A CLASSIC: DEATH BY GOVERVNMENT
by R. J. Rummel
This harrowing book - eloquent through its numbers and not its writing - presents a telling picture of modern governments's assault on the citizens of their own countries. It clearly documents that more deaths in the 20th Century have been caused by the victim's own governments than by war. The not so surprising picture told by the stats is that the more repressive and totalitarian governments show a disproportionate number of murders of their own citizens, compared to freer and more open governments. What is hard for the mind to grasp is the huge number of people estimated to have been killed, directly or indirectly, by their own leaders during our lifetimes.
This is a very important book because it makes clear in numerical terms what we might often have felt but couldn't quantify. If anyone ever had any doubt that groups like Amnesty International were needed in this world, this book is the proof..... more
ANOTHER DECEPTION EXPOSED
The genocidal barbarism of the Nazi forces has been well documented. What hitherto has been little known is the fate of fifteen million German civillians who found themselves at the mercy of Soviet armies and on the wrong side of new postwar borders. All over Eastern Europe, the inhabitants of communities that had been established for many centuries were either expelled or killed. Over two million Germans did not survive."
.... http://representativepress.blogspot.com/
THE BOOK:
A Terrible Revenge : The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
Product Description:
The closing phase and the aftermath of World War II saw millions of refugees and displaced persons wandering across Easter Europe in one of the most brutal and chaotic migrations in world history.
The genocidal barbarism of the Nazi forces has been well documented. What hitherto has been little known is the fate of fifteen million German civillians who found themselves at the mercy of Soviet armies and on the wrong side of new postwar borders. All over Eastern Europe, the inhabitants of communities that had been established for many centuries were either expelled or killed. Over two million Germans did not survive.
Many of these people had supported Hitler, and for the Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, and surviving Jews, their fate must have seemed just. However, the great majority--East Prussian farmers, Silesian industrial workers, their wives and children--were guiltless. Their fate, sentenced purely by race, remains an appalling legacy of the period.
Alfred de Zayas's book describes this horrible retribution. On the basis of extensive research in German and American archives, he outlines the long history of these German communities, scattered from the Baltic to the Danude, and, most movingly, reproduces the testimonies of surviors from the catastrophic exodus that marked the final end to Nazi fantasies of Lebensraum.
2 REVIEWS:
Being a (young) German, and not from an expelled family, I was quite unaware of what went on during the last days of the war in Eastern Germany. Nobody tells you about that here. The "Vertriebenen" (Expelled ones) are considered to be very strange and right-wing and do not have much public exposure. Reading this book I was very shocked and touched, understanding the pain and loss of those people. Even worse, they are not even allowed to express what they have witnessed. The Shoah is very well documentated (and rightly so), but this dark chapter of the holocaust on the Germans after the war will soon be forgotten. The book is very well written, very balanced and not biased, the facts are proven and documentated. Reading it, I had the same bitter feeling that I head reading the KZ-Documents F321 and other first-hand recollection of the Shoah: Men are beasts, and there is no cruelty they will not commit if they are allowed to do that. Hitler allowed the SS to kill the Jews any which way they wanted. Chuchill and Roosevelt allowed Stalin and Benez to kill the Germans any which way they wanted. And they all did. -- "brxx" (cologne, germany)
AND
I have known about the atrocities this book speaks of for many years now. Unfortunately, I'm among the very few Americans who do know. The level of education at my place of employment is very high, yet nobody knows about these terrible crimes. Mention the holocaust though and people can go on for hours talking about what the learned in school or saw on TV. When you bring up what happened to millions of Germans after the war, you generally get two reactions. One is that you are somehow a nazi sympathizer, and the other is total disbelief. The author is to be commended for his work in bringing this injustice to the attention of the American people, even if his book is not widely known. There is so much more should be done. What happened to the jews was wrong, but so was what happened to the Germans after the war. People who are angered by what they feel is an attempt to make the Germans into victims should do some soul searching, for they obviously have a lot in common with the nazis.--- Lawrence N. Mirsky "lmirsky" (New England)
READ THE OTHER 20 REVIEWS AND BUY THE BOOK:
