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Commentary on Allied War Atrocities and Rexist SS General Leon Degrelle
by Abdul Alhazred
After the Reich by Giles MacDonogh (July 2007) studies Allied atrocities during the occupation of Germany and Austria from the closing days of WWII to the Berlin airlift in 1949.
Germany was systematically raped, literally and metaphorically. Torture of prisoners was widespread -- often carried out by Jews in the Allied forces-- especially at the American prison at Schwabisch Hall, where Jews made a routine practice of crushing prisoners’ testicles.
The Red Army raped at least 2 million German women 7 to 80 years old, of which 200,000 later died. The Russians also and looted the Soviet occupation zone of everything of value, from watches to factories. Young German boys were summarily shot when they tried to protect the women in their families. On April 17-18, 1945, French soldiers raped 600 German women in Freudenstadt, and then moved on to Stuttgart where they raped 3,000 more.
16.5 million ethnic Germans were driven from Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, stripped of their possessions, and subjected to atrocities on the way. Hundreds of thousands died. The Potsdam Agreement was the "green light" for the Red Army to ethnically cleanse the eastern German territories. (Also, the Soviets drove millions of Poles from their centuries-old domiciles in eastern Poland. They went to live in the Polish areas the Germans were driven out of. ) This was the largest forcible displacement of civilians in the modern era.
By May 7, 1945 at least 1,800,000 German civilians died, and 3,600,000 homes had been destroyed (20% of total), leaving 7.5 million homeless. 60,000 Germans died of cold in the 1946-47 winter alone.
Meanwhile 1.4 million German POWs were starved to death, and were routinely tortured and used as slave labor. Hundreds of thousands of other Germans were deported to Eastern Europe and the Soviet heartland to work as slave laborers. Many were imprisoned for thirty to fifty years behind the Iron Curtain.
The Americans kept their zones on starvation rations. By the end of 1945, all of Germany was literally starving to death.
All told, 2.25 million German civilians died violent deaths in the period between the Allied “liberation” of Vienna and the Berlin airlift. That was twice as many as died in the war.
Germany was so destroyed by bombs that towns often had few homes remaining, and the occupying forces took over these, especially the best homes. Even those homes that survived were often destroyed, and people lived in holes in the ground, especially orphaned children.
German men were put into all the labor camps the Reich had used for Communists. Unlike the holo-hoax, German prisoners died in throngs. Death marches, starvation, beatings, and outright murder were commonplace.
In the winter of 1944-1945, when word came of advancing Red Armies in Prussia, thousands of Germans committed suicide in mass. Women took their children and drowned themselves in the frozen Spree River. Other Germans hoped they would be safer in cities than in the countryside, where Soviet atrocities would be publicly seen. They were dead wrong.
For a long time, the Germans worried that mentioning their suffering would bring even worse vengeance.
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A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas (May 2006)
More atrocities by the Allies, who incinerated 100,000+ civilians in Dresden, sank German refugee ships in the Baltic with 8000 civilian passengers fleeing the Red advance, and sent planes to machine-gun fleeing German civilians at Dresden and Danzig.
After the war, the Danish Red Cross starved to death 8000 children of German refugee mothers in Aalborg Denmark, because they were German.
In 1932-33 the Soviets starved seven million people to death in Ukraine during Stalin’s collectivization campaign. (Goebbels spoke of this in a speech titled in his speech, “Communism with the Mask Off.” The USA said he was a liar.)
I read the IHR article about Degrelle on your web site again, plus an interview with Degrelle reprinted in the Journal of Military History November 2006.
He says he never held a firearm until age 35, and was the most decorated non-German soldier in WW II. After the war, Belgium sentenced him to death in absentia three times. Died in Spain in 1994, aged 87.
In Belgium in 1940, French troops arrested him as a suspected collaborator, beat him, and imprisoned him in France. The Germans released him. On the eastern front, he entered Ukraine in October 1941 under General Joseph “Sepp” Dietrich.
He says the Soviet Front was where the “real war” was. He talks of the miserable winters and the monotonous steppe. He says the Germans (especially the SS) did not have adequate winter clothing, so they took it from dead Russians. He says Germans received cross-country ski training, but the Russians were better at it. The worst part was fighting guerillas, which were not in uniform, and which followed no discernable tactics.
