Crimes and Mercies Read Online Free PDF Page A

H. V. Kaltenborn, Dorothy Thompson and John Dewey. They estimated that 4.8 million had died by the end of 1947. (Infant mortality in Brandenburg province was estimated at 80–90 per cent in autumn 1945. Infant mortality throughout Germany for the year to the spring of 1946 was reported to Hoover to be 30 per cent.) 7
    The Catholic bishops of the United States, meeting in Washington on 16 November 1946, said that, ‘We boast of our democracy, but in this transplantation of peoples we have perhaps unwittingly allowed ourselves to be influenced by the herd theory of heartless totalitarian political philosophy.’ 8 The Catholic bishops were on strong ground, for accusations of this same crime of deportation of peoples had been levelled by the Allies themselves against the Nazis at Nuremberg. Count Three of Section J of the Indictment against Göring, Ribbentrop and others, reads: ‘In certain occupied territories purportedly annexed to Germany, the defendants methodically and pursuant to plan endeavored to assimilate those territories politically, culturally, socially and economically into the German Reich, and the defendants endeavored to obliterate the former national character of these territories …’ The CAME authors added, ‘It is inconceivable that the United States government would endorse policies for which the Nazi leaders were tried and hanged under American auspices.’ Yet that is what happened. 9
    4) Finally, for the Polish-administered areas of (former) Germany: the Soviet delegate said at the Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in April 1947 that 5.7 million expellees had probably as of October 1946) left Polish-administered areas since Potsdam, and 400,000 remained behind. This is amply confirmed by the report of the Canadian Legation in Warsaw at 25January 1949. The Canadians were told by the Poles that as of June 1947, only 289,000 ethnic Germans remained in the former German territories taken over by Poland. 10
    Murphy said that there had been originally 7 million potential expellees there, which would mean that the Missing/Not Accounted For were 0.9 million from 7 million in two years. Prorating to all of the 14/15 million refugees, we see a total of Missing/Not Accounted For of over 2 million from July 1945 to October 1946. Many millions were still left to endure the hardships of the trek after that. 11

    4: H OW G OVERNMENTS S PY ON W RITERS
    Some parts of this appeared in the essay ‘A Truth So Terrible’ in Abuse Your Illusions , Russ Kick, ed., The Disinformation Company, New York, 2003, or in Other Losses , revised, Little, Brown, 1999.
    In the autumn of 1989, my wife Elisabeth and I were staying in the villa of friends in the south of France. The phone was making strange sounds, so that it was difficult to hear. I called the telephone company, and they said they would send a repairman. The following day, as Elisabeth and I were leaving the house, we noticed a man in a suit with a briefcase standing in the driveway. I asked him what he wanted and he said he was looking for the Villa Autran. I said that it was the villa he had just seen us leaving, that we were the occupants, and asked him if he had come about the phone. He said yes, and I told him the villa was open and he could go in and fix it while we were out. That night, the phone worked fine.
    The next day, I saw a blue and yellow phone company truck in the road just past the driveway, and a man in uniform with tools hanging from his belt. Suddenly I remembered the incident from the day before, so I asked the uniformed man if he was the regular repairman for the area. He said yes, except when he was on holiday and someone else took over. I asked if he had been toldto fix my phone and he said no. Then I remembered that there had been no telephone company truck in or near the driveway the day before.
    Elisabeth and I talked it over and could not make it out. I saw no point in calling the phone company because they could say only that they