BOMBSHELL! One million dead young German soldiers in American and French prisoner-of-war camps.

I read about this in 1991, in a piece by John Fraser, editor of Saturday Night, which I found the best of Canada’s magazines. For close to 20 years, using this piece, I taught about this mass deliberate killing by cold and starvation - one million dead young German soldiers in American and French prisoner-of-war camps - after their surrender, when they were supposed to be safe, as American and French prisoners-of-war had been safe throughout the war.

For a course I was teaching, I created a workbook on Integrating Marginalized Content, from content traditionally marginalized, like content by women, to content kept outside the margins - like this mass killing that did not fit with the narrative of the good Americans and French.

In 2009 I stopped teaching the course, and I rather forgot about those million dead young men.

But the other day I was watching an interview by Reiner Fuellmich with a very mild-mannered older American, William Toel, who had always loved the Germans, as he said more than once near the start. (Link to the interview at the end.)

I didn’t expect what Toel said next. He started talking about leading people to the mass graves of almost 900,000 dead young men at the Rheinwiesen - fields along the Rhein river. The dead: German prisoners-of-war - 12, 13, 14. He was crying and many of those with him were also crying, bringing along food for those boys and men deliberately starved to death by the Americans and French - wet and cold day after day, singing to keep their spirits up, yet dying in the thousands, to be hauled away day after day.

Why did it happen? Toel mentions that Eisenhauer, the American general, apparently utterly detested all Germans.

I will add that none of the American and French soldiers guarding the POWs went against orders. They could see the German soldiers sickening and dying. They knew they were participating in evil. Yet they obeyed. No food. No water. No shelter.

Toel talked about something else - something absolutely crucial. The mass killing, he said, was part of the intended demoralization of Germans, a plot thought up at Bletchley Park, where 80% of the work (well-known) was on code-breaking, but the top top top secret 20% of the work was on finding a strategy for demoralizing the Germans after the war, destroying self-pride and turning it into self-hatred, self-loathing.

What was done to the German prisoners-of-war was the outcome of that top secret work.

There were 5 million German prisoners-of-war. About 1 million died. 1 in 5. 4 million survived. But the trauma of the mass hatred levelled at them stayed deep within them.

I will add: mass hatred continued to be beamed at Germans for decades, so that Nazi and German were, for decades, basically synonymous.

Americans were fed stories of their goodness and heroism. What did listening to such stories do to the psyches of the soldiers who had obeyed and been silent about the mass killings?

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In 1991, I did not learn about the deliberate plot to destroy the German soul, the German spirit. I an sure John Fraser did not know about this. Nor, I believe, did James Bacque, the author of Other Losses, on which Fraser based his article.

What they knew about: the cold-blooded killing of close to one million young German boys and men - utterly outside the narrative of the good Americans and French coming to liberate and to save democracy.

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It’s easy, now, to believe in the plot William Toel speaks of. We see people all around the West, not feeling self-pride, instead feeling self-loathing - denigrating themselves, denigrating being American, Canadian, British, white, male, heterosexual.

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By the way, there’s a lot Toel said that I don’t agree with. Toward the end, he states there is a land each group has been given by god, which is home to us.

But I’m Austrian and I’ve never felt at home in Austria. Vienna feels alien to me. Likewise other parts of Austria.

Where I live - on a continent far away from Austria - feels like home.

Then, where is home for different groups of people? People have kept moving. The Japanese did not come from Japan. The first inhabitants of Japan are the Ainu (about 10,000 of them left, or so I remember).

I remember a British woman saying Provence was her spiritual home. She always felt she’d come home when she arrived.

Also, who are “my people”? There’s so much mix, most of which I barely know, in my background.

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Then, toward the end of the interview, Toel stresses that love is the answer. Reiner Fuellmich brings up justice and truth. Toel equates love and truth, seems to dismiss anything to do with justice.

I agree that love and truth are essential. I don’t, on the other hand, see them as the same thing.

I agree we need to let go of the hurt and the rage and the numbing from injuries, from trauma. I agree we need to live feeling love, approaching life with love.

I also consider justice important. Someone took something - property, self-love, life. Payment seems an okay thing - essential even - or it’s theft.

My final conclusion. On so much, I have a fundamental disagreement with Toel. In fact, I find him dangerous.

More on that tomorrow.

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By the way, MARK YOUR CALENDAR for TRUTH SUMMIT 2 - Sept 15-Oct 6. One issue to be addressed is the reality of the deliberate killing of close to one million young German prisoners-of-war, the reality of the the deliberate instilling of self-hatred. And then we come to that crucial question: what is the answer?

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Here, by the way, is the interview with William Toel that led to these thoughts:
https://icic.law/2023/08/26/william-toel-liberate-the-germans-from-their-guilt-complex-william-toel-befreiung-deutschlands-vom-schuldkomplex/

Posted Sept 4, 2023