There are tens of thousands of books, articles, TV documentaries that
claim to offer objective analysis of the Reich. In fact, attention is
focused on only a very small fragment of the period.
Ralph Franklin Keeling, Institute of American Economics, Chicago, 1970 writes;
It must be brought home to the American people that much
of what they have been led to believe was born of propaganda. That the
Germany Army, for example, actually behaved itself very correctly toward
the people of occupied territories whose governments were signatories
to the Hague and Geneva Conventions. The facts are now well known, and
are beyond dispute, despite the opposite picture painted in the Press as
part of the horrendous business of war.
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Rape
was virtually unheard of in the German Armed Forces and was punishable
by death. The venerable Sudeten academic, Dr. A J P App with whom I
shared a great friendship:
In their behavior toward the women of conquered
territories, the German troops seem actually to have been the most
correct and decent in the whole history of warfare.
William L Shirer was author of the heavily marketed Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
The title achieved notoriety for its spin and blatant falsehoods. This
Jewish journalist was forced to concede how on June 17 1940, in the
first flush of German occupation, women had fled Paris in fear of the
Germans.
It seems the Parisians actually believed the Germans
would rape the women and do worse to the men. The ones who stayed are
all the more amazed at the very correct behavior of the troops.
German soldiers in Paris
President of Thompson Products Frederick C. Crawford was a member of a
delegation organized by the U.S War Department. His report concluded:
After four years of German occupation, the Germans tried
to be careful in their dealings with the people. We were told that if a
citizen attended strictly to business and took no political or
underground action against the occupying army, he was treated with
correctness.
Britain prides itself on not having fallen to the Reich. The forces
of the Reich in fact overran Britain’s Channel Islands. Of that
occupation author Charles Cruickshank writes:
The German behavior was correct; that they were quite
amiably received by most people; there was no real sabotage and no real
resistance movement. That as long as there was food, the civilians had
their fair share and the conditions for the islanders were a good deal
better than it was for the Wehrmacht in May 1945.
German troops occupying Channel Islands
Generally speaking the heads of all the armed forces involved in the
conflict conceded that the German Armed forces rarely breached
international rules of warfare. Major General Robert W. Grow, U.S.
Commander 6th Armored Division in Europe:
My service during World War Two was in command of an
armored division throughout the European campaign, from Normandy to
Saxony. My division lost quite a number of officers and men captured
between July 1944 and April 1945.
In no instance did I hear of personnel from our division receiving
treatment other than proper under the ‘Rules of Land Warfare’. As far as
the 6th Armored Division was concerned in its 280 days of front line
contact, there was no ‘atrocity problem.
Frankly, I was aghast, as were many of my contemporaries, when we
learned of the proposed ‘war crimes’ trials and the fact that military
commanders were among the accused. I know of no general officer who
approved of them.
Little has been written or documented about the Germans use of slave labor, as did all warring participants. Ralph Keeling:
It is true that the Reich exacted forced labor from
foreign workers, but it is also true that, they were for the most part
paid and fed well.
Cabinet Minister Lord Mulley
Many captured allied servicemen were far better educated at German
educational facilities than they had been in their own countries.
Captured in June 1940, British lance-corporal Fred Mulley spent five
years as a prisoner of war in Germany and Poland. During this time he
obtained a BSc in economics and became a chartered secretary. He was
later to become a British Cabinet Minister and held various government
posts.
