Do you agree that The Holocaust happened? John Sack does. :p

"The people who say the Holocaust didn’t happen asked me to speak at their recent international conference. The invitation surprised me, for I am a Jew who’s written about the Holocaust and (for Chrissakes, I feel like adding) certainly hasn’t denied it. To my eyes, however, the invitation, which came from the Institute for Historical Review, in Orange County, California, the central asylum for the delusion that the Germans didn’t kill any Jews and that the Holocaust is, quote, unquote, the Hoax of the Twentieth Century, was not just a wonderment: it was also a golden opportunity, a golden-engraved temptation. We journalists usually sit at the outer edge of occasions: behind the bar in courtrooms, far off the floor of Congress, well out of passing or pitching range at football or baseball games. We are the beggars at banquet halls, waiting for the brass bell and the two-second bite, and the Institute offered me what every journalist hungers for: the feast of unhampered access. Its letter was a safe-conduct pass to a country so fog-bound that you and I can’t discern it. Who are the Holocaust deniers? What are they like behind closed doors? And why are they motionless stones as avalanches of evidence crash onto them roaring, You’re wrong, you’re wrong? I’d been invited to mingle with them like a mole in Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest and then ascend to a lectern to tell them off, and I wrote the Institute saying that yes, I’d come."

http://www.johnsack.com/daniel_in_the_deniers_den_1.htm

"My own speech was on Monday afternoon. It was about An Eye for an Eye, which the Germans among the deniers wanted to hear about so they could share their parents’ guilt with the Jews, their parents’ victims. No longer did I want to tell the deniers off, but I did want to edify them (and I did) that I and the Jews in An Eye for an Eye devoutly believe that the Holocaust happened. But also I wanted to say something therapeutic, to say something about hate."

http://www.johnsack.com/daniel_in_the_deniers_den_5.htm

What does John Sack think about wintermute? Has wintermute ever read Eye for an Eye? I have. :p

"I felt some sympathy for the men and women who say that the Holocaust didn't happen. The people who say it are fools, maybe worse, but I can commiserate with them. The thought that the Holocaust did, indeed, happen is too enormous for one little volleyball brain."

John Sack, Eye for an Eye (New York: BasicBooks, Inc, 1993), p.x

Do you [Wintermute] agree that The Holocaust happened? John Sack does. :p



Wintermute has said a good-bye to the Phora - but the question ought nevertheless to be answered.

That answer depends, as all instructed individuals know, upon what one means by - how one defines - the referenced and alleged "Holocaust".

I'm confident that Wintermute would regard the gas chamber tale as such, he would acknowledge the evacuation of the Jews, and would have questions regarding the extent to which anti-partisan activities might have blended into alleged extermination plans.

I take (or mistake) your point, however, to be that Wintermute cannot call upon Sack in support of one thesis, for failure of Sack to be compliant in regard to another.

If that is your point, you are in error, in principle.
*

I take (or mistake) your point, however, to be that Wintermute cannot call upon Sack in support of one thesis, for failure of Sack to be compliant in regard to another.

If that is your point, you are in error, in principle.
*

Fade the Butcher

I will say that I have seen overwhelming evidence (from multiple sources) that Adolf Hitler brought down World War 2 upon himself, in pursuit of his romantic fantasy of expanding east at the expense of the Slavs.

wintermute
And what do those multiple sources say about the 'Holocaust', Fade?

WM

:: Wintermute has said a good-bye to the Phora - but the question ought nevertheless to be answered.

That's unfortunate. Even when he made malicious insults against myself (as well as others), simply for disagreeing with one of his positions in a thread on the internet, I held my tongue and did not lash back at him.

:: That answer depends, as all instructed individuals know, upon what one means by - how one defines - the referenced and alleged "Holocaust".

John Sack accepts the popular discourse known as 'The Holocaust'. wintermute cites John Sack as a source, thus I was wondering if wintermute also agrees that the Holocaust took place.

:: I'm confident that Wintermute would regard the gas chamber tale as such, he would acknowledge the evacuation of the Jews, and would have questions regarding the extent to which anti-partisan activities might have blended into alleged extermination plans.

John Sack believes the Jews were systematically exterminated in gas chambers. Does wintermute agree with that?

:: I take (or mistake) your point, however, to be that Wintermute cannot call upon Sack in support of one thesis, for failure of Sack to be compliant in regard to another.

I was going to ask wintermute if John Sack was a court historian but he seems to have left the building.

:: If that is your point, you are in error, in principle.

Tell me. What makes one a 'court historian', NeoNietzsche?

:: Wintermute has said a good-bye to the Phora - but the question ought nevertheless to be answered.

That's unfortunate. Even when he made malicious insults against myself (as well as others), simply for disagreeing with one of his positions in a thread on the internet, I held my tongue and did not lash back at him.

:: That answer depends, as all instructed individuals know, upon what one means by - how one defines - the referenced and alleged "Holocaust".

John Sack accepts the popular discourse known as 'The Holocaust'. wintermute cites John Sack as a source, thus I was wondering if wintermute also agrees that the Holocaust took place.

:: I'm confident that Wintermute would regard the gas chamber tale as such, he would acknowledge the evacuation of the Jews, and would have questions regarding the extent to which anti-partisan activities might have blended into alleged extermination plans.

John Sack believes the Jews were systematically exterminated in gas chambers. Does wintermute agree with that?

:: I take (or mistake) your point, however, to be that Wintermute cannot call upon Sack in support of one thesis, for failure of Sack to be compliant in regard to another.

I was going to ask wintermute if John Sack was a court historian but he seems to have left the building.

:: If that is your point, you are in error, in principle.

Tell me. What makes one a 'court historian', NeoNietzsche?

1) As quoted, I'm confident that Wintermute regards the gas chamber tale as such (i.e., as fiction).

2) A court historian typically writes an enormous and putatively definitive work, crammed with trivia but vacant or dishonestly dismissive of vital facts/considerations which would impermissibly reverse the establishment-foundational moral implications drawn from the narrative. The orthodox works on the Pearl Harbor episode constitute classic examples of the genre.
*

I said goodbye to Petr, not the Phora community as a whole.

I did promise Friedrich Braun that before leaving I would post the information I had gathered on Bacque and Sack. For those keeping score, this is actually my last post. I will read PMs so long as the Wintermute account is in service, so please direct all inquiries there.

The data is a overview which directly addresses the reliability of Bacque and Sack, and their support among 'reputable historians'. Also: Order JCS 1067 and it's dependance on Morgenthau, the actual circumvention of 1067 as practiced in the field, David Irving's support of Bacque, confirmation of Sack's thesis, and the absolute dishonesty, amounting to mental illness, of Fade's main source, and Bacque's chief critic, Stephen Ambrose.

Ambrose assisted Bacque in the compilation of his book, and admitted that he had nightmares after reading it and found it on the whole unbearable to think about. This makes more sense when one considers that Ambrose, a popular historian and little else, was handpicked to write Eisenhower's biography, and that Ambrose's self esteem and social status are directly tied to the Eisenhower library. Ambrose oversaw the assemblege of the book, begged off writing the introduction, and then - in an astonishing reversal - savaged the book in the New York Times, with no research against it. Rather, the review argued that 'when the research was done', Bacque would be proved wrong. Ambrose then assembled the scholars who Fade quotes.

For comparison, here is Ambrose' first take on the book: "I have now read Other Losses and wish I had not. I have had nightmares every night since I started reading... You have a sensational if appalling story and it can no longer be suppressed, and I suppose (in truth I know) it must be published... I must withdraw my offer to write a Foreword; I just can't do it to Ike. I quarrel with many of your interpretations, I am not arguing with the basic truth of your discovery.... you have the goods on these guys, you have the quotes from those who were present and saw with their own eyes, you have the broad outline of a truth so terrible that I really can't bear it... You really have made a major historical discovery, the full impact of which neither you nor I nor anyone can fully imagine.... I have written at length about your script to Alice Mayhew, my editor at Simon and Schuster."

