Other Losses: An Investigation Into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans After World War II

I remember being shocked to see on a town memorial marker that one of my WWII-casualty great-uncles on my German side (my father is Irish, mother from Germany), had actually died in October 1946, a full year and a half after the end of the war. I was then informed this one, Willi Kurz, had starved to death in a camp in France (after surviving years of hellish war), survived by his wife and young daughter.So to suddenly stumble across this book was incredibly saddening & maddening, and to see that children suffered similarly long after the war was supposedly over was even worse. But it is true, and "the truth will out." And it is almost unknown. And it shatters the myth that only the "other" side's government is capable of mass murder. And now, I dislike Ike.

My uncle served in the US Army during WW2. When I was younger, he had told me about the US prison camps that he had seen as a member of an Army Engineering detachment. His stories are, sadly, supported by the book, "Other Losses". Unfortunately, my uncle is now dead, or else, he could give everyone reading this review an eye witness account of the American attrocities perpetrated on the German people after the war had ended. As he had said, "We were supposed to be the Good Guys!"

Americans like to justify themselves by believing in the Hollywood notion that they can simply do no wrong. That is, of course, a self-deception. James Bacque has given a well-documented and superbly supported reason for Americans to ask themselves if they truly know what their military and government did in the so-called "Good War." If you are interested in learning some disturbing facts about the U.S. Army of Occupation in Germany, by all means read "Other Losses."And as for the flak put up by the Establishment's court historians, most notably Stephen Ambrose, consider the words of Dr. Ernest F. Fisher, Jr., former historian at the Center of Military History United States Army, in the book's foreword: "Eisenhower's hatred, passed through the lens of a compliant military bureaucracy, produced the horror of death camps unequaled by anything in American military history. In the face of the catastrophic consequences of this hatred, the casual indifference expressed by the SHAEF officers is the most painful aspect of the U.S. Army's involvement." These words, obviously an expression of regret and not accusation, from a career U.S. Army officer carry far more weight than the pseudo-indignant cries of "Foul!" from an academic at LSU with an agenda to pursue.

James Bacque deals with a topic most historians (especially Eisenhower apologists like Stephen Ambrose) want to avoid. It is the frightening account of how Allied forces, at the end of World War II, systematically used, abused and starved millions of German POWs in what Gen. George Patton described as "Gestapo tactics." As an historian, Army veteran, and grandson of a German army officer during that war, it's high time this story was told. So much is written about German atrocities during the war (Malmedy, Trois Ponts, etc). But little is discussed about such issues as this (another being "Operation Keelhaul"... forced 'repatriation' of Russians who served in the German Army). Bacque's evidence is convincing, thorough, and hard to avoid. Too bad so-called "historians" like Ambrose can't see this for himself. Must reading for any serious student of World War II history.