Archive/File: people/b/bacque.james bacque.007
Last-Modified: 1995/02/28 

Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
From: uroessl1@gwdu03.gwdg.de (Roessler  Ulrich)
Subject: Reports (was Hostages)
Message-ID: 
Organization: GWDG, Goettingen
References: ,<36k1bi$mb5@newsbf01.news.aol.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 1994 23:08:10 GMT
Lines: 227

DbtgThomas (dbtgthomas@aol.com) writes :
 
>In article , uroessl1@gwdu03.gwdg.de (Roessler 
>Ulrich) writes:
>
>You mention that in Bacque's acknowledgements at the end of Other Losses
>there was one "dedicated to Arthur L. Smith".  I take it from your tone
>that Smith has some negative connotation.  

No, 'Smith' is just a name.

>                                        I don't know anything about the
>man, but do find the entire quote more interesting than your undetailed
>referral.  It is as follows:

Well, I referred to it, because the note is indeed interesting:

>
>    (after 30 other acknowledgements)  " To Professor Arthur L. Smith of
>Los Angeles, I owe a special debt for his helpfulness and honest advice,
>which he generously tendered to me even though he knew my thesis
>contradicts his own writing.  

Bacque even has a reference to Professor Smith's book 

"Heimkehr aus  dem Zweiten Weltkrieg", Stuttgart: DVA 1985,

hasn't he?

Later Smith wrote a refutation of Bacque's theses:

Die "vermisste Million" : zum Schicksal deutscher Kriegsgefangener nach dem
Zweiten Weltkrieg / von Arthur L. Smith. Aus dem Engl. von Hermann Graml. -
Muenchen : Oldenbourg, 1992. - 141 S.
(Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte ; 65)
Literaturverz. S. 137 - 139.
ISBN 3-486-64565-X

(I'm really too lazy to look up, whether there are English originals, 
it's left to your doubting standard, to find out who this Professor Smith is).

>                            Similarly, David Irving accurately pointed
>me to some very valuable information, although he knows I am deeply
>hostile to his theories about the Holocaust, and some of his theories
>about Churchill.  Eric Koch generously helped me with advice and
>translation although he opposes at least one major theme of the book."
>
>Apparently Bacque doesn't shut out information from sources with which he
>has serious differences of overall opinion.  But that's what an open mind
>will do to you.

Bacque wants you to believe this. In reality, there is lurking behind this
simple statement, you quote, that there EXIST and EXISTED thorough studies
on the fate of the german POWs prior to Bacque's forged sensationalist
block-buster. He even dares to quote the comprehensive study of the 
Maschke commission, which is itself now a primary source, as it is based
on many eye-witness accounts.

I posted a pointer to the book by G.Bischof and Stephen E.Ambrose, 
("Eisenhower and the German POWs", Lousiana State University Press,
Baton Rouge and London 1990), which provides ample examples, how Bacque 
has forged, misquoted, miscalculated, and so forth. 

Keith Morrison was so kind to post a summary of this book,
which may answer a lot of questions, and leaves nothing of Bacque's theses. 
But in case you want to improve your methodology in doubting just read
Bacque again and use "Eisenhower and the German POWs" as commentary.
You'll see what a blunder and rubbish, Mr Bacque contrived.

Besides, a scholar would not only note somewhere hidden in the 
acknowledgments, that there exist other opinions. A scholar would discuss 
them and when possible launch a refutation of these other opinions. 
Bacque apparently cannot do this, as any attempt to do so, would expose
his theses as utter nonsense.

Well, Bacque is only a "publicist" (another word besides "revisionist"
which will aquire a highly dubious meaning).

>
>In case my frequent qualifications haven't made it obvious enough, let me
>state again that I don't have all this stuff figured out.  I am on a
>learning excursion, not a traveling revival show, and it's hard to have a
>double standard when you don't even have an agenda.  This forum is filled
>with far too many wet behind the ears absolute experts (read zealots), and
>it doesn't need another in me.

Let's see, how all this got started:

Mr. DbtgThomas wrote:
>>Message-ID: <36k1bi$mb5@newsbf01.news.aol.com>
>>
>>If you'd like to read an account of Allied atrocities, pick up "Other
>>Losses".  I don't have the author's name at hand, but it's a fairly recent
>>publication that contains documentation of the claims it puts forth
>>(actual records of prison camp deaths in Europe).  In the cryptic words of
>>the German government, 1.7 million soldiers who were alive at the end of
>>hostilities "did not return home", as in never.  They died of intentional
>>starvation and the diseases it brought about.

Mr. DbtgThomas states here completely unequivocal Bacque's theses:
German POWs were deliberately murdered by the Allies. The number of
victims was in the order of 1-2 millions, as Bacque says also. 
Mr.DbtgThomas states this as a proven matter of fact. 

>>                                                   Several million German
>>civilians also died in the winter of 1945-46 when they were evicted en
>>masse from Soviet conquered areas, primarily in Poland.  

This statement, obviously beyond any doubt, comes in the usual, 
doubtful shape of a revisionist claim - i.e. without reference: 
and I'm still waiting, whether Mr.DbtgThomas will provide one.

