Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

I was rubbished on this and ignored it even when I said I had read a book on it! Well now for those who always waffle about wanting links the following one will confirm what I argued all that time ago.

I was rubbished on this and ignored it even when I said I had read a book on it!

The immediate effect on Ireland was devastating, and its long-term effects proved immense, permanently changing Irish culture and tradition. The Irish Potato Famine was the culmination of a social, biological, political, and economic catastrophe. In the colonial context of Ireland's domination by Britain, the root cause of the famine was perceived by many to be British policy, which reduced the amount of land available for feeding the Irish, and therefore stimulated the demand for political autonomy."

Beginning 150 years ago this fall (1995), British "free trade" policy--the same policy Thatcher and her imitators still fanatically insist upon--caused the genocide of 2 million out of 8 million Irish subjects in four years.

books

mass deaths, etc in war and campaigns

Something from history that decent Americans need to see.

yeah, stuff happened on both sides of that conflict that make you wish to swear off membership in the Human Race. Despicable, just despicable.

There is no Book that Genuinely free from politic ,  even holybooks .

I would suggest that General Eisenhower WAS German. But, don't tell anybody. It's a secret, OK? Just you, me and everybody else who bothers to check history.

The Irish Famine was not a war.

[The earlier invasion by the butcher Cromwell also halved Ireland's population. Was that not a war?

Eisenhower was an enthusiastic supporter of denazification, but not because he hated the Germans or believed in collective guilt. To the contrary, he believed that there were Germans who were committed to democracy and that the task of the occupation was to find them and bring them to the fore. In a speech in Frankfurt in 1945, he declared: "The success or failure of this occupation will be judged by the character of the Germans 50 years from now. Proof will come when they begin to run a democracy of their own and we are going to give the Germans a chance to do that, in time." This does not sound like a man who simultaneously was directing the death by starvation of one million young Germans.

An assertion that is central to Mr. Bacque's accusation is his contention that there was no European food shortage in 1945. He points to warehouses in Germany full of food. He says that the Red Cross had food available. One of his most damning pieces of evidence is that a train from Geneva loaded with food parcels sent by the Red Cross to feed German prisoners was forced to turn back.

This is shocking -- food was available, men were hungry and American officers ordered the train to return to Geneva. But there was a reason: the Allied Governments had decided that Red Cross food parcels would be used to feed displaced persons, of whom there were more than two million in Germany, and the orders to Eisenhower on this policy were explicit. So D.P.'s got those food parcels. It is painful beyond description to have to set food priorities in a hungry world, but it had to be done, and who could argue with the decision?

In his conference report on the food situation in Germany, James Tent of the University of Alabama-Birmingham says there was no question that there were severe shortages. Still, as Mr. Tent points out, there was food stocked in warehouses that was not distributed to prisoners living on a near-starvation diet. Again, this is shocking, until the reason is noted. The Allied Governments were fearful of famine in the winter of 1945-46, and they were stockpiling food. Even with the reserves, they barely got through the winter, and it was three years before the European food shortage was overcome.

Mr. Bacque's myth was Eisenhower's nightmare. No food shortage? Eisenhower wrote the Chief of Staff, Gen. George C. Marshall, in February 1945: "I am very much concerned about the food situation. . . . We now have no reserves on the Continent of supplies for the civil population."

With regard to another of Mr. Bacque's conclusions, he arrives at his sensational figure of one million dead through a system of analysis that has left almost everyone who has tried to check his statistics and methods befuddled. He did make one mistake because of a typing error by a clerk. He saw a figure of 70,000 prisoners in an Army medical report and then calculated the total death rate for all prisoners in American hands on the basis of that number and the 21,000 deaths also mentioned in the report. That is, he arrived at his most basic conclusion, a death rate in all camps of 30 percent, by dividing the 21,000 deaths by the 70,000 prisoners. However, the 70,000 figure should have been 10 times higher. All other figures in the document make it clear that the correct number of prisoners was 700,000. This would make the death rate not 30 percent but 3 percent.

In fact, as Albert Cowdrey of the Department of the Army's Center of Military History reported to the conference, the overall death rate among German prisoners was 1 percent. Mr. Cowdrey's conclusion, strongly supported by another conference participant, Maj. Ruediger Overmans of the German Office of Military History in Freiburg (who is writing the final volume of the official German history of the war), is that the total death by all causes of German prisoners in American hands could not have been greater than 56,000.

  the greatest number of "other losses" is revealed in the August 1945 Report of the Military Governor. (These monthly reports are in the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan., in the National Archives in Washington and elsewhere; they are a basic source on every aspect of the occupation, including food shortages and prisoners; Mr. Bacque did not cite them and there is no evidence he examined them.) The August report lists the numbers of disarmed enemy forces discharged by American forces and those transferred to the British and French for forced labor.

The report continues: "An additional group of 663,576 are listed as 'other losses,' consisting largely of members of the Volkssturm [ People's Militia ] released without formal discharge."

It takes little imagination to see what happened here. The People's Militia consisted of older men (up to 60 years of age, mainly World War I veterans) and boys of 16 or sometimes less. American guards and camp authorities told the old men to go home and take care of their grandchildren, the boys to go home and return to school. Along with the transfers to other zones that Mr. Bacque ignores, these people account for all the "missing million."

In short, Mr. Bacque is wrong on every major charge and nearly all his minor ones. Eisenhower was not a Hitler, he did not run death camps, German prisoners did not die by the hundreds of thousands, there was a severe food shortage in 1945, there was nothing sinister or secret about the "disarmed enemy forces" designation or about the column "other losses." Mr. Bacque's "missing million" were old men and young boys in the militia.

Nevertheless, Mr. Bacque makes a point that is irrefutable: some American G.I.'s and their officers were capable of acting in almost as brutal a manner as the Nazis. We did not have a monopoly on virtue. He has challenged us to reopen the question, to do the research required, to get at the full truth. For that contribution, he deserves thanks. But as to how he presented his discovery, I turn again to Albert Cowdrey: "Surely the author has reason to be satisfied with his achievement. He has no reputation as a historian to lose, and 'Other Losses' can only enhance his standing as a writer of fiction."

Under these circumstances, what is a lay reader to do? I suggest that he or she trust common sense. As when confronting the Holocaust-never-happened school, ask the obvious questions. If the answers aren't clear, the charges have not been proved. In Mr. Bacque's case, two such questions are: Where are the bodies? and Is this book consistent with our picture of Eisenhower's character as we know it from innumerable other sources? Ultimately, in cases such as this one, it is often the obvious questions that bring us closest to the truth.

All you had to do is admit that as a civilised nation what you did in 1915 was a wrong.

I have a wonderful idea. How about if we hold you, RJHowie, personally responsible for each and every despicable thing the British Empire ever did from the time they first colonized another country until---. You--- yes, you--- are called upon to explain and apologize for each and every mistake, depravity, taking of land that belonged to somebody else and so on. Think of it. That even makes you, personally, responsible for the American colonies and the way the Indians were treated by same before we became an independent nation. After all, the colonies were Crown colonies and therefore your personal responsibility.

You know there's an awful smelly pile of stuff the British Empire was responsible for. The Irish Potato Famine. The Opium Wars. Sacking and pillaging in the Caribbean back in the days of the Buccaneers. Many of those Buccaneers were at least initially Privateers, carrying "Letters of Marque" signed by English noblemen and sometimes by the Crown itself, so--- reckon that makes you, RJHowie, personally responsible for that. Hey, that's just the tip of the iceberg as they say. Clean up that mess, then come and help us clean our yard.

See, that's the problem with holding every American now living responsible for something that happened way back when. Hold our nose in dog-droppings from several decades back and you just might get somebody returning the favor. Seriously.

Do you think it's right to hold every German now living responsible for  Auschwitz? There's only a handful left who were even alive back then, most Germans have to learn about Auschwitz the same way I do--- by reading history books. In the same way, I don't think holding every Japanese citizen now living responsible for the atrocities committed during WW2 is very workable. Again, how many Japanese now living were alive back then? A handful, and the numbers shrink every day. Of that number, the folk who actually were responsible--- are such a minute number that I doubt they would crowd your living room if they all got together. Most now living don't remember the Eisenhower presidency, much less have anything to do with what he may or may not have done way back when.

Now, this sort of thing really needs to stop. I mean right now. I'm sitting here remembering a thread that was deleted not too long back that poked some fun at the Queen. It needed to be dumped because it was, in fact, more than a little distasteful and I personally felt it was mean-spirited. I find it hard  to justify a thread in return that seems to track dirt all over my carpet, kick my dog and tell my wife that she is of ill repute--- which this thread has that sort of feeling about it. Look, nobody requires you to bow down and worship America. If you really don't like us, that's your privilege. But, a sense of decency would be appreciated.

You are fallowing the usual US creed here and sidestep anything that doesn't fit into that false claim listing.

If there had just been an admittance of what the film portrayed and you lot had said it should not have been that way that would have been fine but you cannot mentally do that over the pnd can you?

So don't insult my intelligence or youre own by falling line with the dancing routine.

I am still hunting for the book I have on the subject but a damn film of the actuality is somehow untrue.