Allied Concentration Camps

The Germans were not alone in running concentration camps. Long before the era of the Third Reich, the Soviet Union had perfected its own camp system, and the Americans and British both operated camps in their countries during the war. After the war, the Allied powers were only too happy to recycle the German camps for their own use…

American Witnesses to the American and French POW Camps after World War II

By John Wear ∙ February 29, 2020

James Bacque in his book Other Losses writes that approximately 1 million German prisoners of war (POWs) died in American and French camps after World War II. One critic of this book asks: “How could the bodies disappear without one soldier’s coming forward in nearly 50 years to relieve his conscience?” The answer to this question is that numerous soldiers have come forward to witness the atrocious death rate in the American and French POW camps after World War II. This article documents the testimony of American soldiers who witnessed the lethal nature of these camps.

An Awful Revenge: The Eastern Victors’ Concentration Camps after World War II

By John Wear ∙ May 13, 2019

The eastern victors continued to operate many formerly German concentration camps after World War II. Additional camps to intern ethnic Germans were established in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. The existence and operation of these postwar camps is a matter of major historical significance. While the population of the German concentration-camp system had grown…

The Gulag: Communism’s Penal Colonies Revisited

By Daniel W. Michaels ∙ March 1, 2002

Daniel W. Michaels is a Columbia University graduate (Phi Beta Kappa, 1954) and a Fulbright exchange student to Germany (1957). Now retired after 40 years of service with the U.S. Department of Defense, he writes from his home in Washington, DC. During the twentieth century it became common practice for nations to detain citizens whose…

Behind “An Eye for An Eye”

By John Sack ∙ May 1, 2001

John Sack is one of America’s most eminent literary journalists. His reporting over more than half a century, from North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, has appeared in such periodicals as Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. He has been a war correspondent in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Yugoslavia, as well as…

Bad News and the Good War

By Joseph Sobran ∙ August 1, 1998

Joseph Sobran is a nationally-syndicated columnist, lecturer, author, and editor of the monthly newsletter Sobran's (P.O. Box 1383, Vienna, VA 22183). This essay is reprinted from the August 1998 issue of Sobran's. Steven Spielberg's “Saving Private Ryan” is the most powerful movie I've seen in years. The opening sequence, already famous, shows the D-Day invasion…

Suppressing the Story of Genocide Against Germans

By Richard H. Curtiss ∙ September 1, 1997

Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (PO Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009). This report is reprinted from the June-July 1997 issue. When he retired from the US foreign service, Curtiss was chief inspector of the US Information Agency. He is also the author of A Changing Image:…

Book Detailing Jewish Crimes Against Germans Banned

By Mark Weber ∙ January 1, 1995

Germany's cultural-political establishment no longer orders the destruction of “socially dangerous” literature in public bonfires. Today it resorts to more modern, environment-friendly methods to destroy “undesirable” books. In February 1995, thousands of copies of a revisionist work detailing postwar Jewish crimes against Germans were destroyed, following bitter attacks by Germany's cultural establishment. The book, An…

Stalin’s War Against His Own Troops

By Yuri Teplyakov ∙ July 1, 1994

At dawn on June 22, 1941, began the mightiest military offensive in history: the German-led Axis attack against the Soviet Union. During the first 18 months of the campaign, about three million Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner. By the end of the conflict four years later, more than five million Soviet troops are estimated to…

From the Allied Camps to the Revisionist Camp

By Hans von der Heide ∙ July 1, 1990

I spent most of my time as P.O.W. in Great Britain (from 1944 to 1948), so I cannot say very much about American P.O.W. camps, except for a period of roughly seven weeks, most of which time I spent in a camp several kilometers outside of Cherbourg in northwest France. This was not the first…

In “Eisenhower’s Death Camps”: Part I

By Martin Brech ∙ July 1, 1990

In October, 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the U.S. army. Largely because of the “Battle of the Bulge,” my training was cut short. My furlough was halved, and I was sent overseas immediately. Upon arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into box cars and shipped to the front. When…

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