Talk:James Bacque

Bio
I knew this guy and I think I should leave this to others, but Bacque was a much more important fiction writer and editor than this entry lets on. It would be far more balanced if there was more information on Bacque's life to balance the controversial material. Sportsman360 (talk) 23:23, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Anyone who implies that Bacque supports Shoah denial, is being defamatory.
The bias against Bacque that is being permitted without adequate checks here at Wiki truly beggars belief and is a disgrace. Those who have properly studied James Bacque's latter work, "Crimes and Mercies" (which to this Oxonian's mind stands up admirably to expert scrutiny - and by the way is in no way "Holocaust denying"), will know that Bacque's research and conclusions continue to hold water.

That others have embraced this great and ground-breaking work of Mr Bacque, currently reprinting for early 2007, is of no surprise, for it reflects what many Germans experienced and recall. That individuals with their own agendas have found the horrific truths and research published welcome or unwelcome, is irrelevant. Bacque's work conforms to high standards of academic and historiographical methodology and accuracy. The attempted slurs that were earlier found on here are therefore appalling.

Many Germans will read "Crimes and Mercies" in English, if it is not translated into their mother tongue.


 * No one implied that Bacque supports denial. The point is that deniers support Bacque. Richard Evans, for instance, quotes one D. Irving as referring to Bacque as "a very good friend of mine." And certainly on this talk page there has been no shortage of admitted deniers ranting about Jewish conspiracies. --Ggbroad 22:25, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

James Bacque
Dear Wikipedia editors.

Audiatur et altera pars is a rule that applies not only to lawyers but also to historians and sociologists. I think that Wikipedia readers are entitled to know what James Bacque has to say, and not what people claim that he says. James Bacque has answered his critics on Television and in the Times Literary Supplement. The reader should at least get a link to the relevant sites.

While it is true that a majority of historians reject Bacque's figures on POW mortality, "Other Losses" and "Crimes and Mercies" are books that address issues far more important than the statistics. Both books draw attention to important subjects that professional historians have deliberately avoided, and when they have touched on the subject, have deliberately played down.


 * What evidence do you have that they were "deliberately" played down? And, in any case, there's a question of historical truth here: 1,000,000 POWs categorically did *not* die in Allied captivity, the phrase "Other Losses" did not mean deaths and deaths alone, as Bacque claimed, Bacque has deliberately manipulated historical evidence and the testimony of witnesses, etc., and has refused to recant more than a decade after he has been exposed for what he is: a conscious, knowing fraud. You're back the wrong horse, sir.  --Ggbroad 20:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

(Answer / 13 June/ I came across the story of the German POWs in the 1970s when I was doing research in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. I was surprised that an issue as important as the death of a very high number of German POWs in Allied hands (the Red Cross had no exact figures) had been so thoroughly neglected by professional historians.  The first question that arises is why and how such high deaths among the German POWs.  The debate on the number only comes later.  Neither you, nor I nor James Bacque is a professional demographer.  That is why a commission should have been established to look at the matter professionally.  In the course of time, as opportunity presented itself, I asked colleagues in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, why no one was writing on the subject of the German POWs in American hands after WWII. A number of historians were honest enough to tell me that, although they knew about the deplorable camp conditions and the crimes committed under the responsibility of United States military authorities, it was not "opportune" to address the issue. It was made clear to me that there would be career consequences for historians who wanted to tackle such unpopular subjects).

The two leading German authors who wrote about the subject of German POWs in American hands, Professor Erich Maschke of the University of Heidelberg and Dr. Kurt Boehme of the German Red Cross, distanced themselves from the lower figures they had put in their earlier publications, explaining that they had considered it safer to rely on the official US figures. In the 1980s, when I was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Public International Law in Heidelberg, I had the opportunity of visiting Professor Maschke on repeated occasions, and also Dr. Boehme, who confirmed that there was much, much more than met the eye.

This sad chapter of post World War II history deserves an open debate. Professor Steven Ambrose, who died disgraced as a plagiarist


 * His plagiarism is logically unrelated to whether or not Bacque's claims are true, which they are not. You're supporting a conscious charlatan. Does it not occur to you that that undermines the credibility of all else you are attempting to do? Do you not consider it significant that 99% of Bacque's major supporters are Holocaust deniers? --Ggbroad 20:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Answer / 13 June/ Not at all. My own research and my own publications stand on their own merit, and this merit has been recognized by the leading scholarly journals and serious colleagues in academia.  My point is that notwithstanding the debate on the statistics, the underlying issue is that the military authorities of my country, the United States, did not observe the provisions of the Geneva POW Convention of 1929, as they do not observe the Geneva Convention III of 1949 with regard to the detainees in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan.  I think that you are being highly unfair in describing Mr. Bacque as "a conscious charlatan".  You are, of course, entitled to disagree with his statistics.  Myself, I am no longer so sure of the number of German POWs who died in Soviet, British, French, American hands.  I think that this whole issue deserves to be looked at again.  Bacque at least took the trouble to go to the Moscow archives to see what statistics he could find about the death of German POWs in Russia.  I do think that his point is valid that if some 1.5 million German POWs died in captivity, surely they did not all die in the Soviet Union.  Maybe we lost a lot more than we care to admit.  And, if you see the photos of the US-run camps and read the reports of the survivors, you realize that the death toll must have been much higher than hitherto accepted.  //

Ambrose did not give Bacque's arguments the necessary scholarly attention. And the Conference in New Orleans was an academic hatchet job. The fact is that Bacque did receive many good reviews from competent historians and that none of those reviewers were invited to Prof. Ambrose's conference.


