the government meets its demands or agrees to
compromise. As examples of protest and persuasion
Sharp lists public speeches, petitions, distribution of literature,
public demonstrations, and fraternizing with low-ranking soldiers and
other government enforcers.
resisters bring more serious sanctions to bear when they resort to social,
economic, and political non-cooperation. Here Sharp offers as examples
social boycott, excommunication, student strikes (social non-cooperation); consumers'
boycotts, workers' strikes, refusal to pay fees, rent, or interest, refusal
to accept a government's money (economic non-cooperation); and the
boycott of legislative bodies and elections, draft resistance, tax resistance, deliberate
bureaucratic inefficiency, and mutiny (political
non-cooperation). Unlike protest and persuasion, many of these tactics could pressure a
government into changing its policies without actually changing anyone's mind.
final category, nonviolent intervention, includes the most radical
forms of resistance against authority. Some examples include fasting until death
(Gandhi's famed tactic), sit-ins, occupying or
surrounding critical government buildings, blocking
of roads, setting up alternative markets and transportation systems
(such as black markets), overloading administrative systems, and
forming a parallel government.
documents a number of examples for each category. While not all of them
have met with success, the historical effectiveness of nonviolent action
is surprising. One familiar but neglected example is
colonial resistance to Britain before the American
Revolution from 1765 to 1775. For further details on the nonviolent
stage of colonial resistance, see Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M.
Morgan, "The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution" (New York:
Collier Books, 1963); Lawrence Henry Gipson,
"The British Empire Before the American Revolution" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1961-1965); Arthur Schlesinger, "The Colonial
Merchants and the American Revolution" (New York: Frederick Ungar,
1966); Lawrence Henry Gipson, "The Coming of the American
Revolution" (New York: Harper Torchbooks,
1962); and Murray Rothbard, "Conceived in Liberty," vol.
3, "Advance to Revolution, 1760-1775" (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington
House, 1976). The famous boycotts of tea and other
British imports, refusal to pay taxes such as those
required by the Stamp Act, and ostracism of the Tories imposed serious
costs upon the British government, leading to desperate action to
preserve British authority in the colonies. Fewer
works on later American tax resistance exist. See, however,
Dall W. Forsythe's "Taxation and Political Change in the Young Nation,
1781-1833" (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), and James Ring Adams,
"Secrets of the Tax Revolt" (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1984), both of which David T. Beito discusses at
length in 'Tax Revolts in American History,' "Humane
Studies Review" 4 (Winter 1986-87). Beito's major work in this area,
"Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression"
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1989), offers a broad discussion of the largest tax rebellion
in modern America; he emphasizes the tax resistance in Chicago during
the New Deal era.
War I Germany yields two significant examples of the effective use of
nonviolence. In 1920, a pro-monarchist faction led by Dr. Wolfgang Kapp attempted to seize
control of the Weimar government. German generals, sympathetic to the
coup, refused to assist the civilian government, and many police actively sided with
Kapp's forces. In response, President Theodor Ebert called a general strike and
bureaucratic non-cooperation. While the military eventually came to the aid of the elected
government, nonviolent resistance acted as the chief obstacle to Kapp's seizure
details on the Kapp putsch, see Erich Eyck, "A History of
the Weimar Republic" (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962).
second instance of the use of nonviolence came during the
so-called Ruhrkampf from 1923 to 1925. When Germany defaulted on its
war reparation payments, French and Belgian troops entered the Ruhr -- one of Germany's
chief industrial centers -- to extract the payments by force. Strikes
and civilian and bureaucratic obstruction made the occupation so costly that the French
and Belgians withdrew without net gain.
Sternstein, 'The Ruhrkampf of 1923: Economic Problems of Civilian
Defense,' in "Civilian Resistance as a National Defense," ed. Adam
Roberts (Harrisburg, PA: Stockpole Books, 1968) discusses
the Ruhrkampf instance at great length.
