Gruesome Harvest

by Ralph Franklin Keeling

Gruesome Harvest by Keeling, Ralph Franklin. Published by Liberty Bell Publications,2004, Paperback

Genres: History, World War II, Germany, War

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1947

Reviews

[Randall Wallace]

This great book came out in 1947. The Germans were rightly despised for applying “Collective Guilt” to the entire Jewish people during WWII, yet afterwards the world turned a blind eye while the U.S. and Allies forced “Collective Guilt” on the entire German people leading to the deaths of millions of German civilians (largely through starvation) after the war. Instead of wanting first to “win the war”, General Eisenhower had stated, “Our primary purpose is destruction of as many Germans as possible.” After the war, the Allies soon defiled their own Atlantic Charter and public agreements at Yalta by denying other countries the right to “choose the form of government under which they will live.” Minutes after Yalta, Russia takes 1/3 of Western Poland and then offers 1/3 of Eastern Germany to Poland with zero thought as to the residents. One eminent European economist wrote, “It seems that the elimination of the German population of Eastern Europe – at least 15,000,000 people – was planned in advance in accordance with decisions made at Yalta.” Post-war forced movement of Germans included 16,000 forced from Latin America by the U.S. Ralph says, “Our hands, too, are stained with the blood of millions of innocent victims of this savage, thoroughly un-American programs.” Most of the post-war Germans forced into slavery were civilians. Even anti-Nazi Germans were rounded up and used as slaves. During the war, the Germans treated Allies prisoners statistically much better according to the London Express. 99% of U.S. prisoners in Germany survived according to the Red Cross. However, Allied treatment of Germans was appalling and rather stupid; we put the most productive Germans behind picks and shovels which guaranteed Germany’s inability to get its feet back of the ground again economically. Germans were looted of everything “not nailed down”. The U.S. Army destroyed millions of dollars of butter and Zeiss lenses, etc. because they had no system for recovery of valuable material. Then the vandalizing made it worse, the Chicago Daily News wrote, “they seem to ruin everything, including the simplest personal belongings of the people in whose homes they are billeted.” Potsdam authorized the industrial sacking of Germany. We took hundreds of Nazi scientists as plunder. The Hague Convention said you can’t confiscate private property but we ignored that too.

Allied soldiers had access to daily staples for barter that enabled them to not rape German women, but the Russian soldiers had nothing to offer but force and were more frequently rapists. Many German women committed suicide and many from injuries after multiple rapes by Russian troops. However, “We (Americans) compelled the German women to yield their virtue in order to live – to get food to eat, beds to sleep in, soap to bathe with, roofs to shelter them.” The U.S. perfectly well knew it’s feeding program for Germans was sub-normal and bordering starvation. Tested US conscientious objectors during the war showed that even getting 1,650 calories a day would kill ¾ of someone’s energy and required a month to return to normal. And so, the U.S. consciously chose to starve a nation after the war was done. It became routine to check crying travelling women for dead babies they didn’t want to give up. One American reported in 1946 that in German hospitals they would decide which babies would live when restricted in food supplies – “It is better to feed 25 enough to keep them alive and let 75 starve, then to feed the 100 for a short while and let them all starve.” Starvation was one thing, but what pissed me off when I kept reading it in different places was how the U.S. was intentionally blind to those good Germans who valiantly had fought Nazism and yet now got the identical punishment as avid Nazis. How is that justice? Senator Hawkes at the time said it was too big of a job to locate the good Germans and isolate them. Meanwhile a New Republic article stated the U.S. had “a positively sadistic desire to inflict maximum suffering of all Germans, irrespective of their responsibility for Nazi crimes.” Potsdam was Morgenthau’s plan to keep Germany down after the war. During the Depression, the US industrial production had fallen to 60% of normal. But Germany at VE day had fallen to 10%. The US comes to Germany to free it from dictatorship but then at Potsdam negates all its founding principles and starts acting with a totalitarianism that Stalin would had to admire. We end up replacing Germany’s nasty complete control over all Germans with U.S.’s nasty complete control over all Germans. We tried to teach our democracy to Germans through force and complete lack of sympathy. Yeah, that’s the ticket. One German woman wanted only “a little sympathy” – if she could know from the Americans if her child was dead she could move on. Luckily, telling other sovereign nations and their citizens what to do is America’s favorite pastime so this happened without incident.

