History Forum / War History / World War II / August 2008

Unfortunately, eye-witnesses are the most unreliable form of evidence. I
might be wrong, of course, in this specific instance, but every time there
is an eye witness account, which is surprising for some reason or another,
and which also has the side effect of putting the teller in a better light
than the most likely version, I have my doubts.

I don't know why, you must have attracted such persons. My father
fought in the Huertgen Forest, and around Wesel. And he said so.

ES

Actually, Americans too were on the lean side in the 1940s. One of the
most remarkable impressions of the recent television docco "The War"
by Ken Burns was the lithe people, young and old, male and female,
black and white. The only tubby ones were the oldest interviewed fifty
years later.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942
new from HarperCollins www.FlyingTigersBook.com

Why is that weird? There still has not been official peace treaties
signed between several previous combantants (most notably, Japan and the
USSR).

Doesn't make it a war.

You're confusing "peace treaties" and "surrender documents". Japan
surrendered to the US (and other allies) in 1945, but no peace treaty
was signed until 1952.

Much else deleted.

Mike

It would be good to decide to be consistent.  The allies are supposed
to be bad for failing to uphold the traditions of a peace agreement when
no agreement had been made, a surrender had been made.

Correct.

Correct.

There had been a surrender of the entire country by the representatives
of its old government.

Under the old rules the allies could annex the whole country if they
wanted it, see the various peace treaties signed by various inhabitants
around the world when they lost to western forces over the past few
hundred years.  See also things like the Brest Litovsk treaty.

See also how long it took for formal peace agreement with Japan.

Why?  The border was open for months after the end of the
fighting, look at all those people who ended up in west
Germany.

Meantime whole nations in the east were basically imprisoned by
Stalin.

If you want the allies to remove Stalin understand the millions of
lives that would cost in the 1945 to 1947 period even assuming
Stalin gives in relatively quickly because of nuclear weapons.

Otherwise known as avoiding the fact the standard required of
the allies regarding human rights was from a 1948 treaty.

Yes you are, go read your own words.

Correct but you want to say legally over and that is wrong.

I like the them and us language.

Actually what the allies received was in effect the right to set up
a new government in Germany.  With the allies having a big say
in what form that government would take.

As the government of the country the allies decided on things
like whether German military taken prisoners would be released
or would be kept as war crimes suspects or would be used as
labour to help repair the mess that was post war Europe.

No we have someone basically pushing things like.

Post War Germany was horrible, that is someone else's fault/crime.

The fact the allies uncovered malnutrition in France in 1944 for
example (and see the Japanese embassy to Vichy send a message
to Tokyo begging home for food in 1941) because Germany
exported food shortages to Europe from September 1939 onwards
is no reason to excuse the food situation in Germany post war, that is
someone else's fault/crime.

The decline in European food production in WWII in areas under
Germany's control and the post war shortages that caused is someone
else's fault/crime.

The fact the world had a real food and shipping shortage post
war is someone else's fault/crime.

Once the war was over we should just agree to let bygones be
bygones and do things like release all the prisoners, that it did not
happen it is someone else's fault/crime.

By the way, given things like Montgomery requesting the entire
UK wheat crop to feed the part of Germany he was trying to
administer, the allies could have really committed genocide,
by leaving Germany in chaos and throwing every German into
the country.  How about the French taking a million or so
horses from Germany to basically replace what the Germans
had taken during the war, and handing all the Germans it had
back to the occupation authorities in Germany?  After all the
1.2 million French soldiers that had been prisoners since 1940
were finally released, and they did work in Germany during the
war by the way, plus about another 900,000 French workers
in Germany.

Another point, there was no peace treaty between Germany and
France after June 1940, but the war between them was as
dead as it could be, French government forces were even taking
occasional shots at the allies.

Rations in Paris were 800 calories in August 1944, it seems
the Germans had been taking 50% of French food production.
In September the allies had that up to 1,210 calories, and
1,515 calories in May 1945.  The average French 14 year old
in 1945 was 7 to 9 Kg and 7 to 11 cm shorter than the 14
year olds on 1935.  The French 1945 crops were hit by a
disastrous frost, a precarious food balance was restored in
1946.

The plentiful food supply in wartime Germany came at a cost to
others, and the bad harvests of 1945 to 1947 combined with the
loss of farmland to war or wartime neglect meant the world was in
a very precarious food situation.

The Germans were without a government in mid 1945.  The allies
supplied a new one.  That government had its rights.

