James Bacque's Other Losses Analysis - Term Paper Example

Task Other Losses Introduction “Other losses”, is ed by James Bacque into the massdeaths of Germans who were prisoners of war by the French and the Americans after WW1. The book states that a huge number of Germans including men, women, children, died in the American and French camps out of insanitary conditions, starvation (Bacque 2) at a time when the Americans and the French were already signatories of the Geneva Convention. The term other losses was a term that was used on the army records to conceal the body count of deaths of the prisoners of war who died out of starvation (Harris). The Contravention of the Geneva Convention After the Second World War the Germans knew that they had lost the war, they witnessed the worst form of resistance (Journal of Historical Review, Vol 10. No.2). It all began because of the United States General, Dwight Eisenhower who was in charge of all the supplies that the Germans received (Bacque 4).General Eisenhower intentionally caused the starvation of the prisoners of war and exposed them to insanitary conditions. The United States was a signatory to the Geneva Convention and the convention provided for ways of handling prisoners of war that they had to follow. In order to conceal the contravention of the Geneva Convention the general disguised the Prisoners of war as Disarmed Enemy Forces so that the Geneva Convention could not recognize them. The Geneva Convention provided for the means of treatment of prisoners, which included the feeding of the prisoners, the reception of mails and the visits by members of the international committee. There ratio supply of food that the Germans were being given was reduced (Bacque 43). The Combined Chiefs of Staff received Eisenhower’s letter that stated that the Germans are the ones who would be responsible for the feeding and taking care of the disarmed Germans and also that there would not be any form of declaration about the condition of the German disarmed troops or that of the Armed forces. This then began the creation of a new form of prison whereby the prisoners were not fed, they were not allowed to receive any mails and there was no shelter. The worst of all this was the decision that saw no public declaration. The United States further defied the Geneva Convention by denying the red cross the permission to enter the prisoner’s camps. “Disarmed Enemy Forces” On the 26th day of April 1945, a message was received from the Combined Chief of Staff that responded to Dwight Eisenhower’s letter, which granted the prisoners of war the status of Disarmed Army forces (Bacque 27). The letter set forth all the conditions that Eisenhower had requested. The prisoners of War were now being regarded as disarmed Enemy forces. This led to the destruction of The German Institutions Welfare Agencies and even the German Red cross was abolished leaving no one to maintain the Germans. The prisoners would then maintain themselves using the local materials available in the enclosures that they had been put in. The enclosure did not have shelter it only comprised of barbed wire fences surrounding the whole enclosure. They returned food aid or any sort of assistance that came in for the Germans. This saw the beginning of inhumane treatment upon the Germans who were already suffering so much under the power of the Americans and the French. The Conditions at the Camps The Americans were very cruel to the Germans. The Americans exposed the Germans to very callous conditions. To begin with, the camps had no toilets and the toilets were mainly logs that were flung over the trenches of the fence (Bacque 38). There was no food and the prisoners ate grass including the young children and the pregnant women at the camps. There were days that passed without the prisoners having any water at all and they had to drink their urine. Their food rations were cut and they had nothing to eat. They were left for starvation. Eisenhower asked for more food and permission to distribute the food himself but he did not. The camps had so much backlog of food but they claimed that the world food scarcity was also affecting them (Bacque 63). The international committee of the Red Cross was denied permission to access the prisoners camps (Harris 111). Eisenhower stated that there was no longer any power protecting the interests of the Germans and therefore any matter that touched on the German prisoners of war could not be released (Bacque 70). There were slow deaths at the camps; people were living in holes while others were literally living with the skeletons of other prisoners whom they watched as they died. There were also random shootings at the camp that increased the death toll and injured some of the prisoners who had no means of getting treatment. The prisoners were dying of typhus that was spreading over to the French. After a while, the British and the Canadians came to see the green houses and they realized that the prisoners were not well, the British took in some of the weak and the sick even when they had initially said that they would not and provided them with food (Mohr). The Marshall Plan Information started spreading out regarding the condition of the prisoners of war. Many people started to come in to witness the conditions that were being discussed. There was pity for the starving and the beaten men and women. In the United states news flowed too regarding the state of the German Prisoners and when they went to see the facts for themselves they discovered that the condition were indeed inhuman and when they returned home ordering the policies that governed allied powers to be changed (Bacque 5). Almost immediately, the mood about the German prisoners of war changed and people began sending in humanitarian support. The Canadians were sending bags of wheat while the ban that had been placed to aid on starving Germans was lifted. There was a plan that was taken up by the Canadian Government to ship food to the starving prisoners. The United States, which was responsible for the killings and the starvation of the Prisoners of war under the command of Robert Patterson, also spent million dollars shipping food through the mobilization of various resources. The Canadians still maintained their food rationings even after the war the Canadians continued with their supplies and millions of lives were saved in the process. The food bridged the gap between the food that that is used from the crop farm after the years supply has run down and many more than those who had died were saved. This came to be known as the Marshall plan that saved the lives of millions of people in starvation. Conclusion Indeed millions of people died in the camps. In order for the French and the Americans to conceal the crimes that they had committed they lied about the number of people who had died in the camps. They stated that the death toll had come up to 614 people. They knew that if they stated that no one had died in the camps that would have been unreasonable and they had to come up with a number (Bacque 126). The Germans Knew that the figure was not the correct figure but they decided to keep quiet so that they would also reduce their humiliation and as they had become allies with the ones responsible for conquering them and so they did not want to offend them. The Germans knew that the number of those who had died in the camps was greater but no one knew the exact number and so they had to take up the figure of 614.The prisoners were finally discharged from their camps in 1945. Dwight Eisenhower went back to America. Many of the people who had been detained in the defense camps were not known by name, it was therefore difficult to know about a person’s whereabouts, and an attempt to search for a person was almost futile (Bacque 149). The crimes committed by the acts of the Americans and the French was concealed as most information was controlled in that everything that was being reported about the mass killings was monitored and this led to this crime disappearing without anyone being held responsible. Most critics state that James Bacque misread and misinterpreted documents while his work was flawed in its content (Ambrose). James Bacque Critics state that the methodology which he used in coming up with the number of the prisoners who died at the camp is compromised and it therefore cannot be relied upon. Additionally they state that that the writer ignored available and critical sources and out of his ignorance, he wrote a book whereby his conclusions are unreasonable. James Jacque indeed told an event that many could not tell and although no one was ever punished for those crimes committed against the Germans, the mass killings came to be revealed for people to know the actual events and the millions who demised. Works Cited Ambrose Stephen. James Bacque’s Other Losses: A Review by Stephen E. Ambrose (New York Times Review, 1991). Available at: Bacque, James. Other losses: The Shocking Truth behind the Mass Deaths of Disarmed German Soldiers and Civilians under General Eisenhowers Command. Prima Publishing, 1989, PP 21-216). Available at: on 16 November 2011 Bacque, James. Hidden Genocide. Missouri, 2011. Pp. 4-6 Available at: on 16 November, 2011 Bacque James, A personal Review: Other Losses (1992, Prima Publishers, P. 2) Available at: Harris, Justin Michael, "American Soldiers and POW Killing in the European Theater of World War II” Theses and Dissertations-History. 2009, Paper 12. Web. 16 November 2011. Available at: Lt, Col. Jack Mohr. Aus Ret, “A Review of James Bacques book "Other Losses". (2009) Available at: . Read More