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Hellstorm The untold story of the genocide of Germany. Based on Thomas Goodrich's book. https://t.co/VpNCuj0WLA
Video Transcript AI Summary
During World War I, Germany faced chaos, poverty, and social issues, but experienced an economic boom and regained hope when the National Socialists came to power. However, envy and fear from other nations led to World War II, the deadliest war in history. Germany suffered terror bombing by the British, and the Soviet Union committed atrocities against German civilians. The Allied forces, including Americans and British, engaged in looting, rape, and killing, while German prisoners of war were mistreated and many died from starvation and neglect. Men in American camps were forced to drink their own urine, and the International Red Cross's efforts were rejected. Eisenhower's program of mistreatment resulted in the deaths of at least 1.5 million German prisoners. Denazification became a cover for rape, torture, and death, and the Morgenthau plan aimed to destroy Germany completely, causing widespread suffering. The expulsion of Germans from Eastern Germany led to around 2 million deaths. The suffering of the German people was largely ignored, while Allied leaders and their actions were shielded from criticism. The true horrors of war cannot be justified or ignored.
Speaker 0: The German army suffered terribly during the First World War, And the German nation also suffered terribly, especially after the war. The crippling sanctions enacted by the with the Treaty of Versailles threw the country into serious depression. There was chaos on the streets and anarchy in the air. Communist seized many cities, including Berlin. While the great wealth of the nation was bled away by Outrageous war reparations or sucked out by unscrupulous politicians, the average German was impoverished.
Inflation and unemployment soon followed and quickly destroyed all hope, all confidence, All morality. German cities were awash in pornography and prostitution, with even starving children being bought and sold like sex toys. Crime was rampant. Drunkenness and drug addiction were widespread. Suicide rates soared.
The situation seemed hopeless, And then things changed dramatically. Soon after the National were elected. The German economy sprang to life. Unemployment was erased. Building boomed.
Great projects began. Confidence burst to life anew. After years of hunger, hardship, shame, and degradation, Germany became a happy, hopeful nation again. Germany's transformation from squalor and misery To a world superpower was so incredible that the 1938 Time Magazine named Adolf Hitler, man of the year. To many, it seemed as if a new cultural, economic, and political renaissance for all of Europe was at hand.
But others throughout the world, envious, powerful, but above all Fearful now work tonight and day to take Germany down. The second World War was the most deadly and destructive war in history. For 6 long years, the unequal struggle pitting Germany against the world continued, with first one side, then the other on top. But at last, overwhelmed, Germany was once more defeated. This time, however, The right was to be punished not with mere reparations, nor loss of land, nor with simple decadence and despair.
No. On this occasion, Germany was to be subjected to pure hatred, hatred of the most vicious, evil, and depraved kind imaginable. Millions upon millions of Germans, many of whom had nothing to do with the war, were systematically raped, tortured, slaughtered, And all in the most sadistic and sickening ways imaginable. What happened to Germany and its people during and after World War 2 has remained the darkest and best kept secret in world history until now. This film is based upon the book by author and historian Thomas Goodrich.
Over the past 30 years, Goodrich has written about a number of subjects, the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, the American Indian wars. But because World War 2 remains to this very day a pressing issue. The author feels this is by far his most urgent and timely book.
Speaker 1: This is the story of the crimes that were committed against Germany during and after World War 2. The words you will hear are those of the victims themselves and the witnesses to these atrocities. There will be no attempt here to present the viewpoint of the other side. Anyone seeking the victor's version of World War 2 need only watch any Hollywood movie, turn on the TV to any World War 2 documentary, or visit any public library. This film, like the book it is based upon, does not concern itself with what the Germans allegedly did to the world During the so called good war.
No. The focus here is instead on what the world did to the Germans. The crimes detailed herein are so vicious, so massive, and so evil that there are no words in the English language to accurately describe them. These are crimes that have been buried by the victors under a mountain of propaganda and lies for now over 70 years. This film is dedicated not only to the voiceless victims of the world's worst war, but also to future generations.
Our hope is that if enough good people in the world are willing to listen and learn what actually occurred to these innocent victims, Men, women, the old, the young, the sick, animals. And they someday soon will rise up as 1. And with United Voice demand that nothing like this ever happens again to anyone, anywhere.
Speaker 0: During World War 2, Germany was subjected to an unrelenting assault from the sky. The Americans and British called it carpet bombing, saturation bombing, or unrestricted bombing. However, the German women and children who suffered through this nightmare called it by a simpler, more accurate name, terror bombing. The terror campaign was no accident. It was the secret plan of British prime minister Winston Churchill and air chief marshal Arthur Harris To unleash the full power of the Royal Air Force against German civilians, to inflict as much damage, to destroy as many homes, and to kill as many men, women, and children as possible.
Speaker 2: German cities will be Subjected to an ordeal, the life of which has never been experienced. My country, continuity, severity, or magnitude. To achieve this end, There are no events of violence, to which we will not know.
Speaker 0: Churchill's violence was on full display during the night of July by 24th 1943. To the residents of Hamburg, a city of over 1,000,000 souls, the raid seemed initially like a standard bombing run. But soon, hundreds of enemy aircraft began raining down tons upon tons of high explosives On the very heart of Hamburg, schools, churches, hospitals, homes, ancient art and architecture, All were blown to bits. The onslaught increased in fury with each succeeding wave of bombers, building minute by minute into a fiery, devastating crescendo. And then the planes suddenly disappeared.
The skies were clear again, And all above was silent. When the stunned survivors reemerge from their sellers later that Night, they saw that their once beautiful city was now a smoldering ruin. The following day as firefighters from throughout Northern Germany battled the blaze, allied bombers suddenly appeared for Hamburg again. As planned, the Americans surprised not only the emergency workers, but columns of fleeing refugees as well. 1,000 perished.
The next night, RAF bombers In addition to the normal payload of high explosives, the British sent down tons of phosphorus bombs to The resulting conflagration ignited a firestorm. Hurricane Force winds created by the intense heat, uprooted trees, ripped roofs from buildings, and sucked Liming victims into the raging inferno. Some who escaped the 150 mile per hour winds in the streets became mired in melting asphalt and quickly burst into flames. Those who had thrown themselves into the city's canals died of thermal radiation. Then as they floated on the water surface, they too ignited.
In the center of the firestorm, temperatures reached 1500 3 Fahrenheit. When the great mass of flames joined, they rose into a column 3 miles high. The attacks against Hamburg continued unabated for another week. Soon, there was nothing left to destroy. Appropriately dubbed by the allies As Operation Gomorrah, the raids had been a cold and calculated attempt to scorch Homburg and its people from the face of the earth.
The plan succeeded. With 13 square miles of total destruction, the 750,000 homeless with an estimated See to 100,000 dead, mostly women and children, Hamburg for all intents and purposes had ceased to exist. It was now clear to all that the allied air war against Germany had become a war of massacre and terror. The pattern was repeated time and again across Germany. Hamburg, Berlin, Nuremberg, Darmstadt, Cologne, Stuttgart, Wurzburg, Munich, all German cities suffered the same.
After first blasting a town to splinters, the Allied bombers quickly returned in the hope of catching survivors and rescuers in the open and igniting with firebombs all that remained. When the roaring bombers released their lethal cargo, a veritable rain of fire descended upon a targeted town. The thousands of small fires would join together to form 1 huge blaze, creating an intense vortex of wind and flames. I
Speaker 3: struggled to run against the wind in the middle of the street. We couldn't go on across because the asphalt had melted. There were people on the roadway, some already dead, some still lying alive, but stuck in the asphalt. They were on their hands And knees screaming.
Speaker 0: Some miraculously survived the inferno, reaching safety in rivers, canals, and parks. Thousands more, however, did not. When the raids finally ended and the firestorms began to recede, rescue workers rushed to free those still trapped underground. When would be rescuers finally broke through to buried bunkers, they often found scenes of unimaginable horror. In cellars suffering direct hits, walls were awash in blood with bone, brains, and body parts splattered everywhere.
Rescuers who entered some bunkers found floors covered in up to a foot of greasy fat. The victims rendered down into a dark liquid. When word first filtered through To the outside world of the butchery being visited upon the women and children of Germany by the Royal Air Force, critics of these war crimes spoke out.
Speaker 4: The ruthless mass bombing of congested cities is as great a threat to the integrity of the human spirit as anything which has yet occurred on this planet. There is no military or political advantage which can justify this blasphemy.
Speaker 0: Although it was considered treasonous for members of the RAF to criticize the bombing campaign, the conscience of some was overwhelmed by the Hell being unleashed upon Germany.
Speaker 5: There were people down there being fried to death in melted asphalt in the roads. They were being burnt up, and we were shuffling incendiary bombs into this holocaust. I felt terribly sorry for the people in that fire that I was helping to stoke up.
Speaker 0: As a symbol of the 3rd Reich and as the most obvious example of Germany's will to fight on, More bombs were devoted to Berlin than any other German city. It is another place, however, that has become most widely with the terror campaign waged against Germany, Dresden. Since Dresden had suffered only 2 small Raids in the 5 years of war, many assumed that the city's salvation was due to its irreplaceable treasures. Ornate palaces, world renowned museums and art galleries, its towering centuries old cathedrals. Others surmise that since Dresden had almost no heavy industry and what little it did have had no bearing on the war, The enemies simply did not deem the city a viable target.
To some, the 26,000 Allied POWs interned within the town appeared a more logical answer. Still others thought that perhaps it was the made it half 1000000 refugees jamming the city. Many who had fled Soviet atrocities in the east that kept Dresden safe from bombing. Despite the dire situation as war closed in, Dresdeners were determined on the night of February 13th to enjoy an annual event known in America as Mardi Gras, but celebrated in Germany as fashion. Women and children along with the few remaining men, many in costume, flooded the streets of Dresden to celebrate the event one last time before Germany's looming defeat.
Just before 10 PM, sirens began wailing. There was no panic. Most residents simply ignored the sounds. Even had there been any air raid shelters, few would have fled to them, for there seemed little doubt on this cold yet Cheery night that like the 171 false alarms which had preceded it, this warning too would end in nothing. However, instead of the all clear siren, a short time later, Dresden heard another sound, a sound similar to a rolling earthquake.
As wave after wave of RAF bombers appeared overhead, thousands of bombs tumbled down. Added to the normal payload of high explosives, 100 of 2 and 4 ton blockbuster bombs slammed into Dresden, Obliterating entire neighborhoods, ancient cathedrals, palaces, and museums were reduced to rubble within seconds. At the railroad station, hundreds of individuals who had refused to leave their highly coveted train seats were blown to bits. At the huge indoor circus, Spectators, performers, and animals were slaughtered by glass and hissing shrapnel. Well marked hospitals were targeted.
In the streets, on the sidewalks, atop the bridges, over the Elbe River, costumed revelers with nowhere to run were slain by the 1,000. Without let up, the massacre continued. And then, the roar above ceased. The explosions stopped and there was quiet once more. Several minutes later, the welcomed silence was broken by the even more welcome sound of the all clear signal.
What had seemed an all night trial by fire had actually occurred in just under Half an hour. In those 30 minutes, however, one of the world's most beautiful architectural treasures had all but vanished. Fire brigades from surrounding towns arrived. Red Cross workers spread out to help the victims. Families screamed for missing loved ones.
For many, the end of the world had seemingly arrived. No one, however, was at all emotionally prepared for what came next. At 1:30 AM, the earth began to tremble once again. As more than a 1000 bombers roared overhead, a rain of death showered down on Dresden. In addition to explosives, the second wave bought tons of incendiary bombs.
In a matter of minutes, the thousands of firebombs ignited the debris and a racing furnace of flame erupted. Unfamiliar with the bombing raids and firestorms, most Dresdeners reacted slowly. Many sought safety in cellars again, not realizing that the terrific Heat would transform their havens into ovens. Others ran for safety through the streets Only to become mired in melting asphalt or sucked into the roaring furnace. Copper roofs melted, Sending down streams of molten metal upon the people below.
Throughout the night, the fiery hell that was dressed Didn't claim the victims by the 1,000, by the tens of 1,000, and by the 100 of 1,000. The following day when the fires had cooled, Rescue workers went to work.
Speaker 6: Never would I have thought that death could come to so many people in so many different ways. Sometimes the victims looked like ordinary people, apparently peacefully sleeping. The faces of others were wracked with pain, the bodies stripped almost naked by the tornado. There were wretched refugees from the east, clad only in rags, and people from the opera in all their Binary. Here, the victims, was a shapeless slab.
There, a lay of ashes. Across the city, along the streets wafted the unmistakable stench of decaying flesh.
Speaker 0: Indeed of all the hideous scents wafting through Dresden, sulfur, gas, sewage, The heavy stench of cooked flesh blanketed all. What were at first mistaken to be thousands of burnt logs scattered about the streets were soon found to be charred corpses glued to the surface, each reduced to roughly 3 feet.
Speaker 7: One shape I will never forget was the remains of what had apparently been a mother and a child. They had shriveled and charred into one place and had been stuck rigidly to the asphalt. They had just been priced up. The child must have been underneath the mother because you could still clearly see its shape with its mother's arms clasped around it.
Speaker 0: Aware that those in the old city would flee the flames to the open spaces, The RAF had hurled hundreds of high explosive bombs into the huge central park. Here, the slaughter was ghastly. Torn off limbs, mutilated torsos, heads blown from their bodies and hurled away. The nightmare was everywhere.
Speaker 8: I went down to my knees, trembled, and cried. Several women lay there with their bellies burst open. And one could see the babies for they were hanging half outside. Many of the babies were mutilated. Seems like That one, I saw everywhere.
And very slowly, one became numb. 1 acted like a zombie.
Speaker 0: The next morning, word spread that survivors should assemble in the city park. As the suffering mass climbed over the debris and the dead, They reached the park as well as the grassy banks of the elb. Some found missing loved ones. Most, however, Did not. And then, shattering the calm came the sounds once more, the roar of engines overhead.
As US bombers began blasting the rubble to dust, American fighter planes zeroed in on the thousands of refugees at the park, Along the river and in other open spaces, even zoo animals, which had miraculously managed To survive the bombing raids were strafed and slaughtered. A weeping zookeeper watched as an American pilot chased down and Shot his last remaining giraffe. Although the raid lasted only 10 minutes, the Americans returned the next day And the next and the next seemingly determined that not a single living thing should survive in Dresden. One of the horrors for those who had survived the nightmare was recovery of the dead. Initially, bodies were pitched forked onto trucks and wagons and then taken to shallow Graves on the outskirts of Dresden.
It soon became clear that such a slow process could never handle the enormous amount of bodies. So huge girls were fashioned from girders in various parts of town and corpses were stacked on them like logs. When the piles reached roughly 10 feet high and 30 feet wide, flamethrowers were used to ignite the mass. 1 month after the massacre, the Dresden chief of police reported that over 200,000 bodies had been recovered from the ruins. Later, the International Red Cross estimated that 275,000 had died in the raids.
Because of the incredible density of Dresden's population on the night of February 13th through 14th, Because thousands of victims were refugees with no records and because many bodies either lay buried forever in the ruins or had simply melted like wax, Other estimates which place the death toll at 300,000 to 400,000 may well be closer to the mark. More people died during the firebombing of Dresden than during the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
Speaker 9: To just fly over it without opposition felt like murder. I felt it was a cowardly war.
Speaker 0: Working in tandem with the terror bombing of German cities was the targets of opportunity policy upon the countryside. Under this order, anything moving in the Reich was fair game for allied fighter planes. Ships, Trucks, cars, trains, ambulances, women shopping on bicycles, farmers and fields, animals and pastures, Even children in schoolyards were targets of allied aircraft. In a flagrant attempt to widen the war, American bombers even attacked Zurich, Basel, and other targets in neutral Switzerland. Additionally, Winston Churchill made plans to saturate German cities with poison gas and kill those women and children yet alive amid the rubble.
When advisors pointed out that Adolf Hitler might reply in kind with his own stockpiles of chemical weapons, the murderous plan was shelved. Meanwhile, the hell raining from the clouds mirrored an ongoing hell rising from the mud. As Germans soon came to realize, The allied powers sought not only the physical destruction of Germany, but the spiritual massacre of the nation as well. The evil swept in from the east. There were constant rumors and hints about what might be expected Should the Soviet Union overrun Germany, most Germans, however, remained hopeful.
Such notions of Asiatic hordes, many were merely the government's attempt to harden their will to resist. Thus it was that on the Night of October 20, 1944, as the village of Nemmersdorf and other communities nearest the front slept in imagined security, The unthinkable occurred. After punching a hole through the German line, the Red Army suddenly burst into the Reich and swarmed over the countryside. After several days of desperate fighting, the German Wehrmacht regrouped, launched a furious counterattack, and eventually drove the Red Army across the border. What German troops soon found was staggering.
It was at Nemmersdorf where stunned soldiers first viewed hell on earth. Along the roads, fleeing refugees had been overtaken by the communists. The people were pulled from their carts, raped, then murdered on the spot.
Speaker 6: In the farmyard further down the road to the cart to which 4 naked women were nailed to their Hands in a cruciform position. Beyond stood a barn, and to each of its two doors, a naked The woman was nailed through the hands in a crucified posture. In the dwellings, we found a total of 70 2 women, including children, and one old man, 74, All dead. All murdered in a bestial manner, except only a Few who had bullet holes in their necks. Some babies had their heads Dusting.
In one room, we found a woman, 84 years old, sitting on a sofa, half of whose head had been shared off Within acts of escape.
Speaker 0: Old men who had tried to protect their wives, daughters, and granddaughters Were themselves knocked down then sawed in half. 50 French POWs and Polish workers who had instinctively stepped in to protect the people Were castrated and killed. Staggered by the enormity of the crime, German authorities requested that neutral observers from Spain, Sweden and Switzerland view the sickening carnage close-up. However, when the visitors filed their reports and word finally reached the outside world, There was only silence. By the winter of 1944, the vicious propaganda war waged against Germany had been won.
By that late stage of the conflict, the war of words had reached such evil extremes that few individuals beyond the Reich's Exporters were concerned about brained German babies or crucified German women. By the final months of the war, The enemy to be destroyed was not merely Adolf Hitler, the Nazi party, or even the soldiers in the field. By the final months of the war, the aim of the approaching allies was nothing less than the utter extinction of the German nation. Every man, Every woman, every child. Fueling the flames of hate was the Jewish propagandist, Ilya Ehrenberg.
One of the most influential men in the Soviet Union, Ehrenberg made sure his message of evil reached every soldier in the Red Army by ordering that leaflets be dropped from airplanes onto the front lines.
Speaker 8: Kill them all, men, old men, children, And the women, after you have abused yourself with them, kill. Nothing in Germany is guiltless, Neither the living nor the yet unborn. Break the racial pride of the German woman. Take her as your legitimate booty. Kill your brave soldiers of the victorious Soviet Army.
Speaker 0: Soon, as the Red Army forced the Wehrmacht back in the east, millions of German civilians suffered the same ghastly fate as the victims of Nemersdorf. Although first encounters with Soviet shock troops were truly traumatic, It was the 2nd wave of soldiers who delivered hell on earth. In numerous instances, before troops pushed on, they turned to the the civilians and warned
Speaker 10: The Mongols are coming. Very bad man. To go quick, go quick.
Speaker 0: Terrified by the news, many Germans did attempt to flee. Most, however, found themselves trapped. Other than destroy liquor and hide young girls, most could only watch the clock and pray that their worst fears were unfounded. After a wait of sometimes days but normally hours, the dreaded second wave arrived. Composed largely of Mongols and other Asians as well as convicts.
These men who formed the 2nd wave of troops were regarded even by their own comrades as utterly merciless. Leading this group were the communist commissars, the fanatical political officers composed almost exclusively of Jews. These hate filled individuals acted as the more than willing orchestrators of the horrors that befell the German people. Of all the methods used to express its hatred, the Red Army said it best with rape.
Speaker 11: And when the first Russians came, the combat troops, they came in and wanted to see everything. Asked about weapons and soldiers, looked at everything closely, didn't find anything, and were very friendly, And then just
Speaker 6: like Then come, Denise.
Speaker 3: And then
Speaker 11: the next lot arrived. The next one took me outside straight away. My mother wanted to throw herself in front of me but she was pushed back. And then they took me upstairs.
Speaker 3: And as
Speaker 11: I tried to defend myself, they showed me his gun. And then, when I came back down, I was quite shocked and but I was just happy that I was still alive. They said, woman, come. They said it in German. Fraucom in German.
We were the prize. It was always like that.
Speaker 0: From 8 to 80 years old, healthy or ill, Indoors or out, in fields, on sidewalks, against walls, the defilement, Torture and murder of German women continued unabated. Merely because a female had been raped once was also no guarantee she would not be assaulted again and again and again. Again and again and again.
Speaker 12: The Russians for coming and going through the whole They kept eyeing us greedily. The nights were dreadful because we were never safe for a moment. The women were raped not once or twice, but 10, 20, 30, and a 100 times. It is for us all the same to the Russians. Versus they raped mere children or old women.
The youngest victim in the war houses where we lived was 10 years of age, and the oldest one Was over 70.
Speaker 0: The women of Germany not only had to endure this onslaught of rape, torture, and murder, But also the humiliation of having it witnessed by friends and family.
Speaker 9: These atrocities were not committed secretly or in hidden corners, But in public, in churches, on the streets, and on the squares, mothers were raped in the presence of their children. Girls were raped in front of their brothers.
Speaker 0: When even violated corpses could no longer be of use, sticks, iron bars, And telephone receivers were commonly rammed into their vaginas. Jewish commissars had a special desire to defile the churches of Germany. Soon after the fall of Danzig, hundreds of desperate females pleaded with an officer for protection. The Soviet pointed to a Catholic cathedral. After the women were safely inside, the officer yelled to his men, pointed to the church, and with bells ringing and organ pipes roaring, The horror continued all night.
Some women and girls inside, some as young as 8 years old, were raped more than 30 Times. Little boys who tried to shield their mothers were shot. When Soviet soldiers captured the city of New Staten in February 1945, they discovered several large camps of the Women's Reich Labor Service, An organization composed mostly of girls who worked on various projects from nursing to street repair. After recapturing the area, The German soldiers were horrified by what had happened to the 25 100 females.
Speaker 10: We had never seen anything like it, utterly and unbelievably monstrous. Naked dead women lay in many of the rooms. Spastic has been cut into the abdomen. In some, the intestines bulged out. Breasts were cut up.
Faces beaten to a pulp and small and puffy. Others had been tied to the furniture by their hands and feet and massacred. A broomstick protruded from the vagina of 1, Besson from side of another. The mothers had to witness how their 10 12 year old daughters were raped by some 20 men. The daughters in turn saw their mothers being raped, even their grandmothers.
Women who tried to resist were brutally tortured to death. There was no mercy. The women we liberated were in a state almost impossible to describe. Their faces had a confused, vacant look. Someone beyond speaking to ran up and down and moaned the same sentences over and over again.
Having seen the consequences of these bestial atrocities, we were terribly agitated and determined to fight. The news of all was past duelling, but it was our obligation, sacred duty to fight to the very last bullet.
Speaker 0: While its men fought furiously in the east, Germany was also trying to stave off invasion from the west. Unfortunately, the invaders on this front often did not behave any better than their Soviet allies. Battlefield newsmen to the west simply did not report the times. As tens of thousands of German rape victims could attest, there was no safety among the American and British. Millions massacred, millions raped, millions already enslaved, But this was only the beginning of Germany's nightmare.
With the German army in headlong retreat, hordes of red soldiers swarmed into greater Germany during the last winter of the war. As word of the Soviet breakthrough spread, millions of Germans hastily packed and fled into the freezing weather. Most merely packed farm carts, hitched horses or cows, and set off as fast as their animals would take them. Already bitterly cold, several days after the treks began, the temperature plunged. As a result, little children and Infants dropped by the 1,000.
With the Earth hard as rock, tiny holes dug in the snowbanks served as graves.
Speaker 12: It was so terribly cold. Once the wind was like ice, the snow was falling. Nothing to eat. No milk. No.
See. I tried to give Gabby the breast behind the house, But she didn't take it because everything was so cold. Many women tried that when some frost
Speaker 0: Given the chaotic conditions and with freezing refugees clogging the way, many treks were quickly overhauled by the Russians. Some Soviet tanks crashed straight through the columns, squashing all in their path. After heavy traffic, the victims, men, Women, children, animals, all were pressed together as flat as cardboard. Those terrified survivors who had scattered to the icy countryside fell easy prey. As always, for the females, the living death soon began.
For millions of Germans cut off on the Baltic coast, only one avenue of escape remained, the sea. As isolated Wehrmacht units desperately defended their shrinking Baltic beachheads, millions of refugees poured into the coastal enclaves. With their backs literally to the sea, only the slow and treacherous evacuation by boat was an option. Consequently, at Memel, Konigsberg, Danzig, and other besieged cauldrons, the situation was appalling.
Speaker 6: Every alley, every street was packed with their vehicles. People
Speaker 1: who were
Speaker 6: waiting in every harbor shed, in every windshield at corner, Among them stood their beasts, bleating, snorting, glowing. The pregnant women giving birth somewhere in a corner on the ground In the barracks. Some of them had been raped on their flight, and now they were trembling for fear they would give birth to a monster. Strangely pale faces of girls going up and down the streets Asking for a doctor, the wounded and the sick, in constant fear they would be left behind, Concealing weapons under their blankets to force someone to take them along or to end their own lives if the Russians came. The orphan who had been saved from the asylum somewhere At the last moment and tossed onto cards with nothing around them but a blanket and who were now lying on the floors with frozen limbs.
The old people who had lain down in some doorway at night and had not awakened And the wild eyed, insane ones who rushed from house to house, from wagon to wagon, crying for their mothers, for their children. Over it all, the gray sky, snow, Frost and thaw and thaw and frost and snow and the chill, Killing wet.
Speaker 0: When a long sought vessel finally tied up and lowered the walkways, Pandemonium erupted on the docks. Because of an order granting priority to those with children, the latter became more valuable than gold. Once adults had boarded, they often tossed infants to relatives or friends below in hopes they might also board. Many babies died, of course, either falling into the freezing water or smashing onto the docks below. Nearby, terribly wounded soldiers quietly awaited their turn to board.
For those who sailed from the besieged ports, their prayers appeared answered. For those left standing behind, their doom seemed sealed. Many men, In a surge of madness, shot themselves. Crazed mothers with starvation gnawing and the red terror looming Found cyanide and poisoned their children, then themselves. Old people merely crawled into snowbanks, fell asleep, and never awoke.
Unfortunately, for thousands of refugees, there was no escaping the nightmare, even at sea. While many refugee ships successfully traversed the treacherous Baltic, Allied bombers were often the first to greet them when they docked. At Swinamunda in Northern Germany, the arrival of a freighter loaded with evacuees Coincided almost exactly with an allied air raid. Hardly had the ship docked when a direct hit sent it to the bottom, Taking 2,000 screaming passengers with it. On January 30, 1945, over 60,000 refugees crowded the docks of Gothenhafen Desperately trying to board the Wilhelm Gustloff, a former cruise liner designed to accommodate 2,000 passengers and crew.
By the time the beautiful white ship cast off, she had taken on as many as 6 to 8,000 refugees. As the goose loft backed away from the port, her path was blocked by smaller craft, all jammed with passengers begging to come aboard. Nets were lowered, and an additional 2,000 refugees scrambled up. Strained far beyond its limits, the tightly sealed ship filled with a hot, Nauseating stench of urine, excrement, and vomit. The groans of severely wounded soldiers And the screams of separated families added to the ghastly horror, but the worst was yet to come.
At approximately 9 PM, 3 heavy thuds rocked the goose laugh. Panic stricken, Thousands below decks stampeded through the narrow passageways, crushing and clawing in a mad attempt to reach safety. Most lifeboats were frozen solid, And even those that could be freed were mishandled in the panic, spilling their screaming occupants into the icy Black Sea. Within a few minutes, those in the water were dead. While thousands of freezing people pressed along the decks, Loud speakers blared words of comfort, assuring passengers that the ship would not sink and help was on the way.
Convinced that the sealed bulkheads had held and that indeed the ship would remain afloat, many refugees fled indoors once more to escape the razor Sharp winds and the minus 20 degree temperature. The respite proved brief, however. At 10 o'clock, a heavy tremor ripped the gooseluff as the bulkheads broke and the Sea rushed in. Within seconds, the big ship began to roll on its side, then plunged beneath the waves. When rescue ships later reached the scene, they pulled from the icy waters a mere 900 survivors.
All else, roughly 7 to 9000 men, women, and children were lost. As many more incidents would prove, the sinking of the Gusloff was no mistake. In a deliberate attempt to as many refugees as possible. Soviet submarines struck again and again at the slow moving ships. Soon after midnight on February 10th, An old luxury liner, the general Stubben, was plowing through the icy black Baltic.
Heavily weighed down with refugees and wounded the ship was in the midst of its second such evacuation in less than a fortnight. Just before 1 AM, 2 torpedoes slammed into the side. As the Steuben's stern rose high out of the water, 100 leaped overboard, including some who were torn to pieces by the still turning Propellers. Within 7 minutes, the ship plunged beneath the waves, swiftly silencing a final mass scream that seemed to arise from a single voice. Of the 35 100 passengers aboard, only a few 100 survived.
Speaker 1: Like some great wild animal. The red army moved closer to the heart of Germany In countless German cities and towns, the pattern repeated itself. The bloody nightmare which enveloped the Baltic coast was typical of that which transpired wherever the Soviets occupied German soil. In many places, Silesia, Prussia, Palmarania, In the German communities of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, and Hungary, a similar horror had been in progress for weeks. There, the ghastly atrocities actually increased.
As if red soldiers were in a mad race with one another to see who could destroy, Murder. And above all, who could rape the most? Meanwhile, the American and British forces punched through the German lines in the West. Unlike the East Front, however, German soldiers were well aware that the foes they faced in the West were signatories of the Geneva Convention. Under this agreement, captured or surrendering German soldiers were protected by law.
With the Red Army roaring across Germany from the East, Many Germans secretly hoped that the Americans might occupy what remained of the right before the communists didn't. It was no secret that Germans, high and low, Consider the Americans and British the lesser of 2 evils. Unfortunately, they were not always right.
Speaker 0: In the spring of 1945, as Berliners prepared to defend the capital from the encircling Soviet Army, Germans to the west also fought to halt the Allied tide. Unlike the howling savagery to the east, fraught with nightmarish ferocity, defeat in the west came methodically, relentlessly, and judged by the standards of the east almost silently. As the western front crept closer, Civilians anxiously awaited the allied arrival. Unlike the terrified truckers to the east, relatively few Germans in the west abandoned their homes. The racial and cultural ties with the enemy, particularly the Americans, were simply too strong to arouse the same terror as the Soviets did.
Far from fleeing the advancing allies, many civilians actually ran to greet them. Little did the Germans realize that because of a decade of Jewish propaganda, the Americans were perhaps even more hate filled than the Soviets. Unlike the wild and almost unimaginable Red Army, US military commanders Might have easily prevented crimes committed against helpless civilians had they only willed it. In most cases, however, they did not. Leading the charge against the German people was general Dwight d Eisenhower, a man whose hatred of all things German was well known.
In much the same vein as Stalin and Roosevelt, Eisenhower advocated the outright massacre of German army officers, Nazi party members, and others. In all, according to the allied commander, At least 100,000 German leaders should be exterminated. Not surprisingly, Such sentiment from above quickly filtered down. The only good German is a dead German became the pervasive sentiment. Take no prisoners was the tacit understanding.
By the tens of 1,000, captured or surrendering Germans were simply slaughtered on the spot. As American forces swept toward Munich in late April 1945, most German guards at the concentration camp near Dachau fled. Despite signs at the gate warning, no entrance, typhus epidemic, several 100 German soldiers were ordered to the prison to maintain and arrange the transfer of over 30,000 prisoners to the allies. When the Americans reached Dachau the following day, they were horrified by what they saw. Outside the prisons had railcars full of diseased and starved corpses.
Inside the camp, a room piled high with naked and emaciated bodies was also discovered. Unhinged by the Certain that Dachau was proof of the atrocities they had heard so much about in America, officers turned their enraged troops loose on the now disarmed German soldiers.
Speaker 13: The men were deliberately wounding guards. A lot of guards were shot in the legs so they couldn't move. They were then turned over to the inmates. 1 was beheaded with a bayonet. Others were ripped apart limb by limb.
Speaker 0: While the tortures were in progress, a lieutenant forced over 300 captive Germans up against a wall, planted 2 machine guns, then ordered his men to open fire. Those still alive when the fuselage ended were forced to stand amid the carnage while the machine gunners reloaded. In all, over 500 helpless German soldiers were slaughtered in cold blood. As a final touch, the citizens of Dachau were forced to bury the thousands of corpses in the camp, thereby assuring the death of many more from disease. Few Americans noticed because few cared, but conditions in German cities and towns were not much better than that at Dachau.
Because of the round the clock American and British air attacks week after week, very little food and almost no medicine was arriving anywhere in Germany. Virtually none reached the numerous concentration camps where during the last days, disease and starvation swept away the inmates by the 1,000. The incident at Dachau was merely one of many massacres committed by US troops.
Speaker 14: We had been held up at a little town. We were Mostly just walked through it, and the Germans stopped us dead. We just couldn't crack it. Eventually, artillery came in, Sort of leveled the houses. They finally surrendered and they came out and sort of lined up.
And per usual, no one knew what was going on. We had a new battalion commander just graduated from West Point, and he lined them up and said, so I want to shoot him, and I was horrified. Quite a few of us were horrified. And I went to him and Told him, you know, that this was against all international law and humanity. My good buddy who I'd Spent so much time with grabbed me and said this nut'll shoot you.
You better quit knock this off. And And, he got enough guys and they shot these about 25 prisoners. It was a terrible thing to see. And I talked to a lot of my buddies who had shot these guys, and they were horrified too.
Speaker 0: Unaware of the deep hatred the allies harbored for them, when proud SS units surrendered, They naively assumed that they would be accorded respect as the unsurpassed fighters that they had proven to be. As soon as they were disarmed, Most were slaughtered where they stood. For those members of the German military lucky enough to survive capture, death often awaited behind the lines where 1,000 more perished. With general Eisenhower turning a blind eye to the Geneva Convention, Only the threat of retaliation against allied POWs still held in Germany prevented a massacre of prodigious proportions. Soon after US combat soldiers moved out of a community and their rear echelon troops moved in, the reality of occupation became clear to the German The second wave of soldiers, wanting to experience a bit of war on their own, took out their aggression on the helpless Germans by looting, Raping, killing, and destroying.
In many towns, the invaders unlocked jails, prisons, and concentration camps, And invited the inmates to join in the revelry.
Speaker 3: They just opened up the camps and let them go. The Russians and Poles were looting the houses and killing the shopkeepers. Then, they began raping the girls.
Speaker 0: Similar mayhem engulfed most towns in Western Germany as Americans and British pushed onward.
Speaker 14: Our own army and the British army have done their share of looting and raping. We too are considered an army of rapists.
Speaker 0: Although brutal rapes persisted against the defenseless females, the allied troops quickly discovered that hunger was a powerful incentive to sexual surrender. Although sex could be bought for a bit of food, a cigarette, or a bar of soap, some victors preferred to take what they wanted whenever and wherever they pleased.
Speaker 15: Hunger made German women more available. But despite this, rape was prevalent and often accompanied by additional violence. In particular, I remember an 18 year old woman who had the side of her face smashed with a rifle butt, And it was then raped by 2 GIs. Even the French complained that the rapes, looting, and drunken destructiveness on the part of our troops was excessive.
Speaker 0: Despite the numerous atrocities committed on the western front, Such savagery never became officially sanctioned. Considering the bloodthirsty propaganda from the primarily Jewish owned media, As well as the active incitement of their political and military leaders, the average British and American soldier himself amazingly well And certainly far, far better than his Soviet counterpart. Although the allies in the west might have easily pushed on to Berlin, They were ordered to halt just short of their goal. As a token of their great love and gratitude, Roosevelt and Churchill had already awarded the German capital to Stalin as a prize. After days of hopeless fighting in which little boys fought and all too often died like men, Berlin was finally overwhelmed on May 2nd.
And with the suicide of Adolf Hitler, the war effectively ended. Now that there was virtually no chance for reprisals against Americans held in German POW camps, Eisenhower's pathological Patriot of Germans was given free reign. With the final capitulation in May 1945, The supreme allied commander found himself in control of over 5,000,000 ragged, weary, but living enemy soldiers. Since Eisenhower could not kill more armed Germans in war, the American desk general decided to kill disarmed Germans in peace. Because the Geneva Convention guaranteed POWs the same food, shelter, and medical attention as their captors, Eisenhower simply circumvented the treaty by creating his own category for prisoners.
Under this reclassification, German soldiers were no longer considered POWs, but DEFs, Disarmed Enemy Forces. With this sleight of hand and indirect violation of the Geneva Convention, Eisenhower could now deal in secret with those in his power, Free from the prying eyes of the outside world. Even before the war's end, Thousands of German POWs had died in American captivity from starvation, neglect, and in many cases, outright murder. With the German surrender and the threat of retaliation against allied POWs entirely erased, deaths in the American Camps accelerated dramatically. While tens of thousands died of starvation and thirst, 100 of 1000 more perished from overcrowding and disease.
Speaker 16: It's incomprehensible to me how we could stand for many, many days without sitting, Without lying down, just sailing there totally soaked. During the day, we marched around huddled together to try to warm each a bit. The lanterns were just logs, flung over ditches next to the barbed wire fences.
Speaker 11: To sleep,
Speaker 16: all we could do was to dig out a hole in the ground with our hands, then cling together in the hole. Because of illness, the man had to defecate on the ground. Soon, many of us were too weak to take off our trousers first. So our clothing was infected, and so was the mud where we had to walk and sit and lie down. There was no water at all at first, except the rain.
More than half the days, we had no food at all. On the west, we got a little k ration. I could see from the package that they were giving us 1 tenth of the rations that they issued To their own men, I complained to the American com commander that he was breaking the Geneva Convention, but he just said, Forget the convention. You haven't any rights. Within a few days, Some of the men who had gone healthy into the camps were dead.
I saw all our men dragging many dead bodies to the gate of the camp where they were falling loose on top of each other onto trucks, which took them away.
Speaker 0: As if their plight were not already hideous enough, prisoners occasionally became the Targets of drunken guards who sprayed the camps with machine gun fire. At 1 compound, amused guards formed lines and beat prisoners with Clubs and sticks as they ran the gauntlet for their poultry rations. At another camp of 52100 men, 10 to 30 bodies were hauled away every day. Prisoners who did not succumb to hunger or disease often died of thirst. Many men were forced to drink their own urine even though streams ran a few feet from the barbed wire.
There was no lack of food or shelter among the allies. Actually, American supply depots were bursting at the seams. Instead of allowing even a trickle of this bounty to reach Compounds, the starvation diet was further reduced. Within full view of some camps, Americans would sadistically burn food that they could not eat themselves. Civilians from nearby villages and towns themselves starving were prevented at gunpoint from passing their own meager fare through the fenced prisoners.
Horrified by the silent secret massacre, the International Red Cross, which had over 100,000 tons of food stored in Switzerland, Tried to intercede. When 2 trains filled with supplies reached the camps, however, they were turned back by American officers. Many people found no justification whatsoever in the massacre of helpless prisoners, especially since the German government had lived up to the Geneva invention as one American put it to a t. The Red Cross reported that 99% of American prisoners War in Germany had survived and were on their way home. Nevertheless, Eisenhower's murderous program continued apace.
Some upright generals such as General George Patton opposed these murderous measures, but Eisenhower quickly overruled them. While continuing to deny the Red Cross and other relief agencies access to the camps, Eisenhower stressed among his camp commanders the need for secrecy To prevent the gruesome details from reaching the outside world and sidetrack those that did, counter rumors were circulated stating that Far from mistreating and murdering prisoners, camp commanders were actually turning back really as Germans who tried to slip back in for food and shelter. Unlike their capitalist counterparts, the Soviet communists made little effort to hide their crimes. 100 of thousands of Germans toiled in the forest and mines of Siberia. The captives were slaves, pure and simple, and no attempt was made to disguise the fact.
For the enslaved Germans, male and female, the odds of surviving the Soviet gulags were even worse than escaping the American death camps. A trip to Siberia was tantamount to a death sentence. What little food the slaves received was intended merely to maintain their strength until they were worked to death. Much the same might be said of the 600,000 German slaves held by the French. Ultimately, no fewer than 800,000 German prisoners died in the American and French death camps.
Indeed, recent estimates place the death toll at upwards of 1,500,000. And thus in Peace did Eisenhower murder at least 10 times the number of German soldiers than were killed on the whole Western front during the whole of the war. With the once mighty Wehrmacht now disarmed and enslaved, and with their leaders either dead or awaiting trial for war crimes, The old men, women, and children who remained in the dismembered Reich now found themselves utterly at the mercy of the victors. Unfortunately, never in the history of the world was mercy in shorter supply. Soon after their victory in Europe, the allied purge of Nazi party members commenced.
In theory, denazification was a simple transplanting of party officials with those of democratic, socialist, or communist underpinnings. In practice, the purge became little more than a cloak for rape, torture, and death. All adult Germans were compelled to register at the nearest allied headquarters and complete a lengthy questionnaire on past activities. While many nervous citizens were detained then and there, most returned home, convinced that their terrible ordeal was over. For 1,000,000, however, the trial had just begun.
Few German adults, Nazi or not, escaped the dreaded knock on the door. Many people were arrested multiple times, including Leni Riefenstahl, a talented young woman who was perhaps the world's most artistic filmmaker. Because her epic documentaries, Triumph of the Will and Olympia, Seem to glorify not only Germany, but National Socialism. And because of her close relationship with an admiring Adolf Hitler, Lenny was of great interest to the allies.
Speaker 12: Neither my husband nor my master nor any of my street assistants had ever joined the Nazi party, nor had any of us been politically active. No charges had ever been filed against us. If we were the mercy of the allies and had no legal protection of any kind.
Speaker 0: As Lenny and others quickly discovered the softening up process began soon after the arrival at an allied prison. Brutally beaten, raped repeatedly, crammed into dark overheated cells, victims nervously awaited their Interrogations.
Speaker 8: The purpose of these interrogations is not to worm out of the people what they knew, which would be uninteresting anyway, but to extort from them special statements. The methods resorted to are extremely primitive. People are beaten up until they confess to having been members of the Nazi party. The authorities simply assume that basically everybody has belonged to the party. Many people die during and after these interrogations, while others who admitted once their party membership are treated more leniently.
Speaker 0: Generally, after enduring blackened eyes, broken bones, rape, electric shock to the breast or in the case of men smashed testicles, only those who took their own lives or died during torture failed to sign confessions. Since most intelligence officers accompanying US And British forces were Jewish refugees who had fled Germany in the 19 thirties, their knowledge of the language and culture was superb. With old scores to settle, the presence of these men ensured that there would be no mercy shown to Nazis or any German for that matter.
Speaker 17: Both officers who took our testimony were former German Jews. One kicked me in the back and the other hit me. The terrible thing was the German men had to watch. That was a horrible, horrible experience. That must have been terrible for them.
When I went outside, several of them stood there with tears running down their cheeks. What could they have done? They could do nothing.
Speaker 0: During the Nazi war crimes trial at Nuremberg, almost any method that would obtain a confession was employed. Understandably, after Several such sessions, even the strongest submitted and signed papers incriminating themselves and others. In addition to testimony given under torture, Those who might have spoken in defense of the accused were threatened with torture and death themselves. Moreover, hired witnesses were paid by the Americans to parent the prosecution's charges. Horrific as denazification was in the British, French, and especially the American zones, it was nothing compared to what took place in Poland behind Soviet lines.
In 100 of concentration camps sponsored by something called the office of state security, thousands of Germans, male and female, Old and young, high and low, Nazi and non Nazi were rounded up and imprisoned, Staffed and run by Jews with help from the polls, Czechs, Russians, and other former concentration camp inmates, The prisons were little better than vast torture chambers where dying was a thing to be prolonged, not hastened. While those with blonde hair, blue eyes, and handsome features were first to go, anyone who spoke German would do. For these vengeful camp operators, no torture, no sadism, no depravity, no evil Seemed too monstrous to inflict on those now in their power. Some Germans were forced to crawl naked on all fours and Eat their own excrement as well as that of others. Many were drowned in open latrines.
100 were herded into buildings and burned to death or sealed in caskets and buried alive. Near Lamstorff, German women were forced to disinter bodies a Polish burial site. Then kiss and make love to the putrid, rotting corpses. Not surprisingly, the mortality rate at the concentration Camps was staggering. And of those rare individuals who did leave with their lives, few could any longer be called human.
Meanwhile, as the judicial charade was in progress behind prison walls, tortures of another kind stalked the Liberated German people as the allied victors enacted their plan to divide, loot, and utterly destroy conquered Germany. In late 1944, the so called Morgenthau plan was endorsed by president Roosevelt, Making the Jewish prewar demand for German extermination official. Named for Roosevelt's secretary of the treasury, Henry Morgenthau, but actually conceived by the secretary's top aide, Harry Dexter White, both of whom were Jewish. The program called the complete destruction of Germany after victory had been won. In addition to the dismantling and destruction of heavy industry and the permanent closure of mines, The Morgenthau plan called for a reduction of the Reichsland area by 1 half.
As many knew, this act guaranteed that roughly 2 thirds of the German population or 50,000,000 people would soon die of starvation. With the remnant of the population reduced to subsistence farming And with the shrunken nation totally at the mercy of hostile European neighbors, it was estimated that within 2 generations, Germany would cease to exist. When Roosevelt's successor Harry Truman met at Potsdam with Stalin and the new British prime minister, Clement Atlee in July 1945, most of the teeth in Morgenthau's murderous scheme remained on the table. With the signature of the big three, the plan went into effect. Stalin's methodical looting in the Russian occupation zone became prodigious.
Steel mills, grain mills, lumber mills, sugar and oil refineries, chemical plants, optical works, Shoe factories and other heavy industries were taken apart down to the last nut and bolt and sent east to the Soviet Union where they were reassembled. Those factories allowed to remain in Germany were to operate solely for the benefit of Russia. Electric and steam locomotives, Their rolling stock and even the tracks they ran on were likewise sent east. Unlike its primitive Soviet ally, The United States had no need for German plants and factories. Nevertheless, the Americans were far and away the most zealous at destroying Germany's ability to recover.
While the US may have spurned German industry, they had a great interest in the Reich's hoard of treasure. 1,000,000,000 of dollars in gold, silver, and currency as well as Priceless paintings, sculptures, and other artworks were plucked from their hiding places in caves, tunnels, and salt mines, and shipped across the Atlantic. Additionally, and a far greater damage to Germany's future was the mental dismantling of the Reich. Tons of secret documents revealing Germany's tremendous organizational talent in business and industry were simply stolen. Hundreds of the greatest scientists in the world were likewise compelled to immigrate by the victors.