We must turn
back to the Indian struggle for independence from Great Britain, the
most famous and successful twentieth-century nonviolent movement. While
Indian independence quickly sparked ethnic violence and failed to deliver
prosperity and freedom to ordinary Indians and Pakistanis, the struggle
compares favorably to violent colonial outbreaks such as
in Algeria. Sharp estimates that if one takes India's
population into account, Algerian-level casualties would have left
India with three million to three and a half million people dead. The number
of Indians actually killed while taking part in nonviolence was about
eight thousand. (See Sharp, "Gandhi as a Political
tried virtually every nonviolent tactic -- tax resistance (such as the famous salt march),
boycotts of British goods, failure to support the British war effort,
and fasting -- during the independence movement. For more details on the history of the
Indian struggle with the British, see Michael Edwardes, "The Last Years of British
India" (London: Cassell, 1963); Ram Gopal,
"How India Struggled for Freedom: A Political History"
(Bombay: Book Centre, 1967); Francis Hutchins, "India's Revolution:
Gandhi and the Quit India Movement" (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1973); and R.P. Masani,
"British in India: An Account of British Rule in the Indian Subcontinent"
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1960).
famous nonviolent struggle in recent American history has been the civil
rights movement. A few of the many histories of the combat for legal equality for
blacks -- fought largely with nonviolent tactics -- are: Arthur I. Waskow,
"From Race Riot to Sit-in: 1919 and the 1960's" (Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1966); James Farmer, "Freedom --
When?" (New York: Random House, 1954); and Alan F. Westin, ed.,
"Freedom Now: The Civil-Rights Struggle in America" (New York:
Basic Books, 1964). Martin Luther King Jr.'s theories of nonviolent
resistance should not be overlooked. Besides 'Letter from
the Birmingham Jail' (Goldwin, ed., "On Civil
Disobedience", 61-77), King's other works on nonviolence and the civil rights
movement include "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story"
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1958) and "Why We Can't Wait" (New York: New
American Library, 1964). For a broader look at the struggle of black
Americans, most of it nonviolent, see Joan Grant,
ed., "Black Protest: History, Documents, and Analyses,
1619 to the Present" (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1968); Carleton Mabee,
"Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from
1830 Through the Civil War" (New York:
Macmillan, 1977); and John Hope Franklin, "From Slavery to Freedom,"
6th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1988).
many historical examples of both nonviolent struggles and violent
struggles with a large nonviolent component. His examples include: Hungarian
resistance to the Austrian empire from 1850 to 1867; the Belgian suffragist
enlargement strikes in 1893, 1902, and 1913; Finland's opposition to Russian
rule from 1898 to 1905; and the Russian Revolution of 1905 and 1906. Anti-colonial
struggles in Asia and Africa were also often nonviolent. They included
China's boycotts against the Japanese between 1906 and 1919; the struggle of the Indian
minority in South Africa against discrimination from 1906 to 1914 and again in 1946;
and Samoan resistance against New Zealand from 1919 to 1936.
Sharp, "Social Power and Political Freedom"
(Boston: Porter Sargent, 1980) for a comprehensive list. Sharp finds a
common pattern throughout the history of nonviolent resistance.
After a movement for social change acquires any sort of influence, it
typically meets with repression. While badly organized movements collapse as
soon as resistance begins, the inculcation of solidarity and discipline (akin in some ways
to the training of normal soldiers) can hold a movement
together long enough to win attention and score some
victories. Moreover, the very fact that the protesters remain
committed to nonviolence even as the government turns to repression to
combat them tends to win over previously neutral parties,
arouse dissent among the repressing group, and inspire and involve
other members of persecuted groups. Sharp refers to
this as "political jiu-jitsu" -- jiu-jitsu being a style of
martial art that uses an opponent's aggressiveness and ferocity against
him. Sharp is far from a Panglossian advocate of
nonviolence; indeed, it is precisely because of the possibility
of failure that he is interested in studying the mechanics of nonviolent
struggle. But, insofar as it succeeds, it usually does so
by converting opponents, making repression too
costly to continue, and threatening the very ability of the
government to maintain power.
