The Rape of Belgium

[bob lembke]

Bob

I raise the point regarding the holocaust because I feel it can be assumed that elements of the officer class that sanctioned or expedited the murder of millions of innocent men, women and children where the same elements of the officer class who Jan suggests would not allow attrocity to take place either in the trenches or the wider community. Jan himself also presented part of his case by referring to events from Britains past which fall outside the period that we are specifically discussing and therefore I feel free to do the same.

Andy

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Andy,

I am not going to beat through the first half of your post, answering line by line, but will simply observe the following. Hitler and his buddies had amptly demonstrated in the Night of the Long Knives how he was going to react to resistance to his programs by officers, sending death squads to murder General Staff officers in front of, or with, their families. He also built large formations outside of the control (if any) the traditional army, such as the SA, the SS, the Waffen SS. Their size could be judged by the fact that I believe that there were more than one million non-Germans in the Waffen SS. The concentration camps were first set up for his domestic opponents; resistance to his policies in the 1930's brought one perhaps six months in, for example, Dachau, sort of a sadistic summer camp stay.

It might be pointed out that the German General Staff sent an emissary to London in 1938, begging the UK government to stand up to Hitler, so that the General Staff could oppose him; a special advisor to the PM, I believe, told the officer that he was a disgraceful traitor to his uniform, and urged him to go back to Germany and perform his duty.

I was trained as a US Army officer, and as a believer in the international norms, I am disgusted with the way in which the US and to a lesser sense the British goverment have easily slipped into gross, multi-faceted violations of the rules of war, international conventions on war crimes, humane treatment of civilians, wars of agression, etc. It has not required the gunning down of staff officers in their homes, or hanging officers with piano wire, filmed for Hitler's enjoyment; in the US it seemed to take little more than pushing aside a square-speaking Army Chief of Staff. These violations have not come from the US officer class, and I know that lots of them are not happy with the situation, but they are getting along with the program, largely.

In summary, the officer class in 1914 was quite different, and in a very different situation, than the officer class of 1939.

But this is all a diversion, and one that I believe is at varience with the guidelines for the Forum; we are not going to determine what happened in the streets of Belgian cities by looking at what happened on the steppes of Russia in 1941.

(I have to acqknowledge that the UK general staff is hopping mad about how Blair provided them with a fudged legal opinion that the invasion of Iraq was not a violation of international law, after they demanded one before moving into Iraq. I understand that they have informed 10 Downing Street that the UK armed forces will not be available for another "foreign adventure" for at least five years. Good for them!)

(As for Germany, there was an interesting case just before the Constitutional (Supreme) Court; a German NCO or junior officer refused to perform his duties, which were in the Bundeswehr logistical system, due to his belief that these duties indirectly supported the war in Iraq, his superiors came down hard on him, he went to the high court, and they ruled that he was within his rights to refuse direct orders that he felt supported an illegal war conducted by another state.)

I will comment on the second part of your post in about an hour. It will be more OT.

Bob Lembke

[egbert]

(As for Germany, there was an interesting case just before the Constitutional (Supreme) Court; a German NCO or junior officer refused to perform his duties, which were in the Bundeswehr logistical system, due to his belief that these duties indirectly supported the war in Iraq, his superiors came down hard on him, he went to the high court, and they ruled that he was within his rights to refuse direct orders that he felt supported an illegal war conducted by another state.)

Bob Lembke

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nice reply in toto Bob!

The officer mentioned was indeed a Major, general staff, at MoD Bonn; he refused to write algorithms for SW to be used by US forces in Iraq; he made up his case by arguing that this war is not legitimated by the UN

[bob lembke]

Bob

When I said that these dastardly acts lose nothing in the translation I was being metaphoric and not literal. An act of brutality is an act of brutality in whatever language the act is recorded in. I would also respectfully suggest, whilst accepting that Britain pumped out some pretty nonsensical propoganda (babies on bayonets, crucified Canadians etc) during the war the Germans did precisely the same and therefore the primary sources that you allude to are just as tainted as anything written in English. A link that Egbert supplied much earlier in the thread demonstrates my point, "The Belgian People's war - A violation of international law" http://www.jrbooksonline.com/HTML-docs/BPW_1.htm. Chutzpah.

My jaw dropped when I read "The Imperial German Government is of opinion that the evidence published in the appendix proves convincingly that the actions of the German troops against the civilian population were provoked by the franctireur war which was a violation of international law". No mention of the gross violation of international law committed by the Imperial German Government in the unprovoked invasion of a neutral country. Balanced ??

Andy

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

A final line or two to sum up my last post's point. Arguably the American administration, government, alphabet agencies, to a lesser degree the armed forces, and to a lesser degree the UK, are violating a wide range of international laws, conventions, etc. at the present time. This does not reasonably lead to a reasonable finding that the Yanks and Brits were the bad guys in WW II. Arguing that the Germans must have done some bad things in 1914 (which they certainly did, to an arguable level) because the German officer corps in WW II were bad guys seems to flow from an actual lack of fact about 1914, possibly due to an inability to read 99% of the possibly creditable sources.

You wrote: I would also respectfully suggest, whilst accepting that Britain pumped out some pretty nonsensical propoganda (babies on bayonets, crucified Canadians etc) during the war the Germans did precisely the same and therefore the primary sources that you allude to are just as tainted as anything written in English.

Let me address this in a round-about and self-congratutory fashion by outlining my WW I activities of the last four years. About 4-5 years ago I found about 50 letters from WW I, mostly Feldpost written between my father and grand-father from their respective fronts. A good number were letters written by my grand-father from Belgium in 1914, where he was a staff officer. My interest kindled, I taught myself written German (when I was young, and after my mother and I were almost sent to a camp {and after about 50 searches of our home by the FBI}, she, being quite scared, insisted that I not learn German. I learned to speak it in Ljubljana, Slovenija when I was there working for the Department of State in the period 1967-71) and then the Fraktur printing system and the Suetterlin und Kurrent hand-writing systems, which possibly 2% of today's Germans can read easily, or at all. I also wrote down 40 pages of oral history from my father, probably mostly from the 1950's, before I did any WW I research, so not to color my memory with research, and reading the letters.

Since then I have purchased about 200 books on WW I, and lots of other materials, mostly in German. (I have bought about 8-10, and received about four in the post, in the last two weeks.) I have had European libraries copy a lot of material, including at least three very rare, complete books. I have read about 200-300 book-length sources, mostly in German and French, also English and Italian, almost all either primary sources or official histories. On three trips to Europe I have done research in London; Vienna; Ljubljana and Kobarid, Slovenija; Split, Croatia; and Istanbul, Turkey.

If you include military orders, letters, etc. the number of sources read and notes taken goes into the thousands. I have translated several short books in the entirety and done translations from the Suetterlin, for a top German dealer in post cards and military documents, from the German, Czech (with my wife's help; she is a much better linguist) and the Slovene. I have thousands of 4 x 6 note cards, a card catalog, and about 1000 pages or more on the word processor, including about 400 pages of time lines on several topics.

The point is that I cannot recall coming across a single atrocity story in all of my readings in German sources, aside from one from a letter from my grand-father from Belgium, which almost certainly was a true incident. This is from well over 100 books and possibly 700 letters and articles.

What is the basis of your statement that, although the Brits "pumped out some pretty nonsensical propaganda during the war the Germans did precisely the same"? Certainly almost all war-time publications from every combatant was given a "spin" in the writer's direction, I simply don't see these extreme, often fantastic atrocity stories. I see the British, American and Canadian ones all the time, although I nether look for them nor (usually) buy them when I see them. (I see a lot of these in books from the period I encounter browsing used book stores.) I have bought one or two or five books of this sort when they were of particular interest or outragous content.

How many German primary sources have you read, and in those how many fantasy atrocity stories did you find? Do you read German in Fraktur, or at all? Have you read primary sources from third-party neutral sources that toured Belgium in 1914 and 1915? What did they report?

As to your last point, the presumed violation of a treaty of neutrality by Germany in pushing through Belgium is a different (although somewhat linked) issue than the issue of what the Belgians did or did not do to the Germans, and what the latter in turn did or did not do to Belgian people and real estate. The White Paper was an attempt to answer the storm of material about on the latter question. A few days ago Bush gave a strong speech attempting to make his case for the Iraq adventure, my jaw would have dropped if he had opened his case by saying: "No matter that we broke international law going into Iraq, and continue to break international law in all sorts of ways; these insurgent guys are really bad actors -----". His not providing that segue into his speech did not cause my jaw to drop.

Bob Lembke

[Jarmstro]

In 1918 on the Saint Michael salient 700 American soldiers died of starvation. How's that for a war attrocity.

[marina]

In 1918 on the Saint Michael salient 700 American soldiers died of starvation. How's that for a war attrocity.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't knpw that story, Jarmstro. What happened?

Marina

[Max]

Arguing that the Germans must have done some bad things in 1914 (which they certainly did, to an arguable level) because the German officer corps in WW II were bad guys seems to flow from an actual lack of fact about 1914, possibly due to an inability to read 99% of the possibly creditable sources.

Bob

The point that I am trying to make is that the men who were in high command during WW2 and enabled/assisted the Nazi regime to commit the heinous acts that they did were to a large extent junior officers during WW1.

The Chiefs of the General Staff from 1933, Beck, Halder, Zeitzler, Heusinger, Guderian, Krebs have one thing in common, they were blooded during WW1 as part of the German Officer Corps. As were Von Kluge, Von Runstedt, Goering, Hess, Donitz, Ernst Roehm, Hans Frank (“If I wanted to put up a poster for every seven Poles shot, the forests of Poland would not suffice to produce the paper for such posters.”), Keitel, von Manstein, Brauchitsch, Rommel, Model, Kesselring, Wolff, Canaris, Freisler, "Dr" Karl Genzken, Gluecks the List (excuse the pun) could go on and on. If they were capable of assisting whether practically or by omission the murder of millions of people in the 30s and 40s what makes you think that they were psychologically or morally different in the period 1914 - 1918?

The point is that I cannot recall coming across a single atrocity story in all of my readings in German sources, aside from one from a letter from my grand-father from Belgium, which almost certainly was a true incident. This is from well over 100 books and possibly 700 letters and articles.

Whilst not questioning your enthusiasm for the subject I do have to question your conclusions. Are you suggesting, based on your studies, that you think that the German Army only committed one atrocity during the period 1914 - 1918? If so I find this claim absolutely incredible.

Andy

[Guest IMDB Fan]

There was a documentary last year (Timewatch?) about atrocities in Belgium. It really was quite horrific.

Marina

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I missed the edition in question Marina but I do remember it being advertised . I also remember an edition of the show from a couple of years ago that caused me to start a thread asking about conditions in POW camps during the war . I remember in particular the testament of a British soldier aged 17 who was caputured in the 1918 spring offensive . He and his comrades were being marched into captivity and stated that he saw French women being bayoneted by Germans . He had no motive to lie

Seems strange to bring in people like Von Rundstedt , Rommel and Von Manstien into a thread about First World War atrocities . Von Runstedt was no lover of Nazism while Von Manstien often mocked Hitler and the Nazis and while Rommel was a member of the Nazi party his conduct during the Second World War was exemplary and the North African campaign is recorded as being the most " humane " campaign of the second world war

Keitel , Hess , Roehm , Goering and a list of other Nazi yes men fought in the First world war ! Guess what the two biggest most evil b@stards of the Nazi regime ( Himmler and Heydrich ) didn`t so the argument that because the leaders of history`s most effective muder machine served in the German army 1914-18 they must have commited atrocities against Belgians and French is a bizarre and needless argument , especially when there is evidence to show the Germans actually did carry atrocities against the civilian populace . Obviously you won`t read about it from any German sources though . In fact if you read any Japanese history book you`ll find absolutely no mention of any Japanese atrocities in the 1930s or 40s !

Oh and seeing as this website is called www.1914-1918.net can we stop bringing the present conflict in Iraq into it because that`s nothing to do with the topic we`re discussing .

Edited 17 November , 2005 by Kate Wills

[bob lembke]

Bob

The point that I am trying to make is that the men who were in high command during WW2 and enabled/assisted the Nazi regime to commit the heinous acts that they did were to a large extent junior officers during WW1.

Andy

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There were 235,000 officers in the German Army in WW I. It is hardly surprising that the high-ranking officers in WW II were junior officers in WW I, with such a pool of experienced, tested officers. The German Army would hardly have turned to the tailoring or tile-setting professions for filling out the General Staff. That hardly tells us anything about what actually happened in Belgium in 1914. My throwing Iraq into the discussion is a debating technique called reducto ad adsurbum, or proving a point by pushing the arguement to its absurd limits. It might be also be considered a protest against being repeatedly dragged into WW II, while this thread, and even this Forum, is specifically dedicated to the study of the Great War.

Bob Lembke

[bob lembke]

Bob

Whilst not questioning your enthusiasm for the subject I do have to question your conclusions. Are you suggesting, based on your studies, that you think that the German Army only committed one atrocity during the period 1914 - 1918? If so I find this claim absolutely incredible.

Andy

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You have completely missed my point, and set up an absurd red herring.

You stated that, although admittedly the British conjured up many absurd atrocity charges, "the Germans did precisely the same". What I said is that, having read over a hundred books of the era written in German by the Germans, and literally many hundreds of German sources in you include letters from the front, news articles, etc., I can not recall seeing a single absurd atrocity story (or even a plausable atrocity story) in all of those sources, although I would have taken note if I had. In contrast, the English-language material, at least the secondary source material, is awash in such stories, due to an organized campaign to grind them out to meet several war objectives.

I asked you how did you come to conclude that the German sources are "precisely the same" in regard to this sort of disinformation. I asked several precise questions about how you arrived at this quite precise conclusion. Your silence suggests that you have probably read no German sources, and your assertion is based on nothing factual at all.

I have been PMed by another forumite; he and I both have manuscript letters from our grand-fathers, who both served in Belgium in 1914, and who wrote precisely on this topic. But rather than post our material, and provide vivid insight into the events in Belgium, we are faced with the need to fend off ethnic attacks disguised as pseudo-history. This is especially absurd and regrettable since you are a Moderator, even though you are not carrying out that role at the moment.

It seems that every person that has posted on this site, German or non-German, and who can read any of the relevant sources in any (or in the case of AOK4) or all of the languages that they were written in, has come under sustained ethnic attack.

Bob Lembke

[bob lembke]

Pascal,

Your comments are "right on". This is a topic in which 99% or more of the primary sources are in Flemish, German, or French. English or English-speaking people had almost nothing to do with these events. However, secondary sources, in particular those in English, are full of what everyone seems to agree is many fabricated, fantastic "atrocity" stories, mostly generated by a highly organized propaganda and disinformation campaign organized mostly by the English government, sometimes using American and Canadian proxies, often "on the payroll".

However, every time that anyone that actually knows something about the topic of this thread, or is able to read one or more of the languages (Flemish, French, and German) that the sources are in, has been repeatedly attacked on personal or ethnic grounds. Repeatedly the Holocaust has been pulled in to "prove" what must have happened in 1914. This has been dished out to German-Americans like me (I am half Danish and English, don't I qualify for some sort of pass?) but additionally people who are not "German", such as "AOK4", an authority on the fighting in Flanders, the author of several impressive books on the topic, and facile in a number of languages, including Flemish, French, and German, and who happens to be a Belgian. He got personally attacked, in part because he is Flemish, it seems. I see no evidence that the muggers actually know anything about Belgium; I would be delighted to be proved wrong here.

I brought in the Iraq analogy to demonstrate the absurdity of determining 1914 events based on WW II events; why not determine what happened in WW II, who were the good and bad guys, by who is violating international norms in the Middle East today?

One poster, possibly accurately, has suggested that these attacks are based on anger that 80% of Brit cars are built by the Germans, and the rest by the Americans, the Japanese, and now the Chinese; plus additional annoyance that the Germans may be about to buy the London Stock Exchange. Might be the case.

----Edited-----

Can we get back to Belgium and 1914?

Bob Lembke

[Plan]

Bob

I've pull my post, as it looks like I didn't make myself clear: It was definitely not an endorsement of any "side" of this argument...