 * Please cite these "good reviews". --Ggbroad 20:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

// Answer> 13 June // I remember them at the time, because that is how I found out about the existence of James Bacque. If you contact Mr. Bacque, I am sure he will provide you with copies of reviews, good and bad. In any event, the English version of the book was published by Little Brown and by Stoddard, both respectable houses. The German version of the book was published by Ullstein, similarly a reputable publisher. //

The questions that Bacque throws at us are still very much open and still deserve our attention.

When we look at the war crimes committed by US forces in Vietnam and see how the official policy of the United States is to deny prisoner of war status to the detainees in Guantanamo and elsewhere, we inevitably ask ourselves, how did the U.S. treat the Germans POWs after World War II.

If you have seen the pictures of the German POWs in Rheinwiesenlager in 1945, as I did at the Pentagon archives, you would be ashamed that the U.S. woulc be capable of such crimes, which, unfortunately, were covered up then.

It is the responsibility of professional historians not to connive at the cover up. We will all be better of if we develop the capacity of self criticism.

Professor Dr.iur. et phil. Alfred de Zayas former Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee former Chief of Petitions at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Visiting Professor of law at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), DePaul University College of Law (Chicago), Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales (Geneva), University of Trier, Universidad de Alcala de Henares (Madrid), currently Professor of international Law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and Professor of world history at the Schiller International University in Leysin, Switzerland. President of the PEN Club, Centre Suisse romande

Sigh
No one denies that German POWs were treated very badly in Allied captivity at the end of the Second World War, but you - if you are who you claim to be - must of all people recognize that Bacque is not someone to be taken seriously. He claimed - on the basis of *no* legitimate evidence that that ONE MILLION German POWs died in Allied captivity, as the result of a deliberate policy of mass murder orchestrated by General Eisenhower. It is this claim which is in dispute. It did not happen. Bacque is the perpetrator of an historical fraud, and supporting his claims does nothing to further the goal of giving proper historical attention to the mistreatment of German POWs. In fact, it undermines it. I don't quite understand why an historian of some standing can't get this simple point. --Ggbroad 20:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

<< It is this claim which is in dispute. It did not happen.>> What sort of argument method is that? What, you think the reader is five years old? How can you say something is "in dispute" and follow up with a flat statement that "it did not happen"? Who are you, God? And, why the OBSESSION with making sure that Bacque "not be taken seriously"? By what criteria do YOU define who should be taken "seriously". Should Hitler be taken seriously? How about Mao? How about Machiavelli? How about Maimondes? Don't you understand the difference between AGREEING with someone and acknowleding they have the right to air their views, no matter how repugnant YOU PERSONALLY find them, as long as they back up their views with credible research and logical explanations? How many people died at Marathon? How many elephants did Hannibal cross the Alps with? How many did Julius Caesar slay at Gaul? How can you dismiss ANY historian who presents arguments that more or less died as a "charlatan"?

What kind of NONESENSE "encyclopedia" is this when someone of your ilk, with ZERO credentials can stand in the way of a distinguished professor like the gentleman you're arguing with and continue to assert that "it didn't happen" as a veto power over presenting ORIGINAL historical research? Sheesh!

// Answer 13 June // Intemperate language does not sharpen our vision. If you were to read the revised edition of "Other Losses" a second time, you may find much useful "evidence". I think that the function of the historian is to test established opinions -- with new questions and new facts. You cannot deny that Bacque did a lot of original research. His book is not the usual rehash of history. I feel that Mr. Bacque gave a push to research in the field and delivered hitherto unknown historical evidence. His extrapolations with regard to mortality figures remain very much a subject of dispute. It is evident that he did not convince you nor the community of professional historians. But it is his merit to have drawn attention to this hitherto taboo subject. What we need is more research on the subject and a calm and respectful attitude with regard to other people's opinions. Vedettas among historians are not uncommon. But they are unbecoming. I would wish that the Wikipedia article would refrain from ad hominem attacks. After all, we all have the right to be wrong. We can reject his figures. But the death of 70,000 German POWs in American hands would still raise the same issues of compliance with the Geneva 1929 POW Convention. In the Report of the ICRC on its activities during WW II and in its archives there is enough evidence of serious disregard of human life by the American military authorities, both vis a vis the POWs and vis a vis the German civilian population, which is the subject of Mr. Bacque's book "Crimes and Mercies", published in Canada by Little Brown, and in Germany by Ullstein.