END PART ONE
Studies Review Volume 9, Number 1 Summer 1994
LITERATURE OF NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE AND CIVILIAN-BASED DEFENSE
Sharp's other works in the area of nonviolence are "Exploring Nonviolent
Alternatives" (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1971); "Social Power and
Political Freedom: Making Europe Unconquerable" (London: Taylor
and Francis, 1985); "National Security Through Civilian-Based
Defense" (Omaha, NE: Association for Transarmament
Studies, 1985); and "Civilian-Based Defense: A Post-Military
Weapons System" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). These
books overlap one another to a significant extent, but,
taken together, they detail the benefits of nonviolent action as a
substitute for violence. Sharp generally utilizes a comparative
institutions approach. For example, he compares the effectiveness of
real-world violence to real-world nonviolence rather than ideal violence
to real- world nonviolence as critics often do. As Sharp puts it,
"Comparative evaluations of nonviolent and
violent means must take into consideration that political violence
is often defeated also. By conventional standards, does not one side lose
in each international war, civil war and violent
revolution? Such defeats have usually been explained
as resulting from certain weaknesses or inadequacies, such as lack of
fighting spirit, insufficient or poor weapons, mistakes in strategy and
tactics, or numerical inferiority. Comparable weaknesses may also lead to
defeat in nonviolent action. The common practice of
explaining defeats of political violence in terms of such
specific shortcomings while blaming defeats of nonviolent action on the
presumption of its universal impotence is both irrational and
uninformed" (Sharp, "The Politics of
Nonviolent Action," p. 756).
With this in
mind, he first notes that violence is usually ineffective. The ability of the
government to use violence greatly exceeds that of the rebels. Indeed,
violent rebellion often strengthens oppressive regimes which can
plausibly claim that rebel violence necessitates
repression. Government's comparative advantage lies in violent action. The comparative
advantage of the people, in contrast, lies in their ability to deny their voluntary
cooperation without which it is nearly impossible for government to
persist. Consider the deadliness to a government of tax strikes, boycotts, general
strikes, and widespread refusal to obey the law. While these tactics are nonviolent, their
universal and unyielding use should terrify any government.
has other advantages as well. Because it seems less dangerous and
radical than violence, it more easily, as mentioned above, wins broad
public support. The costs of participation are lower, so
more people are likely to participate. Traditional
noncombatants like children, women, and the old can effectively
participate in nonviolent struggle. It is more likely to convert
opponents and produce internal disagreement within the
ruling class. It generally leads to far fewer casualties
and material losses than violence. And since it is more decentralized than violent
action, it is less likely to give rise to an even more oppressive state
if it succeeds.
to Sharp's impressive and far-reaching "Politics of Nonviolent
Action," one should examine other works, including Richard B. Gregg's
"The Power of Nonviolence" (New York:
Fellowship Publications, 1944), which combines a theoretical
discussion with a partial history of Gandhi's struggle for Indian
independence. Gregg's theoretical approach is roughly equivalent to
Sharp's -- albeit in a less detailed systematic form. A.
Paul Hare and Herbert H. Blumberg's "Liberation Without Violence:
A Third-Party Approach" (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977)
offers a collection of largely historical essays on the use of
nonviolence in India, the United States, Africa, and Cyprus. V.K. Kool,
ed., "Perspectives on Nonviolence"
Springer-Verlag, 1990) collects thirty essays on various topics
relating to nonviolence, including a keynote address by
Kenneth Boulding. Leroy Pelton, in "The Psychology of Nonviolence" (New
York: Pergamon, 1974), takes a psychological approach, focusing on the
ability of nonviolent resistance to change minds while
avoiding a vicious spiral of escalating violence.
nonviolent action can effectively force one's government to change its
policies or abandon power, then plausibly similar tactics might succeed
against a foreign invader. And, since most
nonviolence has historically been sporadic and unorganized, it might
bepossible to increase its effectiveness through training and
strategic and tactical planning. These two possibilities have sparked
interest in "civilian-based defense" -- the
self-conscious use of nonviolent means for the goal of national
defense. Sharp defines civilian-based defense as "a projected refinement
of the general technique of nonviolent action, or civilian struggle, as
it has occurred widely in improvised forms in the past. This policy is
an attempt deliberately to adapt and develop that technique to meet
defense needs, and thereby potentially to provide...
deterrence to those particular forms of attack" (Sharp, "Social
Power and Political Freedom," p. 233).
may appear intuitively impractical at first, on closer examination the
argument may have strong appeal. From the outset, one
should note that some of the most famous cases of
nonviolent resistance were carried out against foreign powers: colonial North America and
India against the British; Germany against France and Belgium in the Ruhrkampf; and
Hungary against the rule of the Austrian Empire.
