German wartime behaviour

BORN OF PROPAGANDA: "It must be brought home to the American people that much of what they have been led to believe was born of propaganda. That the Germany Army, for example, actually behaved itself very correctly toward the people of occupied territories whose governments were signatories to the Hague and Geneva Conventions. The facts are now well known, and are beyond dispute, despite the opposite picture painted in the Press as part of the horrendous business of war."

Ralph Franklin Keeling, Institute of American Economics, Chicago, 1970

THE MOST CORRECT IN THE HISTORY OF WARFARE: "In their behaviour toward the women of conquered territories, the German troops seem actually to have been the most correct and decent in the whole history of warfare It is a well known fact that rape was virtually unheard of in the German Armed Forces and was in fact punishable by death."

- Dr. A.J. App. Ph.D

WILLIAM SHIRER hardly a Nazi sympathiser, in his Berlin Diary, reported how on June, 17th, 1940, in the first flush of German occupation women had fled Paris in fear of the Germans. 'It seems the Parisians actually believed the Germans would rape the women and do worse to the men. The ones who stayed are all the more amazed at the very correct behaviour of the troops"

UNCOMMONLY CHRISTIAN: Frederick C. Crawford, President of Thompson Products, on January, 4th, 1945, in 'A Report From the War Front' resulting from an inspection tour taken along with others and organised by the War Department, said: "After four years of German occupation,... The Germans tried to be careful in their dealings with the people. We were told that if a citizen attended strictly to business and took no political or underground action against the occupying army, he was treated with correctness. (p.5) In short, wherever Americans have been able to investigate for themselves, they have found that however ruthless the Germans were with resisters and saboteurs, they were uncommonly Christian and decent towards the women of the conquered."

THE CHANNEL ISLANDS "The German behaviour was correct; that they were quite amiably received by most people; there was no real sabotage and no real resistance movement. That as long as there was food, the civilians had their fair share and the conditions for the islanders were a good deal better than it was for the Wehrmacht in May, 1945."- Charles Cruickshank, Oxford University Press

RESPECT FOR THE CHURCH: "As far as I am aware, there is not a single incident in which the so-called anti-Christian Nazis, murdered a priest." - Dr. A.J App. Ph.D

ANGELS COMPARED WITH BRITAIN'S ALLIES: "The Germans were angels compared to the Communists. Persecuted Christians came out of hiding. My father who had been arrested was released by the Germans. He came home with his hands raw. The Communists had tortured him by plunging his hands into boiling water until his skin came off like gloves." - Zite Kaulius, The Advocate, Newark, April, 1964

NOT WAR CRIMINALS: "Very few German officers committed actions by their own free will during World War 11 of such a nature that they, because of such actions, could be regarded as war criminals." Major General H. Bratt, Royal Swedish Army. "The American admirals were courageous. They defended their German counterparts and saved their lives. Why didn't the generals of the ground armies do as much? They behaved contemptibly, because I don't think that the German ground armies committed any crimes." General of the Army, Lionel-Max Chassin. Assistant Chief of Staff, French Army "During my period of Command in the Middle East and Mediterranean Theatres, there were no breaches of International Maritime Law by the Axis Powers reported to me. My own feelings on that matter were that those who had committed War Crimes should have been dealt with by Military Courts after the Armistice and that the Nuremberg Trials were staged as a political stunt." Field Marshall Lord Henry Maitland Wilson of Libya. Commander-in-Chief, Middle East, 1943. Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theatre, 1944.

ADMIRAL KARL DOENITZ FOUGHT HONOURABLE WAR: ".... for I have never heard of any illegal or barbarous act committed under his (Admiral Karl Doenitz) orders. I feel strongly that sailors, soldiers and airmen whose only 'crime' is the effective professional direction of the forces under their command, should not be liable to such trials." - Major General Sir William L.O Twiss, K.C.I.E., C.B., C.B.E., M.C., F.R.G.S. General Officer Commanding, British Army in Burma

NO (GERMAN) ATROCITY PROBLEM: "My service during World War 11 was in command of an armored division throughout the European campaign, from Normandy to Saxony... my division lost quite a number of officers and men captured between July 1944 and April 1945. In no instance did I hear of personnel from our division receiving treatment other than proper under the 'Rules of Land Warfare'. As far as the 6th Armored Division was concerned in its 280 days of front line contact, there was no 'atrocity problem'.... Frankly, I was aghast, as were many of my contemporaries, when we learned of the proposed 'war crimes' trials and the fact that military commanders were among the accused.... I know of no general officer who approved of them."

