I had a sandbox as a little boy. I remember how happy I was when my father added sifted sand to the sandbox. It was exactly what I’d wanted all along! :) Back when I’d had unsifted sand, I’d had to use a screen to sift it! :)
Mainstream historians write from the Allied perspective. This means that they seek to present a story of Allied good triumphing over Axis evil. Facts which do not fit into the story they wish to tell are carefully sifted out. It’s possible to read thousands of pages of mainstream history books without encountering anything other than this sifted sand.
But some mainstream/Allied historians are more intense about sifting than others. While some historians make 100% sure that nothing makes it through without being sifted, others allow the occasional pebble to make it through. It’s very rare for these pebbles to escape the sifting process, which is why close attention should be paid to them when they do make it through. Our objective should be to see facts as they actually were, without anyone sifting out data they found inconvenient.
As a result of this sifting process, many have come to believe that Churchill and FDR did not commit genocide, and were heroes for standing up to someone who did (Hitler). Churchill and FDR were guilty of five separate acts of European genocide.
1. The Anglo-American food blockade imposed on Germany during WWII.
2. The Anglo-American bombing effort against German cities.
3. The effort to impose starvation on postwar Germany.
4. The treatment of German POWs, most of whom were turned over to the Soviet Union.
5. The turning over of millions of Soviet refugees and Soviet POWs to the Soviet government.
1. The food blockade.
As 1940 drew to a close, the situation for many of Europe’s 525 million people was dire. With the food supply reduced by 15% by the blockade and another 15% by poor harvests, starvation [was] a threat. . . . Former president Herbert Hoover, who had done much to alleviate the hunger of European children during WW1, wrote
| The food situation in the present war is already more desperate than at the
| same stage in the [First] World War. … If this war is long continued, there is
| but one implacable end… the greatest famine in history.
Also,
In January Herbert Hoover’s National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies presented the exiled Belgian Government in London with a plan he had agreed with the German authorities to set up soup kitchens in Belgium to feed several million destitute people.[60] . . . However, Britain refused to allow this aid through their blockade. . . .
Hoover said that his information indicated that the Belgian ration was already down to 960 calories–less than half the amount necessary to sustain life–and that many children were already so weak they could no longer attend school. . . .
The American Red Cross chartered [mercy ships to carry] relief supplies into unoccupied France. . . . A number of prominent liberals denounced the release of food to France in a letter to United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
2. The Anglo-American bombing effort
One of the objectives of this bombing effort was to reduce Germany’s cities and its people to ash, on the theory that both were contributing to the German war effort. The goal of the late-war Anglo-American bombing raids was to create firestorms. There were times–such as at Hamburg and Dresden–when they succeeded. The bombing of Dresden is especially notable because it had little military value, was a cultural center, and was filled with large numbers of refugees who had fled west to escape the terror and mass murder of the Red Army. In the aftermath of the Dresden raid–and the international outcry against it–Churchill sent the following telegram to the British Chiefs of Staff:
It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land.
The Dresden raid, alone, killed about eight times as many civilians as did the September 11th terrorist attacks. Also, the Dresden raid was specifically targeted against German firefighters and other rescue workers.
It had been decided that the raid would be a double strike, in which a second wave of bombers would attack three hours after the first, just as the rescue teams were trying to put out the fires.[36]
3. The effort to impose starvation on postwar Germany.
On March 20, 1945 President Roosevelt was warned that the JCS 1067 was not workable: it would let the Germans “stew in their own juice”. Roosevelt’s response was “Let them have soup kitchens! Let their economy sink!” Asked if he wanted the German people to starve, he replied, “Why not?”[47]
Also,
By February 28, 1947 it was estimated that 4,160,000 German former prisoners of war, by General Dwight D. Eisenhower relabeled as Disarmed Enemy Forces in order to negate the Geneva Convention, were used as forced labor by the various Allied countries to work in camps outside Germany: 3,000,000 in Russia, 750,000 in France, 400,000 in Britain and 10,000 in Belgium.[70] Meanwhile in Germany large parts of the population were starving[70] at a time when according to a study done by former U.S. President Herbert Hoover the nutritional condition in countries that in Western Europe was nearly pre-war normal".[70]
4. The treatment of German POWs
The highest-scoring fighter ace in human history was Erich Hartmann. As WWII in Europe drew to a close, Hartmann surrendered to the Americans. But then
After his capture, the U.S. Army handed Hartmann, his pilots, and ground crew over to the Soviet Union on 24 May, where he was imprisoned in accordance with the Yalta Agreements, which stated that airmen and soldiers fighting Soviet forces had to surrender directly to them.
Most of Hartmann’s fellow servicemen were less famous and less lucky than he had been. Instead of merely being tortured and starved by the Soviets–as Hartmann had been–many were allowed to die outright.
Finally we arrived near Kirov and disembarked in a swamp. This was our home for a while. Of the 1,500 POWs who were dropped at this place about 200 lived through the first winter. This I know from some who survived. They were not fed, just worked to death.
Millions of other captured German servicemen endured the same fate at Soviet hands. FDR, Truman, and Churchill knew that Stalin was a mass murderer when they decided to turn millions of captured German servicemen over to him.
5. Turning over refugees and POWs from the Soviet Union to the Soviet government
Outlining the plan to forcibly return the refugees to the Soviet Union, this codicil was kept secret from the US and British people for over fifty years.[2] The name of the operation comes from the naval practice of corporal punishment, keelhauling. . . .
The refugee columns fleeing the Soviet-occupied eastern Europe numbered millions of people. . . .
Often prisoners were summarily executed by receiving Communist authorities, sometimes within earshot of the British. . . .
Tolstoy described the scene of Americans returning to the internment camp after having delivered a shipment of people to the Russians. “The Americans returned to Plattling visibly shamefaced. Before their departure from the rendezvous in the forest, many had seen rows of bodies already hanging from the branches of nearby trees.”[10]
To his credit, Winston Churchill was less enthusiastic about items 3 and 5 on the above list than FDR or Truman had been. Conditions in British-occupied postwar Germany were slightly less bad than the American section. Churchill did not turn over all the refugees he’d agreed to, but allowed some to remain safe from Soviet mass murder. However, FDR, Truman, and Churchill had directly participated in all five of the above-described acts of mass murder in Europe. America’s bombing of Japanese cities–and its use of nuclear weapons against Japan’s civilian population–is of course a separate subject.