Curtis Yarvin, the Rheinwiesenlager, GUPVI camps, and the Problem of German MIAs from World War II.
Curtis Yarvin, the Rheinwiesenlager, GUPVI camps, and the Problem of German MIAs from World War II.
By
J. Otto Pohl
Recently Curtis Yarvin has again raised controversy by referring to the Rheinwiesenlager. These were open-air camps for German POWS reclassified as Disarmed Enemy Forces to avoid having to abide by international treaties regulating the treatment of POWs. The material conditions in these camps were absolutely horrible, as survivor testimony published by the official West German Commission on the fate of POWs headed by Erich Maschke made clear. But the Maschke Commission only cited 4,537 Germans dying in these camps. An extremely low figure when compared to for instance the 1,094,250 given for German POW deaths in Soviet captivity. The US run camps in question may have held as many as two million captives all the way through the winter of 1945-1946. Yet, despite this apparent discrepency nobody challenged it until 1989. That year James Bacque’s Other Losses : The Shocking Truth behind the Mass Deaths of Disarmed German Soldiers and Civilians under General Eisenhower’s Command (Toronto: Soddart) came out. It claimed that deliberate US policies led to the death of around 800,000 Germans in the Rheinwiesenlager. While most of Bacque’s claims were rejected by academics his book did force them to greatly revise upward the possible number of German deaths in US camps from less than 5,000 to possibly over ten times as many. The revision of the mortality figures to perhaps more than 50,000 can be found in the chapter written by Albert E. Cowdry in the book specifically compiled to refute Bacque, Gunter Bischof and Stephen E. Ambrose (ed.), Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against Falsehood (Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1992). This is a sizeable upward revision for possible camp deaths and is much more believable than the older figures that were unquestioned for 44 years.
Part of the problem when dealing with the losses of German POWs both during and after WWII is that the German archival records show over one million unaccounted for MIAs. This is after taking into account all releases of DEFs by the US. The Maschke Commission assigned most of these to deaths as POWs in Soviet captivity. The Bulanov report showed a much lower number of German POWs registered as perishing in GUPVI camps. The number of recorded deaths for German POWs in the Soviet archives is 356,687 and another 10,891 Austrians. This leaves a large number of German MIAs still missing. Rudiger Overmans places the total number of German POWs that might have conceivably died in Soviet captivity at 1,000,000 including 700,000 currently listed as MIAs or almost triple the figure recorded in the Soviet archives. This matches with the figure given by the Maschke Commission. Although he does note that the German archives only confirm 363,000 deaths as POWs in Soviet captivity or only slightly more than the Soviet archival figure for deaths in GUPVI camps. Other scholars place the number even higher at possibly 1.5 million in total. The second figure would indeed account for all German MIAs. Whatever the actual figure it is clear that the registered GUPVI deaths exclude the deaths of German POWs from the time of their capture until their registration at permanent GUPVI camps. It is impossible to determine exactly how large this number was. But, it certainly accounts for hundreds of thousands of the still unaccounted for German MIAs during WWII.
Yarvin is correct that the official figures for the deaths in the Rheinwiesenlager are unbelievable. When Bacque pointed this out in 1989 academics like Cowdry were forced to greatly revise the possible number of deaths in the camps upward. The consensus is now that the actual number might have been possibly as high as 50,000 to 60,000, around the same number as US soldiers that died fighting in Vietnam. This is a substantial number of people and certainly a major war crime in its own right. Yarvin is wrong in suggesting that Soviet archival statistics even formerly secret ones are complete and accurate. It is clear that the GUPVI figures for German POW deaths are one of the many such examples of incomplete data found in the Soviet archives. Others can be found in the official practice of releasing GULag prisoners to die. Here there are many cases of men dying after being officially discharged, but dying before they even physically left the camp. These deaths were not included in the regular camp death statistics submitted to the central authorities. So I have no answers to the question of exactly how many German POWs died in either US or Soviet captivity. I can only state that the numbers to die in both the Rheinwiesenlager and Soviet captivity are much greater than the official figures from the archives.
For a good discussion of these issues see Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of WWII, NY: Picador, 2012, pages 111-124.
I had a quick look at the chapters by Cowdrey and Overmans in the 1992 book...as far as I can see they don't argue that it has been securely established 50 000 German pows died in US captivity. They state the standard number of around 5000 dead, but admit it may have been higher...50-60 000 seems to be more of a hypothetically possible upper limit. The real number is presumably quite a bit lower, but no one knows for certain and there probably isn't much interest in doing an objective investigation (since "revisionists" want to "prove" impossibly high numbers, while mainstream establishment historians aren't interested in potentially having to revise numbers upwards).
A friend of mine, John Jobst, later Bishop of the Kimberley, Western Australia, was in that camp, as was his brother. He told me that he could never forgive the Americans for what they did. In his Memoirs, which I published, he identifies the vicious OIC as a jew.
So the worst killers, both in the Russian and American death camps, were of the world destroyers.
It will happen again, soon, (as with the covid deaths) unless they are banished from the earth.