Muertos por causas diversas.

La guerra en el oeste de Europa

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V.Manstein
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Muertos por causas diversas.

Mensaje por V.Manstein » Sab Sep 30, 2006 12:04 am

Viendo la noticia de que ha traido nuestro compañero Eckart sobre la declaración de un famoso escritor americano de haber asesinado a 122 prisioneros alemanes durante la guerra se me ha ocurrido que no se ha tratado el tema de la mortandad de los prisioneros alemanes en manos aliadas en el frente occidental, que en mi opinión es un absoluto escándalo.


http://perso.orange.fr/bastas/pga/eisen ... .htm#début
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beltzo
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Mensaje por beltzo » Dom Oct 08, 2006 2:23 am

Hola a Todos:

Amigo Manstein me permito preguntarle que cifras son las que le parecen escandalosas, si se trata de las que aporta Bacque en su libro y que arrojan un 30% de víctimas mortales entre los prisioneros de guerra alemanes, entonces no me queda más remedio que estar de acuerdo con su apreciación; sin embargo el articulista refuta estos datos y los que ofrece en su lugar son diez veces menos, un 3 %, y esta cifra a mi me parece dentro de lo que puede considerarse normal. Si tenemos en cuenta los datos de Albert Cowdrey que son citados en el mismo artículo y que suponen un 1%, yo diría que es incluso baja. Un par de ejemplos para ilustrarlo: en la primera guerra mundial el número de prisioneros rusos muertos en cautividad ascendió al 5,4 %, y ya en la segunda guerra mundial el número de angloamericanos muertos en cautividad sumaron el 3,5% del total. [1]

Lo que si me parece escandaloso (por no emplear palabras más duras), independientemente del resultado o de los motivos, es la decisión de cambiar el estatuto de prisionero de guerra por el de Fuerzas Enemigas Desarmadas, que es a mi modo de ver, un burdo intento de soslayar las disposiciones de la convención de Ginebra, de la Haya y unas cuantas leyes más que regulan la guerra; algo que en esencia me recuerda a lo que hicieron los nazis para autojustificarse en el brutal trato dado a los prisioneros del ER. Es evidente que los norteamericanos violaron estas disposiciones, puesto que existe obligación de alimentar a los prisioneros de guerra con raciones similares a las que recibiría un ejército de reserva, pero lo peor es que además al perder la condición de prisionero de guerra perdían también cualquier tipo de amparo en el derecho internacional, alojamiento, ropa, cuidados sanitarios, etc, lo cual casi siempre lleva a todo tipo de arbitrariedades e injusticias. Es muy probable que moralmente el reducir las raciones a los prisioneros de guerra alemanes estuviera justificado por las necesidades del momento (¿es moralmente aceptable ofrecer más comida a un prisionero de guerra que a un refugiado?), y yo sería el primero en defenderlo, pero en mi opinión no hay nada que justifique este tipo de ardides que sólo sirven para vaciar de contenido cualquier tratado internacional según la propia conveniencia.

[1] Datos tomados de Michael Burleigh "El tercer reich" ed. taurus-santillana madrid 2002

Saludos
"Si mi teoría de la relatividad es exacta, los alemanes dirán que soy alemán y los franceses que soy ciudadano del mundo. Pero sino, los franceses dirán que soy alemán, y los alemanes que soy judío". Albert Einstein

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Mensaje por JOSE ANTONIO AZURZA » Dom Oct 08, 2006 3:12 am

¡Cositas y pequeños defectillos de los defensores de la libertad y de la democracia!.

