Editing Other Losses (section)

== Historical evidence ==
Several historians rebutting Bacque have argued that the missing POWs simply went home, that Red Cross food aid was sent to displaced civilians and that German POWs were fed the same rations that the U.S. Army was providing to the civilian population. U.S. and German sources estimate the number of German POWs who died in captivity at between 56,000 and 78,000, or about one per cent of all German prisoners, which is roughly the same as the percentage of American POWs who died in German captivity.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2007-03-22|title=War in History -- Sign In Page|url=http://wih.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/11/2/148.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070322184924/http://wih.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/11/2/148.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=2007-03-22|access-date=2020-09-25}}</ref>

The book ''Other Losses'' alleged 1.5 million prisoners were missing and estimated that up to 500,000 of these were in Soviet camps. When the KGB opened its archives in the 1990s, 356,687 German soldiers and 93,900 civilians previously recorded as missing were found to be listed in the Bulanov report as dying in the Soviet camps.<ref>[http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1266 HNN Debate: Was Ike Responsible for the Deaths of Hundreds of Thousands of German POW's? Pro and Con]</ref>

German POW expert Kurt W. Bohme noted that, of the 5 million prisoners in American hands, the European Theater of Operations provost marshal recorded a total of 15,285 prisoner deaths.<ref name="cowdrey91">{{Harvnb|Cowdrey|1992|p=91}}</ref> In 1974, the German Red Cross reported that about 41,000 German MIAs were last reported in western Germany, which is also the location of the prisoner camps.<ref name="cowdrey92"/> It is reasonable to assume that some deaths in transit camps just before the end of the war went unreported in the chaos at the time.<ref name="cowdrey92"/> Historian Albert Cowdrey estimates that the total figure is unlikely to be above the aggregate of the recorded deaths and the MIAs, which together total 56,285.<ref name="cowdrey92">{{Harvnb|Cowdrey|1992|p=92}}</ref> That maximum number would constitute approximately 1.1% of the 5 million total prisoners held by U.S. forces.<ref name="cowdrey92"/> That figure also is close to Bohme's estimate of 1% for deaths of prisoners held by the Western powers.<ref name="cowdrey92"/>

Many of these occurred in the initial [[Rheinwiesenlager]] transit camps.<ref name="overmans149">{{Harvnb|Overmans|1992|p=149}}</ref> The German Maschke Commission which studied prisoner deaths in the 1960s and 1970s concluded that 557,000 prisoners lived in the Rheinwiesenlager camps.<ref name="overmans149"/> The official death toll for those camps was 3,053.<ref name="overmans149"/> The number registered by local Parish authorities was 5,311.<ref name="overmans149"/> The Maschke Commission noted that the largest claim was that "32,000 fatalities had been heard of", but the Maschke Commission considered this account to be impossible, as was anything in excess of double the parish authorities' figure.<ref name="overmans149"/><ref>{{Harvnb|Bohme|1973|pp=204–5}}</ref>

While harsh treatment of prisoners occurred, no evidence exists that it was part of an organized systematic effort.<ref name="bischamb18">{{Harvnb|Bischof|Ambrose|1992|p=18}}</ref> Bohme concluded that Eisenhower and the U.S. Army had to improvise for months in taking care of the masses of prisoners to prevent a catastrophe: "In spite of all the misery that occurred behind the barbed wire, the catastrophe was prevented; the anticipated mass deaths did not happen."<ref name="bischamb18"/><ref>{{Harvnb|Bohme|1973|p=139}}</ref>

The total death rates for United States-held prisoners is also far lower than those held by most countries throughout the war. In 1941 alone, two million of the 3.3 million German-held Soviet POWs—about 60%—died or were executed by the special SS "Action Groups" (Einsatzgruppen).<ref name="bischamb18"/><ref>{{Harvnb|Streit|1986|p=12}}</ref> By 1944, only 1.05 million of 5 million Soviet prisoners in German hands had survived.<ref name="bischamb19">{{Harvnb|Bischof|Ambrose|1992|p=19}}</ref> Of some 2–3 million German POWs in Russian hands, more than 1 million died.<ref name="bischamb19"/><ref>{{Harvnb|Ratza|1973|pp=194, 224}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Peterson|1977|pp=116, 131–32}}</ref> Of the 132,000 British and American POWs taken by the Japanese army, 27.6% died in captivity—the Bataan death march being the most notorious incident, producing a POW death rate of between 40 and 60%.<ref name="bischamb1">{{Harvnb|Bischof|Ambrose|1992|p=1}}</ref>

