Talk:Disarmed Enemy Forces

Legality of the DEF designation

 * 1 I'm going quietly crazy trying to re-find a reference I once read that stated that the Judge Advocate General (or very similar) strongly opposed Eisenhowers use of the DEF designation. Anyone have any clues on this?


 * 2 The Geneva conventions were aparently changed after the war to close the loophole that allowed the creation of DEF by the U.S. I've also read that the Geneva conventions were changed in responce to the German use of loopholes in them, for example witholding medical treatment to injured POW's until after interrogation. Anyone know of any Germans charged for violating the spirit of the conventions, although not the letter?


 * 3 The Hague convention that states that POWs are to be released and repatriated as soon as possible after peace has been achieved was circumvented by the Allies in a similar fashion, since the Allies claimed unconditional surrender and disolved the German government, and put-of the signing of a peace treaty indefinitely. As a consequence German POW's and DEF could be used as forced labor for several years by all the Allies (I think the number of forced labourers in 1947 were 1 million in the west and 3 million in Russia). All this taken together indicates to me that we need an article collecting these legal issues. There is the general article Debellatio but I think we need to create a main article dealing specifically with Germany, e.g. The legal status of Germany after World War II.

--Stor stark7 Talk 19:03, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * 4 Does anyone have any info on the legality of Eisenhowers handing over of several hundred thousand German soldiers (Dont know if they were DEF or POW at that time) to the Soviet Union, where many of them eventually died in the Soviet work camps?


 * There are a number of articles on the legal status of the Third Reich, see for example End of World War II in Europe, European Advisory Commission Allied Control Council, Occupation statute, Petersberg Agreement ...


 * Also see the citations in the articles. The most comprehensive citation is this online book -- Earl F. Ziemke "The U.S. Army in the occupation of Germany 1944-1946" Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D. C., 1990, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-619027 (CHAPTER XV: The Victory Sealed: Surrender at Reims and a chapter either side.) --Philip Baird Shearer 10:07, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Any details on the fate of the WW2 German DEFs - I have heard that the US prisoners were starved etc after the war. 159.105.80.141 12:06, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Something which needs addressing
The purpose of the designation was to circumvent the 1929 Geneva Convention, Relative to the treatment of prisoners of war.

Well the thing which needs addressing is a simple - why?

What use is it to bring it up if you dont address the reason for said resignation?--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 21:13, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Because, as the Convention stood, the Allies would be in violation whatever they did, as long as the captured were designated POW's. Eisenhower was trying to stay legal, not making cover for mistreatment, as some have claimed. This is adressed already in the body of the article.

What would be more interesting would be information as to whether the Convention was amended later to allow for extra-ordinary circumstances, such as the collapse of a continent. Also, the article already says it was amended to eliminate the DEF loophole - how? 76.2.154.213 (talk) 04:17, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Historical precedents POV
I have added a section POV template to the section "Historical precedents" as the section is unbalanced. These are only presidents if one accepts the German argument that Poland and Yugoslav no longer had recognised governments. But the Allies continued to recognise the Polish and Yugoslavian governments in exile, so this is a POV argument, as it is nothing like the destruction (Debellatio) of the German state and its continued recognition by no states.

What is needed is a reliable source that explains this POV. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 18:18, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually by your argument you are introducing your own POV.
 * 1. You are arguing as if Debelation was a valid legal term for Germany, but as you yourself have admitted the Germans themselves refuse to accept that it applies, so if Debelation is mentioned then the POV of both sides regarding it must be addressed or at least mentioned that it is disputed.
 * 2. You seem to be arguing from the standpoint that removing captives from the protection of international treaties is legal when Debelation is declared. I.e. that there is no legal challenge to DEF. We may have no reliable source that explicitly states that DEF was illegal, but likewise we have no reliable secondary source that explicitly states that the DEF designation and the treatment of the prisoners was legal. To imply that it was legal is POV unless we have a source that states so.--Stor stark7 Speak 21:08, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

