[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

Well, i will have to challenge that because i don't know where you are getting your information from but I constantly see or hear that the Germans committed horrible acts in WW2 and whenever subjects of this nature come up that the German-bashing is rife and alive, has been since the war and still is to this day.
Every person, and i mean every person i have ever entered into a discussion with about the 'role', if you will of Germany in WW2 has been a continual "well, the Germans were all bad, all Germans were Nazis, the Germans and the attrocities they committed were so terrible that... blah blah blah" that it's incredibly difficult to continue a discussion or even attempt to have open-minded or mature points to make to someone.
The point i am making here is that, yes, we know the Germans committed horrible crimes against Humanity, and we know that the Nazis were undeniably and without a doubt wrong in their ideology and their thoughts and actions.
So? And i mean that with the utmost diplomacy here, what i mean by so? is that we know all this, we know this happened, yet we always fall back to this usual rubbish point-making when we speak of anything even remotely that can be considered as questioning what happened in WW2 or questioning the Allies and some of their actions either during the war or post-period.
THAT is what gets me, and to deny that this happens is wrong.
Unfortunately history has been written, we can't change that, what we can change though is our attitudes and learn from history, so that the same mistakes don't happen again.
I think a lot of people still have a problem with letting things go, to continually rub the shame of what the Nazis did in WW2 into the Germans' faces of today.

FF, you are not in a good position to be invoking the victim card. It is entirely appropriate to bring up examples of German actions in WW2 in a discussion about WW2, especially in a case like this where one of the topic you raised in your own thread is about the treatment of German POWs by the Allies.

If you don't want to discuss these issues, maybe you should stick to post-1945 topics.

The Victors feel uncomfortable when they are questioned about what they have written down on paper, called History.

The Germans kept meticulous records during WW2. Most of what we know about how many men, women and children were shipped to extermination camps, slave labor camps, POW camps and what happened to them comes from their own records.

Grossly distorted? Why? Because you think so? Or it's 'too' unbelievable that this could have happened or that the Allies could have actually done this?
Once again, why is it so bad to question history? Or, in this case, why is it so unbelievable or grossly distorted that this happened?

The wikipedia article is supposed to be about the treatment of German POWs by the western allies, but instead of giving you an overall picture, it relies on certain controversial and contested facts to give the impression that the western allies were systematically abusing German POWs.

I will give you some examples.

First, it starts with a quote by Ambrose which gives the impression that German POWs were routinely shot. Ambrose was talking about situations in the heat of combat where enemy soldiers were killed while trying to surrender or immediately after. I have no doubt this happened on both sides. However, real historians who have looked into the issue have not been able to find evidence that it occurred as frequently as Ambrose claimed. Now, if you are looking at evidence about soldiers who were killed in cold blood, long after they surrendered, all the documented cases are about German troops murdering allied prisoners, for example Malmedy or the murder of canadian POWs by the 12th SS in normandy. Terry Copp, the canadian historian looked into this whole issue in the book "Fields of Fire" on the Canadian Army in normandy and was not able to find any evidence that any German POW was ever murdered by canadian forces.

secondly, the wiki article then moves on to the controversy regarding the treatment of german POWs in germany in 1945-46, which is all based on one book, Baque's "Other Losses" which claimed that up to 1,000,000 POWs died. However, Baque is not an historian, but a novelist. Mainstream historians who have reviewed this issue dispute his findings and have established the death toll at the most at 1% of the 5,600,000 prisoners (i.e. 56,000). The other points, DEF designation and open air camp were temporary mesures which were much more due to the chaotic situation which prevailed in Germany in 1945 than any sinister plan by the Allies.

My point was that the wiki article is not an unbiased review of the treatment of German POWs, but a collection of controversial and disputed facts by someone who is trying to prove that German POWs were mistreated by the Allies, but anyone who has even a cursory knowledge of WW2 history will see that.

I could go on and on, since I have many more examples, (and will be happy to provide them if you wish) but I don't want to be acused of "German Bashing".

And with that, i think i have just derailed my own thread.

Happens to all of us.