The missing Million

What were the circumstances behind the death of a Million German POW's, after the end of hostilities, at the hands of the French and American authorities?

ONE MAN IN HIS TIME
by Hans Post, ISBN 1876928352, Published by Otford Press - http://www.otfordpress.com.au, 2002.



(1) As oral histories, Hans' book, together with that of a friend who was a fellow inmate of the Thoree-les-Pins POW camp - Hans Joachim Finke: Die Uberwindung der Sprachlosigkeit (2000) - corroborate the research of James Bacque's Other Losses: An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French & Americans after World War 11 (1999). Bacque found that one million German prisoners of war died from May 1945 to 1949 in POW camps like Thoree-les-Pins.

who is a German Jew, hid his identity well enough to be drafted. He was a POW in England and kept there for a few years after the war. In the beginning, while the war was still hot, he was not well treated. In fact, he had his teeth kicked out. Later, he was released to a British farm family and developed a warm, longstanding relationship with them and eventually he was set up with American sponsors and came over here.

On the other hand, my husband's maternal uncle marched off to Russia, was captured and never heard from again.

This is a book my husband's family is going to be very interested in.

I spent the summer working for a Blacksmith. He had been a Hitler Youth and fought in the battle for Berlin. Only 14 when captured by the Russians, he spent 2 years in a Siberian POW Camp where the prisoners were forced to cut trees from sunup to sundown, 364 days out of the year. They were given Christmas as a day off. Of the 2000 German prisoners in his camp when he arrived, less than 200 survived when he was repatriated to Germany.
He told me that the bigger men were the first to go. The small wiry men survived the longest because their bodies needed fewer calories to maintain them. Many ate grass and weeds and some died from eating poisonous plants.

Two ex German POW's that I worked with in Oklahoma had come back to the States with their families because they had been so well treated. many were released on their own recognizance to work on local farms.
One was an ex Luftwaffe MP and the other a Captain in the Vienna SS Panzer Division. He had been part of an advance team sent to Normandie in preparation for moving the Division from the Eastern Front. Less than a handful of men from his Division ever returned from Russia.

and they are dying with this generation. My FIL refuses to talk about any of it. But as he gets deeper into dementia we can see it is all very high up in his subconscious mind.

He was one of the first to arrive at Dachau. He never would talk about it. I found out from reasearch and going through his souvenirs from the War.

with their generation. Perhaps there are some things best left unsaid.

I worked for a German company from 1985 to 1995.

The rep in Toronto's father was a German P.O.W. who died while in an American Prison Camp. I think he starved to death.

This was because Eisenhower thought it would be nice for American Troops to vent their frustrations about the War and starve or brutalize some of their Nazi prisoners.

A rough and possibly inaccurate recollection on my part, but it sure was a subject I didn't want to discuss much at work!

-85% jimmy

about who was behind the Third Reich and the connections to industrialists and people in power among the Allies.