Other Losses: An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans After WWII

Toronto, Canada: Stoddart Publishing Co, 1989. 1st Canadian Edition. Hardcover. Good/Good. 248, maps, chronology, appendices, notes, bibliography, index, some wear, creases, and small tear to DJ edges. Small rough spot (where sticker was removed) inside front flyleaf. The original Canadian edition of this book. James Bacque (19 May 1929 - 13 September 2019) was a Canadian writer, publisher, and book editor. In Other Losses, Bacque claimed that Allied Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower's policies caused the death of 790,000 German captives in internment camps through disease, starvation and cold from 1944 to 1949. In similar French camps some 250,000 more are said to have perished. The International Committee of the Red Cross was refused entry to the camps, Switzerland was deprived of its status as "protecting power" and POWs were reclassified as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" to circumvent recognition under the Geneva Convention. Bacque argued that this alleged mass murder was a direct result of the policies of the western Allies, who, with the Soviets, ruled as the Military Occupation Government over partitioned Germany from May 1945 until 1949. He laid the blame on Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, saying Germans were kept on starvation rations even though there was enough food in the world to avert the lethal shortage in Germany in 1945-1946. Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose, who helped edit Other Losses, wrote "I quarrel with many of your interpretations, [but] I am not arguing with the basic truth of your discovery" and acknowledged that Bacque had made a "major historical discovery", in the sense that very little attention had hitherto been paid to the treatment of German POWs in Allied hands. He acknowledged he did not support Bacque's conclusions, but said at the American Military Institute's Annual Meeting in March 1990: "Bacque has done some research and uncovered an important story that I, and other American historians, missed altogether in work on Eisenhower and the conclusion of the war. When those millions of Wehrmacht soldiers came into captivity at the end of the war, many of them were deliberately and brutally mistreated. There is no denying this. There are men in this audience who were victims of this mistreatment. It is a story that has been kept quiet." Derived from a Kirkus review: Centering on American idol Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bacque's indictment strikes to the heart of the American dream, charging us with much the same kind of brutality that so incenses Americans when practiced by foreigners—allowing POWs to die by the tens of thousands from disease and starvation. In a skillfully organized, meticulously documented brief (86 pages of notes and appendices), Bacque charges Eisenhower not with neglect but with setting policy- -and charges subsequent authorities with a methodical cover-up, including destruction of evidence. The narrative is strongly detailed, beginning with an old Frenchman, accompanied by Bacque, opening an ancient, dusty box to find—nothing: missing evidence. From there we have a real-life thriller, complete with security forces bullying aged witnesses. Surprises are nonstop, beginning with a damning introduction by respected military historian Ernest F. Fisher, Jr., who speaks of Eisenhower's ``fierce and obsessive hatred of...all things German.'' There follows a jolting indictment of high American figures, starting at the top. The tone is set when Churchill walks out of a Big Three meeting as Roosevelt jokes with Stalin (recent perpetrator of the notorious Katyn Forest massacre) about exterminating prisoners. The point is driven home a thousand ways, most effectively in the knowledgeable analysis of Eisenhower's management style, which allowed subordinates to carry out policy with little paper to back them up. The general who sends military aircraft to pick up oranges for breakfast while prisoners are starving is especially memorable. Even more so is the repeated British refusal to countenance the US policy in principle and detail. Explosive and deeply iconoclastic, this book is sure to enrage many. Refutations without research as painstaking as Bacque's will lack credence.