No it is consistent because there is a difference because if the German state existed, (and there was no debellation) it was under the lawful control of the Four Powers (so the German soldiers were under the command of the same states that were holding them prisoners) and there was not other legal entity to represent the German state. However in the case of the German occupation of Allied countries from 1939-1945 the regimes continued in exile, so the regimes and recognition of those regimes continued throughout the war. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 19:36, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Lets try to clarify some things here.
 * This article is about the U.S. re-designation of German POW's into something else (DEF) in order to remove their legal protection by the Geneva convention.
 * You object to the sub-section "Historical precedents". This section briefly describes some German uses of the re-designation technique to remove the legal protection of Polish and Yugoslav prisoners of war by the Geneva convention.
 * Your argument in claiming that the sub-section is POV is that according to your legal analysis the German actions were contrary to international law, while the U.S. action were not contrary to international law. From your viewpoint this means that they were not a precedent.
 * There are 2 things wrong with your introduction of the POV template.
 * 1. Your implicit expectation that the re-designation has to be legal according to international law of the time. The important thing here is that this is an article about re-designation to avoid the Geneva convention, and the Nazi re-designation just 2 years earlier is very relevant, which is the reason it was included in the quoted paper that also exhaustively deals with the DEF, i.e. "The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II" and which was why I introduced it as "historical precedent. (By the way, yet another precedent was "Italian Military Internees" (IMIs))
 * 2. Your argument that the Nazi re-designation was illegal. Perhaps it was, perhaps it was not. But I will not accept your arguments regarding international law as reason enough to judge it illegal, not unless you can claim to be a recognized expert, i.e. hold a Ph.D. degree in international law. Please replace your arguments with a citation to a reliable secondary source that explicitly states that the German legal argument in defense of the re designations was wrong, making the German use of re-designation technically illegal. Note however that even if you were to manage to find such, you'd still but into point 1 above.


 * Perhaps you'd be happy to note that we can add a sub-section regarding legality of the DEF designation using a proper secondary source, since MacKenzie states:
 * DEF:"Italian POWs continued to be de facto prisoners even though their government was as of October 1943 a cobelligerent in the war against Germany. Although rather unfair and self-serving, this action did not affect the well-being of Italian POWs. More serious-and contrary to the spirit if not the letter of the Geneva Convention-was the treatment accorded German prisoners after the war had ended. With Allied POWs safely on their way home and the danger of retaliation gone, Allied governments felt free to alter the conditions of captivity hitherto enjoyed by German POWs when and where it was deemed necessary."


 * For the re-designations done by the Germans:
 * IMI: "In the wake of the armistice concluded between the government of Marshal Badoglio and the Allies in September 1943, German units in Italy had moved swiftly to disarm, round up, and transport to Germany all the Italian soldiers they could lay their hands on. Numbering over 550,000, these prisoners were never recognized as POWs but instead were dubbed "Italian Military Internees" (IMIs), even though Italy was soon at war again on the Allied side. Deprived of the legal status of POWs, the Italians suffered greatly, as the German authorities denied the International Red Cross and the Vatican permission to visit internment camps and provide aid. A gloss of legitimacy was given to all this when Mussolini officially placed the Italian prisoners at the disposal of the Reich in early 1944"


 * Polish, Yugoslav and French: "After the defeat of Poland in 1939, those Polish troops "released" from POW status had found themselves transformed into a virtual conscript labor force, a practice also followed with most Yugoslav military personnel two years later. Such action was defended on the grounds that, since both countries had been broken up or absorbed after occupation and since official POW status depended on affiliation to a recognized state, former Polish and Yugoslav military personnel were not legally prisoners of war. (R.-J. Wilhelm, Can the Status of Prisoners of War Be Altered? (Geneva, 1953), p. 10.) There were, however, limitations to this approach, the chief one being that the bulk of Germany's prisoners from the West were French, and France still existed as a state. Ironically, it was Pierre Laval, premier of the virtually defunct Vichy government, who came up with a solution to this problem in January 1943. Desperate for political reasons to avoid sending 250,000 more French civilian workers to the Reich (as Sauckel was demanding as part of his labor-mobilization program), Laval proposed that instead an equivalent number of French POWs would be transformed into "free" contract laborers. In theory these men would be volunteers, but in practice coercion needed to be employed once it became clear that the prisoners themselves gained little in the way of added freedom and lost a great deal in terms of rights accorded legally recognized POWs. As civilian "guest" workers they were no longer protected by the Geneva Convention, and they exchanged the relative safety of Wehrmacht custody for a life in which the Gestapo played a major role."


