Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950

J.L. Granatstein, distinguished research professor emeritus of history
at York University, is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and
co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influential Canadians of the
20th Century and the Dictionary of Canadi

Toronto writer James Bacque has won substantial renown in some circles
and been the recipient of vicious attacks in others for his books on
some of the more unpleasant aspects of the Allied victory in World War
II. In Other Losses, he argued that General Eisenhower and the French
conspired to kill hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war by
starvation and disease. This argument has been assailed and, I believe,
generally refuted, though I take it as a given that the death rate in
German POW camps was far higher than it ought to have been.

Now Bacque turns his attention to the German civilian population,
arguing this time that it was deliberate Allied policy to starve Germany
and to allow Germans repatriated from the east and returning to the
conquered land to perish on the roads or in camps. The Morgenthau Plan,
the proposal to turn Germany into a de-industrialized country with
smaller population, Bacque contends, was put into effect as an act of
brutal revenge; previous writers have argued—convincingly—that the
plan was shelved. The story hinges on statistical interpretation, never
Bacque’s strongest suit, and on close reading of historical
documentation, again something that Bacque, whose training was as a
novelist, fails to master completely. Still, just as in his first book,
Bacque has pointed to actions of omission and commission that are far
from pretty. Interestingly, Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King and
under-secretary of state for external affairs Norman Robertson, along
with U.S. relief head Herbert Hoover, come off very well indeed in a
book with few heroes.