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Mensaje por V.Manstein » Dom Oct 08, 2006 5:57 am

Querido Beltzo , efectivamente es escandaloso el hecho que señala y yo no me refería al porcentaje de muertos exacto sino a las circunstancias en que se produjeron y el hecho de que Ike fue un ferviente promotor de las mismas. Ike se tomó un trabao especial en distribuir copias a todos los oficiales del infame plan Morgenthau. Veamos lo que dicen por ejemplo en esa enciclopedia mundial de la red:
During all of 1945 the Allies forces of occupation ensured that no international aid reached ethnic Germans. It was ensured that all relief went to non-German displaced persons, liberated Allied POWs, and concentration camp inmates. The German Red Cross was dissolved, and the International Red Cross and the few other allowed international relief agencies were kept from helping Germans through strict controls on supplies and on travel. The few agencies permitted to help Germans, such as the indigenous Caritas Verband, were not allowed to use imported supplies. When the Vatican attempted to transmit food supplies from Chile to German infants the U.S. State Department forbade it.[4]

During 1945 it was estimated that the average German adult received 1200 calories a day.[5]

General Lucius Clay stated in October 1945 that:

"undoubtedly a large number of refugees have already died of starvation, exposure and disease.... The death rate in many places has increased several fold, and infant mortality is approaching 65 percent in many places. By the spring of 1946, German observers expect that epidemics and malnutrition will claim 2.5 to 3 million victims between the Oder and Elbe."[6]
In early 1946 U.S. President Harry S. Truman finally bowed to pressure from Senators, Congress and public to allow foreign relief organisation to enter Germany in order to review the food situation. In mid 1946 non-German relief organisations were finally permitted to help starving German children.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_and_German_POWs

Me quedo con la frase de Stephen Ambrose, nada sospechoso de ser enemigo de Ike y sus actos:
"we as Americans can't duck the fact that terrible things happened. And they happened at the end of a war we fought for decency and freedom, and they are not excusable".
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Mensaje por beltzo » Dom Oct 08, 2006 7:38 am

Hola de Nuevo:

Morgenthau tenía un plan que no tenía nada que envidiar a los de los nazis, pero lo peor de todo es que aunque el plan se rechazó, en la práctica una parte importante se aplicó hasta 1947, que fue con mucho el peor año para los alemanes, a través de la directiva conocida como JCS 1067, y supongo que esta directiva es la que Ike se dedicó a distribuir entre sus oficiales.

Pero como dijo Churchill: "la historia será benevolente conmigo, porque tengo intención de escribirla".

Saludos
"Si mi teoría de la relatividad es exacta, los alemanes dirán que soy alemán y los franceses que soy ciudadano del mundo. Pero sino, los franceses dirán que soy alemán, y los alemanes que soy judío". Albert Einstein

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Mensaje por V.Manstein » Dom Oct 08, 2006 5:05 pm

beltzo escribió:Hola de Nuevo:

Morgenthau tenía un plan que no tenía nada que envidiar a los de los nazis, pero lo peor de todo es que aunque el plan se rechazó, en la práctica una parte importante se aplicó hasta 1947, que fue con mucho el peor año para los alemanes, a través de la directiva conocida como JCS 1067, y supongo que esta directiva es la que Ike se dedicó a distribuir entre sus oficiales.
Saludos

Pues NO. De hecho, en Noviembre de 1945 ordenó la distribución a oficiales americanos en Alemania de 1000 copias gratis del libro de Morgenthau " Alemania es nuestro poblema" que no era otra cosa que el funesto plan desarrollado y explicado en detalle. Incluso Ambrose admite que verdaderamente Eisenhower era partidario de hacer con Alemania lo propuesto por Morgenthau punto por punto. En el tema de los prisioneros alemanes, evidentemente la actuación de Eisenhower fue indigna de los altos preceptos morales que impulsaban la acción de los Aliados en la IIGM.
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 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


En realidad los aliados decidieron voluntariamente incumplir los mandatos de la convención de Ginebra :
The Allied powers had decided at the highest level (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) to repudiate the Geneva Conventions, especially after the extinction of a German government able to negotiate with the Red Cross. (The Soviet Union, of course, had never signed the Geneva Conventions in the first place.)