To understand how serious Ambrose' position was, consider that he admitted to Bacque: "this thesis destroys my life's work".

The NYT, of course, had to overlook certain ethical practices to allow a collaborator in the authorship of a book review the same book, but there you have Sulzberger 'ethics' in a nutshell.

It does seem that Bacque and co. did uncover a truth so terrible that Ambrose indeed 'couldn't bear it'.

In recent years, Ambrose has been discredited as a obsessive plagarizer.

Bacque responded in Crimes and Mercies to his critics, and silenced them by the material he had recovered from the Soviet Archives. Fade is not aware of this, evidently, just as he is not aware that Sack's thesis regarding the Jewish run death camps is UNCONTROVERISAL. Even 60 minutes and the NYT have signed aboard, and one of the Commandants he ID'ed was forced to relocate to Israel, where he is currently resisting extradition in the standard Jewish way.

There is a new book out, by John Dietrich, regarding the Morgenthau plan, which also takes Bacque's case against Ambrose.

In additon to Morgenthau, there was H. Dexter White (a Jew and a Soviet agent) who was quite interested in the annhilation of Germany.

Petr also indicated he was interested in what I had dug up. Since I actually am in a rush to leave the forum, I will not assemble it into a post but rather present it as it is, with title headers for each link. Let Fade, Mugwort, Bradt, Petr, and whoever else is interested take what they wish, and have at each other.

Also, as I am a man of my word, I will not be returning to post at this forum.

I do however wish to welcome Raina to this forum for the umpteenth time, and for once feel she has found a board worthy of her talents and character. Many happy returns to her.

And now, without further delay, a core dump of Bacque related materials, with links. Enjoy,

Wintermute

JCS 1067 involves many features of the Morgenthau plan, and was implemented for two full years before substantial alteration, as it came to handicap American efforts in Germany.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:sdlX5mumq_8J:www.ihr.org/jhr/v09/v09p287_Kubek.html+jcs+1067+morgenthau&hl=en

How the Treasury officials were able to integrate basic features of their plan into the military directive, originally prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and known as JCS 1067, is fully disclosed in the Diaries. [B]White saw to it that many elements of his thinking were embodied in ICS 1067. Previous directives for guidance of American troops upon entrance into Germany, which already had undergone six or more revisions of a stylistic nature, were now brought more in line with the punitive thinking of Morgenthau and White. A new directive, which called for a more complete de-nazification, was, with some modifications, the spirit and substance of the Treasury plan. In the two full years that ICS 1067 was the cornerstone of American policy, Germany was punished and substantially dismantled in accord with the basic tenets of the Morgenthau Plan. JCS 1067 forbade fraternization by American personnel with the Germans, ordered a very strict program of de-nazification extending both to public life and to business, prohibited American aid in any rebuilding of German industry, and emphasized agricultural rehabilitation only.
Subsequently, JCS 1067 became a severe handicap to American efforts in Germany. It constituted what may be called without exaggeration a heavy millstone around the neck of the American military government. It gave only limited authority to to the United States military government by specifically prohibiting military officials from taking any steps to rehabilitate the German economy except to maximize agricultural production.


Details of how 1067 was undermined by in the field American commanders:

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/clayl.htm

MCKINZIE: It also makes it difficult, doesn't it, in matters of policy setting, because you had JCS-1067, which was as I understand it, a compromise between the War Department and the Department of State on how...

CLAY: JCS-1067 would have been extremely difficult to operate under. If you followed it literally you couldn't have done anything to restore the German economy. If you couldn't restore the German economy you could never hope to get paid for the food that they had to have. By virtue of these sort of things it was modified constantly; not officially, but by allowing this deviation and that deviation, et cetera. We began to slowly wipe out JCS-1067. When we were ordered to put in a currency reform this was in direct controvention of a provision of JCS-1067 that prohibited us from doing anything to improve the German economy. It was an unworkable policy and it wasn't changed just without any discussion or anything by those of us who were in Germany. It was done by gradual changes in its provision and changes of cablegrams, conferences, and so on.


A lengthy discussion of the Morgenthau plan from Irving. Details extensive efforts undertaken by Morgenthau and White to hoodwink Roosevelt and Churchill, and their success in same.

http://www.fpp.co.uk/bookchapters/Morgenthau.html

It was part of the price that Churchill and Cherwell were willing to pay for a broad package of American concessions over which Morgenthau had political control including further Lend-lease aid (Phase II) to the British Empire after the war; moreover Mr Churchill needed his support on military issues including joint British strategic control of the atomic bomb (the Hyde Park agreement which was signed on September 18, 1944) and Britain's participation in the war in the Pacific. We can only speculate about Harry Dexter White's purpose in canvassing a plan which would have ruined the largest country in Central Europe, the last bastion that would protect Western Europe from the Red Army in post-war years.

The memorandum endorsing the plan's objectives was initialled (Okayed) by F.D.R. and W.C. on September 15, 1944.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower had similar views. He told British ambassador Lord Halifax on July 10, 1944, that he felt the enemy leaders should be 'shot while trying to escape.' Imprisonment was not enough for the 3,500 officers of the German general staff. Lieutenant-Commander Harry C. Butcher, Eisenhower's naval aide, noted in a secret diary: 'There was agreement that extermination could be left to nature if the Russians had a free hand.' Why just the Russians?, inquired Eisenhowerthey could temporarily assign zones in Germany to the smaller nations with old scores to settle.

Still, the revelation that Churchill had bankrupted Britain startled him. 'I had no idea,' he told Morgenthau. 'This is very interesting,' he sneered. 'I had no idea that England was broke. I will go over there and make a couple of talks and take over the British Empire.

. . .

On August 19, Roosevelt confidently assured Morgenthau, 'Give me thirty minutes with Churchill and I can correct this.' He added, 'We have got to be tough with Germany and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. You either have to castrate the German people or you have got to treat them in such a manner so they can't go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past.'

. . .

Admiral Leahy was also pleased with it, explaining to Morgenthau that since the British were going to occupy the Ruhr and the Saar, they would have the odium of carrying the Morgenthau plan out. Henry Stimson, isolated on his estate by a hurricane that weekend, now learned of Morgenthau's triumph at Quebec. He wrote in his diary, 'On Saturday or Sunday [September 16-17] I learned from McCloy over the long distance telephone that the President has sent a decision flatly against us in regard to the treatment of Germany. Apparently he has gone over completely to the Morgenthau proposition and has gotten Churchill and Lord Cherwell with them. But the situation is a serious one and the cloud of it has hung over me pretty heavily over the weekend. It is a terrible thing to think that the total power of the United States and the United Kingdom in such a critical matter as this is in the hands of two men, both of whom are similar in their impulsiveness and their lack of systematic study.I have yet to meet a man who is not horrified with the "Carthaginian" attitude of the Treasury. It is Semitism gone wild for vengeance and, if it is ultimately carried out (I can't believe that it will be) it as sure as fate will lay the seeds for another war in the next generation. And yet these two men in a brief conference at Quebec with nobody to advise them except "yes-men," with no Cabinet officer with the President except Morgenthau, have taken this step and given directions for it to be carried out.'

. . .

Morgenthau continued to peddle his plan around Washington. He visited Roosevelt on the day before the president died, and again badgered him to adopt the plan. On the day the war ended, May 8, 1945, Morgenthau would resume his vicious campaign for the starvation of central Europe, this time with Harry S. Truman. Except for the purpose of facilitating the occupation, JCS.1He telephoned Henry Stimson, lunching at home, and complained that the Coordinating Committee was not carrying out his 'scorched earth' policy as hard as he wanted, particularly as related to the destruction of all oil and gasoline and the plants for making them in Germany, and Directive 1067 that ordained this. 067 defined, 'you [Eisenhower] will take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany nor designed to maintain or strengthen the German economy.'

