Review: After the Reich by Giles MacDonogh

Americans have a very benign view of the postwar occupation of Germany. In the conventional narrative, the US liberated the German people from Nazi tyranny, schooled them in Western-style democracy, brought them market-driven prosperity, and protected them from the evil Soviet empire.  But the historical truth is rather different, especially for the period from the Armistice in 1945 to the Berlin Airlift in 1948.  This is the period covered in Giles MacDonogh's book After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation.  With startling detail, MacDonogh tells a story of rape, ethnic cleansing, pillage, starvation and slavery that resulted in an estimated 3 million German deaths (1 million of which were POWs) after Germany surrendered. Of the two million civilians who perished, the vast majority were women, children and elderly Germans who fell victim to suicide, hunger, disease and mass murder.

The first chapters of the After the Reich are perhaps the most gruesome, since MacDonogh describes the fate of the women and girls in the Soviet occupied territories.  Hardly any - even as young as 8-years old or as old as 80 - escaped being brutally raped, sometimes as many as 25 times - 25 times a day.  This led to a wave of suicides, atrocious injuries of young girls, terrible venereal disease (when there were no antibiotics available) and pregnancies. Nor were the Russians entirely alone in their enthusiasm for rape: On April 17-18, 1945, French soldiers raped at least 600 women in the small Black Forest town of Freudenstadt, before going on to Stuttgart where they raped another 3,000 women and eight men.  American forces prohibited rape, but there were more than 600 courts-marshal involving rape charges against American soldiers.  Only the Brits come off better, since they preferred to barter cigarettes and chocolate for sex with the defeated enemy.

Then MacDonogh tells the largely untold story of the slaughter of more than 250,000 Sudeten Germans by Czech nationalists, as well as similar stories of ethnic cleansing in Poland, Silesia, and East Prussia - a predictable outcome from the Yalta Conference.  This sad chapter of postwar history deserves a great deal more study, and MacDonogh deserves much credit for bringing to the attention of American readers.

The other area where MacDonogh breaks new ground is his inclusion of Austria in his study of the postwar occupation.  The author clearly has special knowledge of Austria, and uses it to great advantage in his description of the fall of Vienna and subsequent discussion of Austria's occupied zones and sectors. After the war, Austria presented itself to the world as the first victim of Nazism, but it clearly was not perceived as such by the Allied forces, and After the Reich provides a much needed corrective on that score.

MacDonogh discusses the treatment of German POWs in some detail, and this is an especially painful chapter for Americans.  After Germany's unconditional surrender the status of the millions of German POWs changed to DEP (Disarmed Enemy Persons), which meant they were no longer subject to the Geneva Conventions. Food rations were immediately reduced and starvation became commonplace. The most notorious American camps were the Rheinwiesenlager - the Rhine Meadow Camps - where more than 400,000 prisoners were left to starve out in open in the mud. 10% of them died from hunger, disease and exposure.  The "lucky" ones were herded into former Nazi concentration camps - such as Dachau - where they were treated horribly and many died.  I had read about some of this abuse in Ernst von Salomon 's autobiographical book Der Fragebogen (The Questionnaire), where he describes in detail his treatment as a prisoner of the Americans, and MacDonogh also draws on von Salomon's account. Former Wehrmacht and SS officers were subjected to brutal "interrogations". At Schwaebisch Hall, a particularly infamous prison near Stuttgart for officials suspected of major war crimes, MacDonogh writes:

The Americans had used methods similar to those employed by the SS in Dachau. … Worse still were the mock executions, where the men were led off in hoods, while their guards told them they were approaching the gallows. Prisoners were actually lifted bodily off the ground to convince them they were about to swing. More conventional methods of torture included kicks to the groin, deprivation of sleep and food and savage beatings. When the Americans set up a commission of inquiry into the methods used by their investigators, they found that, of the 139 cases examined, 137 had “had their testicles permanently destroyed by kicks received from the American War Crimes Investigation team.”

So this puts our treatment of enemy combatants in Guantanamo in historical context.

Much more research into the fate of 8 million German POWs needs to be conducted.  For example, how did the treatment of German POWs at American and Canadian POW camps change after the war ended? I've already looked into this a bit.   It also appears that the Americans and British were happy to contract out German prisoners as slave laborers to France and Belgium.

There are some weaknesses to MacDonogh's book, mostly because he tries to cover too much ground.  For example, his revisionist take on the Nuremberg Trials is rushed.  After the Reich probably contains the foundations for three or four new books on immediate postwar  European history.  But it is an important book which should be read along with Joerg Friedrich's Der Brand ( The Fire: The Bombing of Germany 1940-1945).  The truth of "The Good War" and its aftermath needs to be told.