 * As far as I can tell the German actions of re-designation of Poles and Yugoslavs are not discussed as if they were a technical violation of the Geneva convention, rather they are spoken of as technically valid methods that however could not be applied to all cases (i.e. the French). But again, I stick with point 1. which is the crucial point here, the legality issue is irelevant to the sub-section title.
 * Bringing in the legality issue and your own attempt at original research into international law as a motive for the POV template is simply nothing but your own POV, Philip Baird Shearer, and thus the POV template that you introduced is baseless and must be removed.--Stor stark7 Speak 16:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

This article is a disaster
It is mostly uncited, with mass sections being argument from a single journal article by Canadian MacKenzie back in 1994. The whole thing appears to be created out of the Bacque/Wiggers/MacKenzie articles. Moreover, I'm not even sure the "DEF" designation is in more than a couple of documents, but that's for another day.

The Bacque article now has its own Wikipedia article, Other Losses, so it can can go there, with the main tag cite to that article.

Two POW camp photos were blown up to a massive 400 pixels to read the captions instead of just typing in the captions as Wikipedia policy states re photo size.Mosedschurte (talk) 19:57, 12 February 2009 (UTC)


 * If this article is a disaster then I believe it is because of the recent edits. I dispute your claim about uncited. If you have a problem with MacKenzie, then please take it up at WP:RS before doing arbitrary deletions. Why do you claim it is made up of a Wiggers article? Where? Please note, this article is about DEF, not about a book called other losses, which by the way certainly is not amongst any of the references, contrary to what you seem to think. I've reverted your edits, I provide links to them them below with some comments. --Stor stark7 Speak 00:19, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


 * block quote of copyrighted source


 * Red Cross:
 * Before the German surrender the Red Cross was permitted to visit and provide food in both U.S. and German POW camps. With the surrender they were prohibited to visit and provide food in the American French and UK camps. It was not until after repeated approaches (plural) that they were allowed to investigate conditions.


 * With your edit here you make it sound as if the Allies were actually making the prisoners a favour by allowing the Red Cross to finally visit, for example you remove the mention that the amounts of food they were allowed to provide were very small. The red cross text further states: "During their visits, the delegates observed that German prisoners of war were often detained in appalling conditions." which you changed to "On February 4 1946, the Red Cross was permitted to assist prisoners in the U.S. zone and estimated that German prisoners of war were often detained in appalling conditions." Estimated is another word for "guessed", and far from what was being meant. Further, the text states that "in the autumn of 1945, it received authorization to send both relief and delegates into the French and British zones.", which you changed to "Three months after Germany's surrender, the International Red Cross was allowed to investigate the camps in the UK and French occupation zones of Germany, as well as to provide relief to the prisoners held there." How do you know it was 3 months? it is not even the lower possible bounds to be accurate. Autumn in meteorological terms does not start until September 1, and last till November 30, i.e. it could have been anything from 4 to 6 months §(or more if you take astronomical autumn), but you chose to write 3 months instead of simply Autumn...


 * moved attack from two historians to section for them
 * There are two problems with this edit. 1. This is a section on the controversy, not specifically on any alleged "attack", plus you failed to reveal that you also used this edit to delete a full paragraph


 * unexplained edit
 * Here you invent a "MacKenzie controversy". Do you have any sources at all that state that what Professor MacKenzie wrote is in any way controversial?


 * James Bacque claims: Summarized There is now an entire article on Bacque's book -- Oterh Losses
 * Here you cut out the mayor part and refer to an article that has been labeled as unreliable for years.


 * unexplained edit


 * Which consist of large scale deletion, for example deletion of the quite notable "The International Red Cross was never permitted to fully involve itself in the situation in DEF or SEP camps, and even though conditions in them gradually improved, "even the most conservative estimates put the death toll in French camps alone at over 16,500 in 1945"."


 * unexplained edit
 * A deletion of the historical precedents section.


 * ref to odd argument -- no cite
 * A deletion of a paragraph, no attempt to add a tag requesting references for the forced labor, just a deletion.


 * unexplained edit
 * Here you write that the total of dead could not have exceeded 56,000. I fail however to see any mention of who claims or alleges this (nor any sight the "author xxx claims" caveat that you added to Macenzie), nor if this refers to German prisoners in General, German prisoners in U.S. hands, or German prisoners in the Rheiweisenlager, so not really of much use.