The U.S. army was protesting this senseless order. But Morgenthau wanted his evil will performed. Stimson privately dictated next day, 'I foresee hideous results from his influence in the near future.' In a memorandum to Mr. Truman dated May 16, Stimson outlined the probable consequences of such pestilence and famine in central Europe'political revolution and Communistic infiltration.' And he added a warning against the emotional plans to punish every German by starvation: 'The eighty million Germans and Austrians in central Europe today necessarily swing the balance of that continent.'




David Irving regards James Bacque as the 'expert' on postwar treatment of German soldiers. He does not even mention other living historians.

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Letters/History_03/Helga260103.html

David Irving replies:
The expert on this is James Bacque, respected Canadian author of Other Losses, whom you can reach by email at jabacque@csolve.net

Irving adds James Bacque to his speaker's roster:

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:zh6ZNHrkIuQJ:www.hoffman-info.com/conference.html+%22david+irving%22+%22james+bacque%22&hl=en

Next year he hopes to host James Bacque, author of "Other Losses" and "Crimes and Mercies," and Count Nikolai Tolstoy, author of "The Minister and the Massacres," who was bankrupted by Lord Aldington (with the collusion of the British government), after Tolstoy had publicized British complicity in the murder of East European anti-communist refugees at the end of WWII.

Ernest Fisher, a US Army historian, assisted Bacque in assembling his materials.


http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:vttlGIn0dhUJ:www.jamesbacque.com/+bacque&hl=en

Other Losses has a foreword by US Army historian Col Dr Ernest F. Fisher Jr, who assisted Bacque for years in the research. An officer in the 101st Airborne in Germany in 1945, Fisher was appointed to a commission set up by US commander General Dwight Eisenhower to investigate atrocities committed by US soldiers against Germans. The commission exonerated the Americans, and Fisher called the decision "a whitewash".


Various confirmations of Sack's thesis:


http://www.johnsack.com/an_eye_for_an_eye_corroboration.htm

"It didn't happen," said the Executive Director of the World Jewish Congress on 60 Minutes in November 1993.

But already 60 Minutes had found corroborating evidence for An Eye for an Eye. "We went to Poland," said Correspondent Steve Kroft, "to conduct our own interviews with former prisoners at Swietochlowice, sixteen in all, including eight we found independently of John Sack or the German Federal Archives. And we heard the same stories over and over again."

And that wasn't all. According to Kroft,
There's evidence...beginning with this report of the British Foreign Office, written in 1945, which says, "Prisoners at Swietochlowice who do not die of starvation or aren't beaten to death are made to stand up to their necks, night after night until they die, in cold water."

A similar report can be found in the U.S. Congressional Record from 1946.
In the attic of the town hall of Swietochlowice, we found 1,580 death certificates for prisoners at the camp, many of them signed by Commandant Solomon Morel. And a Polish prosecutor...told us he's gathered enough information to charge Morel with beatings, physical and moral persecution, and driving prisoners to commit suicide...

We found out later that Morel...talked to the former Director of Archives at Yad Vashem, the pre-eminent Holocaust archive in Israel. According to Dr. Shmuel Krakowski, Morel called and wanted to be interviewed by Yad Vashem, saying that he was the commandant of a prison camp after the war and that he killed Nazis for revenge.

Since then, the revelations in An Eye for an Eye have been corroborated by The New York Times, by newspapers and newsmagazines in Germany, by scholars in the United States and the United Kingdom, by the archives of the Soviet secret police, in Moscow, and by the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against the Polish Nation.

In November 1994, the former foreign editor of The New York Times wrote in a full-page story in the Times,
Polish authorities are investigating murder charges against Solomon Morel, a former secret police officer who served in the Communist resistance during the war. In the spring of 1945 he was put in charge of what had been a Nazi concentration camp at Swietochlowice, near Katowice.

Mr. Morel, who is Jewish, lost both parents and his two brothers during the war. Witnesses at the camp he commanded after the war have charged that he had hundreds of German civilians tortured and beaten to death, and killed some with his own hands...

He fled to Israel in 1993 and now lives in Tel Aviv.

The Times carried interviews with two Swietochlowice survivors, with the widow of a third survivor, and with John Sack.

In the spring of 1995, when An Eye for an Eye became a best-seller in Germany, German newspapers and newsmagazines hired historians to go to the German Federal Archives, in Koblenz, to double-check it. The book is "watertight," wrote the historian for Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "The facts stand," wrote the historian for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

. . .

For six years, scholars in the United States have backed up An Eye for an Eye. In November 1993, Antony Polonsky, Professor of East European Jewish History at Brandeis, wrote,
I read this extremely gripping and compelling account of the appalling events which accompanied the end of the war and the expulsion of the Germans...in one go. It was impossible to put down...

In my view, only two questions need to be raised. The first concerns the motivation of the author, and here I am convinced that Mr. Sack has tried, as he himself writes, to tell "something more than the story of Jewish revenge: the story of Jewish redemption."

The second is whether the story is true and what it is based on. Here, too, I am satisfied that the author is a serious researcher...The book is in fact a major contribution to our understanding.

. . .

The misdeeds of the almost entirely Jewish-led Polish political police--torture, murder, the forging of electoral results, deportations, etcetera--were notorious.

Deak cited An Eye for an Eye and said of it,
Documents on the Jewish torture and murder of German civilians, including women and children, in Polish concentration camps make for horrendous reading.

More corroboration came from Professor John Micgiel of Columbia and Professor Arno Mayer of Princeton, the author of Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?
The revelations in An Eye for an Eye became an accepted part of European history in May 1997, on the publication of Europe: a History by Professor Norman E. Davies of Oxford. Davies wrote,
Popular knowledge in [Poland] has always insisted that the notorious communist Security Office (UB) contained a disproportionate number of Jews (or rather ex-Jews), and that their crimes were heinous. But few hard facts were ever published, and the stories were dismissed with distaste.

. . .

The number of deaths inflicted by the communist regime on the German population is estimated at 60,000 to 80,000.

. . .

The district attorney for Katowice indicted Morel for crimes against the Polish nation. He sent policemen to Shlomo’s apartment, but Shlomo had fled to Tel Aviv. In December, 1998, the district attorney asked the Minister of Justice in Israel to extradite him, but the Minister replied that the statute of limitations for Shlomo’s crimes had expired in November, 1965. Interpol issued an international warrant for Shlomo, and he must now be arrested if he travels anywhere outside of Israel.

A new book, by John Dietrich, who served six years in the DIA, which supports Bacque's thesis.

The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy
by John Dietrich

[quote]In the Aftermath of War "The plan was designed to completely destroy the German economy, enslave millions of her citizens, and exterminate as many as 20 million people": John Dietrich, who served six years in the Defense Intelligence Agency, takes a hard, revisionist look at American policy toward Germany after WWII in The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy. Charting its origins, development and brief implementation, the author argues that the secretary of the treasury's plan for the demilitarization of Germany "thoroughly reflected" Roosevelt's opinions on postwar strategy (and that the president may have bribed Churchill to sign off on it); that the Soviet Union was the plan's sole beneficiary; and that the plan had far greater effects than anyone involved cared to admit.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Bacque lists the 'reputable historians' who support him. Norman Finkelstein also regards him as legit.

http://www.londonsocialisthistorians.org/messageboard/forum0.pl/noframes/read/436

RESPONSE FROM JAMES BACQUE

Many historians have supported my work. They include Col. Dr Ernest F. Fisher, formerly A Senior Historian, United States Army Center for Military History, Washington, DC; Prof. Richard Overy, King's College, University of London; Prof. Ed Peterson, University of Wisconsin; Dr. Alfred De Zayas, formerly Senior Legal Counsel to the UN High Commission on Human Rights; Prof. Hans Koch, University of York, England; Prof. Ralph Raico, University of Buffalo. There are others--maybe these will do for now?

