Other Losses

This film is narrated by the author of the book of the same name and to quote from Wikipedia: 

In Other Losses (1989), Bacque claimed that Allied Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower's policies caused the death of 790,000 German captives in internment camps through disease, starvation and cold from 1944 to 1949. In similar French camps some 250,000 more are said to have perished. The International Committee of the Red Cross was refused entry to the camps, Switzerland was deprived of its status as "protecting power" and POWs were reclassified as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" in order to avoid recognition under the Geneva Convention. Bacque argued that this alleged mass murder was a direct result of the policies of the western Allies, who, with the Soviets, ruled as the Military Occupation Government over partitioned Germany from May 1945 until 1949. He laid the blame on Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, saying Germans were kept on starvation rations even though there was enough food in the world to avert the lethal shortage in Germany in 1945–1946.

It's a disturbing but absorbing film and illustrates yet again how history is written by the victors. I was somewhat aware that there was a dark side to the allied occupation of Germany because of a book I'd downloaded but not yet read.

I'm motivated to read this book now after having seen this film. I also managed to download a PDF copy of Bacque's "Other Losses" at this location and have added it to my library. Subsequently, I was able to download a Kindle version from The Internet Archive where it's available in PDF, ePub, Plain Text, DAISY and Kindle formats. Even though the software program Calibre, that I use to organise my e-library, will convert from PDF to Kindle, I've encountered problems in the past with the conversion so it's always better to have a firsthand Kindle version.

It's been a long time since I accessed The Internet Archive which is accessible without signing up but I signed up which allows me to upload content if I want to. As is described on the site:

The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.

We began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was ephemeral - but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it. Today we have 20+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine and we work with 450+ library and other partners through our Archive-It program to identify important web pages. 

As our web archive grew, so did our commitment to providing digital versions of other published works. Today our archive contains:

• 279 billion web pages
• 11 million books and texts
• 4 million audio recordings (including 160,000 live concerts)
• 3 million videos (including 1 million Television News programs)
• 1 million images
• 100,000 software programs

Anyone with a free account can upload media to the Internet Archive. We work with thousands of partners globally to save copies of their work into special collections.

The site also goes on to mention that books published prior to 1923 are available for download, and hundreds of thousands of modern books can be borrowed through our Open Library site. I not sure why "Other Losses" is downloadable, having been written in 1989. The Open Library site is accessible using the Internet Archive credentials and to test it out I searched for Jung's "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" but to my surprise a book by Marianne Faithfull popped up called "memories, dreams and reflections". It looked interesting so I've borrowed it and have two weeks in which to read it. An encrypted copy in PDF or ePub format can be downloaded but I'll just read it online I think.

Anyway, getting off topic, but it's interesting where Internet investigations can lead. Returning to the theme of history being written by the victors, I must say that I'd heard nothing about any of this unlike a year or so ago. I'd basically thought that, during the closing stages of the war and in its aftermath, the Allies were basically well-behaved in the areas that it took oversaw. I'd formed the impression that the things were definitely worse in the Russian-occupied areas.

Like most people my age, I've endured a lifetime of Hollywood propaganda about the evil Nazis, the psychopathic Adolf Hitler and the horrors of the Holocaust. Now I'm realising that the history of the second world war that I'd once accepted is largely fictional.