They had come to the conclusion asking Germany to pay for the
war was not going to work.  So they went with the idea, given
the need to help Europe recover, the risk of rebellion, the mess
inside Germany and the massive wealth transfer from the rest of
Europe to Germany during the war that some of the German military
prisoners would be used as a work force for a time post war.

The new German government thought otherwise.  As did the old
one when it comes to things like the prisoners taken in 1940.

Gone to the barricades to condemn the German government for
holding all those French prisoners from 1940 onwards?  And
all those Germans who thought it was the right thing to do and
who benefited from it?

I like the idea of using humans, as opposed to the work they do,
thereby implying slaves.

Actually your government has certain rights when it comes to directing
its citizens.  Guess what the government of Germany was?

I note a very personal definition of hardball.  And note if you
want hardball talk to Stalin or the Nazis.

Congratulations on noticing that, things like the way the medical
profession was so Nazi things had to be altered because otherwise
Germany had a real doctor shortage.  This clashed with the need
to expunge Nazis from the system.

Yes here we go again, the decision that the truth bearer has arrived
but the unwashed are not going to listen.  As opposed to someone
living in much ignorance except when it comes to them and their
friends and with a firm idea they have been offended and others
should be punished or shamed.

I note the lack of explanation of the remark

And there is a wide diversion of Christians, from the eye for an eye
groupings (want to see several million Germans killed to square the
extermination program accounts?) to the forgive and forget groupings.
The latter is obviously preferred at least when it comes to what
Germany did in WWII but amazingly the former is preferred when
it comes to what happened to Germany post war.

So perhaps it can be shown where the western allies had absolute
power in Germany post war?  Not the preferred perceptions of
Germans shocked at being treated as second class citizens (and
apparently ignorant that such treatment was about the best you could
expect from the Nazis) but rather the lack of laws and rules governing
the occupation.

There are a large number of examples of people incapable of knowing
right from wrong, there are a larger number of examples of people
doing what they are told even though they should know it is wrong.

Do you really understand the problems of releasing all the prisoners
at once?  For a start want to note the huge number of Wehrmacht
wounded in the military hospital system.  How about the number
of SS men?

And what sounds wonderful, the release of the prisoners or the ability
to keep the wealth taken to Germany in WWII without any post war
payment?

I note what follows is another poor German victims story.  Nothing
about the European food situation.

In March 1945 the US Army in Europe cut rations to its non combat
personnel in Europe by 10%, after the end of the war the combat troops
followed.

On 3rd May 1945 the US War department warned all theatres
that food reserves in the US were becoming depleted, fresh and
canned meat, canned fruits and vegetables, dehydrated
potatoes, rice, dried yeast and spice were the critical items.
Meats were to be replaced by egg products, pasta, beans
and stews.

It seems the prisoners (as a group) lost 10 to 12 pounds and much
of that was fat put on during captivity.

You know of  Antwerp's Belgian workers going on strike over food
rations in January 1945?

How about the 6.5 million long tons of food the western allies
shipped to Europe September 1943 to September 1945 as civil
relief.

Then they added much of Asia to their responsibilities.  Famine in
Indo-China (want to go there in 1945?, 700,000 to 2 million
deaths), imminent famines in Japan and Malaya.

Seen the post war cuts in British civilian rations?  Seen how
rationing in Australia lasted into the late 1940's?

http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/homefront/rationing.asp

Given rationing continued in Britain even longer what help did
Germany give the British in the late 1940's and early 1950's?

References on request.

So he was able to survive and go through what so many others
had gone through during the war and post war.

The world had a major shipping shortage in 1945, before September
it was the needs of the invasion of Japan and the mess in Europe.
After that it was the general world wide mess and the need to
demobilise.  Seen merchant Shipping and the Demands of War by
Behrens?  It also covers the wartime food shortages and famines
in the countries around the Indian and Mediterranean Oceans.

Understand the world was running out of food in 1945, a prolonged
war would have seen famines.  The lack of food reserves meant
misery was going to continue for years.

The number of German prisoners in the US peaked at about 371,000
in May and June 1945, shipments back to Europe began in earnest in
November 1945, (there were still 351,000 prisoners in October),
by June 1946 there were 146 German prisoners in the US who were
in hospital or had escaped.

By the way start the outrage going again.  The number of Italian prisoners
in the US was about its peak value of around 50 to 51,000 until mid 1945,
still at 49,000 in August before shipments really began in September.