PS Stephen E. Ambrose was a strong supporter of my work and helped me to get published. He appeared on CBS Evening News and was quoted in Time Magazine in support of Other Losses. Suddenly, after a semester in the fall of 1989, at The US Army War College at Carlisle Barracks PA, he switched over to defending Eisenhower. He has never explained this sudden aberration.
PS to my earlier message (James Bacque)

I have just discovered, after cruising the web which I do only about once a year, that Prof. Norman G Finkelstein, whom I admire very much, supports and quotes from my work.--JB

Ambrose biography, detailing personal involvement with Eisenhower.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Stephen-Ambrose

Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 - October 13, 2002) was a popular historian and biographer of Dwight Eisenhower. He had a Ph.D in History from the University of Wisconsin and taught history at the University of New Orleans from 1960 until his retirement in 1995.

Ambrose was the author of numerous bestselling books about World War II, including D-Day, Citizen Soldiers and The Victors; Undaunted Courage, about Lewis and Clark; and Nothing Like It in the World, about the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. He was the founder of the Eisenhower Center and President of the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was military advisor on the movie Saving Private Ryan, and was an executive producer on the television mini-series that was based on his work, Band of Brothers.

Eisenhower chose Ambrose as his biographer after admiring his work on Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff, which was based on his doctoral dissertation. The resulting Eisenhower biographies were generally enthusiastic, but contained many criticisms of the former commander in chief.

Ambrose also wrote a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon, also generally positive, but his Band of Brothers (1993) and D-Day (1994), about the lives and fates of individual soldiers in the World War II invasion catapulted him out of the ranks of academic history and into best-sellerdom.

Ambrose difficulties with plagairism:

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2060618

Stephen Ambrose handled his first plagiarism scandal of the week with the graceful humility you'd expect from America's Uncle History. Over the weekend, the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes nailed Ambrose for heisting several passages of The Wild Blue, his recent best seller about World War II B-24 bomber crews, from historian Thomas Childers. Ambrose had footnoted Childers but still passed off Childers' elegant prose as his own. Ambrose apologized immediately for the "mistake," blamed it on faulty attribution, and promised to place the text in quotations in future editions.

Barnes and Childers quickly pardoned Ambrose, and the only chiding Ambrose received was for his haste: He has written eight books in five years. He's a history factory, using his five kids as researchers and assistants to streamline the production process. "He writes so many books. I don't know how he can avoid making some mistakes," says former Sen. George McGovern, whose B-24 exploits are the chief subject of The Wild Blue. (Running a history-book mill can raise other complications besides bad attribution. Click here for the disturbing story of how Ambrose got the idea for The Wild Blue.)

Ambrose ducked plagiarism No. 1, but then Forbes.com's Mark Lewis started digging. On Monday, Lewis revealed that Ambrose lifted sentences from Jay Monaghan's Custer biography in his 1975 book Crazy Horse and Custer.Two days later, Lewis exposed Cases 3 and 4—pilferage in 1997's best seller Citizen Soldiers and 1991's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery. And today the New York Times' David Kirkpatrick discovered five more swiped phrases and passages in The Wild Blue. Ambrose's patriots can't fall back on the factory defense anymore: Two of the cases occurred when Ambrose was an obscure professor, before he became Stephen Ambrose Industries. Ambrose is more defiant than apologetic. Though he says he'll correct the books, he insists to the Times that, "I am not out there stealing other people's writings. If I am writing up a passage and it is a story I went to tell and this story fits and a part of it is from other people's writing, I just type it up that way and put it in a footnote."


Bacque's direct reply to critics, crucial to an understanding of the whole argument. It discredits Bischof and Overmanns, among the various court historians rounded up to defend Ambrose' beloved Eisenhower:


http://www.corax.org/revisionism/misc/bacque_letter.html

James Bacque Answers a Critic (8/20/1993)

This is a letter by James Bacque, author of Othe Losses. It appeared in The Times Literary Supplement of August 20, 1993.

Sir,-
It is every writer's delight to be attacked in a famous journal by a confused critic, so my thanks go to John Keegan for airing his views on my work in the TLS on July 23.
Mr Keegan has been misled by the editors of the book, "Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against falsehood," which he cites to refute me. The principal editor, Stephen E. Ambrose, clearly does not know what he thinks from day to day, because he has varied wildly from strong approval of my book, "Other Losses," to snarling slanders of me personally, together with buffoonish misrepresentations of American army policies. Having kindly read my manuscript, he wrote to me as follows: "I am not arguing with the basic truth of your discovery...you have the goods on these guys, you have the quotes from those who were present and saw with their own eyes, you have the broad outline of a truth so terrible I really can't bear it...you really have made a major historical discovery..." It appears from the latest Ambrose writings that, indeed, the truth was something he could not bear.

The same might be said for his co-editor, Gunter Bischof, an Austrian. Keegan admires the "scholarship" of Bischof, but Bischof does not know a displaced persons camp from a prison camp. He chastises me for stating that there was a US Army prison camp at Ebensee in Austria: he says that the camp was for DPs. In fact, I have photocopies of General Mark Clark's secret report about the condition of prisoners of war in the camp, plus US Army medical reports of prisoners in the camp, plus eyewitness accounts of the catastrophe among dozens of thousands of prisoners, including the manuscript of a diary kept by the priest Franz Loidl who ministered to the dying. This manuscript is on deposit in the Church History Institute of the Catholic Theological Faculty, University of Vienna.

In the same book so admired by Keegan is a gross error made by Rudiger Overmanns, who does not even know the number of prisoners taken by the Americans. This was not 3.8 million as he says, but over 6 million, according to US Army records in Suitland, Maryland. Of course, this error, conveniently for Ambrose and Keegan, apparently diminishes the number of lives for which the Americans were responsible.

Underlying the Ambrose-Bischof book is a series on German prisoners edited by Erich Maschke. Underlying that series is no important documentation from the US Army archives in Washington. The author of the book on the American camps casually omits all the significant records that survived the paper purges of the late 1940s. However, for an expert judgment on the condition of American camps Mr Keegan may rely on the words of an American Lieutenant-Colonel who was in charge of the camps in France in 1945. In a report preserved at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry W. Allard wrote that "the standards of PW camps in the Com Z in Europe compare as only slightly better or even with the living conditions of the Japanese PW camps our men tell us about, and unfavourably with those of the Germans". Let us remember that after the war, the Americans executed Japanese for precisely the crimes referred to by Allard.

Mr Keegan does not accept the definition of the term "Other Losses" given me by Colonel Philip S. Lauben. He is unaware of the US Army report discovered by Richard Boylan, a senior archivist at the US National Archives, which confirms Lauben. The report plainly states that the "Other Loses" category of prisoners meant deaths and escapes. And finally, of course, 1,700,000 Germans, plus hundreds of thousands of other Europeans, are still missing from their families. This astounding fact is normally neglected by the Western apologists, unless they can also use it to hammer the Soviets, saying they all died in the Gulag. But now that the Soviets are gone, their archives are open and the truth at last emerges.

That truth is simple. The Soviets took some 4.1 million prisoners of war east and west, of whom some 600,000 died in slavery. Of the total take, some 2.4 million were Germans. Of these, some 450,600 died, the rest were sent home. Subtracting the 450,600 dead Germans from the missing 1.7 million, we see that some 1.25 million are still not accounted for. Of these, probably 100,000 - 200,000 died in Polish, Yugoslavian and other camps. The number remaining is very nearly the number I said in "Other Losses" of those who died among all Europeans taken prisoner in the West.