 * I'm very glad that Mr. Bacque gave a "push" to what you allege was a "hithertoo taboo subject." And I certainly agree that we have "the right to be wrong." But there are some important distinctions here that you don't get. One, if we agree on a figure of about 70,000 dead German POWs in US hands, that works out to about 7 to 10% of the figure Bacque claimed. That's a very serious "error." Supposing I published a book which said that 50 million people died in the Holocaust? Would I be praised for furthering research? Of course not.  In addition, Bacque has never confessed to making any substantive error - and this more than a decade after this central claim: Other Losses=deaths=murders=1 million, has been exposed as totally incorrect. Why? Because all the signs point to someone who is, at best, a borderline conspiracy theorist, much beloved by the David Irving right and the extreme Chomskyite left.   Please note, as well, that Mr. Bacque has not be the subject of ad hominem attacks in the article - only on the discussion page.  Historians have one overarching duty: to the truth. We may not like what happened but we can't do anything about it. Bacque deserved the invective he receives. His devotion is to winning an argument and book sales, not truth.   --Ggbroad 12:08, 13 June 2006 (UTC)


 * In the interests of compromise I have added a final paragraph to the article stating that Bacque has spurred further research into some important questions. But can we please have an end to the people who come to this page and rewrite the article as though Bacque's claims are established fact?--Ggbroad 12:13, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

// Answer 13 June, 3 p.m. As Benjamin Disraeli used to say: there are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics. Personally, I leave statistics to professional demographers. I believe that Bacque has raised questions about the location where the German POWs of World War II died. Hitherto we thought that almost all of them had died in Soviet hands. The Soviets were deemed to be the bad guys, and no one cared to question the official statistics. The Russians also give a much lower figure for the death of German POWs in Soviet hands. Could it be, for sake of argument, that 70,000 or 100,000 or even 200,000 German POWs died in American hands? I think that this question deserves being investigated thoroughly. Previously we thought that between 5000 and 10,000 German POWs had died in American hands. Professional historians were complacent about this figure for decades. Now, I am sure that you agree that 5,000 is a gross underestimate. 5,000 would be 14 times less than 70,000 and 20 times less than 100,000. I think that the guild of historians is guilty by omission. The historical establishment should have taken up the matter and not left it to individual maverick historians. For me the big picture is the inacceptable and inhuman treatment of prisoners of war at the end of hostilities. If you see the US Army Signal Corps pictures, you will be shocked. And I dare assume that the US Army did not photograph the worst scenes. The testimony of survivors is riveting.

JAMES BACQUE ANSWERS JOHN KEEGAN James Bacque Answers a Critic (8/20/1993) This is a letter by James Bacque, author of Othe Losses. It appeared in The Times Literary Supplement of August 20, 1993. Sir,-

It is every writer's delight to be attacked in a famous journal by a confused critic, so my thanks go to John Keegan for airing his views on my work in the TLS on July 23.

Mr Keegan has been misled by the editors of the book, "Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against falsehood," which he cites to refute me. The principal editor, Stephen E. Ambrose, clearly does not know what he thinks from day to day, because he has varied wildly from strong approval of my book, "Other Losses," to snarling slanders of me personally, together with buffoonish misrepresentations of American army policies. Having kindly read my manuscript, he wrote to me as follows: "I am not arguing with the basic truth of your discovery...you have the goods on these guys, you have the quotes from those who were present and saw with their own eyes, you have the broad outline of a truth so terrible I really can't bear it...you really have made a major historical discovery..." It appears from the latest Ambrose writings that, indeed, the truth was something he could not bear.

The same might be said for his co-editor, Gunter Bischof, an Austrian. Keegan admires the "scholarship" of Bischof, but Bischof does not know a displaced persons camp from a prison camp. He chastises me for stating that there was a US Army prison camp at Ebensee in Austria: he says that the camp was for DPs. In fact, I have photocopies of General Mark Clark's secret report about the condition of prisoners of war in the camp, plus US Army medical reports of prisoners in the camp, plus eyewitness accounts of the catastrophe among dozens of thousands of prisoners, including the manuscript of a diary kept by the priest Franz Loidl who ministered to the dying. This manuscript is on deposit in the Church History Institute of the Catholic Theological Faculty, University of Vienna.

In the same book so admired by Keegan is a gross error made by Rudiger Overmanns, who does not even know the number of prisoners taken by the Americans. This was not 3.8 million as he says, but over 6 million, according to US Army records in Suitland, Maryland. Of course, this error, conveniently for Ambrose and Keegan, apparently diminishes the number of lives for which the Americans were responsible.