Meantime total German prisoners in allied custody in Europe peaked
at around 8.7 million in the third quarter of 1945, and was down to 4.2
million in the first quarter of 1946.   By the start of 1947 it was 2.4
million of which the USSR had 1 million (Down from 2 million in 1945).
By the start of 1948 the total was 1.3 million of which the USSR held
760,000, by the end of 1948 it was only the USSR holding Germans.

Of the prisoners in US custody 700,000 were transferred to France,
40,000 to Belgium, 10,000 to Holland, 7,000 to Luxembourg, 175,000
to Britain, and 50,000 to various European countries.

Yes I thought it was personal.  Fortified by a lack of understanding
of the situation.

Note you as a German received good food during the war by the
actions of your government to cause malnutrition at the very least
elsewhere in Europe.   (Been to Norway to note the 100% take
of the Norwegian fish catch?) You as a German benefited from the
major transfer of wealth from Europe to Germany during the war,
it was on a scale so large it could not be repaid.  Your adult relations
as Germans helped shield a government that committed genocide
on a massive scale and kept fighting for a long time after it was
obvious the war was lost with all that means to being able to restore
normal life and food supplies.  Your government decided in 1945 to
take food stocks and turn them into fuel (alcohol mainly).

You then received a mild version of the treatment your government
handed out during the war.  Part of that was "revenge", part shock
(they must be inhuman to have allowed those crimes) and part (in
the west most) was the reality of a war that wrecked continents and
the problems of putting things back together again.

Yes Germany was pounded, but the war in the east did more damage
to the countryside of the USSR and Poland compared with what the
allied bombings did to Germany as well as the fighting on German soil.
And lots of the damage to Germany in the east was Germans committing
scorched earth.

In 1945 millions were going to go without, some were going to die,
most of the latter were in the east of Europe and Asia.  The wartime
effect on the 1945 harvests, the poor to average 1946 and 1947
harvests meant prolonged misery for millions in the west as well
as the 20th century's "usual" places.  There are millions of people
alive today living close to the edge in food terms and have been
for years so if what happened to the food situation in Germany in the
1945 to 1947 period is so criminal I suggest you start prosecutions
now for the current situation.  Say after a multi course meal like the
G8 had when discussing the food situation.

This is presumably double counting the arrivals in Germany and the
arrivals in West Germany.  The Oxford companion puts the post war
movements of Germans at about 10 million.

Furthermore innocent ignores those who helped expel the Poles
and Czechs from the areas that were proclaimed German.  Or
lived high and arrogantly as the master race amidst the official inferiors.

The majority of the German refugees were innocents in the sense
they had not directly done any crimes, they were being treated the
way their government had treated the non German populations in
the east.

How many Germans protested that treatment when it was in their
favour?  I know the answer is very few as they were real human
beings and I do not expect any other population to do any better.

Yes the truth bringer is sure the unwashed cannot handle it.

And it seems have hysteria in return.

Actually people do want history, but these personal victimhood claims
are not a good way to do history especially when it is clear how much
ignorance goes into the conclusions.

Actually history.

Postwar much of the world was a catastrophe.  For the first time in
a while Europe had to cope with a food shortage, yet unlike Japan or
Asia Germany had no starvation deaths.  Note some western allied
PoWs did die of starvation in German custody in 1945.

Stick around for a while given the world food imbalance, people
even in the west might gain a taste of a food shortage soon, by the
way there is a proto famine in Ethiopia at the moment.  I trust you
are not using biofuels derived from edible food or animal feed stocks.

The figures I have seen are around 1.5 million out of 10 million
refugees and they largely died in the areas under Stalin's control.

The death rate in west Germany was around 12.3 per thousand
population in 1946, by 1948 it was 10.3.  Meantime in East Germany
it was 22.0 in 1945, 19 in 1946, 15.2 in 1948, 13.4 in 1949 and
11.7 in 1950.

Basically given Germany's population about there were about 750,000
deaths in 1948.  You know, just about the normal death rate for a
western country.

We are trying to but your failure to actually learn anything beyond I
am a victim and the other word for German is victim makes it rather
hard.

By the way, I went through the various yearbooks from the period to
obtain basic production data and views of the situation as one part
of checking out the situation.  In addition the Japanese had made an
even bigger mess of Asian food production than the Germans did of
European.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

Nor in the East.