UPDATE AUGUST 1, 2008:  It has come to my attention that two Holocaust Denial sites have linked to this post.  I have to emphasize that nowhere does MacDonogh equate the atrocities committed against Germans after the war with the systematic murder of six million Jews by the Hitler regime, much less deny that such murder took place.  MacDonogh, like all historians of repute, accepts the Holocaust as a historical fact.  I am sure he is as disgusted as I am with those who deny or distort history to promote an ideology of hate. 

Always report hate sites to the SImon Wiesenthal Center, which keeps an extensive data base of Holocaust Deniers and other deranged lunatics from around the world.  Send the link to [email protected].

 

Comments

[erphschwester]

es ist ja eine alte sache, dass geschichtsschreibung kein "wahrer" prozess ist, sondern in den händen der sieger bzw. mächtigen liegt. das war schon immer so. (lies dazu u.a. stefan heyms "könig-david-bericht")
krieg ist eine sache, die die niedrigsten instinkte frei setzt. hernach möchte keiner all diese dinge getan haben. welche von diesen untaten später publik werden, entscheiden eben die sieger, weil sie die macht dazu haben, mögen augenzeugen noch so sehr andere geschehnisse bezeugen. spätestens, wenn der letzte augenzeuge gestorben ist, kann man behaupten, was man will. aber schon vorher kann und muss jeder für sich entscheiden, ob es opportun ist, diese dinge zur sprache zu bringen. von der unbequemlichkeit, die es mit sich bringt, dinge zu behaupten, die aus dem allgemeinen bewusstsein bereits getilgt wurden, bis hin zu evtl. strafen (man schaue nur auf die türken und ihren völkermord), die die erwähnung nach sich zieht.

sehr schön kann man die folgen von der sieger-geschichtsschreibung gerade eben an deutschland sehen: zwei unterschiedliche staaten mit zwei unterschiedlichen ideologien und zwei unterschiedlichen geschichten, die doch einmal die gleiche war. betont wurde immer nur das, was dem sieger nützte.
und in der nachkriegszeit ging es ja nicht nur um das verschweigen der kriegsgreuel, sondern auch um den siegerfreundlichen wiederaufbau des landes. da wurde nicht nur ein unmenschliches system (hierin waren sich beide deutschen siegermächte einig) abgeschafft, sondern auch ein neuer verbündeter aufgebaut, ein weiteres standbein, von dem aus man agieren konnte.

am ende bleibt jedoch nur die erkenntnis, dass krieg per sé eine unmenschliche sache ist, die in niemandem das beste weckt, mag man hernach auch heldenepen die menge erzählen. im krieg (seltsam, dass man das bis heute nicht begriffen hat) kann keiner gewinner sein.

[David]

"Wer die Geschichte nicht kennt, ist dazu verurteilt, sie zu wiederholen." - George Santayana

[Hattie]

When I lived in Germany in the early 70's, the people I talked to were far from silent about the post-WW II period and the dreadful things that went on. They were, however, with very few exceptions, silent on the subject of the Third Reich.

[MonikaWe]

Hi,
this is a great Blog i bookmarked it direct.
Thank you for all this information and work.

Monika

[generic viagra]

It was a great book, but it haves an awful end.

[kamagra]

The principle objection to the book, given that MacDonogh’s facts are
correct, must be the argument that ‘they had it coming to them,’ i.e., that
Nazi crimes were so horrendous that such mass revenge on the civilian
population is excusable or justifiable. The counter-argument, of course, is
that two wrongs don’t make a right, and that treating the vanquished with
the barbaric methods of the Nazis vitiates the nobility and ‘rightness’ of
the Allied cause.

[Moore]

oh! All books are great..
you are really doing great work, I would like to join your blog.

[Douglas Kramer]

After the Reich is all about the brutal history of Allied occupation.

[hdd regenerator review]

Nazi crimes were so horrendous that such mass revenge on the civilian.

[игры]

It's interesting to find how challenging the content side is for some

[скумпия]

5 star article brilliant. I am new to blogging and you used a langauge I can understand

[Günter rehorst]

According to my researches the book is, at least in parts, poorly researched. It seems to me, that he has copied from poorly researched secundary sources without own validation.
And that is not a good, almost bad, academic working practice.

[dymnjacymndog]

Поздоавляю всех с наступившим НГ !

[Isosyengedo]

Nice Post.

----------
I love http://youtube.com