Underlying the Ambrose-Bischof book is a series on German prisoners edited by Erich Maschke. Underlying that series is no important documentation from the US Army archives in Washington. The author of the book on the American camps casually omits all the significant records that survived the paper purges of the late 1940s. However, for an expert judgment on the condition of American camps Mr Keegan may rely on the words of an American Lieutenant-Colonel who was in charge of the camps in France in 1945. In a report preserved at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry W. Allard wrote that "the standards of PW camps in the Com Z in Europe compare as only slightly better or even with the living conditions of the Japanese PW camps our men tell us about, and unfavourably with those of the Germans". Let us remember that after the war, the Americans executed Japanese for precisely the crimes referred to by Allard.

Mr Keegan does not accept the definition of the term "Other Losses" given me by Colonel Philip S. Lauben. He is unaware of the US Army report discovered by Richard Boylan, a senior archivist at the US National Archives, which confirms Lauben. The report plainly states that the "Other Loses" category of prisoners meant deaths and escapes. And finally, of course, 1,700,000 Germans, plus hundreds of thousands of other Europeans, are still missing from their families. This astounding fact is normally neglected by the Western apologists, unless they can also use it to hammer the Soviets, saying they all died in the Gulag. But now that the Soviets are gone, their archives are open and the truth at last emerges.

That truth is simple. The Soviets took some 4.1 million prisoners of war east and west, of whom some 600,000 died in slavery. Of the total take, some 2.4 million were Germans. Of these, some 450,600 died, the rest were sent home. Subtracting the 450,600 dead Germans from the missing 1.7 million, we see that some 1.25 million are still not accounted for. Of these, probably 100,000 - 200,000 died in Polish, Yugoslavian and other camps. The number remaining is very nearly the number I said in "Other Losses" of those who died among all Europeans taken prisoner in the West.

I wonder if Mr Keegan will consult the Soviet records before attacking them? The surprising thing about the Soviet records is that they are extensive, detailed, accurate and incriminating. For instance, on the subject of prisoners of war, these archives display a dossier for each prisoner, complete with capture records, biographical information, legal,labour and medical history, including X-ray photographs, and so on. The average is about fifteen pages per person. The dossier of Nobel prize winner Konrad Lorenz, the Austrian zoologist contains two hundred pages about him and his work. No such records exist anywhere in the West. In months of work in the archives of the West, I was never able to find the dossier for a single one of the 9 or so million prisoners held. Not one. But in the first hour in the NKVD/KGB archives, I found the archival boxes containing over 4 million personal dossiers. I was allowed to walk up and down the aisles, and take down and photocopy any box I chose at random, and did so. I have scores of photocopies of those records here in Toronto, and Mr Keegan is welcome to consult them. Or he may wish to visit Moscow. He will find interesting information beginning with the story of the Japanese prisoners. The Japanese authorities have long since determined that some 62,000 of their prisoners, chiefly in the Kwantung Army, died in the Gulag. The Soviets lied to the Japanese government for years about the number of deaths, first saying 3,800 had died, then about 4,000, then around 35,000. Finally, the Soviet archives were opened, and mirabile dictu, the death certificates were all there, totalling very nearly 62,000.

Do I hear Keegan protesting that Japan is not Germany? On his visit to Moscow, he may see for himself the Soviet records showing that the prisoners of various nationalities were often mixed together in the same camp, so that Japanese were enslaved beside Germans, were all treated the same way, and died in approximately the same ratio of much the same causes. Letters to me from individual prisoners and records at the Hoover Institution in Stanford all show independently of the Soviet archives that this was the case in more than thirty major camps

Let me also remind Keegan that the Poles long accused the Soviets of massacring some 14,000 officers at Katyn, but that the Soviet archives reveal that the true total was around 21,000. If John Keegan and his friends wish to attack the authenticity of the Soviet archives, they are going to have to show that the fragmentary documents in the Western archives, airy with lacunae and poxed with evasions, are superior to these tremendous archives which incriminate its masters for a horrifying crime against humanity. What will they say then? That the Soviets are hiding something?

JAMES BACQUE


 * Please sign your comments. Alas, this above only illustrates my point: a writer who alleges that he is an actual historian is caught making a very serious error and refuses to admit the error, which reinforces the position that, in fact, he's a conscious fraud rather than a sincere historian who made an error. --Ggbroad 11:48, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Non sequitur. Another, more plausible, scenario is that Bacque is sufficiently convinced of his methodology and prefers to stand by his guns. True, Bacque failed to convince his critics, but his critics also failed to convince him, i.e. did not profer sufficient evidence to make him change his position. Alas, the Ambrose book failed to address many of the issues raised by Bacque. Nor was there any commission of historians, lawyers, demographers set up to determine whether, perhaps, more Germans died in American hands that hitherto believed. It is arguable that less German POWs died in Soviet hands that previously alleged. The balance would increase the number of POW deaths attributable to the other detaining powers. There is still much to be studied -- systematically, methodically, meticulously. Personally, I cannot do this research, since I am overcommitted. But would like to see the Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte in Munich take up the matter. Alfred de Zayas, Geneva

James Bacque's Reputation
I find the claim that almost all of Mr. Bacque's supporters are "Holocaust deniers or neo-Nazis" absurd. Where on earth would anyone have found statistics (since this is an arguement that centers on statistics) to support that idiotic claim? Where is the database of James Bacque supporters, replete with their political viewpoint and views on the Holocaust? What is your expert area, that you feel qualified to attempt to destroy an honest man's reputation? That you attempt to smear as "neo-Nazis" all those who find his research convincing?

Mr. Bacque has uncovered documents that appear on their face to be true. They are damning against my native land, and against a General (Eisenhower) who I grew up thinking was one of the finest military men our country has ever produced. I think that decency demands that Mr. Bacque's findings be discussed, probably by an independant commission of human rights experts, to see exactly how close to the truth he is. I fear, from reading his books and from speaking with many of the survivors of the military occupation of Germany and Austria, that his statistics will be proven to be accurate. This, like his accusations, will be uncomfortable for me and my fellow Americans, but if they are accurate, then so be it. Many of the accusations that have come out of the Iraq war and occupation are also uncomfortable to us, but we are a great people, and guilt for any attrocities is never collective, is personal and individual to the perpetrator.

Calling Mr. Bacque and his supporters (of which I am one) "neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers" is an outrage, an attempt to win a debate by calling names: very dirty, unsubstantiated names. Grow up, discuss the facts, debate fairly.

KearnSchemm


 * I said that the majority of Bacque's supporters are Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis, a point John Keegan made about 10 years ago in his book "the Battle for History". I can't empirically prove it,

If you cannot prove a statement of that sort, and you admit that you can't, then stop saying/writing it! It is dishonest and unfair.

of course, but I would say that the majority of people who discuss his work with approval on the Internet fall into that category. David Irving, for instance, has referred to James Bacque as "my good friend".

How/when did you make the study of those who discuss this on the internet? The word "majority" is a lot less than your prior claim of "almost all." I don't care who calls themselves Bacque's friend, does someones friendship damn Bacque? Do you believe in guilt by association? I for one do not, neither does the legal system in which we live.

Go to the website of the "Institute for Historical Review" and you will find many positive references to Bacque. For a time – until I asked them to remove it – I had a very negative review of "Other Losses" on Amazon.com to which I foolishly appended my real e-mail address and I received, on average, about four or five abusive e-mails per month and, invariably, they were from deniers, etc. It is well known that Bacque has many supporters among the community of Holocaust deniers, etc., and virtually none among the community of legitimate historians. In fairness, Bacque himself has acknowledged much support from neo-Nazis, fascists, etc., though he emphatically denies being one of them, and I certainly apologize if I can across as suggesting that no one can be a sincere believer of his work without being a one. But certainly his most vocal supporters are.

I have no idea who his most vocal supporters are, my point is and remains that his charges, and the support that he gives for them, are prima facie proof that should be looked into by a neutral commission, to see what really happened to those missing million German POWs.

It's curious. Bacque accused the entire community of historians of "decades of lying" (or words of that kind) in "Other Losses". He and his supporters can, apparently, dish it out, but not take it.

Look, I don't know why I have to keep arguing this point. Bacque's work appeals to the ideological predilections of certain audiences who are generally not otherwise up on the historiography. Bacque made a claim, almost twenty years ago, which simply isn't tenable and has long since been disproven: that the Allies deliberately murdered almost a million German POWs at the end of the Second World War and then covered the whole thing up except – darn it! – they forgot about this column in the charts labeled "Other Losses". Well, it didn't happen that way. Period. "Other Losses" weren't all or even mostly deaths and there's no other evidence that a million POWs died let alone were murdered. There's a substantial literature on this. Bacque's numbers are off by about a factor of about 10 to 15, and that was revealed around 1990 or 1991. So, does he say, "ooops, I was wrong"? No. He's never retracted. Instead he says there's a conspiracy against him – the community of historians is afraid to address "taboo" subjects the claim that every crackpot makes against every established field of inquiry: "They laughed at Galileo, now they laugh at me!" etc. But for me, personally, I think what qualifies as "lowest of low" is the blurb that appears on the current edition of his book, Ambrose saying "Bacque has made a major historical discovery" taken totally out of context from a downright negative New York Times review in which Ambrose refers to the book as "worthless". --64.231.167.162 23:08, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Why is Wikipedia Censoring Me
Recently, James Bacque published an article on his web-page asking "why is Wikipedia censoring me?" Of course, Wikipedia is not "censoring" Bacque. Wikipedia has no means of "censoring" Bacque. Giving Bacque the benefit of the doubt, and assuming good faith, we will suppose for the time being that he does not understand what Wikipedia is or how it works. Bacque, like anyone else, can contribute to an article provided that he does so according to five pillars of Wikipedia and does so from an neutral point of view. But the suggestion that "Wikipedia" - a community of millions - is part of a conspiracy to silence him is plainly absurd. --Ggbroad 20:30, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Reality is, Wikipedia is controlled by a clique of Admins


