It seems the Americans were war criminals during WW2.....

[tim]

If you believe this site - http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.opfergang.de/ok025.htm&prev=/search%3Fq%3DDOKUMENTATION%2BAMERIKANISCHER%2BVERB RECHEN%2B%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG
It would seem there may be extremists elsewhere than the US.........

[Zep]

Skinhead neo-Nazis behind this, perhaps?

Goodness gracious, it appears everyone but the Americans had a jolly time from 1939 to 1945 playing war games. First the round-robin to see who gets to the finals, then a jolly fine series to get a winner! Hardly anyone ignored the refrees, and it was fine sport all round! The first-aid people were hardly ever called onto the field of play, and there were no sendings-off either. Excellently played, chaps! :rolleyes:

Umm, what don't these idiots get about the idea that war is the province of mistakes and great tragedies?

[Jon_in_london]

"as I 13 years was old and fled from Breslau in Regensburg lived, became I to
20.4.1945 when buying American low fliers suddenly attacked. That
Airplane came shooting at me too flown, I could even the face of the pilot
recognize. it was a black American. After it first into an open window
had shot, as a woman wanted to air straight their beds, struck those
Balls beside me into the pavement. I could do me still fast behind one
small wall thrown and one did not meet. Low fliers have again and again here
the women and children before the grocer's shop, lining up in a queue
attacked. Like many dead ones and hurt one it gave cannot I no more say."


this is hilarious!!!

[Chaos]

this is hilarious!!!

It is, more probably, the result of a crappy translation program, translated word by word. The grammar is still German.

[Jon_in_london]

Yes, but its still damned funny :D

[Chaos]

Yes, but its still damned funny :D

Not to me :boggled:

[Kopji]

By Erik Kirschbaum

RHEINBERG, Germany (Reuters) - The nightmares come back to Heinz
Gerth when pictures of American soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq
appear on television, images that remind him of his brush with death
as a U.S. prisoner in 1945.

Gerth had surrendered to American soldiers as an 18-year-old German
conscript and was put behind barbed wire in an open field at the end
of World War II.

Thousands starved to death, died from disease or exposure -- and
Gerth nearly perished with them.

"We thought the Americans wanted us to starve to death," said Gerth,
bursting into tears at memories of prisoners dying slow deaths, or of
those who were buried alive when makeshift trenches dug for shelter
collapsed in rain or of those shot by guards in suicidal runs at the
barbed wire.

"It was a death camp," said 77-year-old Gerth, referring to one of
the most notorious "Rhine Meadow camps" at Rheinberg, north of
Cologne. (...)

Gerth said his weight fell to 110 lb from 176 lb in his month at
Rheinberg. "We went days on end without food or water. Eating grass
saved me. Those abused in Iraq will be haunted for life."

In Iraq, U.S. military police have been accused of hooding, stripping
naked and sexually humiliating prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near
Baghdad, a scandal that has caused outrage in the Arab and Muslim
world and undermined U.S. efforts in Iraq.

Although the origins and scale of maltreatment in Iraq and post-war
Germany are vastly different, the images from Iraq have revived
memories of the conditions at 16 "Rhine Meadow camps" where thousands
of Germans were held in open fields without shelter and a minimum of
food in the months after the war ended.

"Rheinberg was a shocking place," said Herbert Schnoor, who spent
several months there as a 17-year-old conscript.

"It was a brutalisation of human beings," Schnoor, retired interior
minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, told Reuters. "But the
whole war was filled with atrocities. In hindsight, we were lucky to
avoid the Soviets. That would have been worse."

Like the controversial detention without charge of 650 foreigners
described as "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, the
United States classified the Germans "disarmed enemy forces" rather
than "prisoners of war." That meant they were not protected by the
Geneva Convention.

Under Geneva Convention rules, German POWs should have received the
same rations as their Allied captors. As "disarmed enemy forces,"
they got less.

"We weren't POWs and had no rights," said Dietrich Kienscherf, 77,
who spent seven weeks in the Rheinberg camp.

"We had no shelter and hardly any food," added Kienscherf, who saw
Americans maltreating German prisoners caught trying to steal food.
(...)

With daily rations of a slice of bread and a half-liter of soup or an
uncooked potato, some prisoners took to eating grass, tree bark,
turnip roots or even snails, according to a 1995 report by the town
of Rheinberg filled with survivors accounts.

It quoted survivors accusing American soldiers of taking their
watches and rings and beating those who complained. Several said
those caught stealing food were forced to eat soap.

As the German army's western front collapsed in early 1945, some five
million Wehrmacht soldiers were captured or surrendered to advancing
U.S. forces. Even the wounded, including amputees, were taken from
hospitals and put in camps.

