Re: RR Finally comes out

On Tue, 02 Dec 2003 18:15:22 +0000, C. Thompson wrote:

> Nor should we forget the treatment of Russian POW's by the Germans. Both
> sides seem to have been particularly brutal to one another in the Ost.

Yes, Russians were used as slave labor to help move German industry
underground as protection against the Allied bombing campaign.  Germans
were used as slave labor in Russian mines for at least a decade after the
war ended.  And the Japanese used Allied POWs as slave labor to build the
Burma Road.  (Frankly, knowing human nature I wouldn't be surprised if the
Western Allies perpetrated some abuses as well, though I don't know of any
involving slave labor on a large scale.)


> There is a brief mention of Russian prisonsers in The Great Escape, and
> also Escape from Colditz.  In both cases they are described as horribly
> malnourished and mistreated.  The British officers who wrote the two
> books were quite happy they were in the British RAF POW camp.

And the only American that I know of who was executed for crimes against
humanity was the commandant of a Confederate POW camp, who also starved
his charges -- men of his own country, modulo a temporary technicality.



But we're not going to invoke the crimes of others, past or present, to
justify crimes of our own, right right right?

-- 
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas