VLE at. SvUlu > ww 2 S

Federated Press news editor
on leave of absence while
serving in the Infantry. His
opinions are his own, but he
believes his opinions are
shared by GI’s in general
This belief is based on con-
tact with hundreds of them
during two years in the army,
four months of which were
spent in intimate contact
With 3,000 of them at Stalag
IX-B, at Bad Orb, Germany.
A member of the American
Newspaper Guild since its
birth, he also believes no un-
ion man will find much to dis-
agree with in this outlook on
what to do with Germany).

A FELLOW Gl. remark-

ed to me not so long ago
that it was his first sight of
a German child that put iron
in his soul. :

“Looking at that red
cheeked, sausage-legged kid,”’
this combat veteran wryly
said, “I couldn’t get out of
my mind the comparison
with the spindly legs and
pale faces of the children of
Italy, France and Belgium.
By starving millions of other
children to death, Hitler had
kept loyal to him the parents
of that German: kid.”

This
would

soldier’s
seem,

remark, it
contains the best

answer to those who now argue
that the German. people. have
suffered too from the war and
should not be made to pay for

‘our
Prison

mans in the towns through
which we passed were better
dressed and looked better fed
than the English people. Once
inside the prison, we found that
if we had been able to pay
black market prices, we could

have had plenty of meat, but-
ter and other food from the
civilians in our area,

The story of how we Ameri-
can prisoners were starved
during those bitter weeks be-
fore liberation is too well
known. to be repeated now, but
perhaps you have forgotten the
Germans’ excuse. To all our
protests the Germans always
rephed that the German people
were being starved to death
and that if they had the food,
we would have got plenty. Af-
ter liberation, an examination
of the. warehouses in our region
and the cellars of the civilians
disclosed that they had been
eating well, and drinking well
too.

Those who now argue for
merey toward the German and
against what they are pleased
to call “slave labor” probably
have never seen what a Ger-
man mine can do to a man.
Well, I have. And when I read
now of French, Belgian,
Ukrainian or Yugoslav farmers
plowing fields in which thous-

Nazis ran out of coal at the Buchenwald

concen-

tration camp and were unable to cremate bodies of the
‘tortured dead before a spearhead of Gen. Patton's
Third U.S. Army atrived. This trailer load of bodies
was found outside the crematory.

the crimes of Hitler, Goering
and their Nazi hordes. The
plain fact is that this crime
paid—the German people as
well as Hitler.

Another plain fact is that
Hitler’s murderous course
which loaded German homes
with French wines, Italian

- cheeses, Russian furs, Nor-
wegian fish, Danish butter
and other loot also killed so
many other Europeans that
there is not enough labor in
the Allied nations for the
task of reconstruction. It
would seem simple justice
then that for five years of
comparatively good living,
the German people should
pay with its labor power.
Marching .to a German pris-

on camp last winter, I was
surprised to see that the Ger-

clothing.

PAGE 14 — MAGAZINE SECTION

Camp By Sergeant Jack Phillips

The Nazis were said to reserve their worst cruel-
ties for Poles and Russians, but this American prisoner
-of war might dispute the claim. Little but bones, skin
and a spark of life, he is the victim of a few months’

imprisonment.
ands of these mines were
sown, I ask whether that far-
mer who fought on our side
should: be blown to bits or
whether “slave labor’ from
Germany should go out, find

’ those mines and remove them.

Left: Two children who died of starvation
ter: Face beaten by S.S. troopers, a ci
in six days. Right: An aged Polish p

Certainly there were Ger-
mans who opposed Hitler.
The official War Department
pictures which accompany
this article are eloquent tes-
timony to that. They are-also
evidence that so long as their
own hellies were full, the
German people in general
were willing to permit such
atrocities in their midst.

Forty million lives were lost
to the greed of the German war
machine. Is it too much to ask
that five or six million German
soldiers who enjoyed the role
of conqueror for so long should
now pay back some of that

loss ?

It is also commonly accepted
that useful labor is about the
Let
the German earn his way back
into respectable society and “in
earning, perhaps he will learn
of democracy
he works

best cure for a criminal.

something too
and its ways as
among the peoples of Europe.

Some may argue that the
ordinary German is not a crim-

inal. Perhaps he is not in the
sense of a Nazi hatchet man,
or an SS trooper, or a U-boat
but common law
held that the ac-
complice after the fact is as
guilty as the criminal himself.

commander,
has always

Ss

I have some acquaintance with

the criminal tendencies of
simple German soldiers other
than those covered by the rules
of war. When we were captured
in the Ardennes battle last
winter, the German _ soldier—
hundreds of him—robbed us of
our watches, our money, our
little remaining food, our over-
coats, overshoes and even shoes
in some instances.

And one evening weeks later,
standing at tthe prison fence,
we watched a column of Ger-
man soldiers march past, car-
rying under their arms Ameri-
can Red Cross packages which
were intended for hunger-rid-
den stomachs and which, the
German authorities had said,
were destroyed that afternoon
in a strafing raid by American
planes.

The German soldier already
looks upon Americans as soft-

nat Belsen find peace in death. Cen-
vilian prisoner at Belsen takes his first drink
risoner, freed at the Dossel camp, delouses his

" hearted fools although he

Continued from. Page 123

ally had tc admit we were
ter soldiers tham he like;
think. What do the humanj.
ians back home think qi
his reaction if he is allows:
ge unpunished for his
of looting and rape? \

During our stay: in
German prison we held pi
lic forums on many iss
One day we discussed we
to. do with Germany after —
victory. And, the vote of §
500: or so..GI’s at the for
was, unanimous in the—bei/§
that Germany should mil
reparations for the colos}
damage she had done to
world; not in gold, that V
failed after the last war,
in the only power she weo'}
have left and the only thi|
of value to anyone else ||
labor. : :

It may be argued that 2
men suffering starvation, -
and vermin in a German pa
camp could not be too objec
in approaching the problen.
what. to do ‘with Germ
Neither were, I imagine, |
men of 1776 when they fra |
the _ Declaration of Indep:|
ence, which still serves
world as a model. of democ |
and ‘a gospel of: humanity.

i

=
8

Soviet As}

gions which give evidence

Soviet policys Due north
China and Mongolia “are §—
Buriat-Mongol and Ye

Autonomous Soviet Reput
inhabited by peoples of the
low race. Wendell “Wi
wrote in One World:

“I found in Yakutsk evid)
of one of the Soviet Un
greatest achievements and —
which the best and most
gressive Americans must
plaud: its handling of the
rible problem of national
racial minorities. . . As fa
I could see, they lived as |
Russians lived; they held

office; they wrote their
poetry and had _ their
theatre . . . Elective of §

were usually filled, I was IE
by Yakuts. Schools taught
languages. War posters a #
the streets were captionec i
both Russian and Yakut.”

It is this policy, long es:
lished in the relations~ ar |
the:- Soviet. nations, which j
expressed iby the Soviet ¢
gation at. San Franciseo in
lation to all colonial and_
pendent peoples when it |
posed. that-. imdependence '§
made the aim of the  trus 4
ship ~plan. The- Soviet™ for fi
policy necessarily reflects ¥
nature and basie features
the Soviet system. That !
plains the popularity of f
vast colonial area of the }
East. aS

. SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 18