Pascal

[Max]

Seems strange to bring in people like Von Rundstedt , Rommel and Von Manstien into a thread about First World War atrocities . Von Runstedt was no lover of Nazism while Von Manstien often mocked Hitler and the Nazis and while Rommel was a member of the Nazi party his conduct during the Second World War was exemplary and the North African campaign is recorded as being the most " humane " campaign of the second world war

Keitel , Hess , Roehm , Goering and a list of other Nazi yes men fought in the First world war ! Guess what the two biggest most evil b@stards of the Nazi regime ( Himmler and Heydrich ) didn`t so the argument that because the leaders of history`s most effective muder machine served in the German army 1914-18 they must have commited atrocities against Belgians and French is a bizarre and needless argument  , especially when there is evidence to show the Germans actually did carry atrocities against the civilian populace . Obviously you won`t read about it from any German sources though . In fact if you read any Japanese history book you`ll find absolutely no mention of any Japanese atrocities in the 1930s or 40s !

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I am not going to get into the good Nazi, bad Nazi argument as it is facile, pointless, and rather obvious.

Andy

[Max]

Your silence suggests that you have probably read no German sources, and your assertion is based on nothing factual at all.

My silence has everything to do with the fact that some of us have to sleep and work. I am on mainland Europe and my last post on this subject was made at around midnight last night. I then went to work at 7.30 and it is now lunchtime. When was I able to post in the interim? I have read the judicial report on the Sacking of Louvain by Leon van der Essen, I apologise that this was a version that had been translated into English and was not in the original legal Flemish. I have also read the fantastic "The Belgian People's war - A violation of international law", but again, not in the original form. Admittedly my reading has not been as extensive as yours but sometimes it is not what or the volume of data that you read but your openness to process it correctly.

But rather than post our material, and provide vivid insight into the events in Belgium, we are faced with the need to fend off ethnic attacks disguised as pseudo-history.................It seems that every person that has posted on this site, German or non-German, and who can read any of the relevant sources in any (or in the case of AOK4) or all of the languages that they were written in, has come under sustained ethnic attack.

Whether you publish your material or not is completely up to you, but please do not use ethnic attack as an excuse not to. Unlike yourself and others I have completely accepted that through the years the British army has committed atrocities, all armies do, it is the nature of the beast, unfortunately you do not seem to be able to accept this. I recounted the fact that my Grandfather admitted to me that he had on two occasions witnessed and done nothing about the execution out of hand (by British and Canadian troops) of German prisoners. This admission came not from written primary source or a letter but eye to eye in the form of a death bed confession. It didn't change the way that I felt about my Grandfather but it made me realise that if a man as kind and gentle as him could do such a thing, given the situation, so could any man. I am not an apologist, unfortunately it seems that not everyone who has contributed to the thread can say the same thing.

The most important thing to remember is that a couple of hundred men, women, children and priests were killed in Louvain. What do you suggest happened to them? Were they shot out of hand? or did they fall down dead with glee at the anticipation of their town being occupied by an invading force?

This is especially absurd and regrettable since you are a Moderator, even though you are not carrying out that role at the moment.

As you quite rightly state, as I have posted on this thread I have declined to moderate on it, that has been left to others. If you think that you have been mistreated in some way or you think I have broken forum rules please feel free to report this to another moderator who will deal with your complaint in a fair and equitable manner.

Andy

[AndyHollinger]

The time is now that all good men should retire to their opinions and go on to other threads.

History speaks for itself. Occupations are nasty apriori - some worse than others. One doesn't have to delve into details to see what populations thought of their conquorers over the long haul. My thinking is that all nations' score card is a mixed bag ... Look at them yourself ... draw up a list of civilian reactions to conquoring forces ... grade the list ... or simply say to yourself ... Would I rather be a Confederate vet living under Sheridan or a Belgian under the Germans in WWI, WOuld I rather be Irish living under Cromwell or a Ukranian in 1942, would I rather be Japanese living under American subjegation or a Frenchman in 1915 ... answers, real answers come pretty quickly.