(1) Detention after the end of war:

Under the Geneva Conventions, PoWs are to be sent home within months of the end of the war. The Allies instead decided to hold many PoWs (redesignated "disarmed enemy forces") as slave laborers, providing "labor reparations" to rebuild the damage inflicted by Nazi aggression. In the West, the demands of France were considered especially compelling -- the Germans had held millions of French PoWs as slave laborers, besides stripping France to the bone. After screening the PoWs, releasing the old men and boys of the "Volkssturm," and detaining Nazis for prosecution, the USA transferred 740,000 of the remainder (including some of those shipped back to Europe from the USA) to France . 1,000,000 German Pows remained in US camps in Germany at the beginning of 1946, but only 38,000 were still left at the beginning of 1947. The Western nations sent their last German PoWs home in 1948 (often under US pressure), while the Soviets kept theirs as late as 1956.

In the spring of 1945, when the US held 3.4 million German PoWs, Britain held 2,150,000 . Many were shipped as slave laborers to Britain, where 400,000 still remained at the end of 1946 . As a general rule, the ones in Britain were treated decently, in contrast to many in France.
(Parenthetical note: The French PoWs held by the Germans 1940-45 were treated reasonably decently, having an annual death rate comparable to British and American PoWs. In the early years of the war, their welfare helped guarantee economic cooperation by France's Vichy government; by the time Vichy's cooperation no longer mattered (1944), impending German defeat would have made mistreatment of French PoWs highly imprudent.)


(2) Reduced rations:

Under the Geneva Conventions, German PoWs should get the same ration as their Allied captors. Instead, designated as "disarmed enemy forces," they got no more rations than German civilians. Especially in April through July 1945, this meant starvation rations, though generally enough food came through to prevent mass deaths from starvation.

Hundreds of thousands of PoWs were kept for many weeks out in the open, with no shelter apart from what they might dig in the ground, and nothing to sit or lie on (above the mud and puddles) apart from their own helmets and greatcoats. This was during the spring and summer, when there was no danger of freezing; nevertheless, given Germany's cooler, wetter climate, these open barbed-wire "cages" were much more of a hardship than similar temporary expedients in North Africa and Italy.

The worst US temporary enclosures were the 16 "Rheinwiesenlager" ("Rhine meadow camps"). 557,000 PoWs were held from April to July 1945 in the six worst of these: Bad Kreuznach-Bretzenheim, Remagen-Sinzig, Rheinberg, Heidesheim, Wickrathberg, and Büderich . The Maschke Commission would later tabulate 4,537 parish-registered deaths in these 6 worst RWLs, 774 from the others. They thought the actual death toll might be twice this, but were skeptical of an eywitness claim of 32,000 deaths.

Indifference, even hostility, of some US guards and camp officers:
Revelation of starved cadavers and mass murder in liberated concentration camps provoked hatred towards Germans in general. This was particularly notable among some (but by no means all) soldiers of Jewish background, and, with less excuse, among some new soldiers, lacking combat experience, who wanted to show toughness.
Conditions remind me of the Andersonville GA prison camp of the US Civil War -- hunger; indifferent or incompetent camp administrators who wouldn't let prisoners help themselves. (The victorious Union tried and hanged Andersonville commandant Capt. Henry Wirz in 1865.) There probably was a dire shortage of food and shelter in the spring and summer of 1945; nevertheless, I suspect that German civilians in surrounding districts could have brought in some debris suitable for dry flooring if they had been asked. Two contrasts with Andersonville: in 1945, the horrible conditions only lasted 3-4 months, and sufficient medical measures prevented mass death from disease.

Even senior leaders like Eisenhower and Clay thought the Germans deserved a taste (or non-taste?) of the hunger they had imposed on everyone else:
"I feel that the Germans should suffer from hunger and from cold as I believe such suffering is necessary to make them realize the consequences of a war which they caused."
-- Lucius D. Clay to John J. McCloy, June 29, 1945
Nevertheless, the western commanders set limits to such suffering; they always pressed for enough food to "prevent disease and unrest."

