Crimes and Mercies (20 page)

According to a report gathered from the town council of Brilon by the Canadian army in 1946, the death rate in the town was 34 per thousand per year for the eleven months between 1 May 1945 and 31 March 1946. The same report shows that the death rate was triple the birth rate (2,224 versus 687).
³⁵
A similar situation existed in the village of Marktoberdorf, near Augsburg, in the US zone, where the death rate in 1946 was 27%%. It was 24%% in 1947, then fell in 1948 to 17%%. But then it rose again, to 24%% in 1949 and 27%% in 1950. The long-term effects of famine may be evident here.
³⁶

General Mark Clark, US Military Commissioner in the US zone of Austria, reported in April 1946 that the death rate in Vienna was varying between 27 and 35 per thousand per year. His report stated that, ‘This relatively high death rate prevailed during a period when the ration scale was 1,550 cpd. With a drop in
the ration it is probable that these rates will increase.’
³⁷
And in fact, those rations for Germans did drop by about a third, or more. ‘During the first months of 1947, supplies of food for the Combined [US and UK] zone fell again to the low level of the two preceding winters.’ Daily rations were often less than 1,000 calories.
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In Schleswig-Holstein, in the British zone, the daily ration for seven months in mid-1947 was only 1,240 calories per day.
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All this had the effect that Clark predicted. We know from the Medical Officer of Health of the US Army that the death rate in the US zone in Germany in May 1946 was 21.5 per thousand per year,
and that it had previously been higher
.
⁴⁰
Hoover reported to the President that there had been an appalling increase of 40 per cent in deaths of aged people
in only three months
.
⁴¹
This is a significant report, since aged people not only constitute a far greater share of the dying than any other sector of the population, they were also a much higher proportion than normal among the population in Germany at that date. On the basis of the report from Clark, and because we know that the rations in the US and British zones did often drop to around 1,000 cpd, it is not unreasonable to assume that the higher rate in the Combined (British-American) zone was at least as high as the Vienna rate of 27/35 per thousand per year.

It is impossible to reconcile the official Military Governor and West German figures of low deaths with the figures from the city of Brilon, the Medical Officer of the US Army, ETO, and the census results. Because the Military Governor figures are contradicted by the detailed documentation found in Ottawa and Stanford, and because the Military Governor and official German figures are self-contradictory and self-serving, and because Robert Murphy predicted a huge loss of life in Germany, and because the Proudfoot comparisons show a huge number of Missing/Not Accounted For, and because the Allied censuses show 5.7 million Missing/Not Accounted For, and because Hoover Commission members found ‘much lying’ going on among the officers of the US military government, and because
members of the ACC said that the Morgenthau Plan was being implemented, and because the low official death figures do not accord with the reality reported and deplored in the United States Senate, and because the German government statistical agency has been unable to define its sources, it is reasonable to conclude that the low death figures are not reliable.

In contrast, the figures based on comparison of the censuses, and the figures below from Robert Murphy, are all coherent in themselves, and relate convincingly to each other. They also describe in statistical terms the huge die-off that is reported throughout Germany in anecdotal terms.

As Clay’s top diplomatic adviser, Robert Murphy was perhaps the most important American participant in decisions on Germany in this period. But his personal papers at Stanford were classified until 1988, and papers to which he contributed, relative to the Council of Foreign Ministers’ conferences in 1947 and 1949, were classified at the State Department in Washington until 1989 – a few more were declassified as late as 1991. These papers together give a high-level and deeply informed view over the whole of the period in Germany. They are especially revealing on the subject of the German population.

Murphy understood both from the census and from direct personal experience what was being done to the people of Germany. He wrote in his Council of Foreign Ministers’ preparatory papers, February 1947, that he expected the German population overall
to shrink by two million
during the period of the return of the prisoners, roughly the next two to three years. This overall shrinkage would exist after allowing for the net of births, deaths, emigration and immigration including return of prisoners. He wrote that this tremendous loss of life would occur because of the ‘present high death rate in Germany’.
⁴²

Murphy said that after the influx, which he expected to number two million prisoners and four million expellees, the population would rise by only four million. This was only possible if deaths exceeded births by two million in the period, since emigration was not permitted at the time. The period was three
years, so Murphy was saying that deaths would exceed births by two million in 1947–50. We know the birth rate for 1946. It was 14%%. Therefore Murphy was basing his prediction on a death rate he knew to be 24%%.
⁴³

The importance of Murphy’s prediction can hardly be exaggerated. It shows that he was basing official American policy on the expectation that this phenomenal death rate, already prevailing nationwide, would continue for three more years. He believed it so firmly that he put it on record to the State Department, to the British, French, Soviet and other American officials in Germany. And he based this on the same statistics that determined all Allied policy decisions for all four powers towards Germany. In other words, by implication, all of the Allied powers believed as Murphy did, that the death rate in Germany was 24%% or higher, and would continue for years at that rate.