[bob lembke]

The time is now that all good men should retire to their opinions and go on to other threads. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Andy Hollinger,

You are completely correct. There have been 114 posts on this thread, and absolutely nothing has been established. Research on this topic presents very difficult research problems. The secondary sources on this topic, especially those in English, have been totally poisoned by a massive propaganda campaign, so it is necessary to go back to the primary sources from all of the participants and try to tease out what actually happened, and in what time-frame, a most difficult task. However, every single person who is able to read the primary sources and has attempted to contribute to this thread has been attacked on personal and ethnic grounds until they have given up on participating. When AOK4, a Belgian, easily the most qualified person who has attempted to participate in this discussion posted, but inconveniently was not of German extraction, he was attacked in a post that, among other things, seemed to equate being Flemish with some sort of congenital deformity.

I diverted my efforts from another thread that was beginning to bear real fruit, where I was about to organize various posts and compile a multi-national bibliography on an important and controversial battle, to participate in this fool's errand. Even "Max"'s last post has an assortment of personal attacks woven into it. He also automatically assumes that I am some sort of "appologist". In fact I was going to post material from my grand-father, a Prussian staff officer who hated the war from day one, among other things, described many reprisal executions. (He also described in several letters how they were frequently fired on in urban areas, once forcing him to crawl under his staff car for cover. He also describes a Belgian raid on a first aid post in which they murdered 43 wounded soldiers.)

I have been approached off-line by another forumite who also has letters from Belgium providing eye-witness descriptions of relevant events. He will not post or participate in this climate. Another seasoned forumite has approached me off-line and stated that these attacks have been the worst he has ever seen on the Great War Forum.

One recalls a quote from Sir Richard Burton (no, not the besotted Welsh thespian, but the 19th Century Englishman, who, incidentally, could supposedly speak 67 languages. See, there is hope, the defective Anglo-Saxon language gene is not universal.), who stated: "The date that Englishmen ceased going about armed was the date of the death of English manners." That date was a good while ago.

Bob Lembke

[Jarmstro]

I don't knpw that story, Jarmstro.  What happened?

Marina

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The Americans called it the batlle of Argonne Sept. 1918, St Mihiel. Bad preperation, gross misadministration and over concentration of men led to gridlock on the supply routes and indeed some 700 men are said to have litterally starved to death in the front line trenches. Those who attempted go back for food were shot. Suppressed? Of course it was. But an attrocity none the less.

[Neil Burns]

Hi James,

Could you provide a source for this. There were two seperate offensives St Mihiel in early September 1918 & the Meuse-Argonne in late September. Alhtough there were huge traffic tie-ups during the Meuse Argonne offensive I am unaware of 700 men starving to death in the front lines and unclear as to who would shoot them if they left.

Thank you,

Neil

[bob lembke]

The Americans called it the batlle of Argonne Sept. 1918, St Mihiel. Bad preperation, gross misadministration and over concentration of men led to gridlock on the supply routes and indeed some 700 men are said to have litterally starved to death in the front line trenches. Those who attempted go back for food were shot. Suppressed? Of course it was. But an attrocity none the less.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As this has nothing to do with Belgium I will happily comment.

Until recently I knew little about the US participation on the Western Front, but for the last year I have been studying some of this in considerable detail, in particular the fighting along the Vesle River in August 1918.

I have heard nothing about this, but I have been very struck by the extreme loss of life among the Yanks. I get the impression that some of the senior officers seem to have been feeling that they were in danger of missing out in the slaughter of the war. I also have found that many "official histories" (I have read and studied about 15, and ploughed through literally many hundreds if not a thousand or two orders, letters, reports, etc.) are quite unreliable, especially on the topic of casualties. (Prof. John Mosier; The Myth of the Great War, states that the US was the only combatent that actually fabricated their casualty figures). In my work, on the US 28th Infantry Division, I found that anything penned by a rank over captain was very unreliable, especially on casualties. However, the 28th was a National Guard division, and many of its higher officrs were politicians. Nuf said.

