Jew used American army to murderder 1.7 million Germans

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From http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v10/v10p161_Brech.html

In 'Eisenhower's Death Camps': A U.S. Prison Guard Remembers
Martin Brech
In October 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the U.S. army.
Largely because of the "Battle of the Bulge," my training was cut short, my
furlough was halved, and I was sent overseas immediately. Upon arrival in Le
Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into box cars and shipped to the
front. When we got there, I was suffering increasingly severe symptoms of
mononucleosis, and was sent to a hospital in Belgium. Since mononucleosis
was then known as the "kissing disease," I mailed a letter of thanks to my
girlfriend.
By the time I left the hospital, the outfit I had trained with in
Spartanburg, South Carolina, was deep inside Germany, so, despite my
protests, I was placed in a "repo depot" (replacement depot). I lost
interest in the units to which I was assigned, and don't recall all of them:
non-combat units were ridiculed at that time. My separation qualification
record states I was mostly with Company C, 14th Infantry Regiment, during my
seventeen-month stay in Germany, but I remember being transferred to other
outfits also.

In late March or early April 1945, I was sent to guard a POW camp near
Andernach along the Rhine. I had four years of high school German, so I was
able to talk to the prisoners, although this was forbidden. Gradually,
however, I was used as an interpreter and asked to ferret out members of the
S.S. (I found none.)

In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open field
surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure that
I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets.
Many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit
trenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring, and their misery from
exposure alone was evident.

Even more shocking was to see the prisoners throwing grass and weeds into
a tin can containing a thin soup. They told me they did this to help ease
their hunger pains. Quickly they grew emaciated. Dysentery raged, and soon
they were sleeping in their own excrement, too weak and crowded to reach the
slit trenches. Many were begging for food, sickening and dying before our
eyes. We had ample food and supplies, but did nothing to help them,
including no medical assistance.

Outraged, I protested to my officers and was met with hostility or bland
indifference. When pressed, they explained they were under strict orders
from "higher up." No officer would dare do this to 50,000 men if he felt
that it was "out of line," leaving him open to charges. Realizing my
protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could
slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too said they were under
strict orders to severely ration the prisoners' food, and that these orders
came from "higher up." But he said they had more food than they knew what to
do with, and would sneak me some.

When I threw this food over the barbed wire to the prisoners, I was caught
and threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the "offense," and one officer
angrily threatened to shoot me. I assumed this was a bluff until I
encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of
German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, "Why?," he
mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty. I saw the
women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any had
been hit.

This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded killers filled
with moralistic hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of
extermination; another expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articles
in the G.I. newspaper, Stars and Stripes, played up the German concentration
camps, complete with photos of emaciated bodies. This amplified our
self-righteous cruelty, and made it easier to imitate behavior we were
supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were
trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and
civilians.

These prisoners, I found out, were mostly farmers and workingmen, as
simple and ignorant as many of our own troops. As time went on, more of them
lapsed into a zombie-like state of listlessness, while others tried to
escape in a demented or suicidal fashion, running through open fields in
broad daylight towards the Rhine to quench their thirst. They were mowed
down.

Some prisoners were as eager for cigarettes as for food, saying they took
the edge off their hunger. Accordingly, enterprising G.I. "Yankee traders"
were acquiring hordes of watches and rings in exchange for handfuls of
cigarettes or less. When I began throwing cartons of cigarettes to the
prisoners to ruin this trade, I was threatened by rank-and-file G.I.s too.

The only bright spot in this gloomy picture came one night when. I was put
on the "graveyard shift," from two to four a.m. Actually, there was a
graveyard on the uphill side of this enclosure, not many yards away. My
superiors had forgotten to give me a flashlight and I hadn't bothered to ask
for one, disgusted as I was with the whole situation by that time. It was a
fairly bright night and I soon became aware of a prisoner crawling under the
wires towards the graveyard. We were supposed to shoot escapees on sight, so
I started to get up from the ground to warn him to get back. Suddenly I
noticed another prisoner crawling from the graveyard back to the enclosure.
They were risking their lives to get to the graveyard for something. I had
to investigate.

When I entered the gloom of this shrubby, tree-shaded cemetery, I felt
completely vulnerable, but somehow curiosity kept me moving. Despite my
caution, I tripped over the legs of someone in a prone position. Whipping my
rifle around while stumbling and trying to regain composure of mind and
body, I soon was relieved I hadn't reflexively fired. The figure sat up.
Gradually, I could see the beautiful but terror-stricken face of a woman
with a picnic basket nearby. German civilians were not allowed to feed, nor
even come near the prisoners, so I quickly assured her I approved of what
she was doing, not to be afraid, and that I would leave the graveyard to get
out of the way.

I did so immediately and sat down, leaning against a tree at the edge of
the cemetery to be inconspicuous and not frighten the prisoners. I imagined
then, and still do now, what it would be like to meet a beautiful woman with
a picnic basket under those conditions as a prisoner. I have never forgotten
her face.

Eventually, more prisoners crawled back to the enclosure. I saw they were
dragging food to their comrades, and could only admire their courage and
devotion.

On May 8, V.E. Day [1945], I decided to celebrate with some prisoners I
was guarding who were baking bread the other prisoners occasionally
received. This group had all the bread they could eat, and shared the jovial
mood generated by the end of the war. We all thought we were going home
soon, a pathetic hope on their part. We were in what was to become the
French zone [of occupation], where I soon would witness the brutality of the
French soldiers when we transferred our prisoners to them for their slave
labor camps.

On this day, however, we were happy.