 * Oh, well that explains it then. It's a conspiracy. Of course. They must have gotten to me, too. --Ggbroad 11:08, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is owned by Jews, and edited ceaselessly by Jews. While whites are out earning their living, the Jews are controlling the flow of information.  Same old story, less gas chambers. -- Bill White
 * Not sure, if that got anything to do with Jews, and honestly I do not really care. But observing censorship on wikipedia for a while, it seems certain subjects or points of view are anathema and will be edited out swiftly. --105.237.38.144 (talk) 15:55, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

maybe not wikipedia itself, but the useres surely to censor stuff they dont like. I like wikipedia and I use it a lot, but just for information that cant be biased, i.e. if I would want to look up how fast a boeing 737 can fly, Ill go to wikipedia. but everything like polics and stuff that might have more than one POV I dont use wikipedia for that because people will just delete stuff they dont agree with. its true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.5.69.109 (talk) 17:31, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

NPOV template
I have added the NPOV template because, it seems, that whethter or not one agrees with Mr Bacque's assertions, the Wikipedia article itself is written in a decidedly biased tone against the author and needs to be reworked to a neutral point of view. Earpol 20:48, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * There's a problem here, though. How does one write in a neutral manner about a hoaxer? I mean this question quite seriously. Is the entry on Holocaust deniers not written with a (quite deserved) bias against the deniers? --Ggbroad 21:14, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, re-reading this article, I dispute the allegation that it is biased. The claim that the overwhelming majority of professional historians dispute Bacque's claims is true, the quotations are verifiable and cited, it states Bacque's claims, it even concludes with a nod in Bacque's direction. Very often I find that by "neutral" Wikipedians have some notion of giving equal credence to two sides in a dispute. But what happens when two sides in a dispute are categorically *not* of equal merit - as is the case here? --Ggbroad 21:19, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

"Hoaxer" ? What kind of descriptive group noun is this Ggbroad? I've read thru the entire series here, and I have to say that your posts have the sanctimony of the "gatekeeper' about them. It seems to be true then, that anything remotely critical or damaging to the cultural or political myths of the Jews is attacked or igonored.  Hail, Gatekeeper!  .... or should that be "Heil" ?

Wikipedia's core is all professionals
They keep their articles flowing, concise, and with a continuous thought that generates an opinion. Anything to do with the "Jewish Goals" is quickly diluted, side tracked, and dismissed. James Bacque, who is 100% correct, is being chewed up by these 'Professional Propagandist Jackals'. Rather than present a short, concise summary of his books, he is caught off guard and puts on a lengthy rambling defense of minutiae.

Holocaust denial laws are the oxymoron of free speech. EVERYTHING can be debated that's what freedom is.

Even "professionals" can have an agenda. 2601:181:8301:4510:F556:9CE7:C5F9:FBB (talk) 15:31, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Strange article
Trying to understand the truth, I read the article and I find it strange. Bacque gives numbers, dates, references. Wikipedia only gives names of academic people saying that Bacque is wrong. So it is very clear that in the places of the power, academies and other institutions paid by government or economic powers, Bacque is not welcomed. But I remember Wegener, who was considered mad, when speaking of continents moving, and Galileo before, when saying of Earth moving around the Sun. Both were right, against the current ideas.

So wikipedia has more than one million of articles. I think some reference inside wikipedia and its data (people, statistics, events, ...) could be found, in the sense of common understanding, or in the sense of what Bacque affirms. Truman Burbank 09:15, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Everything this guy writes about is BS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.202.129.54 (talk) 21:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Some Small Fixes
I have tried to give the article some balance. Bacque was actually an accomplished writer in Canada before Other Losses, but it is important to point out Other Losses was his first foray into history. I think it's important to point out Bacque is talking about losses among German POWs held by the Western Allies. Certainly hundreds of thousands, and perhaps more that a million, German POWs died in Allied custody if the Soviet Union is included among the Allies. As well, tens of thousands of German civilians died in Soviet forced-labour crews. Bacque does make a contribution, albeit flawed, to the historiography, one that has been built upon recently by Anthony Beevor and others, who have looked at the immediate post-war period, the state of Europe before the Marshall Plan, the European reconstruction period, the founding of the ECSC and the beginning of the Cold War. I am not familiar enough with Bacque's books, especially the second one, to accurately describe them. I think someone who has read them carefully should, at least, give a bare outline of his argument before rejecting them out of hand. I don't know why Holocaust deniers would embrace Bacque's work, since any neglect of Germans held as POWs by the Western allies does not negate the genocide against the Jews and other Nazi victims. As for the plagiarisms committed by Ambrose: they are not relevant to this discussion. Arthur Ellis 21:10, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Citied Criticism
I have now added *seven* cited, highly negative reviews of Bacque from writers across the political spectrum: from Stephen Ambrose to Edward S. Herman. Before anyone starts shouting POV, consider: it is not POV to express the critical consensus on a work of art. If I state, for instance, that such-and-such a movie or novel received bad reviews, that's not a violation of NPOV. If anyone has peer-reviewed studies or reviews from refereed journals that support Bacque, by all means put them up. Having searched the JSTOR and America History and Life databases - over 100 journals - I can't find any. So don't go shouting about POV. It's not my fault that this is the way the scholarly consensus goes. NPOV does not mean "give equal time to crackpot theories."--Ggbroad 23:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

