tlb wrote:You need to add some additional support for these statements: how did Stalin's desires influence Eisenhower's decisions? I am not aware that Western forces starved German prisoners and I believe that Stalin did what he wanted without regard for Western opinion.
The whole situation was vastly more complex than I wanted to get into, but I'll try to flesh it out some. A few of the factors (in no particular order) are:
1) General post-war food crisis, caused in part by:
2) expulsion of ethnic Germans by soviet forces from eastern Europe, and partitioning of Germany split western Germany from its agriculture centers east of the Oder-Neisse line (Potsdam conference)
2) Devastation of Germany to both transportation networks and agricultural processing facilities (those still in operation), made it difficult to distribute what food was available to cities
3) US/UK drastically underestimating both (#2 above) and numbers of soldiers that were surrendering (in part these were units expected to surrender to soviets, but even without these the numbers were way off).
3a) Geneva29 dictated POWs be fed at the same level as basic soldier, which wasn't possible owing to lack of material and logistics, failure of planning (this happened to allies a number of times, including the rapid collapse of the western front following breakout from normandy)
4) Tehran conference (this is where Stalin's desire for German laborers came into play)
5) USSR's steadfast refusal to sign Geneva29
5a) This meant the European advisory commission (which was supposed to integrate and advise allies after conclusion of hostilities) wasn't able to draft a statement of unconditional surrender (one of its principal tasks) because it couldn't be certain the USSR would honor it if one of their commander's issued it.
5b) partially as a result (also for other reasons) the EAC decided to strip germany of all government. This also meant international protections (including embassies in neutral states) because those are accorded to governments.
#3 was the big one in regards to the point I was making above. Regardless of what Stalin was doing, SHAEF had expected to be feeding ~3 million PoWs and found themselves with over 7. The brits didn't want them in the UK in those numbers, what with rationing still in effect, and shipping them to the US was equally problematic. And when it came down, the food, and the logistical ability to get it to the prisoners, did not exist. It wasn't a matter of want, or desire to punish (really, if you think this is bad, consider Morganthu's brainstorm). The food didn't exist. The ability to get non-existent food to the prisoners didn't exist. So Eisenhower (or combined chiefs of staff, blame whoever you want), called them Disarmed Enemy Forces and did the best they could.
Under the circumstances, was not nearly as bad as it could have been (it was still very bad). It certainly was not the 'death camps' or 'planned starvation' that some have claimed. But the point was to get out from under the burden of Geneva29's legal obligations that could not be met.
As a side-note, Geneva was amended to try and stop a repeat. specifically that soldiers who 'fell into the power' of another were obligated PoW status. Hence, we now have 'illegal enemy combatants' to do an end-around of Geneva49.
Gunter Bischof and Stephen Ambrose wrote a great book on it in the early 90s. "Eisenhower and German PoWs"