One man opposed to the vengeance minded program was George Patton.
Speaker 13: Evidently, the virus started by Morgenthau, The Semitic revenge against all Germans is still working. I can't see how Americans can sink so low.
Speaker 0: During the 1st postwar years, Germany was little better than a vast concentration camp. Coinciding with the ruthless allied program of denazification and reeducation was the American and British policy of non fraternization, segregating the victors from the vanquished in an effort to Further degrade and demonize Germans and crush what little pride and respect remained. 1 year after the war's end, the former Reich still had urban dwellers clinging precariously to their caves and cracks for shelter. In Berlin alone, an estimated 50,000 orphans struggled to survive.
Speaker 9: Some of them, One eyed or one legged veterans of 7 or so. Many so deranged by the bombing and the Russian attack They screamed at the sight of any uniform, even the Salvation Army 1.
Speaker 0: While occupation troops dined on 5 course meals complete with Fried soul, Dutch steak, and ice cream, thousands of starving children felt fortunate if a potato peel or crust of moldy bread was unearthed. Children who could not live by their wits died. Those who didn't starve or freeze were crushed by the walls of their caves or torn to Shreds by unexploded bombs, which lay scattered across Germany by the ton. On their own, orphans aged fast, and little girls aged fastest of Like their older sisters, the children soon discovered that selling themselves could stave off starvation. A dreaded concern, not only for those who were selling themselves, but for the millions of rape victims was unwanted pregnancy.
Thousands who were in fact pregnant sought and found abortions. 1000 more lived in dreadful suspense. Their lives utterly shattered in every way imaginable. At length, allied soldiers, reporters, And others began to recoil at the ruthless reign of terror transpiring in Germany.
Speaker 13: While the Germans around them Starve, wear rags, and live in huddles. The American aristocrats live in an often unaccustomed ease and luxury. They live in the finest houses from which they drove the Germans. They swagger about in fine liveries and gorge themselves on diets 3 times as great as they allow the Germans. When we tell the Germans their low rations are necessary because food is so short.
They naturally either think we are lying to them or regard us as inhuman for taking the lion's share of the short supplies while they and their children starve.
Speaker 0: Even as the chorus of critics over the sadistic treatment of Germany grew, a nightmare of almost unbelievable proportions was developing behind the iron curtain.
Speaker 2: Never mind the 5 1,000,000 dramas. Starlet will see to them.
Speaker 0: With a wave of the hand and a puff of his cigar, The British prime minister thus condoned one of the greatest massacres in human history. With an understanding reached at Yalta then Signed into law at Potsdam, the Soviet Union swallowed vast chunks of German and Polish territory in the east. In return, Poland itself devoured large tracts of the former Reich in the west, including much of Prussia, Pomerania, and the extremely rich industrialized province of Cilicia. Despite Solemn reassurances by the allied leaders that the mass expulsions would be carried out in an orderly and humane manner. Shattering glass And splintering doors were usually the first sounds a victim heard, soon followed by angry shouts to clear the home in 30, 10, Even 5 minutes.
Thus, by tens and twenties, by 100 and 1000, homeless Germans now began trudging west with no clear goal in mind, Except for those able-bodied individuals held as slaves and young girls retained for sex, roughly 11,000,000 truckers took to the roads. Thus began the greatest death march in history.
Speaker 18: As they left town in an endless procession, Polish soldiers fell upon them, beating and flogging them in a blind rage, robbed of all they possessed and Literally stripped of the last of their belongings, these poor creatures trudged along in the wind and the rain With no roof or shield over their heads, not knowing where they would find a new boat.
Speaker 0: Of the roughly 11,000,000 victims hurled from their homes in Eastern Germany, an estimated 2,000,000, mostly women and children, perished. Equally as horrifying, though less well known, were the nearly 1,000,000 Germans who died during similar expulsions in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. Additionally, an estimated 4,000,000 more ethnic Germans Were sent east to the Soviet Union where the odds of surviving as slaves were worse than as refugees.
Speaker 19: To slice 3 or 4 ancient provinces from a country, then loot and plunder 9,000,000 people of their houses, Farms, cattle, furniture, and even clothing, and then expel them from the land they have inhabited for 700 years With no distinction between the innocent and the guilty, to drive them like unwanted beasts on foot to far off provinces, Unprotected, shelterless, and starving is an atrocity so vast that history records none vaster.
Speaker 0: While Western leaders such as Winston Churchill later feigned surprise at the tragedy they had wrought in Eastern Germany, little was Said about the deliberate starvation of the rest of the Reich, an utter silence prevailed concerning the allied torture chambers in Germany, the on the spot massacre of Nazi party members and SS troops, the death camps run by Eisenhower, or the hellish Jewish torture pens in Poland. Taken as a whole, it is a certainty that far more Germans died during the first two years of peace Men died during the previous 6 years of war.
Speaker 1: World War 2 was the world's worst war. World War II was the world's worst war because of the evil that was unleashed on millions of helpless men, women, and children. The Allied war waged against Germany both during and after the war were evil, So vicious and so depraved that, truly, words have not yet been invented to describe them. While one might estimate the incredible loss of life During and after World War 2, it is almost impossible to calculate the physical and psychological suffering caused by the rape, Torture and degradation of the German nation. Unlike their victims, the victims faced no post war prison camps, No slavery, no torture, no starvation, no rapes, no trials for the numerous war crimes, And no vilification campaign that persists to this very day.
Quite the opposite. For the victors, American generals became American presidents. British prime ministers became British knights. Allied soldiers became the greatest generation, and the winning side claimed complete and utter control over the history of World War 2. Not surprisingly, in the winner's expert hands, the evil crime that was World War 2 What's quickly transformed into the crusade in Europe, the war to end evil and simply the good war.
Year after year, decade after decade, a mountain of movies, TV shows, articles, books are released with the sole intent of heaping crime and guilt on the heads of the victims. At the same time, the victors have elevated themselves to paragons of virtue by hiding the very real crimes they committed both during and after the war. Anyone who can say that the actions of the allies were justified Hopefully has never witnessed a screaming child running like a living torch through a flaming street. Never watched as a man drank his own urine to stay alive, even as a river ran just beyond the prison fence. Never heard the animal shrieks of the torture as their genitals are mutilated or the groans of a bleeding woman begging for a bullet while the line awaiting its turn grows longer.
Hopefully these people have never seen such things, For only then one can understand how they might parrot over and over again the standard refrain, they got exactly what they deserved, And never lose a moment's sleep. Still, if there is one central truth that was born of World War 2, It is that clearly there is no such thing as a good war. Those who say differently are either those who profit politically or financially from war, Or those who have never witnessed war up close, in all its horror.
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