Alfons:
That the Western Allies created detainment camps in which former German soldiers, sailors, airmen and SS died is not in doubt. It happened and that is a matter of established fact in the West. What is in dispute is the scale of the death toll. James Bacques argued that between 800,000 and 1.2 million Germans died in camps run by Americans, British and French post-war authorities. Peer review of his research and arguments contained in his book, "Other Losses" found that he had grossly overstated his claims and had also tried to cast deaths caused by mismanagement and negligence as premeditated acts of killing on the part of the Western allies. It is true that many died but not the huge numbers which Bacques had argued for.
During the same period of time the Soviet Union was, with the explicit approval of the leaders of the Western allies, engaged in a truly massive programme of ethnic cleansing of Getman civilians from non-German lands in Eastern Europe. Between 11 and 14 million civilians of German ethnicity were forcibly removed from Eastern Europe and driven back west into Germany proper. There was no way that either ruined Germany nor the Western Allies could support such a wave of refugees and so widespread starvation and exposure both enroute and in Germany proper occurred. The deaths mounted and between 750,000 and 2,000,000 ethnic Germans died as a result of this massive programme of ethnic cleansing conducted by Soviet forces at all of the allies behests. One of the tools to drive these ethnic Germans (mostly women, children and males too old or too young for military service) out of the east was mass rape of women and that is why the behaviour is decried in the West as such a crime against humanity.
Post-war policy towards the Germans, both former military and civilians, was brutal and callous from both the Western Allies and the Soviets but in terms of the scale of death and suffering the Soviet actions exceeded Western crimes and mismanagement/negligence in scope and brutality. While generally discounted today, the deaths at the time were viewed as unavoidable and also as just consequences and justice for German militarism which had just killed about 60 million people between 1933 and 1945, the majority being Soviet solders and civilians and the Germans themselves. This vengeful mood passed in the West far more quickly than in the East, understandably given the far lower numbers of war dead, other casualties suffered and material destruction in the West. Plans like the vengeful Morgenthau plan were quickly abandoned and the very generous Marshall Plan was implemented to rebuild Europe and to try to give it some measure of long-term economic and political stability into which a culture of peace could be inculcated and entrenched.
So yes, the allies presided over policies which through mismanagement, negligence and design killed hundreds of thousands to millions of Germans in the post-war period and all allies share in the responsibility for those deaths and the attendent misery caused to survivors. The majority of these deaths can be attributed to Soviet actions, with the consent of the Western allies. But unlike in the East those policies were short-lived affairs and were soon reversed and replaced by more constructive and supportive policies in order to improve conditions in war-ravaged western Germany and in Western Europe, despite the crippling war-debt which most Western Allies found themselves in during the post-war period.
Cheers.
Evilroddy.
