politalX Politics Store - Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950
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List Price: £21.50
Our Price: £21.50
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Manufacturer: Talon Books,Canada
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 943.0874
EAN: 9780889225671
ISBN: 0889225672
Label: Talon Books,Canada
Manufacturer: Talon Books,Canada
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2007-11-15
Publisher: Talon Books,Canada
Studio: Talon Books,Canada
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Comment: This is an interesting and worthy topic - a largely unknown story of how the German population suffered following WWII.
However, I found James Bacque's narrative far too subjective and often frustratingly difficult to follow. He even managed to make tedious the section in which his paranoia boils over - regarding various governments apparently interfering in his work. I suggest he allows his editor to do likewise.
This book makes you appreciate the wealth of excellent British historians we currently have writing on the WWII period.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A VERY important book - which must be read by all those interested in WW2
Comment: The previous reviewer, who complains that no mention was made of the Holocaust does not understand that this book is NOT about the Jewish Holocaust, it about the fate of the German civilian population after WW2. Stacks of books have already been written about the Holocaust, this book is NOT meant to cover that subject. Is that clear? It seems to me idiotic that this reviewer has even raised this. Bacque has actually made some key discoveries and these point to extremely brutal treatment of the German civilian population by the Alled authorities in the period immediately following the end of hostilities. What is worse is that this treatment was not an accident, but deliberate policy designed to make the Germans suffer - as if they had not suffered enough! My only criticism of Bacque is that his extrapolations of how many died as a result of this evil policy seem to be based on assumptions rather than precise calculations. What cannot be disputed is that several million people did die unnecessarily, and this will always be a dark stain on the allied cause in the war. It's time that more people in the UK and USA read books like this one to gain a more balanced understanding of the war.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not as good as I expected.
Comment: After reading the reviews to this book i couldn't wait to read it, sadly though it didn't quite hold up to my expectations.
Don't get me wrong i enjoyed the book and belive the author to have researched the book well, but it came across very one sided to me.
I do belive that the Allied forces are guilty of the crimes mentioned in the book, BUT the author just seems to dismiss the 6 million plus Jews that were murdered by the Germans (and lets not not forget the thousands of normal everyday German civilians who victimised Jews in the pre war years, Germans who stood by and let them be persecuted, handed them over to officials, to their deaths.
Also nothing is mentioned of the awful treatment of allied prisoners, it was ok for the Germans to bomb Britian, but the treatment of British Airman, shot on the spot, spat at and beaten by German civilians, I could go on, but the book didn't.
I'm not proud of the Allied treatment of Germans after the end of the war, ywo wrongs definatly do not make a right, but one thing the author briefly states is the eventual growth of the german economy into one of the strongest ones in Europe in the post war era due to some of the Allied policies for Germany.
Think of the situation in that era and not in this time and day, Germany had been at war with Europe for the second time in 25 years, could the Allies really just "let them get away with it"?
No they couldn't, but as in war, post war/politics, it is always the civilians who suffer.
BUT my biggest gripe and let down about the book was a part on how Churchill let Russian POW go back to the Soviet Union knowing that the vast majority of them would be executed by the soviets for desertion and/or political reasons.
I have read about this in other books, but these other books told both sides of the story, the Soviet Union, in their occupied zones of Germany and German war terrorties upon liberation of POW Camps, had British POW in their area, AND Stalin would only release these back to Churchill upon the release of his prisioners. What was Churchill to do, let his own country people die? Would have been nice to have had these point mentioned in the book.
No German civilian should have died at the end of the war, but that is easy for me a 28 year old to say, but had i been a 28 year old Allied soldier who had just, say, liberated Treblinka, then would i say the same?
The book raises many good moral questions, it's just a shame that some of these were one sided.
Customer Rating:
Summary: this great book made me sick to my stomach
Comment: Every once in a while, reading a book profoundly changes the way you look at the world. This is one of those books. I was educated with the idea that the Allies were noble and just in their policy and behavior after WW2. This well researched and written book opened a whole new paradigm for me, where ALL nations can be shown to act cruelly to fellow man. I can't decide what is more disconcerting, the fact that these crimes against humanity happened, or that they are so rarely talked about. Especially interesting was Gen. Eisenhower's quote in response to finding out that a majority of the urban German women and children would starve in the winter of 1946, while food lay rotting in Rotterdam. "Let the Germans suffer." The book is also nicely counterweighted by the actions of Herbert Hoover whose actions saved over 80 million starving civilians, regardless of nationality. Thanks to James Bacque I cannot imagine holding another public figure in higher esteem. I will be sure to keep this book in mind in every discussion on European history I will ever have in my life.
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Summary: This book verifies the experiences suffered by my family
Comment: I finally found a book that proves that the many WWII experiences as related by my family and relatives were not simply war tales. I grew up hearing stories of shoppers in Duisburg being strafed by American fighters and stories of refugee trains in Bavaria which were filled with children and painted with the red cross emblem being strafed by American fighters. My family experienced the forced starvation in western Germany and they experienced the "disappearance" of the entire family living in Tilsit, East Prussia. It makes me ashamed to be an American; to hear constantly from Americans how the Germans comitted such crimes when the Americans did exactly the same things to American Indians and African Americans.
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