is the blog of an Orthodox Christian and is published under the spiritual patronage of St. John of San Francisco. Topics likely to be discussed include matters relating to Orthodoxy as well as other religious confessions, politics, economics, social issues, current events or anything else which interests me. © 2006-2024
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
The Rhine Meadows "Death Camps" Hoax
Claims that the Allies ran a network of de facto death camps where up to a million German POWs died from deliberate maltreatment, including starvation, have been rampant on the internet for years. While it is true that the administration of the camps were not without serious problems, mostly beyond the control of Allies; the claims made by various revisionists and conspiracy theorists have been repeatedly investigated by both governements and reputable historians, and found to be false.
Knowing nothing about this subject, I took a sniff & this is what I learned from Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteFirstly, the deaths were not up to a million, but between 3000 & 6000 for somewhere between 1 & 2 million prisoners. That's about 0.3 %.
However, prisoners held in the camps were designated disarmed enemy forces, not prisoners of war. This decision was made in March 1945 by SHAEF commander in chief Dwight D. Eisenhower: by not classifying the hundreds of thousands of captured troops as POWs, the logistical problems associated with accommodating so many prisoners of war mandated by the Geneva Convention governing their treatment were negated. Due to the numbers of prisoners, the Americans transferred internal control of the camps over to the Germans. The results from these decisions were not pretty.
Sorry, but as one who has served this country honorably, I find the behavior of the US on this one disgusting & the claim that any mistreatment & resulting misery & death was beyond our control artful.