 * unexplained edit
 * Here you add a table showing POW death rates in World War II.
 * First this has no place here, what has it to do with DEFs after the war was over?
 * and second, it is also an obvious attempt at relativism.
 * Finally, it seems ironic that is seems it is I who have provided the data in the table that you have obviously copy pasted from an other article.


 * unexplained edit
 * Here you delete a sourced paragraph about the 1,300,000 German POW's that the German red cross still lists as missing.


 * PS. to Carders, regarding the video clip, the title about running comes from the Norwegian title of the clip, and although it is not shown in the clip, the narrator tells about it.--Stor stark7 Speak 00:19, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


 * If you have problem with the edits other editors made or cites they added, then edit accordingly. Don't revert the entire thing and engage in WP:Edit War.


 * And Other Losses now has its own article, so it's summary here now.


 * Re: "Here you cut out the mayor part and refer to an article that has been labeled as unreliable for years."
 * ->Then edit the other article. Don't recreate the same article on Other Losses here.  There is no WP:Ownership of this article.  Edit the other one if it is unreliable.Mosedschurte (talk) 00:47, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Re: "A deletion of the historical precedents section."
 * ->First, it's not deleted. It's but moved to the section of the author who makes the claims of connections to Germany's legal treatment of Polish and Yugoslavian troops with the U.S. Treatment of Germans (note: despite they designated entirely differently, but I didn't even get into that).
 * ->Second, it was actually repetitive before -- but then again, this article was a disaster (to be nice) before.


 * Re: "A deletion of a paragraph, no attempt to add a tag requesting references for the forced labor, just a deletion."
 * ->You mean the unsourced paragraph? The one that, even more oddly, makes a legal conclusion about the Hague Convention with an entirely unsourced description of the Hague Convention in a ref tag?  Yeah, that was deleted.Mosedschurte (talk) 00:58, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Re: "Here you write that the total of dead could not have exceeded 56,000. I fail however to see any mention of who claims or alleges this (nor any sight the "author xxx claims" caveat that you added to Macenzie), nor if this refers to German prisoners in General, German prisoners in U.S. hands, or German prisoners in the Rheiweisenlager, so not really of much use."
 * ->Oh, you mean Stephen Ambrose -- every heard of him? -- and the panel of historians that examined this claim when Bacque raised this WP:Fringe claim in the 1990s? Do you really want me to go track down every source, including everyone on the panel that slammed Bacque (and everyone since) that has come in at under 56,000?  Forget has anyone reputable ever even come in over that?


 * I also cited the Ferguson article comparing POW stats across countries -- the only article to do so, which you improperly deleted.Mosedschurte (talk) 01:02, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Re: "   Here you add a table showing POW death rates in World War II.    First this has no place here, what has it to do with DEFs after the war was over?
 * First, you can't be serious in an article about POW deaths that the other rates providing context must somehow be deleted.
 * Second, making this argument even more silly: the ONE other rate listed in the article before was the British rate -- the ONLY rate lower than the already tiny U.S. rate.
 * In short, the demonstration of that being that this article did -- and still does -- have serious POV issues.Mosedschurte (talk) 01:06, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I propose we bring this to the edit resolution process, since we obviously can find no common ground here. I suggest we start with 3rd opinion. But first
 * Please be civil and do not throw out red herrings about Edit:War, please note that it is you who have deleted huge amounts of text without providing no explanations in your edit summary. Please read up on policy about explaining and motivating your edits.
 * Your claim about there now being an article about the book by Bacque called "Other losses". What you are referring to is the article Eisenhower and German POWs which dealt with the controversy regarding the treatment of POWs. You deleted huge amounts of texts that apparently did not fit your POV, thus misleading recent arrival User:Mangoe to believe the article was only about Bacques book and therefore to rename it to Other losses. To make it extra hilarious, I see now that you used that to take the opportunity to delete even further text by referring to the new title. A bit rich, really.
 * "A deletion of the historical precedents section." To say you moved it is a bit rich, its been trimmed down beyond use, no-one will understand what it is about.
 * I see you are unable to distinguish between notes and references, and the fact that you deleted the section about forced labor, although you definitively know about the forced labor since you've edited that article shows that....
 * Stephen Ambrose. Please calm down, and stop with the straw men. Ambrose may be neither more nor less reliable than Makenzie, but your POV is made very evident by the way you differ in the presentation of what the two state. One is apparently a gods gospel, the other one has "claims" (note that they don't even seem to contradict each other anywhere, but still this difference in presentation)
 * The table of POW casualties. So you are saying that the percentages of deaths for POW's in wartime should be shown in a table and used to provide context for the deaths a different category of prisoners in peacetime? Without any explanation that explains how many wartime years they had to be POW's to reach those death rates?