Kenneth Boulding, Sharp writes "What exists, is possible." More fundamentally,
nonviolent resistance never had any of the advantages that military resistance does.
Usually the military has years to train, strategize, prepare arsenals, test weapons,
stockpile necessary resources, and study the past for lessons. But, nonviolent struggles
have almost always been carried out without the
benefit of personnel training or tactical and strategic planning. What
would happen if countries spent as much energy preparing for a nonviolent struggle as they
do for a military struggle? This is a question that Sharp and other
authors sympathetic to civilian-based defense have tried to answer.
As with most
scholarship on nonviolence, the work of Gene Sharp dominates the
area of civilian-based defense. "Social Power and Political
Freedom," a collection of essays on topics
relating to nonviolence, contains two well-written introductory
essays to the theory of civilian-based defense: "The Political
Equivalent of War' -- Civilian-Based Defense,"and
"Popular Empowerment." "The Political Equivalent of
War," criticizes traditional solutions to the problem of war: removing
its "causes,"; pacifism and unilateral
disarmament; world government; and negotiated general disarmament.
discusses the history of nonviolence, with examples from the Montgomery
boycotts, the Soviet prison camp resistance at Vorkuta, and German and Norwegian
opposition to Nazi policies.
introductory examples provide a springboard for an extensive discussion
of civilian-based defense. Sharp insists that deterrents are not limited to standard
military ones. Rather, it is merely necessary for nonviolence to make
occupation so difficult that the costs of conquest exceed
the benefits. Massive tax resistance, boycotts,
incitement of desertion, and strikes might accomplish this. And, if a
would-be conqueror realized that nonviolent techniques might make the costs
of occupation skyrocket, he might be deterred from trying. Sharp
considers specific ways to prepare effective
civilian-based defense: general education and training in the
techniques of nonviolence, as well as a "West Point" for training specialists;
the wide-spread dissemination of publishing and broadcasting equipment to prevent
invaders from seizing all of the means of communication; and local
stockpiles should exist to ease the pain of a general
strike. Lastly, Sharp considers questions of strategy.
He contrasts a "nonviolent Blitzkrieg" -- a policy of total non-cooperation,
a general strike, and massive protests -- with the less dramatic but
more sustainable "selective resistance" --
targeting specific institutions for protection and defense and
certain enemy policies for defiance and protest.
Empowerment" offers another telling point. While standard military
defense is easy for a government to use against its own people, civilian-based
defense is not. Civilian-based defense is a positive check against the abuse
of power. If the government acts improperly, the same techniques that
the citizenry can wield against foreigners can be turned on its own
leaders. National defense, properly understood, shields society from all oppression, both
foreign and domestic.
Europe Unconquerable" was Sharp's attempt to apply his theory of
civilian-based defense to the protection of Western Europe against a Soviet invasion.