Overcrowded, poorly-managed railroad transports were a sporadic, temporary problem. At Mailly le Camp on 16 March 1945, 104 German PoWs were dead on arrival. A further 27 were found dead at Attichy. Eisenhower apologized publicly, though expressing intense irritation privately about having to apologize to the Germans about anything.
http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/for/us-germany-pow.html

Ya que estamos terminando con citas, aquí una de Eisenhower en una carta a su esposa de 1944 "God, I hate the Germans..."
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Mensaje por jesus2 » Lun Oct 09, 2006 2:40 am

Muy rápidamente, pues no tengo tiempo para más, y reconociendo que escribo de memoria:

Hubert Meyer, en la historia divisionaria de la 12 SS, escribe que en los primeros compases de la invasión de Normandía, y debido a lo inseguro y fluctuante de las líneas tanto propias como enemigas, el comandante del regimiento de artillería de la división Panzer Lehr ( 130 Panzerartillerie regiment ), el coronel Luxemburger, es capturado junto a un capitán, el Conde Clary-Aldridgen ( creo recordar ) y un teniente, por soldados británicos, además de otros soldados.

El coronel está ligeramente herido, lo cual no impide que sea interrogado a golpes sobre el terreno. Al final, se toma una solución: el coronel, herido, será atado a la parte delantera de un Sherman, y el resto de los prisioneros, es fusilado. Soldados de la división de las Juventudes Hitlerianas encuentran con un disparo en la cabeza, y todavía vivo, al capitán, así como al resto de los cuerpos sin vida de los otros prisioneros. El capitán, a pesar de su grave estado, cuenta a sus rescatadores lo sucedido.

El coronel Luxemburger tampoco acaba la historia bien parado. El Sherman al cual es atado, evidentemente como escudo humano, ataca las posiciones alemanas. Las defensas anticarro alemanas dan buena cuenta del carro. Se recoge al coronel, todavía con vida, del campo de batalla. Es inmediatamente trasladado a un hospital, muriendo dos días después.

Saludos al foro.
En la vida no existe la Suerte, ni siquiera la buena o mala suerte, como dicen los que dicen que saben de ella. Existe el Destino. Y sobre todo, el Destino que cada uno quiera labrarse para sí mismo. ( Yo mismo )

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Mensaje por V.Manstein » Lun Oct 09, 2006 4:39 am

Querido Jesús, esa historia efectivamente es muy conocida pero no es excepcional ni la peor. Entre otras está la famosa masacre de Chenogne del día de año nuevo de 1945 cuando más de 60 prisioneros alemanes desarmados y controlados fueron asesinados a sangre fría por sus guardianes americanos, quienes por supuesto quedaron sin juicio ni castigo ( miembros del 21 batallón de infantería blindada, compañía B). Alinearon a los más de 60 chicos en grupos de 15 o 20, entre ellos había algunos muchachos menores de 18 años; instalaron ametralladoras con tranquilidad y liquidaron a todos esos chicos. Un asesinato sin paliativos más para la historia de la guerra.

No sólo fueron los americanos, por supuesto. Un hecho poco conocido es que los británicos organizaron en Londres una especie de Alexanderplatz para torturar o incluso asesinar prisioneros alemanes con los métodos más crueles al estilo de la Gestapo con el objetivo de obtener información. Era la denominada London cage:
Kensington Palace Gardens is one of the most exclusive, and expensive, addresses in the world: its stately row of 160-year-old mansions, built on land owned by the crown, is home to ambassadors, billionaires and princes. One property bought by the Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal for a reputed £57m is said to be the most expensive house in London. Down the road, a pair of Manhattan tax lawyers are renovating No 6, while next door, No 7, is the London home of the Sultan of Brunei. Over the years No 8 has housed its fair share of dowagers and dukes.

Between July 1940 and September 1948, however, these three magnificent houses were home to one of the country's most secret military establishments: the London office of the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, known colloquially as the London Cage.

The London Cage was run by MI19, the section of the War Office responsible for gleaning information from enemy prisoners of war, and few outside this organisation knew exactly what went on beyond the single barbed-wire fence that separated the three houses from the busy streets and grand parks of west London.