 * Further my comments stand, you have engaged in huge deletions without providing any explanations, just see the list provided above. Just because you do not like something does not give you the right to delete it without providing a good motivation.--Stor stark7 Speak 01:48, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Re: "What you are referring to is the article Eisenhower and German POWs"
 * ->No, I'm referring to Other Losses, the article that deals with James Bacque's book. I have no idea how James Bacque's Fringe theories have spawned three articles, or why someone would vehemently attempt to rebroadcast Bacque's seriously WP:Fringe charges in as many Wikipedia articles as possible.


 * Re: "You deleted huge amounts of texts that apparently did not fit your POV"
 * Almost all of the "deleted" text was (a) summarized Other Losses material that points to the article now titled Other Losses, including a long debate re Ambrose/everyone else which was entirely inappropriate outside of Other Losses; (b) material that was summarized, such at the 1963 report and (c) some (but certainly not close to all) conclusory material with zero cites.


 * Re: "To say you moved it is a bit rich, its been trimmed down beyond use, no-one will understand what it is about."
 * ->Good God. It was actually stated twice in the article before at different spots, both times incomprehensibly.


 * Re: "I see you are unable to distinguish between notes and references, "
 * ->Nope. At least you're consistent.  It was a "ref" tag, not a "ref group=note" tag.  Oh yeah, and zero source.  All while attempting to make a legal conclusion about the Hague Convention.


 * Re: "So you are saying that the percentages of deaths for POW's in wartime"
 * (1) It's not just POW's in wartime. It's total POWs. (2) that includes POW's in the camps referred to throughout herein.
 * Perhaps most humorously, you actually had in ONLY THE BRITISH FIGURES of the same sort -- the only ones lower than the American figures. Seriously, it was a complete joke.  The article even did the honors of combining a defined Wikipedia weasel word "revealed" consecutively with wait for it . . . James Bacque.  "Bacque revealed . . ."   "Mosedschurte (talk) 02:12, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I grow weary of these attacks on me. I'll be very direct therefore.
 * 1. You have engaged in very poor edit practice, verging on direct vandalism, by deleting huge amounts of sourced material without explanation.
 * 2. The article you refer to as Other Losses used to be Eisenhower and German POWs, until your unexplained edit-storm. To pretend otherwise is plain silly, just look at the history. It used to be about the controversy, after your deletions it is really only about one book. And after the renaming you have continued your massive deletions.
 * 3. You continuously accuse me of inserting fringe claims regarding Bacque. This is your last warning. Provide evidence that I have cited Bacque.
 * 4. It seems very clear to me that you have never read the Nial Fergusson paper on POW casualties that you make frequent references to. This does not surprise me, since I spotted another place where you provided info not supported by the cite you provided. Talk:Forced_labor_of_Germans_in_the_Soviet_Union
 * 5. I did indeed write that Bacque revealed the DEF designation, before his 1989 book few if any in the public or indeed academia were aware of DEF. You really wish to push your POV to the point of giving Bacque no credit at all, as evidenced by your deletion of the sourced sentence that stated the second half of the following:


 * The result of this conference was edited by Ambrose and Guenther Bischof and published in 1992 as the book Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against Falsehood which strongly disputes Bacque's mortality statistics. The historians did however not dispute Bacque's findings regarding camp conditions: "Bacque's six eyewitnesses fairly accurately reflect the appalling conditions in the Rhine meadow camps.... There can be little doubt that conditions in the worst of the camps were horrific - in the first weeks of May, even inhuman."

Your refusal to provide a neutral portrayal of the situation is not in line with expected editor behavior, just so you know. Neither is inserting references to books that do not support your claims. Please be more careful in the future, and please refrain from further personal attacks, see WP:CIV.--Stor stark7 Speak 02:53, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Re: "You have engaged in very poor edit practice"

->Another baseless assertion, and not helpful.


 * Re: "The article you refer to as Other Losses used to be Eisenhower and German POWs. until your unexplained edit-storm."

