Eisenhower's dirty secret

History's hidden genocide of German soldiers

- NIALL McCRAE

A VAST field is filled as far as the eye can see with miserable and gaunt men in remnants of military uniform.

It's May 1945 and the war in Europe has ended. By rights, these surrendered soldiers will be allowed to return to their families, but many will not leave this muddy ground alive.

There is no food, no shelter, and no medicine. The Rheinwiesenlager (Rhine meadow camps) were the killing fields of one of the worst war crimes in modern history, committed by General Dwight Eisenhower and the U.S. Army.

The cull of German troops was a closely guarded secret until four decades after the war, when a Canadian researcher was writing a book on a French resistance hero. James Bacque found that his subject, Raou Laporterie, had been saved by a German soldier, Hans Goertz. In gratitude, in 1946, Laporterie got Goertz out of a French prison camp to work in his chain of drapery stores. Goertz told of mass deaths of inmates through lack of sustenance.

After pursuing leads in the French records, Bacque came to realise that Allied military leaders had 'committed an appalling crime against humanity'.

Bacque's investigation culminated in his harrowing book, Other Losses (1989). The foreword to this exposé was written by Ernest Fisher, a retired colonel of the U.S. Army, and war historian noted for his book, Cassino to the Alps.

Fisher set the scene: 'Over most of the western front in April 1945, the thunder of artillery had been replaced by the shuffling of millions of pairs of boots as columns of disarmed German soldiers marched wearily towards Allied barbed wire enclosures.

'Scattered enemy detachments fired a few volleys before fading into the countryside and were eventually captured by Allied soldiers.'