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From: minsky@shell1.cybernex.net (Jacob Minsky)
Subject: Re: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:_Deutschland_=FCber__alles?=
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References: <359f59d4.0@news.dls.net> <35a7fffa.0@news.rlc.net> <6o96p7$3vb$1@unlisys.unlisys.net> <35a8bcd1.0@news.rlc.net> <6oakl1$aus$1@unlisys.unlisys.net> <35aa1475.0@news.rlc.net>
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George F. Hardy (georgeh@mail.rlc.net) wrote:
: In article <6oakl1$aus$1@unlisys.unlisys.net>, sanio@berlin.snafu.de 
: (Erhard Sanio) says:
: >
: >In article <35a8bcd1.0@news.rlc.net>,
: >George F. Hardy  wrote:
: >

: >You started asserting that Abmbrose and Schmidt had written about
: >56,000 German POWs dying is US hands, which is a flat lie.

: Ambrose and Bischof.  In "Eisenhower and the German POWs"
: page 19, bottom line (except for notes) ISBN: 0-8071-1758-7.

: As I have said, look it up. 

O.K., *I*'ll look it up. It's not so much a "flat lie" as it is 
another one of your stupid misreadings of the Ambrose and Bischoff
volume. If you read the footnote on page 20, and *especially* the 
discussion by A. Cowdrey (who is the very person being quoted as
supporting the 56,000 number!) on pp. 78-92, you would (perhaps)
understand that 56,000 is the *total* number of German soldiers 
missing and unaccounted for on the Western front and in areas 
controlled by the Western Allies. In order for this to become
the number of prisoners who died in American hands, two additional
assumptions are necessary: 1) that 100% of the missing soldiers 
died in captivity, and none died in combat or simply weren't 
traced after the war and 2) that 100% of the prisoners who died 
were in American hands. Both of these assumptions are extremely
unlikely, and that is why Cowdrey states on pp. 91-92:

         [T]he total number who  died unrecorded in
         American camps cannot exceed 56,285,  and,
         -- since this figure would assume that all
         or virtually all died in camps rather than 
         in the last battles  --  THE CORRECT TOTAL
         IS PROBABLY VERY MUCH SMALLER.

         [emphasis mine - JM]

In other words the figure of 56,000 is not being offered as the best
available estimate of the number of deaths of prisoners in American
hands, but as the upper limit of that number; any higher estimates
require an assumption of transfer of large numbers of German prisoners
who were last seen on the Eastern front, usually before the end of 
1944, to American custody. Note that this number would have to be 
*in addition* to documented transfers of prisoners by the Soviet 
Union to the Western Allies. The secret transfer to the Americans 
of hundreds of thousands of POWs who had been held by the Soviet Union
for months, so that the Americans could then starve them, is firmly
in the realm of schizophrenic delirium, as opposed to history. That is
what the editors of _Eisenhower and the German POWs_ are trying to
convey.

: And stop lying yourself.

Get a clue.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacob Minsky  minsky@cybernex.net  P.O. Box 312, New York, NY 10268-0312

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