While the subject is perhaps passe, the work is useful because it
investigates a fairly specific issue in detail. Moreover, those who
doubted the efficacy of nonviolence against the Soviets
may find it a more plausible tool against the less serious
threats that European nations face today. "Exploring Nonviolent Alternatives,"
one of Sharp's shorter pieces, applies the analysis to the question of
national defense. "National Security Through Civilian-Based
Defense," a long pamphlet, does nearly the same. "Civilian-Based
Defense," Sharp's most recent book, summarizes his
lifetime of scholarly research on nonviolence. It also
contains fascinating treatments of the use of nonviolence in the final
overthrow of communism in EasternEurope. Short, clear, and wide-ranging,
"Civilian-Based Defense" is the best single piece to read on the
Some of the
most interesting scholarship on civilian-based defense by authors
other than Sharp appears in Roberts, ed., "Civilian Resistance as a
National Defence." Notable essays include Sir Basil
Liddell Hart's "Lessons from Resistance Movements
-- Guerrilla and Nonviolent"; Theodor Ebert's "Nonviolent Resistance
Against Communist Regimes?"; Jeremy Bennett's "The Resistance
Against the German Occupation of Denmark 1940-5"; Magne Skodvin,
"Norwegian Nonviolent Resistance During the
German Occupation"; and Wolfgang Sternstein, "The Ruhrkampf
of 1923: Economic Problems of Civilian Defense." One should also see T.K.
Mahadevan, Adam Roberts, and Gene Sharp, eds., "Civilian Defense: An
Introduction" (New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1967).
books on civilian-based defense, see Sir Stephen King-Hall, "Defence
in the Nuclear Age" (London: Victor Gollancz, 1958), which argues
that Britain should unilaterally give up its nuclear
weapons stockpile, since the possession of nuclear weapons
makes Britain a more likely target for a hostile nuclear attack; he
recommends civilian-based defense. Norman Freund, in "Nonviolent
National Defense: A Philosophical Inquiry into Applied
Nonviolence" (New York: University Press of America, 1987),
summarizes many of the main arguments for civilian-based defense, as
does Krishnalal Shridharani, "War Without Violence: A Study
of Gandhi's Methods and Its Accomplishments" (New York: Garland, 1972).
A Quaker organization, the American Friends Service Committee, defended
civilian- based defense in "In Place of War: An Inquiry into Nonviolent
National Defense" (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1967). Anders
Boserup and Andrew Mack, "War Without Weapons" (New York:
Schocken Books, 1975), overlaps with Sharp's work;
its main innovation is its explicit attempt to integrate the theory of
nonviolence with classical strategic theory as formulated by Clauswitz. In
so doing, Boserup and Mack open the door for the application of both
rational choice and game theories to the question of nonviolence.
Can Only Work Against the British" -- Nonviolence against Totalitarian
everyone will concede that nonviolence can work against "civilized"
nations. But what about the hard cases? What about totalitarian governments
utterly lacking in moral scruples and prepared to kill as many people as
necessary to cement their rule? Intuitively, the case against nonviolence in
such circumstances is strong. Yet preliminary
research into the history of nonviolent resistance against Nazi Germany
and Soviet Russia casts doubt on this intuition. While nonviolence may be less useful
against amoral or immoral tyrants, it is far from futile.
Norwegian, and Dutch resistance to Nazism from 1940 to 1945 was
pronounced and fairly successful. In Norway, for example, teachers refused to
promote fascism in the schools. For this, the Nazis imprisoned a thousand
teachers. But, the remaining teachers stood firm, giving
anti-fascist instruction to children and teaching in their homes. This
policy made the pro-fascist Quisling government so
unpopular that it eventually released all of the imprisoned teachers and
dropped its attempt to dominate the schools. Other forms of struggle included ostracism,
the refusal to speak to Nazi soldiers and intense social hostility to collaborationists.
struggle in the Netherlands was also fierce. The Dutch organized two general strikes in Amsterdam;
one in 1941 protested mistreatment of Jews, and a second in 1943
opposed the Nazi plan to intern Dutch war veterans in Germany. In Copenhagen,
Danes used a general strike to liberalize martial law.
sources include Jeremy Bennett, "The Resistance Against the German
Occupation of Denmark 1940-5," in Roberts, pp.