But there was no peace treaty. If that is weird, it is

The problem is that you demanded a "peace settlement", before, which is
different from a "peace treaty". It is weird that a document was signed in
1990; It would be weird to claim that that was the peace treaty. And it
would be weirder yet to claim that no peace existed 1945-1990. So the claim
that no reparations could be exacted and paid before 1990 remains weird. You
might have noticed nobody supports such a claim, and you yourself are unsure
that it could be put forth.

And one should recall the less than peaceful Iron Curtain

Irrelevant internal business of the countries involved.

And to save face. I'll conclude you have had to take the point you cut out:
the existence of a lofty theoretical ideal does not imply binding
committment by anybody.

1. I got nothing, I wasn't born yet. Don't make the mistake that everybody
identifies himself with one of the parties to the conflict. Somebody does
that, here, but it's not me.
2. The issue is simple. If a peace treaty is indispensable for paying
reparations, which is what you claimed (though "not surely"), then it is
also indispensable for POW repatriations. If POWs could be repatriated
before 1990, then war reparations could also be paid before 1990. As already
pointed out to you, you can't have both.

Only following you there. You were the one demanding a formal treaty with a
new indigenous German government in order to make reparations possible. So I
showed you the logical consequences of such a lawyerly reasoning, which you
started, not me.

See above. You have not come out of the contradiction of your contrasting
claims.

Pray tell why not? The idea that a government cannot do whatever it wants
with its own citizens is very recent, if you study the history of the last
few decades. Even in the case at hand, i.e. what the German government had
done to its own citizens, the Allies at Nuremberg, the case made was that
the absolute powers of the German government at the time had come into being
illegally (see Count One of the Indictment). The idea that even a
democratically elected government's powers are not unlimited with regard to
its own citizens' rights has come to the light later than 1945.
And the Allied Military Government, unlike the previous German government,
had achieved its own absolute powers legally. The previous German government
had accepted to acknowledge them.
So yes, it could change the status of POWs into that of former German
servicemen detained under the authority of the Allied Military Government.
It was not an elegant move, but you will not find an internal German law or
an international convention forbidding that.

If you study the *history* of

Or maybe the fact is that, since as you stated these are _postwar_ years,
people interested in the history of _WWII_ understandably are not
interested?

But you chose not to try and explain it better. OK with me.

If it were true that the absolute power corrupted the Allied Military
Government, then it would still be in power. On the contrary, a sizable part
of Germany was again ruled by a free, democratically elected, non-foreign
government, in a matter of a very short time. And even the other part now
is.

But

Oh no, I won't tell you that. That follower of Mohammed is perfectly sure he
knows what is right: stoning to death the adulteress. Or... are you going to
tell him he's wrong? Or that he's uncapable of knowing what's right and
what's wrong?

Do you mean there was public disorder in Germany? Crowds of hungry, jobless,
homeless ex-POWs wandering the streets and looking for food in whatever way
it took to find it?

Yes, I guess, the same sort of references that compare legitimate wartime
operations to genocide.

Interestingly, you have the usual problem: I mentioned dietary problems _in
the whole of Europe_, much of which caused by the scorched Earth tactics and
ruthless pillaging used by the Germans - and you only notice the dietary
problems of those poor Germans. Since this topic has been discussed ad
abundantiam, I refer anybody else reading this to previous threads, which
amply showed how the Allies had problems feeding people in Norway or Holland
or Greece or even France, too.

In any case, even focusing only on those poor Germans. So they were lean.
Adding a few hundred thousands hungry, jobless, homeless POWs improves the
situation exactly how? You are once again helping me to make my point. Thank
you.

Interestingly, when it was Germany to win a war, it was as natural as water
that the losers paid reparations and lost territory. But when the contrary
happened, oh! What a monstrous vengeance!

With their own government to blame, but this detail somehow never ever makes
it into your posts. There were many more million innocents all over Europe
in other devastated countries, and the government to blame was once again
the same, the German one. But this detail somehow never ever makes it into
your posts.

To get a

This of course includes the inflated claims concerning the refugee problems
in Poland. But even taking it at face value, can I remind you that your
suggestion would have been to add to the mix a few hundred thousand hungry,
jobless, homeless POWs? This is going to improve the situation exactly how?
You are once again making my point, as above. Thank you.

In general, the complaint we hear can be compared to that of a boy who
burned down his own house while playing with fire. When night and rain
comes, and he has been punished by his parents, what he does is to complain
that his parents have been harsh on him and that they aren't providing him
with shelter from the cold. Unfortunately, his parents' resources aren't
unlimited, they cannot build a new house in an hour. Especially if the boy
has somehow alienated the neighbours by doing the same to their houses too.