possibly up to two million civilians
Not two million and not during the expulsion but during flight and expulsion and deportations to the SU. Xx236 08:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Recent Edits
In light of some recent edits to this article (eg. people deleting other people’s edits), can I propose a more structured approach that should avoid ending up in an edit war –

1.	do not remove material that is sourced 2.	instead of removing material that is unsourced, request a reference 3.	use this talk page to discuss before making major edits 4.	keep the article NPOV

As it stands the article does give too much weight to the critics of Bacque, in particular Ambrose. For instance, after a 5 line synopsis of the book “Other Losses”, there is a 9 line rambling diatribe from Ambrose criticizing it.

Bacque himself has claimed that he has received varying degrees of support for his books from the following historians - Professor Ed Peterson, University of Wisconsin; Professor Hans Koch, University of York, England; Professor Ralph Raico, University of Buffalo; Otto Kimminich, University of Regensburg;  Professor Dr. Peter Hoffmann, McGill University; Professor Pierre Van Den Berghe, University of Seattle. Logicman1966 (talk) 05:09, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Who is James Bacque?
Despite the fact the entry is entitled James Bacque, there really is almost nothing in it about him. Where was he educated? What degrees does he hold? Does he make his living writing or does he have some other job? Does he have a family? He's categorized as an alumni from several colleges, yet no mention of the degrees, if any, he holds. Surely someone has written a real profile on him that we might draw upon.Spoonkymonkey (talk) 15:50, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Ambrose
I just read the entry on Stephen Ambrose. I had not followed his plagiarism controversy. Apparently, evidence of plagiarism and sloppy work go all the way back to his dissertation in 1960. In the Wikipedia entry, he is quoted admitting his own failings as a researcher. I have therefore pared down his criticisms both in fairness to Bacque and for Wikipedia's own sake: we can't have one article saying Ambrose effectively was a fraud from the time he was a grad student, then use his words as a club to beat Bacque. Spoonkymonkey (talk) 16:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

And there is one point I find very intriguing: Ambrose and others have thundered at length against the thesis of "Other Losses", but I have not (yet ?) seen any refutation of the sources that Bacque cites in that work. Could it be that his sources are irrefutable, which means his thesis is based on strong ground ? Renaud OLGIATI (talk) 14:31, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem is not with Bacque's sources. The problem is that he misreads, misinterprets, misunderstands, and misuses them.--172.192.9.173 (talk) 19:27, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * All sources are open to each researchers own interpretaion and this is how the system works towards truth. Ambrose himself wrote I quarrel with many of your interpretations, [but] I am not arguing with the basic truth of your discovery. Claims of misuse require proof other than just saying it is so and Bacque's critics claims regarding his work are academically no more reliable than Bacque's own claims. Wayne (talk) 05:35, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Upper Canada College
The article says he has a BA from Upper Canada College. This is unlikely as UCC is a high school. Spoonkymonkey (talk) 01:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I've checked his bio; he did indeed attend Upper Canada College. He then studied at the University of Toronto, and obtained a BA in 1952.

I will update the article. Logicman1966 (talk) 02:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Comments
The article quotes a Mackenzie as saying ""That German prisoners were treated very badly in the months immediately after the war...is beyond dispute. All in all, however, Bacque's thesis and mortality figures cannot be taken as accurate". Germans were treated badly for years after the war. My uncle was a German soldier and forced to work in French coal mines for years after the war. He and the other prisoners were treated terribly, not just for a few months, but for years. But he was released before German prisoners held in the Soviet Union were released. The last German prisoners the Soviets let go home were released in 1955, ten years after the war had ended. The ones that went home were lucky because hundreds of thousands of German POW's were murdered by the Soviets. At Stalingrad 90,000 Germans were taken prisoner and only 5,000 of these men were ever seen alive again.

What does the statement by one of the other people making a comment mean when he says Wikipedia can't censor Bacque. Sure they can. Bacque has attempted to correct something that he thinks is wrong in a wikipedia article and wikipedia removed his version and put their own version back. I have been censored several times by wikipedia and their editors have a definite consistency of thought regarding Germans and WW II. You can read the bias in every article they have either on an event or any German individual from the WW II period.