- Major General Robert W. Grow, U.S.A. Commander 6th Armored Division in Europe

THERE WAS AN ALLIED ATROCITY PROBLEM: "We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled the flesh of enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers. We topped off our saturation bombing and burning of enemy civilians by dropping atomic bombs on two nearly defenceless cities, thereby setting an all time record for instantaneous mass slaughter.

"As victors we are privileged to try our defeated opponents for their crimes against humanity; but we should be realistic enough to appreciate that if we were on trial for breaking international laws, we should be found guilty on a dozen counts. We fought a dishonourable war, because morality has a low priority in battle....

".... I have asked fighting men for instance, why they - or actual we - regulated flame-throwers in such a way that enemy soldiers were set afire, to die slowly and painfully, rather than be killed outright by a full blast of burning oil. Was it because they hated the enemy so thoroughly? The answer was invariably, 'No, we don't hate those poor bastards particularly; we just hate the whole goddam mess and have to take it out on somebody.

Possibly for the same reason we mutilated the bodies of the enemy dead, cutting off their ears and kicking out their gold teeth for souvenirs, and buried them with their testicles in their mouths, but such flagrant violations of all moral codes reach into still unexplored realms of battle psychology."

- Edgar L. Jones, U.S Second World War veteran. Atlantic Monthly, February, 1946

GERMAN TREATMENT OF PRISONERS-OF-WAR: "All of the ex-prisoners-of-war seemed to me to be surprisingly well fed. Faces showed the signs of years of captivity; there was no doubt about that. But I did not see the signs of starvation that I expected after reading the accounts of the way these people have been treated." The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh. "The code of German officers does not differ from our own in any important way as far as I can see." Major General Churchill Mann, C.B.E., D.S.O., C.D. Royal Canadian Army "I can vouch that during the five years of fighting of our Fleet, mostly attached to the British Fleet, I never heard any complaint of atrocities in submarine warfare."

- Vice Admiral Epaminondas P. Cawadias, Royal Hellenic Navy.

RESPECTED THE RED CROSS: "The most amazing thing about the atrocities in this war is that there have been so few of them. I have come up against few instances where the Germans have not treated prisoners according to the rules, and respected the Red Cross." - Cf. The Progressive, February, 4th,1945. London Express, Allan Wood, War Correspondent.

OBEYED THE CONVENTION: "The Germans even in their greatest moments of despair obeyed the Convention in most respects. True it is that there were front line atrocities - passions run high up there - but they were incidents, not practices, and maladministration of their American prison camps was very uncommon." - Lieutenant Newton L. Marguiles. U.S Assistant Judge Advocate, Jefferson Barracks, April, 27th,1945.

TREATMENT OF FOREIGN WORKERS: "It is true that the Reich exacted forced labour from foreign workers, but it is also true that, they were for the most part paid and fed well." Ralph F. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest, American Institute of Economics. “I think some of the persons found themselves better off than at any time in their lives before." Dr.James K.Pollack, AMG. "What did the Germans do to get efficient production from forced labour that we were not able to do with Germans working down the mines? They fed their help and fed them well."

- Max H. Forester, Chief of AMG's Coal and Mining Division, July, 1945.

. . . AND EDUCATED THEM TOO: "When the Second World War broke out in 1939, he (Lord Mulley) joined the Army, attaining the rank of lance-sergeant before being captured at Dunkirk in 1940. He spent the next five years in prisoner-of-war camps in Poland, East Prussia and Bavaria, using the time to pass examinations in a number of subjects, including economics and banking." -

The Times, 16^th March 1995 obituary on Lord Mulley, former Cabinet Minister.

“The warmongering faction has to get its citizens mad at the enemy, and in the proper mood. It has to get its citizens to think they are fighting for the world’s good, and for Christian or other religious righteousness, and the enemy is evil and ruled by the devil. So it was with the propaganda against Hitler and Germany, and so it has been ever since.”

– Alex S. Perry Jnr. The Barnes Review, Vol. No.1.