>>[Statement about carpet bombing deleted, no reasonable person denies
>> this to have happened. Its moral quality may be worth a discussion.
>> Such a discussion took place btw in s.c.british and s.c.german 
>> after Peter Skaliks unaccountable disappearance.]

>>
>>I am in no way anti-American.  My father fought three straight years in
>>the North African and Italian campaigns and I take pride in that fact. 
>>Ordinary soldiers had nothing to do with the mistreatment, it rolled down
>>from the top, primarily due to Eisenhower's loathing of the Germans.  For
>>obvious reasons, this did not and does not get any press.
>>

And now Mr. DbtgThomas presents the guilty. One should remember here,
that Bacque's theses are. He claims, that at least 800,000 German POWs died 
in a starvation campaign in 1945, instigated and performed by Eisenhower 
as the responsible commander in Europe, and highest military responsible of 
the camps for the POWs. This is nothing short than charging Eisenhower 
with mass-murder.

And Mr. DbtgThomas has absolutely no doubts here, as it all "rolled down 
from the top".


The number of 1.7 million German soldiers missing is actually from the
German Red Cross Tracer Service, Munich.

["Nachforschungen nach den Wehrmachtsverschollenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges"
  Deutsche Rotes Kreuz-Suchdienst, Muenchen 1974,
 cf. as well Albert E.Cowdrey in Bischof/Ambrose op.cit.]

Mr. Bacque hasn't yet read the report of this Service, but he quotes it.

In reality, from this report alone an other history emerges:

Almost all of the missing soldiers were lost at the Eastern Front, 
the majority of those, who had survived the battles, must have been under 
Soviet custody. The number of missing soldiers, is yet still 
not equal to a number of deliberately killed POWs. (The Soviet archives
of the Red Army and of the labor camp administration are now available, 
and at least some of the questions about these missed soldiers may be
answered now more precisely. This work, as I've seen, is under way,
the work of the Maschke commission had already collected a lot of material
from German POWs about the Soviet camps, so an uncomplete picture of 
this history is available for over 20 years now. Indeed, about 30% of
the German POWs in Soviet hands died there, but I posted this already.)

But at most 56,000 of the missing soldiers could have come under custody of 
the U.S. army only, so at least 750,000 of Bacque's alleged victims of 
Eisenhower must have been martians. Remember, we are speaking of a
the collapsed German army in a war destroyed country. 

The U.S. army had about 5 million POWs in their hand in spring 1945.

>
>As a final comment, I find some of the eyewitness testimony about German
>actions to be less than credible, including the hand sketches that are
>accepted by many as viable evidence.  

Which hand-sketches? What testimonies? Who accepts what? 

When it comes to evidence of the Holocaust, one should note, that most 
evidence was produced by the perpetrators themselves. 
And these pieces and bits of evidence were preserved in spite of the 
attempts they made to conceal the procedure, and to wipe out the traces.

Later, there were e.g. in Western Germany a series of trials on SS-guards 
of concentration and destruction camps, somewhat too late actually,
but producing a huge amount of further testimonies and confessions. 

The trials corroborated the picture of the 'Holocaust', which was then 
already described fairly precisely in the monograph of Gerald Reitlinger,
"The Final Solution", mainly using the affidavits and documents from 
the Nuremberg trials, from other trials just after the war, 
and from eyewitness accounts of survivors.

Actually, most of the perpetrators didn't try to deny the mass-murders. 
They tried to minimize their own participation in the process or said 
that they obeyed only orders etc. Can you accept these testimonies
as evidence? Or are you more critical than the courts? And why?

>                                     But while I might dismiss them in my
>own mind, or in a short public statement, I can find no reason at all to
>ridicule someone's expression of their own pain simply because I disagree
>with the likelihood of the factual details.  That would be in abominably
>poor taste, and absolutely unnecessary.  It's what zealots and fanatics
>do, and people who indulge in the practice should think about the image it
>projects.  Perhaps it doesn't fit them at all, and it's a shame to see
>valid inputs destroyed by too enthusiastic of such a cheap verbal
>maneuver.  I think you have more to say than pointless insults, and look
>forward to hearing your views in substance.
>

I know for sure now, that Mr. DbtgThomas isn't a Peter-Skaliks-ersatz. 
This individual granted at least exemption from evasive lyricism.

But Mr.DbtgThomas may be assured: when I'll ever feel any inclination
to insult him, I'll send a warning post in advance before starting 
the _Fraktur reden_. So far, I only answered, Mr.DbtgThomas' doubts 
with some simple inputs. 
I'm quite grateful, that I could sort out this here.

Mr. DbtgThomas recent articles about the different syllables in "ausrotten",
though, may be somewhat "unfocused" in the terminology of one estimated 
poster here.
Yet, I'll address this issue again, if Mr. DbtgThomas starts as well 
to discuss the surrounding text in Himmler's Posen-speech. I'm quite 
interested to see, which doubts may arise in Mr.DbtgThomas' mind, 
when applying his doubting standard to the meaning of this abominable 
German text.

u.roessler                                         uroessl1@gwdg.de

"wolte gott, das sie auch ausgerottet wuerden, die euch verstoeren"

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