Wikipedia denies or downplays every atrocity committed against the Germans by the allies. The Soviets massacred all the people in the East Prussian town of Nemmersdorf. This is an infamous act that has been documented, the Red Cross were brought there and there is film of it. Its an accepted fact. National Geographic had an article a few years ago discussing the Nemmersdorf massacre. But if you look at the wikipedia article on Nemmersdorf they deny the Soviets committed this atrocity and even suggest the Germans were responsible for the murders themselves. Wikipedia makes these bizarre claims in several of their articles. In an article on Hanna Reitsch, the famous German female pilot, wikipedia claims at the end of the war her father murdered his family. This family was in a part of Germany that is now Poland and this area was brutalized with the expulsions of an estimated 14 to 20 million Germans and the mass murder of many of them - but wikipedia claims the famous aviator's father killed his own family. When I told the wikpedia editor how ridiculous she was for saying this and not even having a reference she said I would have to prove the father didn't kill his own family. Yes, that is what she wrote. When I told her that over 14 million Germans were brutally expelled from their homes and 2 million German women were raped by allied soldiers (these are documented facts) she said I would have to provide referenced material for what I was saying and that wikipedia doesn't allow unreferenced entries to be posted. She was hinting that I was just making things up. She was completely ignorant of the allied rape of 2 million German women and the brutal expulsion of up to 20 million Germans from their homes. When I sent her two articles from reputable sources on these events she made no further comments but still kept the entry claiming the man killed his own family. It is not surprising to me people would call Bacque or people interested in his work "holocaust deniers". Wikipedia is filled with editors with extreme bias towards Germans. It doesn't want anything to take the spotlight off what was done to Jews in the war and doesn't want any reflection (or even admission) of what was done to the Germans by the allies.

The owners of wikipedia are Jewish and I think that fact is reflected in the editors they select and how the articles on wikipedia are written.76.193.117.1 (talk) 05:22, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Funny, I've always been struck by how many Wikipedia editors bend over backwards to bring Allied "war crimes" to the fore. Some are certainly legitimate, others are disingenuous efforts at some sort of historical "balance". Let me assure you, however, that Wikipedia is not a product of some conspiracy, rather it is merely the product of an almost grinding, slavish loyalty to consensus, the result of which is that every subject and every article is eventually edited down to (at best) mediocrity.172.190.241.144 (talk) 03:40, 18 May 2011 (UTC)


 * There's lots of PoMo people and unreconstructed Marxists who turn to Wikipedia to shape minds, since they can't do it any other way. Spoonkymonkey (talk) 13:56, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

primary
This constitutes use of primary sources. See WP:PRIMARY. We should also avoid block quotes. Volunteer Marek 14:09, 28 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The blockquote is only used because it looked neater due to the length. Is the primary source a problem for his qualifications? I should be able to find another source if his qualifications are disputed."Ernest F. Fisher graduated from Boston University in 1941. In World War II he served in Europe as a lieutenant with the 501st Parachute Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. At the end of the war he participated as an investigator into allegations of misconduct by U.S. troops. Following his discharge, he returned to Boston University and received an M.A. degree in history in 1947. In 1952 he received a Ph.D. degree in History from the University of Wisconsin. He then taught history at the University of Virginia. From 1954 to 1959 he worked as a senior historian with the U.S. Army Headquarters in Europe. Since 1960 he has been a member of the staff of the Center of Military History. He is an author of military history books. He is a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve." His qualifications are important because he is actually more qualified on the subject than any of Bacque's critics. Wayne (talk) 19:07, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I would prefer such discussion in German POWs after WWII or something. This is a biographical article.Xx236 (talk) 07:53, 1 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm not proposing to include Fishers entire bio. But his qualifications are indeed relevant for this article. Wayne (talk) 12:39, 1 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree. Since he's not famous like Ambrose, he should be explained. Same with the other well-qualified academic historians.Spoonkymonkey (talk) 13:55, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Colonel Fisher was also an eyewitness. 2601:181:8301:4510:59A:6D14:E8B3:ED3A (talk) 00:00, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
 * To what incident? Hhfjbaker (talk) 19:57, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Crimes and Mercies
"citation needed" rtaher than two million story.Xx236 (talk) 07:05, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Bacque has gone to the Russian war archives and has further verified his finding - which didn't need verifcation. 2601:181:8301:4510:F556:9CE7:C5F9:FBB (talk) 15:35, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

lopsided and unbalanced
you should take most of the content discussing bacque's two controversial books and place them where they belong: in their main articles. then you should acquaint yourselves with more detail of mr bacque's life, career, and personality and pass those morsels along to your readers. i won't be among them because it is quite clear that you intend to continue slagging him, unsubtly. 65.95.193.195 (talk) 20:24, 13 December 2023 (UTC)


 * OK. If you're neither here to read nor to edit then there's not much of a discussion to be had, is there AntiDionysius (talk) 20:26, 13 December 2023 (UTC)