->Another inaccuracy. I didn't change the article to Other Losses. As you pointed out, it was, even more oddly, titled "Eisenhower and German POWs", which appeared to be a mistaken attempt by whoever started the article to name it after a book by Ambrose, yet almost the entire article seemed to be a complete recitation of Fringe claims of James Bacque and a chapter of an old book written by Richard D. Wiggers. Another editor changed it to "Other Losses" -- which actually reflected the article. By the way, James Bacque somehow now has his own Wikipedia article as well. The edits I made were to keep the article to POWs (it was titled "Eisenhower and German POWs") rather than the the blunderbuss attack it included regarding the German population as a whole and to include the many criticisms of Bacque's claims and calculations.


 * Re: "You continuously accuse me of inserting fringe claims regarding Bacque. This is your last warning. Provide evidence that I have cited Bacque."

->Last warning: Where did I ever say you "CITED" Bacque. The article obviously contained massive repeat quantities of Bacque's claims from other articles.


 * Re: "It seems very clear to me that you have never read the Nial Fergusson paper on POW casualties that you make frequent references to."

->Not only have I read it, but let's be blunt: you flat out incorrectly stated (being as nice as possible about it) that it is "I [you] who have provided the data in the table that you have obviously copy pasted from an other article." ->Reality: I "copied and pasted" the table from an article that I MADE after I read the Ferguson article. The table containing total deaths is also copied and pasted in yet another Bacque-related claim article, Other Losses. I didn't say anything earlier about it because it was just one of a list of inaccuracies for which it was not worth getting bogged down.


 * Re: "The result of this conference was edited by Ambrose and Guenther Bischof and published in 1992 as the book Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against Falsehood which strongly disputes Bacque's mortality statistics"

->It does much more than that. Among other things, it obliterates his claims of how the DEF was designated (which he'd badly bungled), the reasons for it and Bacque's crazy speculations about Eisenhower and "hiding the bodies." It does say that camp conditions were appalling, but it goes on to describe in detail the immense problems of housing 7.5 million prisoners in camps in the middle of one of the most war-destroyed countries in history.Mosedschurte (talk) 08:02, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Re: "You have engaged in very poor edit practice" ->Another baseless assertion, and not helpful.


 * Not baseless at all, and only unhelpful if you refuse to listen. Let me help you explicitly then. This is from the instructions regarding edit summaries.
 * "Always fill in the summary field. This is considered an important guideline. Even a short summary is better than no summary. An edit summary is even more important if you delete any text; otherwise, people may question your motives for the edit."
 * Here two examples of why I question your motives. ,
 * And here I explain an example of why I do not trust you to portray sources accurately.
 * 1.	^ e f g h S. P. MacKenzie "The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II", The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 66, No. 3. (Sep., 1994), pp. 487-520. (Half of the cites to this article were deleted)
 * 2.	^ Further referenced in footnote to: J. Wilhelm, Can the Status of Prisoners of War Be Altered? (Geneva, 1953) p.10
 * 3.	^ Ernest Fisher, Jr. was for many years a senior historian with the United States Army Center for Military History in Washington, and wrote the official history of the U.S. Army campaign in Italy, Cassino to the Alps. Among his recent publications is a book on the American non-commissioned officer, Guardians of the Republic published by Ballantine. From HNN Debate: Was Ike Responsible for the Deaths of Hundreds of Thousands of German POW's? Pro and Con
 * 4.	^ Other Losses: An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners of War After World War II., Review author[s]: Jonathan Osmond International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) © 1991 Royal Institute of International Affairs
 * 5.	^ The Scholarship on World War II: Its Present Condition and Future Possibilities. Richard H. Kohn. The Journal of Military History, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Jul., 1991), pp. 365-394
 * 6.	^ Note: Food relief shipments to Germany were prohibited by the Allies until December 1945, since "they might tend to negate the policy of restricting the German standard of living to the average of the surrounding European nations". "CARE package shipments to individuals remained prohibited until 5 June 1946". The U.S. Army In The Occupation of Germany 1944-1946 by Earl F. Ziemke Footnotes to chapter 23, Further referenced to: (1) Memo, European Section Theater Group, OPD, for L & LD, sub: Establishment of Civilian Director of Relief, 8 Dec 45, in OPD, ABC 336 (sec. IV) (cases 155- ) . (2) OMGUS, Control Office, Hist Br, History of U.S. Military Government in Germany, Public Welfare, 9 Jul 46, in OMGUS 21-3/5.
 * 7.	^ Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, "The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38", p.289
 * 8.	^ Ike's Revenge? Time Magazine, Monday, Oct. 2, 1989
 * 9.	^ stern-Serie: Besiegt, befreit, besetzt - Deutschland 1945-48
 * 9.	^ stern-Serie: Besiegt, befreit, besetzt - Deutschland 1945-48


 * ->Last warning: Where did I ever say you "CITED" Bacque. The article obviously contained massive repeat quantities of Bacque's claims from other articles.
 * Re: Bacque, this article is not about Bacque and never was, and your endless hampering about Bacque is certainly not useful.
 * I think I understand now, from your many statements above, which motives that are driving your blanking of sourced information without providing any explanations. You are unhappy with reliable uncontroversial sources that provide information that in your eyes come from Bacque, and that is why you delete them.  However you may perceive the facts they provide, you can provide no rationale for the deletions except an attempt to make an association to Bacque. I hope you understand the error of your ways here. Wiki policy does not allow deletions based on self imagined associations. If you dispute my analysis, provide evidence that the other articles were from unreliable sources, or somehow reliable sources rehashing the parts of Bacques book that have been refuted. I expect you will not be able to support your argument.


 * Ferguson table origins:
 * The table about War time casualties of PW’s in WW2 is irrelevant in an article about DEF’s AFTER the war and more on the line of synthesis, but I’ll let that slide for now. I’m more interested in your statement that "I "copied and pasted" the table from an article that I MADE after I read the Ferguson article." Care to mention the name of that article you say you copied the table from? This way we can simply ascertain whether it was in fact you who inserted the table into Wikipedia. The article name please?
 * --Stor stark7 Speak 20:18, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Re:"And here I explain an example of why I do not trust you to portray sources accurately."
 * ->Had you actually read the background, you would know that that was not my source or cite. I was moving material -- interestingly, material deleted from Other Losses because it did no deal with that book -- to another article at the request of that editor.


 * Re: "me: Last warning: Where did I ever say you "CITED" Bacque." You, no response to the question.
 * ->Not surprising.


 * Re: "And here I explain an example of why I do not trust you to portray sources accurately."
 * ->Perhaps most humorously about his complaint is that literally the very first line deleted in your example was the outrageous statement: "Estimates of POW casualties range from 600,000 to 1,000,000." Without a cite, of course.


 * Re: "The following are the cites to the information that you deleted"
 * ->Bacque: as if this bears repeating, the link to the entire article on Bacque's book "Other Losses" is now in the article. I just added back the additional ref cite to it the book.
 * ->Kohn: Again, contained an Ambrose discussion of Bacque's Other Losses, the cite was reffing the a quote starting "Bacque has done some research . . . " about the response to Bacque, which belongs in the Bacque article on "Other Losses".  This is not an article on Other Losses, the material covered by which is only summarized here.
 * ->Ziemke: AGAIN, this was a ref to a note on Bacque, here the sentence that began "Mr. Bacque is wrong on every major . . . ". That's for Other Losses, the material covered by which is only summarized here.
 * ->Tadashi Wakabayashi: AGAIN, and this is unbelievable, that was for yet ANOTHER Bacque sentence, "Bacque's six eyewitnesses . . . " That's for Other Losses, the material covered by which is only summarized here.  The Bacque focus in this article was simply astounding.
 * ->MacKenzie: remains in the article. In fact, he has his own section, but it summarized such that it is not an article essentially just parrotting the MacKenzie arguments.
 * ->Footnote to: Bohm- it was in the MacKenzie material pre-summary, and I just added that back in along with MacKenzie's argument that "callous self-interest and a desire for retribution played a role in the fate of these men" -- the sort of attacking value judgment by a historian that, by the way, should NOT be in an encyclopedic article, but this article is so far below that, it's not even worth going into at this moment
 * ->Time Magainze Article: This was YET AGAIN on the discussion regarding Bacque's book, but I just added it back in.
 * ->Wilhelm: remains in the article
 * ->stern-Serie: the odd claim about 1,300,000 captives fate being "still unknown" - I mistakenly cut that while trying to move it. I just added it back.