It would be good to decide to be consistent.  The allies are supposed
to be bad for failing to uphold the traditions of a peace agreement when
no agreement had been made, a surrender had been made.

Correct.

Correct.

There had been a surrender of the entire country by the representatives
of its old government.

Under the old rules the allies could annex the whole country if they
wanted it, see the various peace treaties signed by various inhabitants
around the world when they lost to western forces over the past few
hundred years.  See also things like the Brest Litovsk treaty.

See also how long it took for formal peace agreement with Japan.

Why?  The border was open for months after the end of the
fighting, look at all those people who ended up in west
Germany.

Meantime whole nations in the east were basically imprisoned by
Stalin.

If you want the allies to remove Stalin understand the millions of
lives that would cost in the 1945 to 1947 period even assuming
Stalin gives in relatively quickly because of nuclear weapons.

Otherwise known as avoiding the fact the standard required of
the allies regarding human rights was from a 1948 treaty.

Yes you are, go read your own words.

Correct but you want to say legally over and that is wrong.

I like the them and us language.

Actually what the allies received was in effect the right to set up
a new government in Germany.  With the allies having a big say
in what form that government would take.

As the government of the country the allies decided on things
like whether German military taken prisoners would be released
or would be kept as war crimes suspects or would be used as
labour to help repair the mess that was post war Europe.

No we have someone basically pushing things like.

Post War Germany was horrible, that is someone else's fault/crime.

The fact the allies uncovered malnutrition in France in 1944 for
example (and see the Japanese embassy to Vichy send a message
to Tokyo begging home for food in 1941) because Germany
exported food shortages to Europe from September 1939 onwards
is no reason to excuse the food situation in Germany post war, that is
someone else's fault/crime.

The decline in European food production in WWII in areas under
Germany's control and the post war shortages that caused is someone
else's fault/crime.

The fact the world had a real food and shipping shortage post
war is someone else's fault/crime.

Once the war was over we should just agree to let bygones be
bygones and do things like release all the prisoners, that it did not
happen it is someone else's fault/crime.

By the way, given things like Montgomery requesting the entire
UK wheat crop to feed the part of Germany he was trying to
administer, the allies could have really committed genocide,
by leaving Germany in chaos and throwing every German into
the country.  How about the French taking a million or so
horses from Germany to basically replace what the Germans
had taken during the war, and handing all the Germans it had
back to the occupation authorities in Germany?  After all the
1.2 million French soldiers that had been prisoners since 1940
were finally released, and they did work in Germany during the
war by the way, plus about another 900,000 French workers
in Germany.

Another point, there was no peace treaty between Germany and
France after June 1940, but the war between them was as
dead as it could be, French government forces were even taking
occasional shots at the allies.

Rations in Paris were 800 calories in August 1944, it seems
the Germans had been taking 50% of French food production.
In September the allies had that up to 1,210 calories, and
1,515 calories in May 1945.  The average French 14 year old
in 1945 was 7 to 9 Kg and 7 to 11 cm shorter than the 14
year olds on 1935.  The French 1945 crops were hit by a
disastrous frost, a precarious food balance was restored in
1946.

The plentiful food supply in wartime Germany came at a cost to
others, and the bad harvests of 1945 to 1947 combined with the
loss of farmland to war or wartime neglect meant the world was in
a very precarious food situation.

The Germans were without a government in mid 1945.  The allies
supplied a new one.  That government had its rights.

They had come to the conclusion asking Germany to pay for the
war was not going to work.  So they went with the idea, given
the need to help Europe recover, the risk of rebellion, the mess
inside Germany and the massive wealth transfer from the rest of
Europe to Germany during the war that some of the German military
prisoners would be used as a work force for a time post war.

The new German government thought otherwise.  As did the old
one when it comes to things like the prisoners taken in 1940.

Gone to the barricades to condemn the German government for
holding all those French prisoners from 1940 onwards?  And
all those Germans who thought it was the right thing to do and
who benefited from it?

I like the idea of using humans, as opposed to the work they do,
thereby implying slaves.

Actually your government has certain rights when it comes to directing
its citizens.  Guess what the government of Germany was?

I note a very personal definition of hardball.  And note if you
want hardball talk to Stalin or the Nazis.

Congratulations on noticing that, things like the way the medical
profession was so Nazi things had to be altered because otherwise
Germany had a real doctor shortage.  This clashed with the need
to expunge Nazis from the system.