General Marshall stated that he never once found any form of plan for Nazi world domination or documents that it was even contemplated. The only flaw was that at the end of the book, the author reveals his unfounded fear that Russians have secretly planned to soon destroy everything we hold dear through violence, and I can now only assume Ralph soon had photos of Richard Pipes and Joe McCarthy taped provocatively to his bedroom ceiling. Aside from that, this was a great book and the sixth one I have read on this topic, of the sadistic Post-War treatment of the German people.

[Diane]

Honestly didnt finish this book because it cuts too close to home.

If you want to see what WW2 was like for the Germans then you should read this book. It really opens eyes to how much evil is out there.

[Sheridan]

Noone can credibly cast doubt on Mr. Keeling. He is honest, simple as that. Read it and pause, what is it, what can it be that will make people feel they can do this? Morgenthau, the answer is Morgenthau, how can this beast not be condemned by history? By popular consensus none of this exists now..... none of it...not in Gaza, not in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, Bahrain, Israel, none of it exists, it never existed.
Read this book, if you are a good person. Don't be afraid of the truth, embrace it, it will make you stronger, better.

[postmodern putin]

Keeling’s account of the Allies’ post-war policies—mass displacement, starvation, and outright atrocities—is a compelling condemnation of the decisions that shaped the current liberal world order we see crumbling before our very eyes today. Written with precision and moral clarity, this book feels like a gut-punch of historical reckoning. One of the most gripping, disturbing, but absolutely necessary books on the period. A must-read for any serious student of WW2 history.

[Scott Jones]

An amazing account of the attempted genocide of the German people after world war II. This is very graphic, so definitely not a book to read to your kids. The information can be distilled and taught, of course!

[Bill Flach]

This should be required reading. Keeling unravels the gruesome details of the German Holocaust and the attempted extermination of the German race following WWII.

[Roy]

What a terrible book. What was done to the Germans in general ,and particularly to the women, is a crime beyond the understanding of my comfortable 21st century life. The vanquished were the spoils of that war. They destroyed a beautiful race. It seems incomprehensible that the British and the Americans would do that to such close kin, but as you read you yet again see the invisible hand pulling the strings. An ancient hate hunts us.

[Bernie Tomasso]

This book, written shortly after World War II ended, gave me a very historical view of how the Allies treated Germany and punished the civilians as well as the military. I would like to read more about Joseph Stalin as a result of reading this book as he appeared to be a master manipulator of the other three powers who controlled Germany.

[Max]

As someone whose paternal family originates east of the Oder, I was looking for a book to educate me on the expulsion of the Germans from the East. This book is a grim look into the unheard flight of millions during the time of mass genocide. I rate it four stars just due to how much it hurt to read this book.

[Fred Kohn]

Texe Marrs in his antisemitic book *Holy Serpent of the Jews* lists a number of books that claim to lay out the case that the Allies deliberately starved hundreds of thousands of German after WWII. Apparently this is a common antisemitic and Nazi apologist trope. Wikipedia claims of *Gruesome Harvest: The Allies Postwar War Against the German People*, by Ralph Franklin Keeling, that "mainstream historians view its claims of a deliberate Allied attempt to 'exterminate' the German race as highly exaggerated and conspiratorial." Nonetheless, when I saw that this book was available on the Internet Archive for free and is not too long, I decided to read it. And I’m glad I did! Despite its skewed perspective, I learned a lot.

I was unable to confirm that the Allies deliberately starved Germans. Historians generally agree that whatever food shortages occurred were due to the breakdown of German infrastructure rather than deliberately planned by the Allies, and that the numbers involved have been greatly exaggerated by some. Nonetheless Keeling presents a number of quotes purporting to show that the starvation was deliberate, for example, "Senator Homer E. Capehart of Indiana in an address before the United States Senate February 5, 1946, said in part: For nine months now this administration has been carrying on a deliberate policy of mass starvation … These remarks were interspersed with a mass of supporting evidence." However, Keeling fails to cite this evidence.

