Crimes and Mercies. James Bacque
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and to understand it through different perspectives and emphasis. It is not the function of lawyers to legislate history, nor of judges to jail writers for expressing non-conformist views on historical matters. This is a return to the days of the Inquisition.
ALFRED DE ZAYAS Geneva, 2007
This book is my attempt to understand how we in the West in the twentieth century ignored peaceful wisdom in pursuit of victorious folly; how we often idolised the worldly worst among us while we ignored the kindly best; how in beating the devil, we imitated his behaviour; and how despite all this, there were those among us who steadfastly spoke from conscience and ever acted from mercy to save our victims, and thus to save ourselves.
The Allied Armies that landed in Europe in 1944 were the first armies in history that were organized for mercy as well as victory. They were ordered to defeat the enemy, liberate the oppressed and feed the hungry. Within two years of victory, 800 million people around the world had been saved from famine, chiefly by Americans and Canadians, but helped by Argentinians, Britons and Australians.
This was a mercy that came too late for many millions of Germans. As the Allies brought freedom to Hitler’s slaves, they witnessed in the concentration camps scenes of horror such as Europeans and North Americans had scarcely seen before. The sight of these pitiful victims meant that the Germans were denied a share in the relief that was already on its way to the rest of the world. Thus, for several years, the Allies wreaked a vengeance on the Germans such as the world had never seen. A whole nation was converted to a starvation prison. At least 7 million civilians died after the war, plus about 1.5 million prisoners of war.
Here was the outline of a moral struggle so vast it defied definition. This seemed to me to be the same struggle between good and evil that had gone on in the mind of Jesus Christ, as he stood on a hillside in the desert and was tempted by the devil; it was the struggle between the devil and Faust for Faust’s soul.
The struggle is without end, of course, but there are discernible stages in its development in the twentieth century. The first begins with the criminal folly of the First World War from 1914 to 1918, ending with the failure of the Treaty of Trianon (Versailles). Through all this time, many humanitarians, led by Herbert Hoover, saved many hundreds of millions of lives. After Versailles, many leaders of the Western democracies did their best to mitigate some of the horrors of war with disarmament conferences, reparations forgiveness, naval agreements, humanitarian treaties and capitulations, to the point of timidly appeasing the tyrant Hitler. Neither Hitler nor his ally Stalin was mollified, and the war that followed was the worst ever known. Not until years after the Second World War did the vast generosity and wise forbearance of the Western democracies begin to overtake the criminality to which they had been dragged by the tyrants. Under Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Mackenzie King, George Marshall and Clement Attlee, the Western democracies brought peace, prosperity and order to a despairing world. Simultaneous with the thousand crimes committed in Democracy’s name since 1945, there has been a steady brightening of their civilizing genius. In freeing colonies, forgiving enemies, in arms control, the voluntary limiting of client-wars, in world health measures, food production, international law, human rights and hundreds of other ways, the Western democracies have shown this genius. The same spirit was clear in heroes like Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak in the Soviet Union, who led the effort to empty the Gulag and eventually freed the Russian people with very little bloodshed.
This struggle has been presented to us as a struggle between ‘their’ evil and ‘our’ good. But as Solzhenitsyn wrote: ‘The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.’ The struggle between the criminals and the merciful is so enormous and lengthy that I have only touched on a few of the outstanding events, mostly in the West. These seemed to me interesting because concealed, and instructive because unforeseen. In our Western democracies the ideals of self-determination, mercy towards the vanquished and freedom of speech, were thought to be highly regarded and strongly protected. These ideals have often been betrayed, a process which is going on to this day.
Another astonishment for me was to discover the disparity between our warm approval of ourselves, and the evidence. This is not because the actions which manifest our collective virtue are absent; it is rather that we attribute virtues to those who do not possess them. We have followed heroic leaders into disastrous wars while we have largely ignored the people who acted from kindness or wrote the truth. Having made false gods, we have made a god of falsity. If the truth will set us free, we must first set free the truth.
I owe my warm thanks first to Elisabeth Bacque, who has read and translated German, French and Italian for this book, as well as my own hieroglyphics, always with a cool eye to the major point: the fundamental decency of the men and women who made up our armies, and our armies of mercy, in Europe after 1945. To Alfred de Zayas, a good friend, brilliant historian and scholar, the book owes more than I can say. He has contributed knowledge, balance, caution and lots of original material, as well as his persuasive Foreword. To Paul Boytinck, friend, guide and expert researcher, I owe wonderful research material of every kind, plus manifold leads to obscure journals and books in four languages. And the same is true of Colonel Dr Ernest Fisher, who has never stinted in his help or good advice. To Martin Reesink, I owe many thanks for the expert research he did and helped me to do in the archives of the Red Army and KGB, plus some wonderful dinners and hilarious rambles and drives around Moscow in 1992 and 1993. Andrei Kashirin and Alexander Bystritsky prepared the thoroughgoing Spravka for me, covering all the essential points of the treatment and statistics of prisoners of war in the USSR. Captain V. P. Galitski of Moscow gave generously of his time and knowledge on the same subjects. For supporting me through a lot of thick and some thin, thanks to John Fraser, a gutsy friend, fine editor and so-so baseline player. And thanks also to that dogged researcher, E. B. Walker of Birmingham.
Once again, my friend Dr Anthony Miller took much time from a busy schedule to read, appraise, criticize, and re-read the manuscript, giving each statistical section the benefit of his broad epidemiological knowledge. Thanks to John Bemrose, for warm friendship, good counsel and good editorial advice. To Professor Angelo Codevilla of Stanford University, many thanks for tough advice and great hospitality in the visiting scholar’s condominium at Stanford. I have profited greatly once again from discussions with Peter Hoffman, and from the guidance of Jack Granatstein, Josef Skvorecky and Pierre van den Berghe. Their sharp editing kept me from many an error. I was moved to tears by the kindly, deeply-felt letter of appraisal from Professor Otto Kimminich of Regensburg. Thanks as well to Professor Desmond Morton for supporting me to the Canada Council, and to the Canada Council itself for a timely grant which helped me go to Moscow and Stanford. Paul Tuerr and Paul Weigel of Kitchener have both helped me, especially with the organization of a conference at Massey College in Toronto to which many scholars came in spring 1996, to give papers on various aspects of the Allied occupation of Germany in 1945–50. Along with them, Karen Manion, Siegfried Fischer and Chris Klein helped to carry that burden.
To Ute and Wolfgang Spietz, vielen Dank. To Professor Hartmut Froeschle, Peter Dyck, Dr Gabriele Stüber and to Professor Richard Müller, thanks for advice and help. And to dear Annette Roser, who has taken up the cause and made it her own, as well as to Dr Ter-Nedden of Bonn, to Annaliese Barbara Baum, and especially Lotte Börgmann, friend and guide, whom I feel I know well though I have met her but once – besten Dank.
Alan Samson, my editor at Little, Brown in London, took the courageous decision to publish this book despite the harsh opposition it is bound to arouse. And then he and Andrew Gordon gave very effective advice on improving the manuscript.
Toronto, April 1997
And for this new edition, thanks to Karl and Christy Siegler for their expert and attentive editing.
Toronto, June 2007
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives and him