Yes here we go again, the decision that the truth bearer has arrived
but the unwashed are not going to listen.  As opposed to someone
living in much ignorance except when it comes to them and their
friends and with a firm idea they have been offended and others
should be punished or shamed.

I note the lack of explanation of the remark

And there is a wide diversion of Christians, from the eye for an eye
groupings (want to see several million Germans killed to square the
extermination program accounts?) to the forgive and forget groupings.
The latter is obviously preferred at least when it comes to what
Germany did in WWII but amazingly the former is preferred when
it comes to what happened to Germany post war.

So perhaps it can be shown where the western allies had absolute
power in Germany post war?  Not the preferred perceptions of
Germans shocked at being treated as second class citizens (and
apparently ignorant that such treatment was about the best you could
expect from the Nazis) but rather the lack of laws and rules governing
the occupation.

There are a large number of examples of people incapable of knowing
right from wrong, there are a larger number of examples of people
doing what they are told even though they should know it is wrong.

Do you really understand the problems of releasing all the prisoners
at once?  For a start want to note the huge number of Wehrmacht
wounded in the military hospital system.  How about the number
of SS men?

And what sounds wonderful, the release of the prisoners or the ability
to keep the wealth taken to Germany in WWII without any post war
payment?

I note what follows is another poor German victims story.  Nothing
about the European food situation.

In March 1945 the US Army in Europe cut rations to its non combat
personnel in Europe by 10%, after the end of the war the combat troops
followed.

On 3rd May 1945 the US War department warned all theatres
that food reserves in the US were becoming depleted, fresh and
canned meat, canned fruits and vegetables, dehydrated
potatoes, rice, dried yeast and spice were the critical items.
Meats were to be replaced by egg products, pasta, beans
and stews.

It seems the prisoners (as a group) lost 10 to 12 pounds and much
of that was fat put on during captivity.

You know of  Antwerp's Belgian workers going on strike over food
rations in January 1945?

How about the 6.5 million long tons of food the western allies
shipped to Europe September 1943 to September 1945 as civil
relief.

Then they added much of Asia to their responsibilities.  Famine in
Indo-China (want to go there in 1945?, 700,000 to 2 million
deaths), imminent famines in Japan and Malaya.

Seen the post war cuts in British civilian rations?  Seen how
rationing in Australia lasted into the late 1940's?

http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/homefront/rationing.asp

Given rationing continued in Britain even longer what help did
Germany give the British in the late 1940's and early 1950's?

References on request.

So he was able to survive and go through what so many others
had gone through during the war and post war.

The world had a major shipping shortage in 1945, before September
it was the needs of the invasion of Japan and the mess in Europe.
After that it was the general world wide mess and the need to
demobilise.  Seen merchant Shipping and the Demands of War by
Behrens?  It also covers the wartime food shortages and famines
in the countries around the Indian and Mediterranean Oceans.

Understand the world was running out of food in 1945, a prolonged
war would have seen famines.  The lack of food reserves meant
misery was going to continue for years.

The number of German prisoners in the US peaked at about 371,000
in May and June 1945, shipments back to Europe began in earnest in
November 1945, (there were still 351,000 prisoners in October),
by June 1946 there were 146 German prisoners in the US who were
in hospital or had escaped.

By the way start the outrage going again.  The number of Italian prisoners
in the US was about its peak value of around 50 to 51,000 until mid 1945,
still at 49,000 in August before shipments really began in September.

Meantime total German prisoners in allied custody in Europe peaked
at around 8.7 million in the third quarter of 1945, and was down to 4.2
million in the first quarter of 1946.   By the start of 1947 it was 2.4
million of which the USSR had 1 million (Down from 2 million in 1945).
By the start of 1948 the total was 1.3 million of which the USSR held
760,000, by the end of 1948 it was only the USSR holding Germans.

Of the prisoners in US custody 700,000 were transferred to France,
40,000 to Belgium, 10,000 to Holland, 7,000 to Luxembourg, 175,000
to Britain, and 50,000 to various European countries.

Yes I thought it was personal.  Fortified by a lack of understanding
of the situation.

Note you as a German received good food during the war by the
actions of your government to cause malnutrition at the very least
elsewhere in Europe.   (Been to Norway to note the 100% take
of the Norwegian fish catch?) You as a German benefited from the
major transfer of wealth from Europe to Germany during the war,
it was on a scale so large it could not be repaid.  Your adult relations
as Germans helped shield a government that committed genocide
on a massive scale an