154-172; Magne Skodvin, "Norwegian Nonviolent Resistance
During the German Occupation," in Roberts, pp. 136-153; Bjarne Hï¿½ye
and Trygve M. Ager, "The Fight of the Norwegian Church Against
Nazism" (New York: Macmillan, 1943); and Werner
Warmbrunn, "The Dutch Under German Occupation 1940-1945"
(Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1963). For a general treatment
of resistance to Nazism, see International Conference on the History of the
Resistance Movements, "European Resistance Movements, 1939-1945 (Oxford:
Pergamon Press, 1960).
the most amazing but widely neglected case of nonviolent resistance
against Nazi Germany was the protection of Jews and other persecuted minorities
from deportation, imprisonment, and murder. In "The Lesson of Eichmann: A
Review-Essay on Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem" in "Social Power
and Political Freedom," Gene Sharp shows how the nations which nonviolently resisted
National Socialist racial persecutions saved almost all of their Jews, while
Jews in other Nazi-controlled nations were vastly more likely to be placed in
concentration camps and killed.
to arrest Norway's seventeen hundred Jews sparked internal resistance
and protest resignations; most of the Norwegian Jews fled to Sweden. In
Belgium, police refused to cooperate with the Germans, and railroad
workers sabotaged trains transporting imprisoned Jews. Apparently no Belgian
Jews died at Nazi hands, and about half of all foreign Jews living in Belgium survived
occupation. While Vichy France helped deport foreign Jews, it refused to cooperate
in the deportation of French Jews; in consequence, eighty percent were saved. Even
though Italy was a German ally, Italians did not share Hitler's anti-Semitism. As a result
of bureaucratic resistance and non-cooperation, ninety percent of Italian Jews were saved.
tried to crack down on Danish Jews, the Danes thwarted his efforts.
Not only did the Danish government and people resist -- through bureaucratic
slowdowns and noncooperation -- but, surprisingly, the German commander
in Denmark also refused to help organize Jewish deportations. This
prompted Himmler to import special troops to arrest Jews. But, in the end
almost all Danish Jews escaped unharmed. In Bulgaria, the
parliament refused to assist the German anti-Jewish measures, and Bulgarians held public
demonstrations against the persecution of Jews. As far as can be known,
no Bulgarian Jews were killed or deported by the Nazis.
For more on
this, see Hannah Arendt, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the
Banality of Evil" (New York: Viking Press, 1963). The
omnipresent pattern that Arendt finds and that Sharp emphasizes is that totalitarian
governments are not omnipotent. They need the cooperation of the ruled
to exert their will. If a people denies cooperation, even a government
as vicious as Hitler's, bound by few moral constraints, might be unable to get what it
of nonviolent struggle against the Soviet Union has, until recently,
been much more bleak. When, in 1953, East Germans used the general strike
and other nonviolent tactics to win better treatment for
workers, the Soviets brutally crushed all
opposition, leading to worldwide recognition -- even among socialists
-- that the Soviet regime's claim to represent "workers" was
absurd. Stefan Brant, "The East German
Rising" (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1957) covers the history
of the largely nonviolent 1953 struggle. The Hungarian uprising in
1956, while generally considered a military
struggle, contained strong nonviolent elements, including a general
strike, mass demonstrations, and the formation of a parallel
government. Again, the Soviets harshly repressed it, though it is worth noting
that the nonviolent resistance (for example the general strike in Budapest)
held out longer than the Hungarian military. On this, see
Ferenc Vali, "Rift and Revolt in Hungary:
Nationalism versus Communism" (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1961) and George Mikes, "The Hungarian Revolution" (London: Andre Deutsch,
struggle of 1968 is a final tragic chapter in the history of resistance
to the Soviets. Remarkably, the Czechs used nonviolent means almost exclusively
and, consequently, lasted considerably longer than did
the Hungarians. The Dubcek government ordered its
soldiers to remain in their barracks, the state news agency
refused to announce that its government had "requested" the
invasion, and the Czech Congress condemned Soviet
actions and demanded a release of its kidnapped officials.
Other forms of resistance included short-term general strikes, transportation
obstruction, and the use of radio to rally the people against Soviet invaders.