I wonder if Mr Keegan will consult the Soviet records before attacking them? The surprising thing about the Soviet records is that they are extensive, detailed, accurate and incriminating. For instance, on the subject of prisoners of war, these archives display a dossier for each prisoner, complete with capture records, biographical information, legal,labour and medical history, including X-ray photographs, and so on. The average is about fifteen pages per person. The dossier of Nobel prize winner Konrad Lorenz, the Austrian zoologist contains two hundred pages about him and his work. No such records exist anywhere in the West. In months of work in the archives of the West, I was never able to find the dossier for a single one of the 9 or so million prisoners held. Not one. But in the first hour in the NKVD/KGB archives, I found the archival boxes containing over 4 million personal dossiers. I was allowed to walk up and down the aisles, and take down and photocopy any box I chose at random, and did so. I have scores of photocopies of those records here in Toronto, and Mr Keegan is welcome to consult them. Or he may wish to visit Moscow. He will find interesting information beginning with the story of the Japanese prisoners. The Japanese authorities have long since determined that some 62,000 of their prisoners, chiefly in the Kwantung Army, died in the Gulag. The Soviets lied to the Japanese government for years about the number of deaths, first saying 3,800 had died, then about 4,000, then around 35,000. Finally, the Soviet archives were opened, and mirabile dictu, the death certificates were all there, totalling very nearly 62,000.

Do I hear Keegan protesting that Japan is not Germany? On his visit to Moscow, he may see for himself the Soviet records showing that the prisoners of various nationalities were often mixed together in the same camp, so that Japanese were enslaved beside Germans, were all treated the same way, and died in approximately the same ratio of much the same causes. Letters to me from individual prisoners and records at the Hoover Institution in Stanford all show independently of the Soviet archives that this was the case in more than thirty major camps

Let me also remind Keegan that the Poles long accused the Soviets of massacring some 14,000 officers at Katyn, but that the Soviet archives reveal that the true total was around 21,000. If John Keegan and his friends wish to attack the authenticity of the Soviet archives, they are going to have to show that the fragmentary documents in the Western archives, airy with lacunae and poxed with evasions, are superior to these tremendous archives which incriminate its masters for a horrifying crime against humanity. What will they say then? That the Soviets are hiding something?

JAMES BACQUE
422 Heath St. E.
Toronto, Ontario

From Crimes and Mercies, regarding the actual pressures on court historians and even lowly journalists, who have no training in 'historiographic methodologies', Fade's twenty five cent word for academic prejudices.

http://www.serendipity.li/hr/cm01.htm

We see today great institutions of public opinion — among them Le Monde and the New York Times — feverishly denying the Western Allied atrocities of the post-war period against Germany. For most people in the West, the denials rest on delusion, not evidence. The question never even becomes, 'Did the Allies do such things?' because the answer has been planted in everyone's heads already. 'NO, the Allies did not, because they could not.' For instance, the eminent British historian Michael Howard, reviewing for the Times Literary Supplement a book about Allied atrocities against Germans, admitted that although he was 'an innumerate historian' unqualified to judge the crucial statistics in the book, he could 'apply the criterion of inherent probability' to refute the book. 9 The French press and TV rose with rhetoric uncomplicated by evidence to denounce recent allegations that mass crimes were committed by the French army against the Germans. Stephen Ambrose also attacked a book about allied misdeeds by concluding that 'when scholars do the necessary research they will find [this book] to be worse than worthless'. 10 The answer is known before the evidence is consulted. In other words, belief is everything, evidence means nothing.
Count Nikolai Tolstoy, the renowned English writer, has been driven bankrupt and forbidden to publish on the subject of British treatment of prisoners of war under Lord Aldington. His books have been withdrawn from British libraries. His attempts at redress in British courts have been constantly frustrated in the UK, although the denial of his rights has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. The alleged libel against Lord Aldington was converted by the courts and government into a libel against the history of the state. Against which there is no appeal.

The books of former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark have revealed tremendous civilian deaths in Iraq during the Gulf War which have never been admitted by any of the Allies who caused them. 11 No major publisher in the English-speaking world has dared to bring them out.

My fellow author Alfred de Zayas, a graduate of Harvard and of Göttingen, spent years researching and writing his book Nemesis at Potsdam, about the expulsions from the east of Germany. And then he had to spend ten years sending it round to almost a hundred publishers in the West before the manuscript was finally accepted. The president of one of the biggest houses in New York returned the manuscript with the note that he would never publish a book sympathetic to the Germans.

It is no good to respond that all these authors got published, and so freedom of discussion exists. The full weight of official disapproval has stifled the discussion by shrinking the audience. And once that happens the authors may be silenced by financial distress.

Another defence of Bacque, summarizing his opponents elementary errors, ulterior motives, and failure to consider the information taken from Soviet archives.

http://hnn.us/articles/1266.html

The revelations about the alleged plagiarism committed by Stephen E. Ambrose last year are not only important to American historians and the public but also vitally interesting to the authors of this article. We have both suffered considerable personal embarrassment as a result of incorrect and deceitful allegations made against us and our work. These were published in a book that Ambrose edited (with Gunter Bischof) entitled Eisenhower And The German POWs. Ambrose contributed the lead essay and he organized the conference, in New Orleans in December, 1990 at which the original papers were presented.(1)

In the fall of 1987, Bacque and Fisher met for the first time under the auspices of General Bruce Clark, to discuss some astonishing documents about United States Army prisoner of war camps in 1945 which Bacque had uncovered while researching his book Other Losses. Together, we went to the U.S. National Archives to research this subject. We also interviewed the late Forrest C. Pogue, the leading expert on the command structure of the army. We told him that our research had shown beyond our doubt, that in the U.S. and French prison camps in Europe in 1945-6, a vast tragedy had occurred, causing the needless deaths of approximately 800,000/900,000 Axis prisoners of war. Pogue advised us what we had to find was the smoking gun in Eisenhower's hand.(2)

In the course of the next few months' research together, we visited the National Archives in Washington many times, and the George C. Marshall Library in Lexington, Virginia. In the spring of 1988, Bacque had finished the draft of the manuscript and Fisher was preparing to write his foreword. Through the British historian M. R. D. Foot, Bacque was introduced to Ambrose, then the chief of the Eisenhower Center in New Orleans. Ambrose kindly read the manuscript, and offered many suggestions by mail, and during a two-day editing session at his cabin in Wisconsin. Among other things he said:

I have now read Other Losses and wish I had not. I have had nightmares every night since I started reading... You have a sensational if appalling story and it can no longer be suppressed, and I suppose (in truth I know) it must be published... I must withdraw my offer to write a Foreword; I just can't do it to Ike. I quarrel with many of your interpretations, I am not arguing with the basic truth of your discovery.... you have the goods on these guys, you have the quotes from those who were present and saw with their own eyes, you have the broad outline of a truth so terrible that I really can't bear it.... You really have made a major historical discovery, the full impact of which neither you nor I nor anyone can fully imagine.... I have written at length about your script to Alice Mayhew, my editor at Simon and Schuster.

[b]The manuscript was typeset incorporating many of Ambrose's suggestions, Fisher wrote the Introduction and the page proofs of the whole book were sent to Ambrose. He read them and handed them back to Fisher at a meeting of an historical association in Washington in the spring of 1989, with the words, "This book destroys my life's work."

Nevertheless he bravely stood by his earlier words when reporters came to him for comments after the book was published in Canada in September, 1989. He largely confirmed Other Losses to the interviewer for the Dan Rather Evening News. He said to Time magazine (October 2, 1989, International edition) that it was "a major historical discovery. 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 democracy and freedom, and they are not excusable." When he was questioned by a student at a lecture in British Columbia why he had not himself discovered the evidence that appeared in Other Losses, he said frankly that he had never thought to look.

Sometime during the autumn of 1989, Ambrose accepted an appointment to lecture at the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. It appears he suffered a sea-change in his attitude, for he soon began organizing a conference to be held at the Eisenhower Center, which eventuated in the book Eisenhower and The German POWs.