Historians estimate that between 5,000 and 20,000 German prisoners
died of starvation, disease and exposure.

"The Rhine Meadow camps are a dark chapter in American military
history," said Klaus-Dietmar Henke, a history professor at Dresden
University. "There were certainly incidents of murder, executions,
and thousands did starve to death. (...)

Henke and U.S. historians have noted there was a worldwide shortage
of food in 1945 and they estimated the death rate of German POWs in
American hands was one to five percent, slightly higher than a one
percent death rate of U.S. POWs in Germany and far below that for
Germans in Soviet hands: 35 to 50 percent.

"It was more that the Allies were overwhelmed by so many prisoners
and were not prepared for them," said Henke.

A West German government commission in 1971 estimated that up to
9,000 died in the six largest Rhine Meadow camps. Testimony from some
of the survivors included in the government's report said they had
estimated as many as 32,000 died.

In Rheinberg, a village just west of the Rhine river, there are
hardly any reminders of the horrors. Tidy houses and farmland occupy
the land where the camp with its 6-mile long barbed wire perimeter
once stood.

There are no remnants of the holes which the prisoners dug in the
ground for primitive shelter but local officials say the remains of
prisoners who drowned or were buried alive in the pits are still
sometimes found during construction work.

"I thought I would never make it out of there alive," said Hubert
Wallrauen, whose weight halved to 77 lb. "I was fortunate I found a
big turnip root that saved my life."

[END]
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

(kopji note) - the Reuters story appears legimate due to the wide discussions about it, but has been pulled or relocated from the Reuters site. It continues to appear on the neo nazi/white supremicist sites which I deign not to link to. The article above mentions some specific places and names which might be worth further research.





I agree with Chaos, just because the translation is poor does not make it funny. The painting on the site with the American planes blasting the kid carrying the school supplies seems like (rather poorly done) propaganda art.

The camp events seem to have actually taken place, and were reviewed in 1971. Suddenly five million soldiers giving up and being taken prisoner. Might be just an excuse, but I doubt any other country could have done any better. War offers these horrible situations up so we should not act too surprised. Ultimately, responsibility for the massive German deaths near the end of the war must be laid at the feet of the lunatic they chose to lead them.

The lesson for us maybe, is that war is never a clean and neat extension of diplomatic policy. It always involves atrocity, destruction, and the suffering of innocent people.

[Kopji]

And if we don't have the stomach for that cold reality we should not have gone to Iraq in the first place...

[Skeptic]

I'm sorry, but, as a jew, I find it hard to be moved by stories of German sufferings during WWII.

Germany started a war of expansion, agression, and annihilation against those considered inferior--jews and Slavs--who deserved only annihilation, or, at best, the "honored" position of being the slaves of the Aryans.

After it lost the war--AND ONLY AFTER IT LOST THE WAR--the big lie, the idea that somehow most Germans were innocent bystanders "hijacked" by a group of criminal nazis, began to circulate.

But it's simply not true. How many of the "innocent Germans" DURING the war refused to employ Russian or Polish slave workers as servants? How many of them protested the sudden disappearance of the jews--oops!--DURING the war? Had Germany won the war, how many of these people would have said: "Sorry, we cannot share the German victory--it's only a Nazi victory, and we're not nazis! We refuse to be ubermenschen!"?

The answer to all these questions is clear: virtually none.

[Abdul Alhazred]

... How many of them protested the sudden disappearance of the jews--oops!--DURING the war? ...

Actually started BEFORE the war.

[Giz]

So in the midst of a world wide shortage of food, POW's were hungry.

Allied soldiers, having just liberated real death camps, were not hugely sympathetic to the plight of German POWs.

And the pope was catholic.

And bears (and POWs) **** in the woods.

[Jeff Corey]

That painting and narration may well have been fiction, since the black pilots (the Tuskegee Airmen) were combat mission fighter pilots. Their job was to protect the bombers and did it very well.
I can't see them breaking away from a bombing mission to strafe the Katzenjammer Kids.

[Doubt]

That painting and narration may well have been fiction, since the black pilots (the Tuskegee Airmen) were combat mission fighter pilots. Their job was to protect the bombers and did it very well.
I can't see them breaking away from a bombing mission to strafe the Katzenjammer Kids.

The escort fighters worked in shifts. The later model fighters had the sufficient range but not the endurance (in terms of flight time) to stay with the bombers all the way through a mission. After ending their shift, fighters were free to attack ground targets on their way home if they had enough fuel and ammo. One of their favorite targets were trains.

However, I seriously doubt somebody on the ground could identify the race of a pilot in an oncoming fighter. The plane would still be moving at a high rate of speed with the pilot’s face obscured by the flight helmet, goggles and oxygen mask. Also, looking at a plane shooting in your general direction is not a smart thing to do when you should be hiding behind cover.

