Stands Among The World's Most Stands Among The ... - Index of

ADMIRAL DANIEL LEAHY, AMBASSADOR TO THE VICHY GOVERNMENT
"I felt sorry for the German people. We were planning - and we had the force to carry out our plans -
to obliterate a once mighty nation. I had an uneasy feeling that those eighty million Germans some
how or other would live to fight again."
EISENHOWER
"Our primary purpose is destruction of as many Germans as possible. I expect to destroy every
German west of the Rhine and within that area in which we are attacking."
General Eisenhower. J. Kingsley Smith (INS) Paris. February 24th 1945
INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN ECONOMICS
"The sacking of Germany after her unconditional surrender will go down in history as one of the most
monstrous acts of modern times. Its excess beggars description and its magnitude defies
condemnation." Ralph F. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest, 1947. Institute of American Economics
THE BACKGROUND TO THESE TERRIBLE DEEDS
In the final two years of the Second World War, Communist Russia, the United States and Britain
were drawing up plans for the dismemberment of Europe, the amputation of 25% of German territory,
and the handing over of half of Europe to the Soviet Union.
This policy would mean the forced expulsion of 15,000,000 Germans from their traditional
homelands in East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, Eastern Brandenburg, the Sudetenland, pre-war
Poland, Hungary, Rumania and Yugoslavia.
Its purpose was to remove the 'problem of German minorities', the desire to reward the USSR with
territory, the destruction of Germany as a major European commercial rival to Britain and France,
compensation for Poland, and the desire to punish the conquered Germans. These expulsions
continued until 1949 - four years after the war formally ending.
A BLUNDER WITHOUT EQUAL
Posterity will probably regard the Second World War as a blunder without equal resulting in a tragedy
that defies parallel, the results of which will scar the face of humanity for all time.
On the face of it, war had been declared for the purpose of defending, what many agreed at the time
was indefensible; Poland's continued acquisition of territorial booty; "... that very Poland which with
hyena appetite only six months before, joined in the pillage and destruction of the Czechoslovak
state." - Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Vol.1, pp. 311/312
It was a war that left Europe in ruins, millions dead, the British Empire in meltdown and Britain
burdened with a war debt that would keep prosperity at bay for decades. Poland far from being freed
on having served its purpose was handed over to the despotic Soviet Union, as were eleven other
European nations. None of the stated aims of the war had been achieved.
On the other hand, the real (and largely unstated) aims of the war were in their final stages. The
elimination of Germany as a competitive trading nation, which by position and population threatened
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