In February, 1990 he also published a review in the New York Times Book Review, under very odd circumstances. Although the Times apparently has a policy not to print reviews from writers who have helped to edit a book under review, the paper ran Ambrose's review of Other Losses. This appeared on page one, despite the fact that the book was not yet published in the U.S., was by an author never before published in the U.S., and was issued by a minor publisher on the west coast. Clearly it was the fame of Ambrose which had secured the review, its length and prominence.

In that slam-bang attack presented as a review, Ambrose admitted frankly that he had not done the research necessary to confute the book's thesis. He wrote, "When the necessary research is done, it will be seen that...." and went on to say that the book is "spectacularly flawed."

In December, Ambrose convoked his conference on the subject of Eisenhower and the German prisoners of war. A number of scholars presented the papers which constitute the book. These writers we have come to think of as "The Ike-minded." Although there are very many errors in the book which confuse and obscure history, we shall correct only the errors relating to the outstanding discovery in Other Losses, the number of the dead in American and French camps.

In the first place, Ambrose and the Ike-minded in his book make the fundamental error of relying on a secondary source, the report of the Maschke Commission in Germany, when much better primary sources were available. The Maschke report purports to give an account of the fate of German prisoners of war in allied hands after World War Two. The editors did not visit the Soviet archives because these were closed. The American prisoner of war records were open at the time of the research and writing, but the writer Kurt W. Boehme did not visit them.

These U.S. POW archives themselves were reduced by deliberate destruction sometime in the late 1940s, according to Eddy Reese, a senior archivist in Modern Military Records. But much survived, and it was among these papers, which we researched for many months through 1986-7 that we found the basic evidence for the deaths in American and French camps. For instance, we found the total of captives in U.S. hands in northwest Europe under Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) command in June 1945, which is 5,224,310. And in the same sets of papers, we found the detailed statistical summaries week by week reporting captures, transfers, discharges of prisoners, including the ominous heading, Other Losses. The meaning of this term was explained by Col. Philip S. Lauben, whose name we found on the circulation list for these G2 papers. Lauben was expert, having been head of the German Affairs Branch of SHAEF and he was unequivocal: Other Losses meant deaths, and "very very minor escapes," fewer than two per cent. It was only much later, under heavy pressure from the U.S. Army that Lauben was induced to recant. (3)

The total of prisoners of war captured was clear enough, but Ambrose and the Ike-minded do not accept U.S. army documents as sufficient evidence. They reduce the number of prisoners to 3,800,000 by a very simple sleight-of-hand. They point out that some of the prisoners were designated as Disarmed Enemy Forces, and they then fail to give any further accounting for them. This reduces the pool of potential victims, and thus inflates the proportion of those alleged to have died. It also eliminates from the accounts 1,400,000 of the captives who were worst treated, and who bore the largest proportion of losses.

Of the prisoners of war, they say, some 700,000 were sent to the French. Among the remainder, some 3,097,000, the Ike-minded say that 4,537 died. This is a very challenging statistic. Ambrose's book reports that the death total of 4,537 constitutes a loss ratio of 0.1%, while neglecting to report the time period. This is one of their typical evasions, which usually obscure the picture. We can partly rectify it here.

The annual death rate for German civilians in the 1930s was around 12 deaths per 1,000 people. The ambient death rate in 1945 in central-west Europe among civilians was about the same. That 12 figure includes the most vulnerable in society, babies and old people. Among young men in peacetime, the death rate is always far lower. For instance, among resting American soldiers in base camp, it was less than one third of that rate, or about 3.8. A total of 4,537 deaths among 3,097,000 implies a death rate of 1.46 (per annum); since 80 percent of the prisoners were kept on average 6 months, this death total implies a rate of around 3.8. Thus the Ike-minded ask us to believe that the prisoners who even Ambrose has admitted were starving, thirsty, living in mudholes for long periods, somehow-miraculously-were just as healthy as were the well-fed, well-rested and well-clothed U.S. soldiers living in base camp.

But the tedious statistical arguments have been settled by the appearance on the scene of Soviet files. When the Soviet archives on prisoners of war for the 20th century were opened after 1990, Bacque immediately flew to Moscow where he was admitted to the gloomy KGB archives. There he was shown boxes containing millions of documents relating to prisoners of war of every nationality from World War II. He was allowed to patrol those dim aisles, to take down any box he wished and to photocopy any documents he wanted. He brought away from Moscow scores of copies of typical entries, including medical and legal records for individual prisoners, ID documentation, date of death or discharge. He also found the statistical summary of the fate of German prisoners of war.

This was a major find because it would confirm or destroy the work in Other Losses. The Germans knew, by a thorough survey, how many prisoners had never come home--about 1,400,000. The Soviet death figure would settle the argument between Ambrose and Other Losses as follows: from the missing 1,400,000 one subtracts the 800,000/900,000 deaths alleged in Other Losses to determine that there must have been 500,000 to 600,000 dead in Soviet captivity.

In forthright manner in several reports, most notably the Bulanov Report dated 28 October, 1956, the Soviets recorded the fate of 2,389,560 Germans, of whom 450,600 died., including 93,900 as they were being transferred from the front to the rear. A further 66,481 civilians died among people rounded up to replace dead and escaped prisoners. The total of the dead actually recorded in the Soviet archives is 517,081.

The authenticity of the Soviet archives is certain. The deaths of Japanese prisoners of war shown in the KGB prisoner archives match almost exactly the figures determined by the Japanese themselves. The Soviet massacre of Polish prisoners at Katyn in 1940 is also confirmed in the KGB archives. Finally, the figures in Other Losses when tallied with the German figures for their own missing, confirm the KGB figures.

This amazing confirmation was never been admitted or discussed by Ambrose or any of the Ike-minded. No American publisher has offered to take on either of the books that have presented this research. They have, however, been published in the UK, Canada and Germany.(4)

Soon after this discovery, there was placed in our hands the "smoking gun" demanded by Forrest C. Pogue. This was in the form of a letter sent from Eisenhower's HQ to all German cities and towns under SHAEF's control, dated May 9 1945. In it, the Germans are told that anyone who gathers together food for the purpose of taking it to the prisoner of war camps was liable to be shot. It was also a crime punishable by death to take food to the prisoners. We have eye-witness evidence of the killing of several women and of prisoners near them, by guards at American camps.

The personal consequences of all this for the authors have been distressing, but far worse has been the effect on American and German history. Because of the enormous influence of Ambrose and the New York Times, most American reviewers dismissed Other Losses as sensationalist trash, or falsehood as Ambrose called it. So the public has been deprived of their right to informed public debate.

We are neither of us feeling much Schadenfreude these days. We are upset that Stephen E. Ambrose did not live up to what is implied in his letter to Bacque, that this story "can no longer be suppressed."

I will do a point by point systematic refutation of wintermute's claims over the course of the next several days. I actually re-checked out John Sack's book and James Bacque's book just this evening from the library, as I was expecting a barrage of garbage and like this. I also managed to pick up Ambrose's book in which he methodically destroys the principal thesis of Other Losses (which I read several years ago, in the midst of a debate between Sulla and Potty), along with several other historians. A quick glance over this thread seems to indicate that wintermute is once again relying on the word of James Bacque and internet sources. The claims he makes about Stephen Ambrose were easily located with an internet search. I will have much more to say later, as I also checked out several more sources on the Morgenthau plan, but in the meantime, it is interesting that wintermute did not choose to post this:

Gunter Bischof and Brian Loring Villa

http://hnn.us/articles/1266.html#Bischof


Gunter Bischof, PhD (Harvard '89), is a professor of history and the executive director of CenterAustria at the University of New Orleans. He is the author of Austria in the First Cold War 1945-55 (1999) and editor of more than 20 books on World War II, the Cold War and modern Austria.

Brian Loring Villa, PhD (Harvard '69) is professor of history at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of the prize-winning Unauthorized Action: Mountbatten and the Dieppe Raid (1989) and is completing a book on Pearl Harbor.