I am no expert on the Tuskegee Airmen. I do know they started off based in North Africa. Not sure how many missions they would have flown over Germany as opposed to Italy, Romania and other Southern European targets.

[Chaos]

I'm sorry, but, as a jew, I find it hard to be moved by stories of German sufferings during WWII.

Germany started a war of expansion, agression, and annihilation against those considered inferior--jews and Slavs--who deserved only annihilation, or, at best, the "honored" position of being the slaves of the Aryans.

After it lost the war--AND ONLY AFTER IT LOST THE WAR--the big lie, the idea that somehow most Germans were innocent bystanders "hijacked" by a group of criminal nazis, began to circulate.

But it's simply not true. How many of the "innocent Germans" DURING the war refused to employ Russian or Polish slave workers as servants? How many of them protested the sudden disappearance of the jews--oops!--DURING the war? Had Germany won the war, how many of these people would have said: "Sorry, we cannot share the German victory--it's only a Nazi victory, and we're not nazis! We refuse to be ubermenschen!"?

The answer to all these questions is clear: virtually none.

So tell me, does one crime justify another crime done to the perpetrator of the first, if the second crime is not necessary to stop the first?

[Giz]

Chaos,

The US "atrocity" was neither of the same magnitude nor was it the result of unprovoked aggression. Depending on the shortage of food at the time it may not even have been preventable.

Does that make it a good thing? No, but it perhaps means we should keep a sense of proportion...

And if we believe in taking responsibility for our own actions then it should be noted that many of the Wehrmacht/SS veterans had willingly participated in an aggresive war of conquest - that the war came full circle and bit them on the *ss should have been taken on the chin if they had any integrity...
might makes right until the German righty is no longer mighty...

Like it or not, Germans pleading WW2 victimhood is a hard sell...

[Chaos]

Chaos,

The US "atrocity" was neither of the same magnitude nor was it the result of unprovoked aggression. Depending on the shortage of food at the time it may not even have been preventable.

Does that make it a good thing? No, but it perhaps means we should keep a sense of proportion...

And if we believe in taking responsibility for our own actions then it should be noted that many of the Wehrmacht/SS veterans had willingly participated in an aggresive war of conquest - that the war came full circle and bit them on the *ss should have been taken on the chin if they had any integrity...
might makes right until the German righty is no longer mighty...

Like it or not, Germans pleading WW2 victimhood is a hard sell...

Nobody here denies the scope of German atrocities during WW2, neither in the war itself nor in the holocaust.
I´d even - if just for the sake if this debate - accept the argument that every adult German who did not actively resist these atrocities is in some way guilty of them.
However that does not absolve the Allies from doing the best they can - and not "what we think those bastards deserve". That is, unless they wish to relinquish their claims on being the paragon of virtue.

[Zep]

Chaos, I just want to repeat my opening comment: "War is the province of mistakes and great tragedies". On all sides.

[Giz]

Chaos
Do people claim that the Allies were paragons of virtue? Or just that the Allies were, relatively speaking, paragons of virtue?

[Chaos]

Chaos
Do people claim that the Allies were paragons of virtue? Or just that the Allies were, relatively speaking, paragons of virtue?

Well, every time someone brings up the fact that the Allies did, indeed, not have a perfectly spotless record, all hell breaks loose and this someone has to defend himself against allegations of being a Nazi sympathizer or something similar.
So, I cannot help but assume that the belief that the Allies were paragons of virtue is held, and defended with an almost religious zeal.


Zep
Sure. I don´t deny that. But there were actions on both sides that would, in an impartial review, be called war crimes - intentional war crimes.
I don´t deny that German war crimes by far - by order of magnitude, actually - outweigh Allied war crimes. But I do deny that they excuse or legalize these crimes.

[Bluegill]

Chaos, I agree with you. Our own shame is never eclipsed by the shame of others. Revenge is never noble and never equals justice. An awful crime that is dwarfed by a horrendous crime is still an awful crime. An explanation for maltreatment does not excuse it. And the pride that the Allied nations rightfully feel for their nation's actions and the sacrifices of my forebears during WWII can still be felt even as we aknowledge faults.

[Beerina]

It is, more probably, the result of a crappy translation program, translated word by word. The grammar is still German.

Yeah, subject, object, verb, as opposed to English's subject verb object, or Yoda's object, subject, verb (which I read somewhere no language on Earth uses.)

[Soapy Sam]

Chaos - you are right. Two blacks do not make a white.

I'm 50, so it's all history to me. I remember my father though-who was a reluctant soldier and a very gentle man. To the day he died he was not so much angry as utterly baffled and disappointed by how Germany of all nations- the epitome of western culture in so many fields- could have fallen so far, so fast.
I think he felt if it could happen there, it could happen anywhere.

