Hendrick Verton - In the Fire of the Eastern Front

I was once more in the land of the ‘Ivans’ on 13 November. My return trip, on my own, had not been a problem. I had had no companions. Who wanted to return willingly to this ‘Red paradise’ on the other side of the Elbe?

Once more in Finsterwald, I came to the conclusion that life in the Western zones was not all that the German refugees had hoped. They did not find the quality of life that they were used to or expected, in comparison to the Stone-age ‘Nirvana’ to be found here in the Russian zone. Although there was no arbitrary deportation in the Western zones, ‘power to the full’ was well practised over the vanquished.

The power was soon to be seen in all its force, beginning on 20 November 1945 in the form of the Nuremberg Trials, which lasted for nearly a year, until October 1946. The Germans looked, waited and hoped for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, plus the resurrection of rights. They were treated to the wrath and revenge of the conquerors, decorated with a ‘holier than thou’ attitude in a ‘show trial, in which the laws were made by the ‘victors’. The prosecution was made up of the ‘victors’, judge and jury were ‘victors’ and the hangmen too. We returned to Medieval laws that were now wrapped in modern, new, and the fictitious, accompanied by the guiding principle that “those who lost the war must forfeit their lives”.

Orders and obedience were crimes. The breaking of our oath was, perhaps, a mitigation. Denunciation was rewarded with the ‘closing’ of your case. All of the principles of law were not only ignored but were trampled into the ground by the feet of the ‘victors’ in Nuremberg. For example, “No sentence without lawful rights, or carrying out of orders under force”, meant non-convict ion. One could not be sentenced for the actions of others.

In many prisons under the Western Allies the use of torture was allowed. It was on the daily agenda, be it physical or psycho logical. The means justified the end. The use of manipulated gallows to ‘hang’ the said prisoner was one of those psychological methods. Spinal injuries and irreparable damage to the vertebrae of the neck were the result. Torture continued until the said prisoner signed a confession that had been dictated and typed beforehand by the ‘victors’. No one questioned the self-same format of the hundreds of prisoners presented as evidence. Illegal Courts Martial were held within prison walls. There was blatant disregard of Church Law, using soldiers disguised as priests to hear the intimate ‘confessions’ of the prisoners. Nothing, but nothing was sacred and all entered the court as wrecks, with broken bones, broken spirits, abrasions or burns, to take their places in court or in the witness-box. Defence lawyers who protested at the lawless justice, were whisked away under arrest. Insight into the prosecution documents, bringing clarity, was refused. They were shipped off by the ton, to disappear and in many cases to be destroyed.

Outside the courthouse, people were starving to death. Inside the ‘victors’ were judging Germany’s crimes against humanity. Outside, hundreds of thousands sat in prisons without any proof their crimes. Inside the ‘victors’ sat and judged the arbitrariness of the Germans. The sweet odour of epidemics wafted over the victims of the bombing of the ‘victors’ outside. Inside an International Tribunal judged the behaviour of the Germans. Meanwhile, thousands at that time were being dragged out of their homes and deported as slaves into labour camps. There they worked until they died. All of which happened in the Malmedy trial.

A Transitional Agreement was drawn up in 1954 in Paris, on 23 October, after the Declaration of Sovereignty over the Bundesrepublik. It stated that German jurisdiction would not be allowed to judge the crimes of the Allies. Rights? Revenge? “Don’t do what I do, do what I say?” What cannot be denied is that it was not a case of “Rights for all”. One has to ask what did the Nuremberg Trials alter? The answer is nothing. Most certainly it did not affect the number of wars that have taken place since 1945, and with far more sacrifices than in the Second World War. Most certainly not for the ‘victors’. No one however has brought the warmongers into court.

It took twenty years before the former American Minister of Defence could admit to the world that the American government had made “a terrible mistake” with the Vietnam war! Robert McNamara used the term ‘mistake’ in that 58,000 American soldiers lost their lives in fighting for their fatherland. It was a ‘mistake’ that cost two million Vietnamese their lives? Two million?

The historian Dr Golo Mann, declared that “To research the crimes of the Allies against the Germans in Germany, is absolutely necessary for German history”. I will do that.

The Americans held over three million German soldiers prisoner in the summer months of 1945, in Europe. The American General, and Commander-in-Chief of the Allies, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who later sat in the top-most seat of the government, that of the US President, said it all when declaring, “We did not come as liberators, we came as conquerors”. He never said a truer word. Liberators have no need to torture, have no need to rape and have no need to harass. Liberators possess the self-esteem to keep to the rules of human rights. They have no need to plague, or deliberately let people starve, as he did.

Dwight D. Eisenhower begrudged the prisoners a roof over their heads, begrudged the prisoners even the simplest and most meagre portion of food, even though huge reserves were available. Prisoners were given less consideration than animals that had a burrow to keep them dry and warm. Out of the rain? Protected from the sun? The prisoners on the meadows of the Rhine had none of that. They lived in holes in the ground and were forced to go there. Holes that filled with rain produced a bog. They did not even have the most primitive of sanitary conditions, which in turn produced epidemics and death, adding to that of being left to rot. Many died in the Rhineland between Remagen and Sinzig. It was a deliberate programme of extermination. It happened not only in the Rhineland, but in other places as well. Places of extermination!

An article in the magazine Der Spiegel, in their 40th edition from 1989, reported, “Foodstuffs, although in huge reserves, were deliberately withheld, so that the interned died. They also died from lack of hygiene and sanitary conditions, both leading to epidemics which killed”. “Ten times more than those Germans who lost their lives on the battlefields of Normandy, and from then until the capitulation, died in POW camps”. A quote from the former candidate for the US Presidency, Pat Buchanan said, “Nearly a million prisoners died, not only in American POW camps after 1945, but in French camps too”. That quote is from the bestseller by James Bach,.

The figures are only the official ones and most certainly could be added to, but the official figures should not be used to judge or for revenge, conquerors or not. They should be used to add weight on the other side of the scales to achieve a balance that was not done in Nuremberg. There, morals, conscience and most of all justice, were non-existent, and also deliberately ignored. Can we now interpret the words from Carl von Clausewitz as, “The prisoner of war status is another form of the progress of politics”?

The war had now ended, but not in the POW camps. The German people have the key to unlocking the door of the past that is necessary for German history, necessary for the future. But those who stay ‘mum’, together with those who will not take a look into the past, are lost. One-sided accusation, one-sided “researched facts”, and one-sided withholding of documents of historical importance in their archives, plus those who keep silent, all that has to end.