Research on all aspects of World War II POWs has seen a real renaissance in Germany, Russia and much of Europe in the past years, as well as in Australia. Not too long ago the premier German television channel ARD featured a three-part documentary on World War II POWs in its main evening program. This trend is less discernible in the U.S. Interest in the World War II POW story is partly the result of larger trends in World War II scholarship in studying ALL victims of the war, and has much to do with the opening of archives in the former Soviet Union. It also is related to the extensive and ongoing debate in Germany and Austria about the travelling "Wehrmacht exhibit," which documents extensively the war crimes of the German Army on the Eastern front (the willful neglect of millions of Russian POWs resulting in their deaths being one of these war crimes). Ironically, James Bacque's sensationalist book Other Losses probably was a cause for this revival of POW research in Germany and elsewhere, too, since it pointed out that this chapter of World War II history had not been sufficiently studied up until the 1990s.

That the odd couple of Bacque and Fisher should now come out to bottom feed on the woes of historian Stephen Ambrose ought to tickle no one familiar with this debate. We cannot speak for Stephen Ambrose and his initial response to the Bacque manuscript since we never saw this correspondence. But with Bacque's considerable skill of manipulating evidence it would not be surprising if he misrepresents his personal dealings with Ambrose in the statement under discussion here. A case in point is his misrepresentation of "Ike and the Disappearing Atrocities" in the New York Times Book Review of February 24, 1991. This was a RESEARCH REPORT summarizing the findings of the conference gathered at the Eisenhower Center of the University of New Orleans in mid-December 1990. The papers of this workshop soundly refuted the charges of Other Losses, especially Bacque's fanciful handling of statistics. Dr. Ambrose first presented these findings of an international group of World War II and POW experts at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in New York City in late December 1990. He then published it in the New York Times Book Review. So the Times story was NOT a "book review," as Bacque claims, but a conference report. This is a crucial distinction as the Times indeed would not review a book not published in the United States at that point in time.

It is not necessary to review here Bacque's extravagant statistical claims which are the heart of his conspiracy theory. The eight scholars who gathered in New Orleans and contributed to Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against Falsehood (1992) refuted Bacque's wily misinterpretations of statistics and oral history evidence in detail. Numerous reviews of the book written by the top talent in the military history profession such as John Keegan and Russel Weigley were persuaded by the findings of the book. These findings have since been further solidified by detailed case studies on individual American POW camps in Germany hastily built at the end of the war like Christof Strauss's exhaustive Heidelberg dissertation on the POW and internment in the Heilbronn camp.

The mountain of evidence has been building that Bacque's charge of the "missing million" supposedly perishing in the American (and French) POW camps in Germany and France is based on completely faulty interpretation of statistical data. There was never any serious disagreement that the German POWs were treated badly by the U.S. Army and suffered egregiously in these camps in the first weeks after the end of the war. That the chaos of the war's end would also produce potentially mismatches and errors in record keeping should surprise no one either. But there was NO AMERICAN POLICY to starve them to death as Bacque asserts and NO COVER UP either after the war. No question about it, there were individual American camp guards who took revenge on German POWs based on their hatred of the Nazis.

Some of this recent scholarship is now conveniently summarized in the volume Kriegsgefangenschaft im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Ein vergleichende Perspektive [Prisoners of War in World War II: A Comparative Perspective] (Holler Verlag 1999) edited by Gunter Bischof and Rudiger Overmans. The essays in this volume were spawned two "post-Bacque" conferences in New Orleans (1992) and Innsbruck, Austria (1994). Overmans (a contributor to the 1992 volume) has emerged as the top POW researcher in Germany with two recent books on POWs and as the historical consultant for the above-mentioned ARD TV-documentary.

The problem for Bacque is that he cannot read most of this massive and exciting new scholarship because he does not read German. He also does not read Russian. So the claims of his exhaustive research in the "KGB archives" (which to our knowledge are only restrictively open to researchers!) should be taken with a big grain of salt. Many stories have surfaced about Russian archives opening their holdings selectively to those who are willing to pay for it. Bacque's second volume, Crimes and Mercies, was first published in German by Ullstein in Berlin (a publishing house well aware of the popularity of revisionist scholarship among German veteran circles). A panel of scholars gathered at the annual German Studies Association meeting in Salt Lake City in October 1999 and found the charges of Crimes and Mercies even more extravagant and pig-headed than those proffered in Other Losses. Here Bacque was construing a vast conspiracy about many millions of German refugees perishing in Germany at the end of the war as a result of Allied neglect. The GSA papers were never published, however, since the business of refuting Bacque's claims again and again and in detail gives more credence to his wild conspiracy history. Trying to revive the debate now is yet another attempt by him to gain acceptability in the scholarly community.

We do not pretend that all questions have been answered concerning the treatment of POWs during and after World War II. This is an emerging field where many questions still need to be answered. Researchers are hard at work on these issues. Scholarly conferences on World War II POW treatment were held in Hamburg (Germany) in June 2002 and will take place in Graz (Austria) in May 2003. Bacque should be happy that he has helped spark such massive interest in these forgotten victims of World War II. But scholarship remains largely critical of his wildly exaggerated conclusions on POW death rates among German POWs in American hands in Europe and his sloppy methodology.

Bacque's very odd notion that Eisenhower and the German POWs should have been "withdrawn" by Dr. Ambrose suggests that he does not understand the nature of academic discourse where ideas are contested and refuted with persuasive evidence in a perpetual cycle. You can't really "withdraw" them. And Dr. Ambrose was not in a position to retract the scholarship of seven other authors. Ideas and scholarship will be ignored if they fail to convince. This has happened to much of Mr. Bacque's work. Alas, it is surprising that Dr. Fisher, who has long served as a scholarly fig leaf to enhance Bacque's credibility, should support this strange demand of "withdrawal." Had his request come through an authoritative scholarly society, one could understand. Coming from Fisher may make his former teachers and colleagues squirm.

As to the ridiculous charge that Bacque's critics are "Ike-minded," one only needs to ponder the fact that most of the authors in Eisenhower and the German POWs are experts on various aspects of World War II but never have been Eisenhower scholars per se. Only the Cold War diplomatic historians Rolf Steininger of the University of Innsbruck and Bischof have an abiding interest in Eisenhower's presidency. Both have tended to see Eisenhower's Cold War involvement very critically. So much for the "The Ike-minded."

- " I actually re-checked out John Sack's book and James Bacque's book just this evening from the library, as I was expecting a barrage of garbage and like this. "


Whoa! Does your local library really allow such un-PC (regardless of their reliability) books on its shelves?

The books by David Irving and Israel Shahak are about the most un-PC stuff you can find from the Helsinki University library.


(Correction: I checked this out, and yes, you can get Bacque's "Other Losses". No "Crimes and Mercies", and no John Sack either.)


Petr

Yeah. We have John Sack's book, James Bacque's book, all of David Irving's writings, Hitler's writings, David Duke's book, The Turner Diaries etc. I have never had much of a problem locating any book I have ever desired to read. Some conspiracy, eh? :p

Lucky you. My arguments around here would be even much more efficient if I'd have the same kind of access to sources.


Petr

:: Lucky you. My arguments around here would be even much more efficient if I'd have the same kind of access to sources.

Petr,

The funniest thing about all of this is that Bacque's findings were never suppressed by any ZOG conspiracy (as wintermute would have the gallery believe). Indeed, if anything, his work stimulated a lot of new interest in the field. His book was never ignored. The claims he made were extensively discussed at international conferences and refuted by real historians in numerous publications.

- " The funniest thing about all of this is that Bacque's findings were never suppressed by any ZOG conspiracy (as wintermute would have the gallery believe)."


Well, in truth, we should say that there are many different kinds of censorship.

Like, the officials of Helsinki University deciding that Bacque's second book is not worth acquiring could be considered to be a form of suppression.


Petr

Its probably just so obscure that your library does not have it in stock. Try Inter-Library Loan if you have it there.