As a gesture of friendliness, I emptied my rifle and stood it in the
corner, even allowing them to play with it at their request. This thoroughly
"broke the ice," and soon we were singing songs we taught each other, or
that I had learned in high school German class ("Du, du, liegst mir im
Herzen"). Out of gratitude, they baked me a special small loaf of sweet
bread, the only possible present they had left to offer. I stuffed it in my
"Eisenhower jacket," and snuck it back to my barracks, eating it when I had
privacy. I have never tasted more delicious bread, nor felt a deeper sense
of communion while eating it. I believe a cosmic sense of Christ (the
Oneness of all Being) revealed its normally hidden presence to me on that
occasion, influencing my later decision to major in philosophy and religion.

Shortly afterwards, some of our weak and sickly prisoners were marched off
by French soldiers to their camp. We were riding on a truck behind this
column. Temporarily, it slowed down and dropped back, perhaps because the
driver was as shocked as I was. Whenever a German prisoner staggered or
dropped back, he was hit on the head with a club and killed. The bodies were
rolled to the side of the road to be picked up by another truck. For many,
this quick death might have been preferable to slow starvation in our
"killing fields."

When I finally saw the German women held in a separate enclosure, I asked
why we were holding them prisoner. I was told they were "camp followers,"
selected as breeding stock for the S.S. to create a super-race. I spoke to
some, and must say I never met a more spirited or attractive group of women.
I certainly didn't think they deserved imprisonment.

More and more I was used as an interpreter, and was able to prevent some
particularly unfortunate arrests. One somewhat amusing incident involved an
old farmer who was being dragged away by several M.P.s. I was told he had a
"fancy Nazi medal," which they showed me. Fortunately, I had a chart
identifying such medals. He'd been awarded it for having five children!
Perhaps his wife was somewhat relieved to get him "off her back, "but I
didn't think one of our death camps was a fair punishment for his
contribution to Germany. The M.P.s agreed and released him to continue his
"dirty work."

Famine began to spread among the German civilians also. It was a common
sight to see German women up to their elbows in our garbage cans looking for
something edible -- that is, if they weren't chased away.

When I interviewed mayors of small towns and villages, I was told that
their supply of food had been taken away by "displaced persons" (foreigners
who had worked in Germany), who packed the food on trucks and drove away.
When I reported this, the response was a shrug. I never saw any Red Cross at
the camp or helping civilians, although their coffee and doughnut stands
were available everywhere else for us. In the meantime, the Germans had to
rely on the sharing of hidden stores until the next harvest.

Hunger made German women more "available," but despite this, rape was
prevalent and often accompanied by additional violence. In particular I
remember an eighteen-year old woman who had the side of her faced smashed
with a rifle butt, and was then raped by two G.I.s. Even the French
complained that the rapes, looting and drunken destructiveness on the part
of our troops was excessive. In Le Havre, we'd been given booklets warning
us that the German soldiers had maintained a high standard of behavior with
French civilians who were peaceful, and that we should do the same. In this
we failed miserably.

"So what?" some would say. "The enemy's atrocities were worse than ours."
It is true that I experienced only the end of the war, when we were already
the victors. The German opportunity for atrocities had faded, while ours was
at hand. But two wrongs don't make a right. Rather than copying our enemy's
crimes, we should aim once and for all to break the cycle of hatred and
vengeance that has plagued and distorted human history. This is why I am
speaking out now, 45 years after the crime. We can never prevent individual
war crimes, but we can, if enough of us speak out, influence government
policy. We can reject government propaganda that depicts our enemies as
subhuman and encourages the kind of outrages I witnessed. We can protest the
bombing of civilian targets, which still goes on today. And we can refuse
ever to condone our government's murder of unarmed and defeated prisoners of
war.

I realize it's difficult for the average citizen to admit witnessing a
crime of this magnitude, especially if implicated himself. Even G.I.s
sympathetic to the victims were afraid to complain and get into trouble,
they told me. And the danger has not ceased. Since I spoke out a few weeks
ago, I have received threatening calls and had my mailbox smashed. But its
been worth it. Writing about these atrocities has been a catharsis of
feelings suppressed too long, a liberation, that perhaps will remind other
witnesses that "the truth will make us free, have no fear." We may even
learn a supreme lesson from all this: only love can conquer all.


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Martin Brech lives in Mahopac, New York. When he wrote this memoir essay
in 1990, he was an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Mercy
College in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Brech holds a master's degree in theology
from Columbia University, and is a Unitarian-Universalist minister.

This essay was published in The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1990
(Vol. 10, No. 2), pp. 161-166. (Revised, updated: Nov. 2008)



For Further Reading:-
James Bacque ,Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under
Allied Occupation, 1944-1950, Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1997)

James Bacque, Other Losses: An investigation into the mass deaths of
German prisoners at the hands of the French and Americans after World War II
(Toronto: Stoddart, 1989)

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, NEMESIS AT POTSDAM: The Anglo-Americans and the
Expulsion of the Germans (Lincoln, Neb.: 1990)

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge, Second Edition, Fully Revised
and Updated: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994)

John Dietrich, The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar
Policy (New York: Algora, 2002)

Ralph Franklin Keeling, Gruesome Harvest - The Allies Postwar War Against
the German People (IHR, 1992). Originally published in Chicago in 1947.

Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied
Occupation (New York: Basic Books, 2007)

John Sack, An Eye for an Eye: The Story of Jews Who Sought Revenge for the
Holocaust (2000)

Mark Weber, New Book Details Mass Killings and Brutal Mistreatment of
Germans at the End of World War Two (Summer 2007) (
http://www.ihr.org/other/afterthereich072007.html ) Mr Weber reviews Giles
McDonogh's book.