I think he was right.

[Euromutt]

Bleah. I speak German, I've read most of the stuff on that page in the original, and I'm not impressed. It's all blown way out of proportion, and some of its comes off as outright fabrication. This page (http://www.opfergang.de/kramer_3.htm) describes a supposedly criminal act by the destroyer USS Roper on 13-Apr-1942. Roper, using radar, managed to catch the German submarine U 85 on the surface at night. The U 85 fired a torpedo, which missed, and attempted to gain enough speed and distance to dive, but the destroyer had managed to get too close. From the German:The destroyer trapped the U-boat in its searchlight and opened fire. The conning tower and pressure hull of the were hit, water penetrated the hull of the U-boat, which slowly sank. Almost all of the 45 crewmen were able, equipped with life jackets, to jump into the water. The U-boat sank beneath the waves of the Atlantic.

The American destroyer tore through the large group of shipwrecked German sailors wihtout reducing speed and dropped eleven depth changes on the spot where the U-boat had been downed. The destroyer's commanding officer, Commander Howe, indicated in his report that he had seen the German sailors floating in the water. Crewmen of the American destroyer reported hearing them cry for help. After the depth charges had denoted between and below them, none of them remained alive.Given that it was night time, and the North Atlantic in April, we cannot assume that the Americans had been able to see that that the U-boat had been sunk; thus, they would have had to assume that there was a possibility that the U-boat had managed to dive (albeit without managing to recover the sailors who had been on deck), and thus continued to be a threat to Allied shipping. Given this risk, Howe's decision to drop depth charges what might have been a functional U-boat was perfectly justified.

Regarding the strafing-painting, which smacks of blatant propaganda anyway, I note with scorn the caption "Wenige Tagen vor Kriegsende" - "a few days before the end of the war." In other words, this incident wouldn't have happened if the Nazis had surrendered a little sooner. Assuming that it actually did happen, and I'm not willing to accept that on the say-so of one anonymous witness.

And then there's the Rheinwiesen "death camp"... spare me. That description only works if you classify every camp in which someone died as a "death camp." That would not only expand the number of German death camps to include just about every PoW and forced labor camp, but it's also a use of the term calculated to make light of the horror of the actual death camps like Auschwitz. It's too vile for words.

I don't know whether this page is the work of some Holocaust denier scumbag or of some anti-American leftie who's in denial about his nation's past, but words fail me to adequately express my disgust. Not in the least place because I used to assist in prosecuting war crimes, and I do not like to see the term cheapened by being bandied about in this fashion.

[Hutch]

There is many a boy here to-day who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.
William T. Sherman


War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
William T. Sherman

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.
William T. Sherman


For those not from America, William Tecumseh Serman was a Civil War General who was among the first practioners of "Total War" and his name is still one many folks in Georgia and South Carolina are not fond of.

But he did speak of war--any war--pretty eloquently.

Press on.

[Mephisto]

There are atrocities and human rights abuse by every side in every war. When the Iraq war broke out, I was chastised by several neo-cons for suggesting that it was only a matter of time before the atrocities broke out (this was offline, but I've run into similar resistance to my continued insistence that the atrocities will continue as long as the war continues).

As you can see, the human-rights abuse leaves people on both sides tending wounds that never heal . . .

No one seems to forget. Now, consider the relatives, friends, neighbors and acquaintences of all those innocents who have died in Iraq . . .

[Euromutt]

There are atrocities and human rights abuse by every side in every war.There's still a distinction to be made, namely whether such violations of what we now call international humanitarian law are widespread, even systematic, and/or known to and condoned or even encouraged by the command hierarchy. I know of a number of acts committed by American GIs in the European Theater of Operations which indubitably qualified as war crimes--quite a few German soldiers were shot while trying to surrender, for example, and some concentration camp guards were treated with, ahem, less than scrupulous adherence to the Geneva Conventions--but these were not US policy, official or unofficial, and can in no way be placed on equal footing with the systematic atrocities conducted by the German armed forces. The number of German soldiers illegitimately killed by GIs probably does not match the number of entire villages in Occupied Europe massacred by German forces; moreover, the Germans were acting on orders.

When I started at ICTY (http://www.un.org/icty/) back in 1997, I accepted the "all sides are equally guilty" stuff concerning Bosnia. Within a few months of getting into the material, I knew better.
No one seems to forget. Now, consider the relatives, friends, neighbors and acquaintences of all those innocents who have died in Iraq . . .In that regard, the number of Iraqi civilians who have been deliberately killed by insurgents far outweighs the number who have been killed--be it deliberately, negligently or inadvertently--by Coalition forces. So what's your point?