Let's see what I'll do.


Petr

Well, in truth, we should say that there are many different kinds of censorship.

Like, the officials of Helsinki University deciding that Bacque's second book is not worth acquiring could be considered to be a form of suppression.


Petr

Most benign form of censorship I've ever heard of.

The data is a overview which directly addresses the reliability of Bacque and Sack, and their support among 'reputable historians'.


What do your 'reliable historians' say about the Holocaust?

Soft censorship often works more efficiently than too apparent and ham-handed one.

Self-censorship (emperor's new clothes syndrome) is the most developed form of this kind of oppression...


Petr

Soft censorship often works more efficiently than too apparent and ham-handed one.


The library in my town doesn't have any copies of "The Devil's Disciples", but I doubt anyone would consider it censorship.

I simply went out and bought it. If someone can't be bothered to do that, I think it says more about the quality of the book than the nature of the state.


Self-censorship (emperor's new clothes syndrome) is the most developed form of this kind of oppression...


Except that it doesn't sound oppressive.

- "The library in my town doesn't have any copies of "The Devil's Disciples", but I doubt anyone would consider it censorship."


Big-time university library is a bit different matter. It is SUPPOSED to be well-equipped, and represent all kinds of viewpoints.


- "Except that it doesn't sound oppressive."


EXACTLY.

"There are none so enslaved than those who falsely think themselves to be free."


Petr

- "Except that it doesn't sound oppressive."


EXACTLY.


"There are none so enslaved than those who falsely think themselves to be free."



I see. So being unpopular is to be oppressed?

I have no time for semantic trifles. One has to be unpopular before you can become oppressed.


Petr

I have no time for semantic trifles.


It doesn't seem semantic to me.


One has to be unpopular before you can become oppressed.


Thats true. But thats a line which I don't think has been crossed simply by the Helsinki library refusing to order a copy of Bacque's book.

I am no talking about Bacque's book specifically, but about library book-ordering policies as a quiet and efficient method of silencing un-PC voices.


Petr

I am no talking about Bacque's book specifically, but about library book-ordering policies as a quiet and efficient method of silencing un-PC voices.


Why is the library obligated to have that particular book?

- " The funniest thing about all of this is that Bacque's findings were never suppressed by any ZOG conspiracy (as wintermute would have the gallery believe)." I'm not sure what you regard as "suppressed". It appears that you think if a book's suppressed there will be big signs everywhere saying Such-and-Such book was suppressed! That's not how it happens. Most people won't notice anything at all, including the book; that's the point.


http://www.serendipity.li/hr/cm01.htm
From Crimes and Mercies, Chapter VIII, History and Forgetting

We see today great institutions of public opinion — among them Le Monde and the New York Times — feverishly denying the Western Allied atrocities of the post-war period against Germany. For most people in the West, the denials rest on delusion, not evidence. The question never even becomes, 'Did the Allies do such things?' because the answer has been planted in everyone's heads already. 'NO, the Allies did not, because they could not.' For instance, the eminent British historian Michael Howard, reviewing for the Times Literary Supplement a book about Allied atrocities against Germans, admitted that although he was 'an innumerate historian' unqualified to judge the crucial statistics in the book, he could 'apply the criterion of inherent probability' to refute the book. 9 The French press and TV rose with rhetoric uncomplicated by evidence to denounce recent allegations that mass crimes were committed by the French army against the Germans. Stephen Ambrose also attacked a book about allied misdeeds by concluding that 'when scholars do the necessary research they will find [this book] to be worse than worthless'. 10 The answer is known before the evidence is consulted. In other words, belief is everything, evidence means nothing.
Count Nikolai Tolstoy, the renowned English writer, has been driven bankrupt and forbidden to publish on the subject of British treatment of prisoners of war under Lord Aldington. His books have been withdrawn from British libraries. His attempts at redress in British courts have been constantly frustrated in the UK, although the denial of his rights has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. The alleged libel against Lord Aldington was converted by the courts and government into a libel against the history of the state. Against which there is no appeal.

The books of former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark have revealed tremendous civilian deaths in Iraq during the Gulf War which have never been admitted by any of the Allies who caused them. 11 No major publisher in the English-speaking world has dared to bring them out.

My fellow author Alfred de Zayas, a graduate of Harvard and of Göttingen, spent years researching and writing his book Nemesis at Potsdam, about the expulsions from the east of Germany. And then he had to spend ten years sending it round to almost a hundred publishers in the West before the manuscript was finally accepted. The president of one of the biggest houses in New York returned the manuscript with the note that he would never publish a book sympathetic to the Germans.

It is no good to respond that all these authors got published, and so freedom of discussion exists. The full weight of official disapproval has stifled the discussion by shrinking the audience. And once that happens the authors may be silenced by financial distress.

Well, in truth, we should say that there are many different kinds of censorship.

Like, the officials of Helsinki University deciding that Bacque's second book is not worth acquiring could be considered to be a form of suppression.


Petr

That is EXACTLY how it works. The only way for you to know whether it's genuinely not worth acquiring or whether there may be other reasons a library does not wish to make it available is to read it and see for yourself.

You're lucky in even hearing about the book, though. Most people never will, as things stand.

Why is the library obligated to have that particular book?

If the library were privately-owned, you may have a point. When it's paid for by all of our tax dollars, I do think it should strive to present a wide array of viewpoints instead of pushing a particular line and hiding others.

If the library were privately-owned, you may have a point. When it's paid for by all of our tax dollars, I do think it should strive to present a wide array of viewpoints instead of pushing a particular line and hiding others.

You are aware, of course, that your local library isn't the Library of Congress?

Elaborate on your point, please.

Elaborate on your point, please.

My point is that its irrational to expect your local library to posess every written word produced by man. Nonetheless, they do their best.

http://catnyp.nypl.org/search/aBacque/abacque/1,24,77,B/frameset&FF=abacque+james+1929-&6,,6

As you can see, the New York Public Library has a copy of Bacque's book. It is silly, though, to expect the library at Bakersfield or Helsinki to have it just because its in New York.

My point is that its irrational to expect your local library to posess every written word produced by man.

This is true. You agree then, that libraries should not refuse to get certain books because they are "controversial"?

This is true. You agree then, that libraries should not refuse to get certain books because they are "controversial"?

I don't think libraries should get certain books because they're controversial, either. If its a choice between John Keegan and David Irving, the choice is obvious.

If the choice is between a book from a viewpoint that is absent and a book from a viewpoint that is already heavily represented, I believe they should choose the first. But in reality, the choices don't work that way. Many library systems are perfectly capable of stocking multiple viewpoints and accept donations.

Fade, various things you write about the "Holocaust" and believers and doubters therein cause me to think that you have not thoroughly studied the revisionist literature, but rely on others to form your opinions for you (for example, your saying that John Sack thought there was a "Holocaust", as though that were evidence that there was: a logical fallacy which is particularly fallacious on this subject, in which the assumption is that most people of the western world--and in particular, Jewish people--think there was a "Holocaust").

I'd like to know specifically what revisionist literature you have read; for example, have you read Dissecting the Holocaust? If not, you should not yet be arguing on the subject, because you are not sufficiently informed to argue intelligently; instead you should, as a preliminary step, inform yourself firsthand on the arguments and evidence of the of the revisionists. If you have, then let us discuss it chapter by chapter; I'm game --are you?

Oh--and get out your copy of the book that according to you refutes James Bacque; I've got Crimes and Mercies right here, and will throw down the gauntlet by saying that John Keegan is an arrant weenie to claim in his book The Battle for History that Bacque is a "crackpot", without adducing a scrap of evidence to back up that charge. On the subject of Keegan, I will add that if there is any better preparation than teaching military history at the Royal Military Aademy, Sandhurst, for a stellar career as court historian, I can't think what it is.

Have you read David Hoggan's The Forced War yet, BTW?