General Ballard, a divisional, corps, and finally an army CO, found that he had to establish a tight cordon of military police behind the fighting troops. This was just before the fighting you described, and I think he was the corps commander there also. So the instrument was in place. Most yanks fought bravely, but many also deserted, according to him, and he said that Paris was overrun with US deserters, causing a lot of trouble with the French. They of course could not go back with the departing AEF, and formed a criminal class in Paris after the war.

Ballard seems to have been an efficient officer, but certainly was tough and nasty, quite a hater, if his writings are to believed. I could see him giving orders for shooting down soldiers drifting back from the fighting line. I don't recall him boasting about it in his memoirs.

A great resource and bargain for the study of the AEF is the three CD set sold by the US Army for $20, including postage, it has 13,500 pages of orders, messages, plans, etc., and translated French and German material. But the selection of documents was done a while ago for publication in books, and I would not expect to find out a lot of such an event, if it occurred, among the documents selected for publication by Army personnel.

Bob Lembke

[Neil Burns]

Hi Bob,

I agree with you (and have in the past) regarding US unit histories and mismanagement of US troops. I do not think any US troops starved to death during the First World War. Officers & runners moving to the rear to get rations for their men simply weren't shot out of hand by any nation's battlefield police.

Take care,

Neil

[bob lembke]

Hi, Niel;

Yes, on the face of it, I find improbable, but Iam finding such irregularity within the AEF in some matters that I would be surprised but not astonished if unauthorized foraging parties had been fired on. The best arguement againt it happening (700 starving to death) is the physiology of starvation; it would take weeks for previously well-fed and healthy young men to literally starve to death. There is also the question whether hundereds or thousands of armed men would submit to sitting still and literally starve. First they would eat the horses. The officers might be next.

I would have to be shown that this occurred.

Bob Lembke

[2ndCMR]

First of all, the English, or English-speaking people, had next to nothing to do with these matters. Hardly any useful primany sources would have been written in English....Secondly, the English, and to some extent the Americans, produced an astonishing tidal wave of propaganda on this issue, some of it blatantly and crudely propagandistic, and some of it material of greater subtleness. This effort served the Allied cause well during the war, but probably has poisoned the historical well so badly that it is unlikely that anything close to the historical truth could ever be arrived at. The practical result is that if you are reading contemporary sources, and they are in English, you almost certainly are either reading commissioned propaganda, or the second-degree product of propaganda.

Well, that simplifies things doesn’t it? No need to read all that Englisches propaganda!

the German General Staff sent an emissary to London in 1938, begging the UK government to stand up to Hitler, so that the General Staff could oppose him

So we are to believe that the “Great General Staff” is unable to act without the assistance of the British?? As the Nazis assumption of power was approved in a vote by a large majority of the German people, the “correct” (in the German sense of the word) response of the British was quite logical, if naive. There was of course the possiblity that the whole thing was simply a provocation that would be used by Nazi propaganda to justify some piece of aggression.

The point is that I cannot recall coming across a single atrocity story in all of my readings in German sources, aside from one from a letter from my grand-father from Belgium, which almost certainly was a true incident. This is from well over 100 books and possibly 700 letters and articles. 

My holocaust-denying host told us that as a student he asked all kinds of adults of the wartime generation about the extermination of the Jews etc., and all of them told him that they had heard nothing and knew nothing about such things at the time....So that settles it then! And besides, we know that “German officers wouldn’t do such things.”

One poster, possibly accurately, has suggested that these attacks are based on anger that 80% of Brit cars are built by the Germans, and the rest by the Americans, the Japanese, and now the Chinese; plus additional annoyance that the Germans may be about to buy the London Stock Exchange. Might be the case.

I’m afraid your inability to follow a line of argument or comment, or deduce the thinking behind it, demonstrates again, why wars occur. Or perhaps this is simply a deliberate distortion?

What is the basis of your statement that, although the Brits "pumped out some pretty nonsensical propaganda during the war the Germans did precisely the same"? Certainly almost all war-time publications from every combatant was given a "spin" in the writer's direction, I simply don't see these extreme, often fantastic atrocity stories. I see the British, American and Canadian ones all the time, although I nether look for them nor (usually) buy them when I see them. (I see a lot of these in books from the period I encounter browsing used book stores.) I have bought one or two or five books of this sort when they were of particular interest or outragous content.

