Other Losses: An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans after World War II

Other Losses caused an international scandal when first published in 1989 by revealing that Allied Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower’s policies caused the death of some 1,000,000 German captives in American and French internment camps. These deaths, occurring through disease, starvation, and exposure from 1944 to 1949, were a direct result of the policies of the western Allies. Alongside the Soviets, they ruled as the Military Occupation Government over partitioned Germany from May 1945 until 1949.

Disputation and New Evidence

An attempted book-length disputation of Other Losses was published in 1992. This work, featuring essays by British, American, and German revisionist historians (Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood, edited by Ambrose & Günter), sought to challenge Bacque’s findings.

However, in the same year, James Bacque traveled to Moscow to examine the newly-opened KGB archives. There, he uncovered meticulously and exhaustively documented new proof that almost one million German POWs had indeed died in Western camps.

Support from Military Historians

One of the historians who supports Bacque’s work is Colonel Ernest F. Fisher, 101st Airborne Division. In 1945, Fisher participated in investigations into allegations of misconduct by U.S. troops in Germany and later became a senior historian with the United States Army.

In the foreword to the book, Fisher states:

“Starting in April 1945, the United States Army and the French Army casually annihilated about one million [German] men, most of them in American camps … Eisenhower’s hatred, passed through the lens of a compliant military bureaucracy, produced the ­horror of death camps unequalled by anything in American military ­history … How did this enormous war crime come to light? The first clues were uncovered in 1986 by the author James Bacque and his ­assistant.”

Purpose of the Updated Edition

This updated third edition of Other Losses exists not to accuse, but to remind us that no country can claim an inherent innocence of or exemption from the cruelties of war.