The comparison of the censuses has shown us already that some 5.7 million people disappeared inside Germany between October 1946 and September 1950, in addition to those officially reported, and in addition to the millions of expellee deaths and millions of prisoner deaths. But the census of 1950 also shows that Murphy in 1947 was low in estimating future deaths. He had estimated a population for Germany of 69,000,000 once the expellees had arrived and the surviving prisoners were back. The 1950 census showed there were actually only 68,400,000 present, and that many more expellees and prisoners had returned than he predicted. Murphy had predicted that the net ‘immigration’ would be 6 million, made up of returning prisoners and expellees arriving. In fact, the number who had arrived between October 1946 and September 1950 was 8.6 million, made up of 6 million expellees and 2.6 million prisoners.
Murphy’s death prediction was
low because the death rate he was using as at October 1946 was too
low
. The rate rose during the disastrous Hunger Year, 1947.

The West German government has not accounted for those five to six million people missing
in
Germany, but it has said that 2.1 million expellees died en route
to
occupied Germany from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union.
⁴⁴
These deaths,
having occurred outside Germany, were not included in the official death figures for Germany as published today, and are therefore irrelevant to the death totals
within
occupied Germany.

Little is known about the fate of the Germans who remained behind in the seized territories. The expellees say over and over in their accounts that, ‘Our village was empty … all of the villages were abandoned …’ and so on. Since it was the policy of the Poles and Russians, agreed by the Western democracies, to empty the land of all Germans, and the anecdotal evidence says over and over again that this happened, it is easy to believe that the policy was carried out. It is therefore hard to believe that people stayed behind, unless they were already dying. But the West German government figure of 2.1 million dead and about 12.5 million arrivals means that one must believe that some 2,645,000 persons went on living in these ‘empty villages’. Can this be believed? The Poles said that in early 1947 there were only 400,000 Germans left in the land where there had been about 8 million people. The stay-at-homes thus were around 5 per cent of the original population.
⁴⁵
In Czechoslovakia there were around 250,000 who remained behind in 1950, approximately 8 per cent of the German population in May 1945.
⁴⁶
It appears more credible that most of the missing died, and their deaths were hidden. The evidence above speaks for itself to the reader. In the statistical tables of deaths that follow, the official figures for expellee deaths and stay-behinds are used but not endorsed by the author.

Summary

In sum, there is compelling evidence from the census and from Ambassador Murphy that between October 1946 and September 1950 in the four occupied zones, some 5.7 million German civilian residents of Germany died but were not reported to have died. Although most of these people died from lack of food, their deaths were not caused by the world food shortage described by some historians. They were dying seventeen months to five years
after the German surrender. They began dying when world food production was 97 per cent of normal. They were for a considerable time prevented from receiving charitable help, and from earning their own bread. They went on dying while world food production climbed ever higher. The great majority of the dead Germans were women, children and very old men.
⁴⁷

The Adenauer government also determined by survey that at least 1.4 million Germans did not come home from Allied POW camps. They all died.
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A further 2.1 million people, nearly all women and children, are admitted by the West Germans and the Allies to have died during the expulsions. Notable authorities, including the first Chancellor of West Germany, have written that at least six million among the expellees alone died.

At least 9.3 million Germans died needlessly soon after the war, the great majority because of the conditions imposed by the four major victors. This is many more Germans than died in battle, air raids and concentration camps during the war.
⁴⁹
Millions of these people slowly starved to death in front of the victors’ eyes every day for years. These deaths have never been honestly reported by either the Allies or the German government.

TOTALS OF DEATHS

NOTE:

The prisoners’ minimum deaths is an unrealistically cautious estimate based on the notion that somehow, no one died who had not been counted missing by Dr Bitter and subsequent surveyors. Those counted as missing numbered 1.4 million military, to whom are here added 66,000 dead paramilitary in the USSR.

The deaths above are not only above and beyond those
actually reported, but also most of the victims died after October 1946. Of course there were many deaths in the period from August 1945, when the Potsdam policies took full effect, up to the time of the first census in October 1946.

Between the imposition of the Potsdam Agreements in August 1945, and the first census, October 1946, probably about 1,950,000 German non-expelled civilians died, but only about 1,100,000 deaths were reported.
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This means that about 800,000 more Germans died and were not reported by the Allies between August 1945 and October 1946.

It is not possible from the figures available to determine how many civilians died in the Soviet zone and how many in the Western zones.

Why did this happen? The answer begins with understanding that most of the deaths were not accidental. A man who studied the cause of these deaths, who knew the famine intimately, and who worked magic to avert the catastrophe, has written of the famine in Germany in 1947: ‘[Our] occupation has no chance of success if these [famine] conditions continue. This state of affairs has been foreseen, and I have urged repeatedly that priority be recognized for food shipments to Germany. The basis for the priority is the prevention of famine in the US–UK zones of Germany …’
⁵¹
The man who believed that ‘this state of affairs has been foreseen’ was the US Secretary of War, Robert Patterson. The man he was trying to move to action was the US Secretary of State, George C. Marshall.

The rest of the answer to ‘Why?’ is to find out why so many people tried to cover this up. After all, if the Allies did their best to feed the starving civilians, and all the fault lay with the Nazis, or the world food shortage, why cover up the resulting deaths? Why not advertise them as the grim consequence of evil and error? The gallows at Nuremberg, the prosecutions of concentration-camp guards for fifty years, are public evidence of an apparently clear conscience in the West on Nazi crimes. Why hide
these millions of civilian deaths, since historical theory, if it pays any attention at all, attributes them to consequences of Nazi policies? The cover-up alone shows that the Allies have to this day a very uneasy conscience on the subject.