Even though the invasion was a complete military success, the Soviets
decided that the political situation made it unwise to replace the Dubcek government
with collaborators. Instead, after some compromise on reforms, they
released the kidnapped Czech leaders and restored them to their previous
positions. The liberal reformers retained power for eight
more months, at which point the Russians replaced
them with their own favorites. This ended Czech reforms. On the
1968 struggle see Robert Littell, ed., "The Czech Black Book"
Frederick A. Praeger, 1969); Robin Alison Remington, ed.,
"Winter in Prague" (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969); and Philip
Windsor and Adam Roberts, "Czechoslovakia" 1968 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1969).
It would be
easy to draw deeply pessimistic conclusions from this long string of
suppressed attempts to liberalize communist nations. Not only did history support
the pessimistic conclusion of Jeane Kirkpatrick and other conservatives,
but it, a priori, also made sense. Violent revolution in
a totalitarian system seemed futile. The ruling
elite might fight amongst itself, but they had no intention of giving
up power voluntarily. And, nonviolence proved clearly useless against
Or did it?
As Sharp emphasized, nonviolence can win by converting opponents
and neutrals and by creating divisions within ruling groups. In a way,
that was happening for decades under communism. Not only
the people, but also subgroups within the ruling
elite itself gradually came to see the evil and inherent contradictions
within their own system. Circulation of illegal literature, smuggled
videotapes, and infiltration of Western cultural influences slowly eroded
confidence. It is a mistake to look at communist nations over the
past few decades and conclude that all resistance had been crushed;
rather, it had been occurring covertly, slowly
undermining all of the claims of communist governments
The move for
liberalization began with the Solidarity movement in Poland. One
readable journalistic history of Solidarity is Timothy Garton Ash's,
"The Polish Revolution: Solidarity
1980-1982" (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983). Ash emphasizes
that the election of a Polish pope marked the beginning of rising
expectations in Poland. By highlighting the role of
non-state institutions, John Paul's election tended
to make people more conscious of the distinction between society and
state. Ash describes one of the pope's Polish appearances: "For
nine days the state virtually ceased to exist,
except as a censor doctoring the television coverage. Everyone saw that
Poland is not a communist country -- just a communist state" (Ash,p. 29).
chief tactic of Solidarity was the strike, which it used both to
highlight particular grievances and to attain broader reform. Peter Raina's
"Poland 1981: Towards Social Renewal"
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985) details the history of Solidarity's
tactics, demands, and compromises that critical year. The author analyzes
the precise text of reform bills on independent trade
unions, worker self-management, censorship, and higher education. For a
broader history, see Jadwiga Staniaszkis, "Poland's
Self-Limiting Revolution" (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1984). This work gives a solid account of the crucial 1980 through 1982
period -- the height of Solidarity's influence --
but it also discusses moderate reforms during the 70's, the Polish
people's rising expectations prior to Solidarity, and the early period
of Soviet occupation after World War II.
Solidarity movement and student and peasant associations expressed discontent
and struggled for reform despite harsh persecution. Their limited
successes inspired dissidents in other communist nations to push harder
for reform and frightened communist leaders into mild
compromises. One work documenting the spread of the
"Polish virus" is Elizabeth Teague's "Solidarity and the
Soviet Worker" (London: Croom Helm, 1988) which discusses the
influence of the Solidarity movement on Soviet politics. The Politburo
clearly feared the growth of the ideas of the
Solidarity movement and made concessions to workers in the early
1980s to prevent this. While Teague found little Polish influence upon
ethnic Russians, the Solidarity movement frequently
influenced other ethnicities within the USSR to push
peacefully for reforms in their own republics.
the accumulated effects of resistance penetrated the Soviet Politburo
itself. Gorbachev announced that Soviet forces would not quell reforms in
Eastern Europe. At this point, the unself-conscious
tactics of nonviolent resistance went public. A half
million East Germans demonstrated in Berlin for democratic elections
and civil liberties on 4 November 1989. A half million Czechs and Slovaks
protested the phony reforms of communist bosses in Prague
three weeks later. Thousands of protesters in Leipzig
forced state security headquarters to submit to public inspection.
writes, repression often rebounded against the repressors: "Czechs
and Slovaks erected shrines at the main sites of the beatings, raising
those injured to the stature of heroes. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets
daily following the police actions. As one student put it, the beatings
were ï¿½the spark that started the whole
movement'" (Sharp, "Civilian-Based Defense," pp. 58-59).