The historian [[Niall Ferguson]] claims a significantly lower death rate of 0.15% for German POWs held by Americans, less than every other country except for fellow allied power Britain.<ref>Niall Ferguson, "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat" War in History 2004 11 (2) 148–192 pg. 187-188</ref> Ferguson further claims that another advantage to surrendering to the British rather than the Americans was that the British were also less likely to hand German prisoners over to the Soviet Union.<ref>Niall Ferguson, "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat" War in History 2004 11 (2) 148–192 pg. 189</ref> Large numbers of German prisoners were transferred between the Allies. The U.S. gave 765,000 to France, 76,000 to [[Benelux]] countries, and 200,000 to the Soviet Union. The U.S. also chose to refuse to accept the surrender of German troops attempting to surrender in [[Saxony]] and [[Bohemia]]. These soldiers were instead handed over to the Soviet Union.<ref>Niall Ferguson, "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat" War in History 2004 11 (2) 148–192 pg. 189, (footnote, reference to: [[Heinz Nawratil]], Die deutschen Nachkriegsverluste unter Vertriebenen, Gefangenen und Verschleppter: mit einer Übersicht über die europäischen Nachkriegsverluste (Munich and Berlin, 1988), pp. 36f.)</ref> The Soviet Union, in turn, handed German prisoners over to other Eastern European nations, for example, 70,000 to Poland.<ref>Niall Ferguson, ''"Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat"'' War in History 2004 11 (2) 148–192 pg. pg 164.</ref> According to Ferguson, the death rate of German soldiers held prisoner in the Soviet Union was 35.8%.<ref>Niall Ferguson, "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat" War in History 2004 11 (2) 148–192 pg. 186 (Table 4)</ref>

Ferguson tabulated the total death rate for POWs in World War II as follows:<ref>{{Harvnb|Ferguson|2004|p=186}}</ref>

:{| class=wikitable
|-
! &nbsp; !!Percentage of<br>POWs who died
|- style="text-align:center;"
| align="left"|Russian POWs held by Germans||57.5%
|- style="text-align:center;"
| align="left"|German POWs held by Russians||35.8%
|- style="text-align:center;"
| align="left"|American POWs held by Japanese||33.0%
|- style="text-align:center;"
| align="left"|German POWs held by Eastern Europeans||32.9%
|- style="text-align:center;"
| align="left"|British POWs held by Japanese||24.8%
|- style="text-align:center;"
| align="left"|British POWs held by Germans||3.5%
|- style="text-align:center;"
| align="left"|German POWs held by French||2.58%
|- style="text-align:center;"
| align="left"|'''German POWs held by Americans'''||'''0.15%'''
|- style="text-align:center;"
| align="left"|German POWs held by British||0.03%
|-
|}

=== Lack of records ===
There are no longer any surviving records showing which German POWs and [[Disarmed Enemy Forces]] were in U.S. custody prior to roughly September 1945. The early standard operating procedure for handling POWs and Disarmed Enemy Forces was to send a copy of the POW form to the [[Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects]] (CROWCASS). However, this practice was apparently stopped as impractical, and all copies of the POW forms, roughly eight million, were destroyed.<ref>US Department of Justice, Criminal Division, In the Matter of Josef Mengele: A Report to the Attorney General of the United States (Washington, DC: Department of Justice, 1992) (DD 247 .M46 U55 1991). Available from [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/mengeleosi.html Jewish Virtual Library] as PDF (15 MB) or from the [http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/nazi/mengele/mengele_report.html rotten dot com archive] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070612235422/http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/nazi/mengele/mengele_report.html |date=2007-06-12 }} as html</ref><ref>Note: the file was originally available for download from the United States Department of Justice homepage, as "http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/publicdocs/11-1prior/crm12.pdf", and may still be available under a different name or catalog</ref> By way of contrast, the Soviet archives contain dossiers for every German POW they held, averaging around 15 pages for each.<ref name="HHP">[http://www.historiography-project.org/misc/bacque_letter.html James Bacque Answers a Critic] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120317183548/http://www.historiography-project.org/misc/bacque_letter.html |date=2012-03-17 }} Holocaust History Project 2003</ref>