Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Dark Records"
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@0815Catgus Firstly, when the Mauretanias were constructed, they were fitted with strong points for installation of six inch guns, for use as Armed Merchant Cruisers. However such weapons were not fitted, as smaller and medium sized liners were so converted instead.
Lusitania carried small arms ammunition, authorised by US customs, and was in a war zone only after Germany had declared a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare earlier in 1915.
Neither fact, of course, is relevant to your original, odd, comment.
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'Verified?' Nothing of the sort. The whole nonsense is based on a book, 'Other Losses' written by a journalist in 1989. His claims were investigated by a Panel from the University of New Orleans in December, 1990.
The panel commented that, among its many problems, Other Losses:
misuses documents
misreads documents
ignores contrary evidence
employs a statistical methodology that is hopelessly compromised
made no attempt to see the evidence he has gathered in relation to the broader situation
made no attempt to perform any comparative context
puts words into the mouths of the subjects of his oral history
ignores a readily available and absolutely critical source that decisively dealt with his central accusation
As a consequence of those and other shortcomings, the book "makes charges that are demonstrably absurd."
Panel member Stephen Ambrose later wrote in the New York Times:
Mr Bacque is wrong on every major charge and nearly all his minor ones. Eisenhower was not a Hitler, he did not run death camps, German prisoners did not die by the hundreds of thousands, there was a severe food shortage in 1945, there was nothing sinister or secret about the "disarmed enemy forces" designation or about the column "other losses."
Mr Bacque's "missing million" were old men and young boys in the Volkssturm (People's Militia) released without formal discharge and transfers of POWs to other allies control areas. Maj. Ruediger Overmans of the German Office of Military History in Freiburg who wrote the final volume of the official German history of the war estimated that the total death by all causes of German prisoners in American hands could not have been greater than 56,000 approximately 1% of the over 5,000,000 German POWs in Allied hands exclusive of the Soviets. Eisenhower's calculations as to how many people he would be required to feed in occupied Germany in 1945-46 were too low and he had been asking for more food shipments since February 1945. He had badly underestimated the number of German soldiers surrendering to the Western Allies; more than five million, instead of the anticipated three million as German soldiers crossed the Elbe River to escape the Russians. So too with German civilians—about 13 million altogether crossing the Elbe to escape the Russians, and the number of slave labourers and displaced persons liberated was almost 8 million instead of the 5 million expected. In short, Eisenhower faced shortages even before he learned that there were at least 17 million more people to feed in Germany than he had expected not to mention all of the other countries in war-ravaged Europe, the Philippines, Okinawa and Japan. All Europe went on rations for the next three years, including Britain, until the food crisis was over.
Historians Gunter Bischof and Brian Loring Villa stated that a research report from the panel "soundly refuted the charges of Other Losses, especially Bacque's fanciful handling of statistics." The historians further stated:
It is not necessary to review here Bacque's extravagant statistical claims which are the heart of his conspiracy theory. The eight scholars who gathered in New Orleans and contributed to Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against Falsehood (1992) refuted Bacque's wily misinterpretations of statistics and oral history evidence in detail.
Numerous reviews of the book written by the top talent in the military history profession such as John Keegan and Russel Weigley were persuaded by the findings of the book. These findings have since been further solidified by detailed case studies on individual American POW camps in Germany hastily built at the end of the war, like Christof Strauss's exhaustive Heidelberg dissertation on the POW and internment in the Heilbronn camp. The mountain of evidence has been building that Bacque's charge of the "missing million" supposedly perishing in the American (and French) POW camps in Germany and France is based on completely faulty interpretation of statistical data.
There was never any serious disagreement that the German POWs were treated badly by the U.S. Army and suffered egregiously in these camps in the first weeks after the end of the war. That the chaos of the war's end would also produce potentially mismatches and errors in record keeping should surprise no one either. But there was NO AMERICAN POLICY to starve them to death as Bacque asserts and NO COVER UP either after the war. No question about it, there were individual American camp guards who took revenge on German POWs based on their hatred of the Nazis.
Of course, you won't believe any of this, I assume?
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Gustloff was an armed naval auxiliary, carrying troops and U-boats crews, as well as refugees herded aboard at the last minute. She was, whatever, the result, a legitimate target.
The fault lies with the German authorities who chose to put civilians aboard a warship. The Soviet captain, whether drunk or sober, was doing his duty, just as, in similar circumstances, would have a British, US, or German captain.
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@Curlyblonde Not actually true, mon brave. There have indeed been numerous expeditions to the wreck of Lusitania. Certainly, small arms ammunitions has been found, but that was legal at the time, and listed on the manifest accepted by New York customs. Indeed, nothing has been found in the wreck which was not manifested.
Even the current owner of the wreck (reluctantly) admitted that after the most recent expedition.
The simple fact is that Germany had introduced a policy of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. The fallout from the sinking, in Allied, Neutral, & even Germany and German supporting states, was immense, and the German government promptly ordered that the policy be abandoned.
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The difference being that it really didn't matter to the Germans what Lusitania was or was not carrying, as they had already declared unrestricted submarine warfare. The 'fuss' as you call it, was because no one at the time, whether American, French, British, or in most cases German, really believed that any of the warring states would sink one of the great liners.
Gustloff, by the way, was carrying troops and U-boat crews, as well as refugees herded aboard by the German authorities. As an armed naval auxiliary, she was a legitimate target.
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