Success was contagious -- once East Germany's neighboring communist
regimes fell, the East Germans began to flee to West
Germany by way of their government's former allies. In
the final chapter, communism within the Soviet Union itself collapsed, and
the last-ditch attempt of hard-line communists to seize power was
foiled with no small thanks to mass demonstrations,
fraternization with soldiers, and other nonviolent tactics.
there has been some overlap between the classical liberal tradition and
the theory and practice of nonviolent struggle, they remain virtual
strangers to one another in scholarship. There is,
however, no intrinsic reason for this. While nonviolence
is compatible with many viewpoints, some of the best arguments in its
favor have a rather classical liberal flavor. The analysis of political
power and civil obedience put forth by nonviolence
theorists closely resembles classical liberalism. Similarly,
the observation that violent revolution often serves only the interests
of a new elite fits comfortably into the classical liberal tradition.
The nonviolence literature contains few explicit references to
spontaneous order, but the idea is often present
nonetheless, especially in Gene Sharp's work. The idiom of the nonviolence
literature is initially foreign, but frequently it is a difference chiefly
of style, not of substance.
liberals interested in the issue of nonviolence will find several gaps
in the existing literature waiting to be filled. First of all, the
notion of spontaneous order in general, along with
rational choice and game theories, rarely appears. But, these
tools could shed considerable light on the feasibility of nonviolence;
they might also help answer the objection that centrally planned
resistance is necessarily more effective than
civilian-based defense. Second, classical liberals may be able to
draw on a broader range of historical examples than the current literature
does. The self-conscious resistance movements are its primary focus;
but aren't there many voluntary institutions whose
result is to check state power even though that is no part
of the intention of the participants?
informal economy is rarely a form of ideological protest, but it is
nevertheless a decentralized and nonviolent check
upon the abuse of governmental power. A third insight that classical liberals might
introduce and expand is the role of markets and economic freedom as a nonviolent check
upon the state. Since contemporary advocates of nonviolence
tend to be suspicious of capitalism, they often ignore typically liberal
observations. Classical liberals may learn from -- as well as contribute to
-- the nonviolence literature. Besides its intrinsic
interest, it may point the way to answers to several difficult
issues within the classical liberal tradition. Despite their distrust
of state power and interventionist foreign policy, classical liberals
have had a difficult time envisioning specific
alternatives to violence to combat tyranny. The literature of
nonviolent resistance is filled with penetrating insights
in this area. And, while classical liberals
frequently long for alternatives to both electoral politics and
violence, specific suggestions have been sparse. These are merely a few
gaps that the nonviolence literature may fill. On a more
aesthetic note, many of the historical examples of
nonviolence are beautiful illustrations of the power of voluntary
institutions to supplement or replace the role of the state.
role of civilian protest and direct action in recent anti-communist
revolutions lends a new credibility to the idea of nonviolent resistance.
It would go too far to attribute the demise of communism
purely to nonviolent resistance. But it was one
important and neglected factor in the greatest triumph of freedom in
the twentieth-century. Classical liberals should study the lessons that
it teaches. In particular, they should learn how
freedom may be defended against tyrannical governments.
A central lesson here is that even when the government has the weapons,
there is something that it cannot seize: the voluntary compliance of
its citizens. Without it, maintaining power becomes costly or even
impossible. But, as we have seen, governments almost
instinctively sense this risk and strive to prevent
it from arising. As La Boetie explains, "it has always happened that
tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to
train their people not only in obedience and servility
toward themselves, but also in adoration" (La Boetie, 75). All
that is necessary to prevent tyranny is to let the citizenry come to
know its own strength. Or, in the timeless words of La Boetie,
"From all these indignities [of tyranny], such as the very beasts of
the field would not endure, you can deliver
yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing
to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do
not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but
simply that you support him no longer; then you will
behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has
been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces"
(La Boetie, p. 53).
is a graduate student in Economics at Princeton University