by James Bacque
Talon Books, Vancouver
318 pages
2015
The updated version of this book exists to remind us that no country can claim an inherent innocence of or exemption from the cruelties of war. It is an investigation into the mass deaths of German prisoners of war at the hands of the French and Americans after World War II.
If the allegations in this book are true, and the evidence is compelling, then it changes the history of the war. The glorified become the butchers. Eisenhower and De Gaulle come off particularly badly, not so other generals.
The camps are described as being as bad as and worse than the Nazi concentration camps. One million German prisoners of war are said to have died of starvation while plenty of food was stored nearby. Conditions were appalling and few did anything to alleviate them. Fortunately or unfortunately what is described is confirmed by people from within the US army and also by 2,000 survivors of the camps.
Politicians and the press stayed silent in spite of warnings. The British and the Canadian camps were much better. When this book was first published in 1989 it created a furore. But when the Berlin Wall fell and Soviet archives were opened, the records there tended to corroborate everything written therein.
The people whose aim was to conquer Hitler ended up using similar methods.
For those of us who were reared with the idea that the only concentration camps in the world were Nazi ones, or that all Germans were Nazis or that the allies were paragons of virtue, this work is quite an eye opener and gives strength to the notion that the real history of World War Two has yet to be written.
It means we have been fed anti German propaganda for the past decades. The re-exposition of the Jewish holocaust has kept our attention firmly fixed there. Maybe someday we will hear more about the Catholic holocaust?
Whoever controls the press proclaims that it is free. Those to whom this freedom is denied have no means to deny it. The same story is played out in the current abortion debate all over the world.
While one cannot condone the uncondonable, the so called cover up of sex abuse in the Catholic church is kindergarten stuff compared with the cover up exposed in this work.
One hopes that when the full truth of the Mother and Baby homes in Ireland comes out, which should include an analysis of the social situation, and not just the partial truth, so that those who relish scandals in the Catholic church may save some of their indignation for one million German prisoners.
About the Author: Fr Conor Donnelly
Fr Conor Donnelly qualified as a medical doctor in University College Dublin in 1977 and worked for a year at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin. He was ordained a priest in 1981 for the Prelature of Opus Dei. After obtaining a doctorate in Theology from the University of Navarre, Spain in 1982, he spent twenty-two years in Asia, in the Philippines and Singapore. He is currently an assistant chaplain at Kianda School in Nairobi.