 * Re the edits where the summary is left blank: I do this when the explanation is in the TALK PAGE., such as the edits just above.  I should have put "sse Talk" in the edit field, but I didn't.  Mosedschurte (talk) 21:41, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

As an aside, probably next week when I have the time to run down more sources, I'm going to actually add material regarding the reclassification process, as this article is actually supposed to be on the classification of "Disarmed Enemy Forces" per its title.Mosedschurte (talk) 21:46, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Your statement: "The article obviously contained massive repeat quantities of Bacque's claims from other articles."


 * You still have failed to do anything other than show that some of the references you deleted also dealt with what Bacque wrote, you have not shown that they repeat anything Bacque wrote, and certainly not that anything attributed to those references has been refuted.


 * Your statement: "Perhaps most humorously about his complaint is that literally the very first line deleted in your example was the outrageous statement: "Estimates of POW casualties range from 600,000 to 1,000,000." Without a cite, of course.".


 * This was your response to amongst many other things my complaint about this unexplained blanket deletion of almost a full paragraph. Your statement about "outrageous statement" is very telling, and perhaps explains why you did not even attach a citation request, but instead went straight to blanking the paragraph without explanation. The cite available in the paragraph you deleted (including cite) contains the information supporting what you claim is an "outrageous statement". I will revert to the last version before your intervention. I propose that before you make further changes you first take into account the complaints made by me and also the observations made by the neutral third opinion that I requested, and thereafter first explain/discuss here at the talk page each of the changes and deletions you wish to make in good time before you make them.--Stor stark7 Speak 22:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Third opinion

 * 1) The article needs more material about its subject, which is DEF as a policy decision rather than its consequences.
 * 2) The table is nontopical. It appears to be WP:SOAPBOXing of the "they were worse" variety, and cites no source. It should be immediately deleted.
 * 3) There is too much factual assertion rather than attribution of claims. One example: "In total, the number of German POWs that died could not have exceeded 1% (56,000)" is asserted by Ambrose, but it is quoted as a fact.
 * 4) By contrast, it appears that someone has gone through and inserted "allegedly" and its synonyms at every possible opportunity into the opposing material. This perverts the intent of WP:UNDUE.
 * Personal disclosure - my impression of Bacque is that he makes too many conclusions out of too little data. But neither my personal opinion nor anyone else's should be used as an excuse to take sides in a dispute. Wikipedia does not engage in disputes, it neutrally describes them. arimareiji (talk) 17:47, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

This article is a complete joke
I swear I'm not making this up, it ACTUALLY STATED "The Western Allies' post-war treatment of German prisoners was first investigated by Canadian novelist James Bacque, together with Ernest Fisher, Jr."

James Bacque the FIRST to investigate??? That was too silly not to save for posterity on the Talk page. If you don't believe me, click on the history of this monstrosity. That was even nuttier than Bacque's "Missing Million" claim in Other Losses.

It also had huge 400px wide photos of the Rheinwiesenlager camps, which not only have ZERO to do with the DEF designations, but also contained thousands of prisoners designated POW, not DEF.

It also contained long descriptions of the total deaths from Bacque's crazed book -- never mind that these were not only 'not all because of DEF designations, the subject of this article, but many of these prisoners weren't even DEF, they were French.

In short, it was pretty wacky. It still needs some work, though the designation itself is a pretty narrow subject. Mosedschurte (talk) 22:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

circumvent ion of the 1929 Geneva Convention
The statement "was to circumvent the 1929 Geneva Convention, Relative to the treatment of prisoners of war." carries POV connotations for someone reading the introduction and who is not familiar with the term "Disarmed Enemy Forces" as it hints that the move was illegal. The lead should be read independently of the main body of the article and be a fair summary of the article. Such a statement is not a fair summary. --PBS (talk) 07:24, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I changed the Lede to reflect this.  Also, I moved the addition of the 1949 amendment material regarding the 1929 GC to the aftermath section, with the other sentence addressing the issue.Mosedschurte (talk) 15:28, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Numbers don't match?
I notice what, at a first quick reading, seems to be an inconsistency in the current presentation. The article now suggests that allegations that hundreds of thousands captured Germans died under allied hands is exaggerated. However, that doesn't seem to match the fact that 1'300'000 Germans went missing. Should we perhaps mention academic opinions that do provide a plausible accounting, or are we obliged to leave it to the readers to form their own opinion about the claimed "consensus" [citation missing!]? Harald88 (talk) 14:21, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

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