Sometimes the SS marched all night on foot. Sometimes they drove all night in trucks. Sometimes they linked up with Panzer units of the regular army, whose armor made them feel safer.
Degrelle wrote about Soviet atrocities in his book Campaign in Russia. He says guerillas (“partisans”) were the worst group to be captured by, since they gouged out eyes, hacked off limbs and genitalia, and butchered men front of their comrades during field interrogations. This was confirmed by regular Red Army troops that defected, and by partisans who turned against Stalin. One partisan saw his fellows use a saw to cut off a German’s legs, and saw everyone laugh as the dying German clawed his way around in the snow before dying. Partisans gave Degrelle pictures of Germans that had been crucified alive with their genitals stuffed into their mouths. They killed all German wounded they could, usually by smashing their heads with the butts of their rifles, or with a shovel, or with a bayonet. Degrelle says this is why the Einsatzgruppen became so fierce.
There were many kinds of partisans, ranging from fanatical servants of Stalin (who were the most dangerous, and could not be reasoned with) to peasant conscripts with no choice, to ex-Red Army people who joined the partisans when their units were destroyed. The last type was the easiest to deal with, and some of them defected to the SS.
Partisans moved quickly in pigskin sandals, usually at night, using hit-and-run tactics, planting mines, killing sentries, sniping from trees, etc. They lived and fought like animals, and had underground bunker complexes with medical clinics and weapons manufacturing facilities. Many were murderers and rapists flushed from Russian prison-sewers.
As a Waffen SS man, Degrelle fought with people from other nations. He says the Russians hated Italians even more than they hated Germans (he doesn’t explain why). Partisans tortured and killed every Italian they could, including medics and chaplains.
He says Russian peasants suffered greatly under Stalin, and sometimes an entire village turned out to welcome the arriving Germans. They often helped the Einsatzgruppen root out the Commissars from towns and villages. The Russian Orthodox clergy had suffered under Stalin, and Germans often attended their church services. Russians prayed for an end to their sufferings, and a victory against Stalin. The SS helped peasants bring in their crops, and protected them from partisan reprisals. Sometime the peasants became a second family to the SS, and there was great sadness when the SS left a village.
Degrelle says the Russian and Ukrainian peasants lived a better life under the Germans for three years than they had their entire lives. Peasants also offered intelligence on partisans and Red Army activities, and served as translators and scouts.
He says sometimes the Germans in charge did stupid things that destroyed the support Germany had gained. This was especially unfortunate in Ukraine, where everyone hated Stalin. Armenians and Kalmyks were fanatically anti-Stalin.
He says the Red Army was not disciplined, but was suicidal and determined. They had men and women of all ages and races, from teenagers to the elderly. Degrelle says it was difficult to shoot women and children, but necessary, since they fought just as hard as the Russian men. He became upset, however, when he saw a nine-year-old Red Army boy killed in action. This caused his rage at Stalin and the Communists to triple.
Not all Red Army people were determined. Those who were peasants caught up in the war usually wanted to surrender. (Any Germans who surrendered to Russians were tortured to death.)
Some Germans committed suicide. Many went mad from exhaustion, hunger, fear, cold, and endless brutality. Germans became walking ghosts. Often the only food they had was the rotting carcass of a dead horse they came upon.
The Russians broadcast propaganda in French, asking the Waffen SS to come over and fight for Charles DeGaulle. Degrelle says this was great amusement for his men.
He met Himmler four times, and Hitler several times. Attached to this e-mail is a picture of Hitler in the “Wolf’s Lair” personally decorating Degrelle, February 1944 after the Battle of Cherkassy, Ukraine, where Degrelle was severely wounded. Himmler and Goebbels were there. He says he was never fully comfortable with Himmler as the head of the SS.
He says he escaped the allies by dodging them through Germany, Belgium, and Denmark, briefly meeting with Himmler in Kiel, Germany, and then to Oslo. From Oslo he flew in an HE 111 to Spain, crashed on a beach, getting wounded again, and spent the rest of his life in Spain.
“My own government condemned me to death, but they have not pursued those who murdered my family. Justice is determined by those in power; nothing else.”
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