Nothing like an impartial study of all materials to arrive at the truth! Perhaps you can enlighten us as to the titles of these “outragous”(sic) propaganda pieces so that we may examine their odious contents ourselves?

The concentration camps were first set up for his domestic opponents; resistance to his policies in the 1930's brought one perhaps six months in, for example, Dachau, sort of a sadistic summer camp stay.

No comment!

My interest kindled, I taught myself written German (when I was young, and after my mother and I were almost sent to a camp {and after about 50 searches of our home by the FBI}

Unfortunate, but then with the openly Nazi propaganda of the German-American Bund, not surprising. Anyone who has seen the photos of their swastika-bedecked rallies and Brownshirt/Hitler Youth-type uniforms in the 1930s and 40s will see why they might be regarded as a security risk. Leaving aside the sabotage of US war efforts in both WWI and WWII by “German-Americans”.

I was trained as a US Army officer, and as a believer in the international norms, I am disgusted with the way in which the US and to a lesser sense the British goverment have easily slipped into gross, multi-faceted violations of the rules of war, international conventions on war crimes, humane treatment of civilians, wars of agression, etc. It has not required the gunning down of staff officers in their homes, or hanging officers with piano wire, filmed for Hitler's enjoyment; in the US it seemed to take little more than pushing aside a square-speaking Army Chief of Staff.

The July 20th Plot occured in 1944, not 1934. Odd how the officer corps allowed Gen. Schleicher et al to be disposed of without a whimper, but then they got Ernst Roehm & “friends” as part of the deal, so perhaps they thought it was a fair trade.

we are not going to determine what happened in the streets of Belgian cities by looking at what happened on the steppes of Russia in 1941. 

Au contraire, it is all part and parcel of the same thing. As one French general said in 1919, “This is not a peace, it is an armistice for twenty years”. As for the steppess of Russia, you needn’t go any farther than Oradur sur Glan http://www.oradour.info/ or Lidice, or any number of others.

So the language becomes more violent and intemperate: posters are “...beaten about the head and shoulders.”, others become “muggers”, and we “seemed to equate being Flemish with some sort of congenital deformity.” Calm yourself good sir, we are not writing for “Der Sturmer”, or even the “Volkischer Beobachter”

One recalls a quote from Sir Richard Burton (no, not the besotted Welsh thespian, but the 19th Century Englishman, who, incidentally, could supposedly speak 67 languages. See, there is hope, the defective Anglo-Saxon language gene is not universal.), who stated: "The date that Englishmen ceased going about armed was the date of the death of English manners." That date was a good while ago.

Oh dear, are our genes still defective? I thought two world wars had cleared up that little Teutonic misapprehension? Allow me to clear up one other: collectively the residents of the British Isles are known as “British”, the English are the largest of the four ethnic groups that comprise the United Kingdom. As for our manners, you are hoist on your own petard.

“You English will always be fools, and we Germans will never be gentlemen.” German officer rescued by the Royal Navy in WWI.

“We Germans have no boundaries”, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha

There are many more such of course, but I’m afraid I must go and rake some leaves.

[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi Bob,

I read mostly German sources and struggle to find the British and Belgian stuff.

Not finding mentions in German sources means nothing.

Some official sources mention franktireurs shooting at Germans while Regimental histories sometimes admit that it was actually friendly fire.

You need to expand your reading to Regt histories.

The Germans dont have propaganda and tales of terror? Maybe because the war was not being fought in Germany? There are enough German books that complain about the allies from the moment they crossed the German border at the end of hostilities in WW1 and WW2 and enough that moan on and on about allied air pirates when they bomb Germany.

You mention maybe we should read neutral 3rd party primary source material.... I found one. An American Journalist who was there.

You say you have a zillion books (so do I ;-) but maybe it is what is NOT being said that speaks so very loudly? One of the main battalions in Löwen dedicates TWO, 2, DEUX, ZWEI... WHOLE lines to the whole affair in their regimental history..... while writing pages on periods in the trenches where nothing happened...

An example of bashful German understatement ?

See the link below...

http://www.kaiserscross.com/41815/77301.html