Years later Tony Whitehead, a consultant psychiatrist in Brighton, recounted in his memoirs how, as a young aircraftsman delivering a belligerent SS sergeant to the Cage, he was shocked to see a German naval officer in full dress uniform on his hands and knees, cleaning the entrance hall floor. An enormous Guardsman stood with one foot on the prisoner's back, casually enjoying a smoke. When Whitehead collected his prisoner three days later, the man was completely subdued, rarely looked up, and addressed him as sir. "I do not know what had happened to him at the London Cage," Dr Whitehead wrote.

By examining thousands of documents stored at the National Archives, formerly the Public Record Office, as well as the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, the Guardian has established what happened to this prisoner, and many others like him.

The London Cage was used partly as a torture centre, inside which large numbers of German officers and soldiers were subjected to systematic ill-treatment. In total 3,573 men passed through the Cage, and more than 1,000 were persuaded to give statements about war crimes. The brutality did not end with the war, moreover: a number of German civilians joined the servicemen who were interrogated there up to 1948.

The Cage was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Scotland, a forceful, outspoken man deemed to have the perfect background. Although English, the colonel had served briefly in the German army in what is now Namibia shortly after the turn of the century, and was later awarded the OBE for his work interrogating German prisoners during the first world war. In 1939, at the age of 57, he was recalled for service.

The Cage had space for 60 prisoners at any time, and five interrogation rooms. Scotland had around 10 officers serving under him, plus a dozen NCOs who served as interrogators and interpreters. Security was provided by soldiers from the Guards regiments, selected, one archived document asserts, "for their height rather than their brains".

Among the documents stored at the National Archives at Kew is the manuscript of Scotland's memoirs. In his first draft he recalled how he would muse, on arriving at the Cage each morning: "'Abandon all hope ye who enter here.' For if any German had any information we wanted, it was invariably extracted from him in the long run." There was pandemonium at the War Office when the book was submitted to be censored in June 1950. Officials begged Scotland to quietly lock the manuscript away, then threatened him with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. Special Branch detectives were sent to raid his retirement home at Bourne End, Buckinghamshire. The Foreign Office urged suppression of the book, as it would assist "persons agitating on behalf of war criminals". An assessment by MI5 pointed out that Scotland had detailed repeated breaches of the Geneva convention, with his admissions that prisoners had been forced to kneel while being beaten about the head; forced to stand to attention for up to 26 hours; threatened with execution; or threatened with "an unnecessary operation".

The book was eventually published after a seven-year delay, and only after all incriminating material had been deleted. It is now clear, however, that Scotland could have tried to reveal far more.

Within the National Archives are documents from two official inquiries into the methods employed at the Cage, one which heard evidence that guards were under orders to knock on some prisoners' cell doors every 15 minutes, depriving them of sleep, and another which concluded with "the possibility that violence was used" during interrogations.

There is also a long and detailed letter of complaint from one SS captain, Fritz Knoechlein, who describes his treatment after being taken to the Cage in October 1946. Knoechlein alleges that because he was "unable to make the desired confession" he was stripped, given only a pair of pyjama trousers, deprived of sleep for four days and nights, and starved.

The guards kicked him each time he passed, he alleges, while his interrogators boasted that they were "much better" than the "Gestapo in Alexanderplatz". After being forced to perform rigorous exercises until he collapsed, he says he was compelled to walk in a tight circle for four hours. On complaining to Scotland that he was being kicked even "by ordinary soldiers without a rank", Knoechlein alleges that he was doused in cold water, pushed down stairs, and beaten with a cudgel. Later, he says, he was forced to stand beside a large gas stove with all its rings lit before being confined in a shower which sprayed extremely cold water from the sides as well as from above. Finally, the SS man says, he and another prisoner were taken into the gardens behind the mansions, where they were forced to run in circles while carrying heavy logs.

"Since these tortures were the consequences of my personal complaint, any further complaint would have been senseless," Knoechlein wrote. "One of the guards who had a somewhat humane feeling advised me not to make any more complaints, otherwise things would turn worse for me." Other prisoners, he alleged, were beaten until they begged to be killed, while some were told that they could be made to disappear.

At the time Knoechlein made these allegations he was facing the death penalty, having been convicted of the murder of 124 British soldiers, including 98 members of the Royal Norfolk Regiment. These soldiers had been massacred by men under Knoechlein's command after being taken prisoner on the retreat to Dunkirk in May 1940. He was in a desperate position, and may have been making desperate allegations in a bid to escape the hangman. Nevertheless, his complaint was taken seriously by War Office officials, who considered whether to convene an inquiry. They eventually decided against this, on the grounds that this would mean delaying Knoechlein's execution. There was no legal precedent for this, one official noted, besides which "any court of inquiry into these allegations would be futile".

Similar torture allegations surfaced in 1947, and again the following year, when 21 Gestapo and police officers were tried for the murder of 50 RAF officers who had been shot after tunnelling their way out of Stalag Luft III, the breakout recreated in the Hollywood film The Great Escape.

The court in Hamburg was told that many of the defendants had been starved and systematically beaten at the London Cage, confined in the cold water shower, and "threatened with electrical devices". Among the defendants was Erich Zacharias, a sergeant in the Gestapo's frontier police. The only evidence against him was his confession which, MI5 noted in its assessment of Scotland's memoir, had been signed only because "being a prisoner in their hands, he had been worked on psychologically". Zacharias insisted that he had also been beaten. Twenty of the defendants were convicted and 14 were hanged, Zacharias among them.

It is impossible to discern, from the War Office archives, whether Scotland was regarded by this time as a maverick whose methods were to be quietly overlooked, or whether he was acting with clear, official approval. It is clear, however, by late 1946 there was "disquiet about his methods" being expressed at the headquarters of the British army of the Rhine.

By then the Red Cross was aware of the existence of the Cage, although only because its location had inadvertently been included on a list of PoW camps sent to the organisation. A Red Cross inspector called twice at Kensington Palace Gardens in March 1946 but was turned away. In a lengthy memo to the War Office, Scotland explained that he had identified the officer responsible for disclosing its location, and that this man had promised "that this blunder would not be repeated".

Scotland went on to argue that the Red Cross need not be admitted, because his prisoners were either civilians, or "criminals within the armed forces", and neither, he said, were protected by the Geneva convention. Should the Red Cross be allowed inside the Cage, he added, he would instruct the RAF to stop sending him prisoners suspected of involvement in the Stalag Luft III murders. "The interrogation of these criminals must proceed in Germany under conditions more closely related to police methods than to Geneva convention principles."

Furthermore, he wrote: "The secret gear which we use to check the reliability of information obtained must be removed from the Cage before permission is given to inspect the building. This work will take a month to complete." It is unclear what sort of "secret gear" Scotland wanted to conceal from the Red Cross.

It was a further 18 months before the Red Cross could enter the Cage. Its inspector found little evidence of ill-treatment but, as he noted in subsequent reports, 10 prisoners in the worst physical condition appeared to have been moved to other PoW camps the night before his arrival, and there was evidence that any prisoner who lodged a complaint in his presence would suffer reprisals.

Despite the growing number of complaints it was receiving about the London Cage, the International Committee of the Red Cross eventually decided to do nothing "through official channels" as it had been assured that its closure was imminent, and because it feared such action would be against the interests of the men still detained there.

As the work of the Cage was wound down, the interrogation of prisoners was switched to a number of internment camps in Germany. And there is evidence that the treatment meted out in these places was, if anything, far worse. While many of the papers relating to these interrogation centres remain sealed at the Foreign Office, it is clear that one camp in the British zone became particularly notorious. At least two German prisoners starved to death there, according to a court of inquiry, while others were shot for minor offences.

In one complaint lodged at the National Archives, a 27-year-old German journalist being held at this camp said he had spent two years as a prisoner of the Gestapo. And not once, he said, did they treat him as badly as the British.
http://www.mathaba.net/news
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maximus

Mensaje por maximus » Jue Oct 12, 2006 9:40 pm

He estado leyendo con mucha atención las valiosas fuentes que han aportado los foreros sobre este asunto. Ya antes me había sorprendido leer acerca de la mortalidad de cientos de miles de prisioneros alemanes en manos de los angloamericanos, y me extrañaba que eso se hubiera mantenido en secreto tanto tiempo.

Sin embargo, de leer las mismas fuentes que ustedes ofrecen, no veo esa sorprendente conclusión por ninguna parte.

El plan Morgenthau de los aliados con respecto al trato a la Alemania vencida, no me parece equiparable al que tenían los alemanes preparado para la URSS en absoluto (que incluía incluso la difusión de enfermedades infecciosas entre la población rusa, plan Oldenburg, creo que se llamaba). De lo que parece que se trataba en el plan Morgenthau era de impedir que Alemania volviese a ser una potencia industrial capaz de emprender una nueva guerra. Algo injusto además de estúpido, pero no un genocidio.

En cuanto al libro del señor Bracque no debería ser tomado muy en serio porque no aporta documentación alguna y está desmentido en la otra fuente citada, todo son "fulano dijo que vio...", "mengano cuenta que...". La Alemania ocupada en 1945 estaba llena de periodistas y testigos fiables que no confirman que los abusos aislados fueran generalizados.


Que se prohibiera a la población civil alimentar a los prisioneros, por ejemplo, tiene su sentido puesto que toda la comida en el país estaba racionada y había que atender con preferencia a los cientos de miles de víctimas de los nazis que aún quedaban atrapados en territorio alemán. Las raciones recibidas por los POW sin duda fueron escasas durante los primeros meses de la ocupación, pero nada comparable a las atrocidades cometidas por los alemanes en su avance por Rusia en el verano de 1941.


Guantánamos hay y ha habido, y puede que siga habiendo, y es excelente que se denuncie y se recuerde, pero ojito con el revisionismo.

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V.Manstein
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Mensaje por V.Manstein » Vie Oct 13, 2006 5:06 am

maximus escribió: Guantánamos hay y ha habido, y puede que siga habiendo, y es excelente que se denuncie y se recuerde, pero ojito con el revisionismo.
Estimado amigo, ¿ Qué quiere decir con lo de ojito.....?. En esta casa el revisionismo tiene escasa cabida.

En cuanto a que el asunto no era comparable a lo que hicieron alemanes y soviéticos............está más que claro. No se trata de hacer una clasificación de quién era más malo. Las democracias occidentales y sus líderes militares y políticos no podían permitirse cometer esos actos y es necesario denunciarlos y reprobarlos. Los regímenes dictatoriales alemán y soviético eran criminales por esencia y usarlos a efectos comparativos para estimar las acciones de los aliados occidentales no es muy inteligente.
Soldat im 20.Jahrhundert

maximus

Mensaje por maximus » Vie Oct 13, 2006 9:38 pm

maximus escribió:

Guantánamos hay y ha habido, y puede que siga habiendo, y es excelente que se denuncie y se recuerde, pero ojito con el revisionismo.


Estimado amigo, ¿ Qué quiere decir con lo de ojito.....?. En esta casa el revisionismo tiene escasa cabida.

Bueno, en esta casa se han dado innumerables muestras de tolerancia cero con el revisionismo, pero el problema es que la información circula a veces de tal forma que cualquier recién llegado puede confundirse.

azurzazarraga
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Re: Muertos por causas diversas.

Mensaje por azurzazarraga » Mié Abr 01, 2015 10:05 pm

Cantidad de artículos sobre la masacre de Malmedy, pero sobre lo de Chenogne , primera noticia que tengo. Curioso, los dos incidentes en Las Ardenas, pero uno si y otro pssh......

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