Two important historical points around this time were the Potsdam Conference and the Morgenthau Plan, about which I know little. I’m currently reading through the American Presidents series edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., but I’m only up to John Quincy Adams. It will be a while until I get up to FDR and Truman. The Morgenthau Plan is not in the index of either of these books (although Morgenthau himself is frequently referenced in the FDR biography), but 6 pages are devoted to the Potsdam Conference in the Truman biography. However, these 6 pages focus on the Allies relationship with Japan and say nothing concerning their relationship with Germany.

Concerning the Potsdam conference Keeling writes, "The Potsdam plan was made to order for Soviet Russia, but not for free enterprise or free democratic processes." Google agrees: "The statement accurately reflects the fundamental geopolitical conflict of the Potsdam Conference (July–August 1945), where the Allied powers attempted to map out a postwar future for Europe." Concerning the Morgenthau Plan, Keeling writes, "In other words, the Morgenthau Plan was made to order for the Kremlin."Again, Google agrees: "Historians and contemporaries point to several key reasons why the plan played right into Joseph Stalin's hands."

In the chapter "Teaching Democracy in Reverse," Keeling is highly critical of American response at the end of the war: "We despised Hitler for burning books proscribed by the Nazis, not because we were necessarily partial toward the particular books involved, but as a matter of principle. Yet we have ourselves violated the principle, and adopted Hitlers, by burning the Nazi books. In words we denounce Hitlerism; in deeds we exonerate it!" and "The Nazis were wrong in their invasion of the schools and forcing elimination of certain ideas and texts and acceptance of certain others. They were wrong in principle. So are we, when we impose our ideas and textbooks on the Germans. We are even more so for being outsiders, whereas the Nazis were at least German. The Nazis were wrong in their strict censorship of the German press. And so are we. We cannot create a free press in Germany through rigid censorship and we look very foolish when we try it."

Many of Keeling's statements surprised me, but were confirmed by Google, for example:

Keeling: The sacking of Germany after her unconditional surrender will go down in history as one of the most monstrous acts of modern times.

Google: The post-surrender period of Germany is widely recognized by historians as a humanitarian catastrophe.

Keeling: The serious looting by the Russians was conducted officially, systematically and thoroughly.

Google: This statement accurately describes the Soviet "compensatory restitution" policies executed by the USSR at the end of World War II.

Keeling: German scientists, as a matter of fact, have become a highly esteemed form of war plunder.

Google: Through secret programs like the U.S. Operation Paperclip, over 1,600 German and Austrian scientists, engineers, and technicians were imported along with their intellectual property and research to secure military and technological superiority.

Keeling: Yet, how firmly propaganda had fixed the public impression that Mein Kampf offered a program for world conquest.

Google: The perception that *Mein Kampf* offered a detailed, strategic program for world conquest was largely a retrospective construction rather than an accurate reflection of the book's contents.

Other statements were more debatable:

Keeling: Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, told the Chamber of Commerce of America in London, June 20, 1944, as reported by the United Press: "Japan was provoked into attacking the United States at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty on history ever to say that America was forced into the war."

Google: the characterization of the Pearl Harbor attack as an inevitable or purely defensive reaction remains one of the most debated concepts in diplomatic and military history.

Keeling: In clear violation of international law our vessels in the Atlantic were ordered two months before Pearl Harbor to shell all Axis craft encountered.

Google: These orders are heavily debated by historians regarding both their tactical impact and their alignment with international law at the time.

Other statements are refuted by Google:

Keeling: All German cities above 50,000 population and many smaller ones were from 50 to 80 per cent destroyed.

Google: This claim is a widely cited historical overstatement.

Keeling: Although Germany's population is half as large as our own, her territory in 1937 was only one sixteenth as large as ours.

Google: You are quoting a famous argument used by Adolf Hitler in a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast on January 30, 1939.

A disturbing fact of history is the mass rape of German women after the war. Google says : "Historians estimate that Soviet soldiers committed mass rapes against approximately 2,000,000 German women during the occupation. This reflected the devastating human cost and the stark divergence between Soviet and Western Allied postwar objectives." However Keeling doesn’t let the Americans off so easily: "The main difference between American and Russian methods of ravishing the unconditionally surrendered women of Germany is the American capitalistic, free economy touch. THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY, for December 5, 1945, reports:
'The American provost marshal. Lieutenant Colonel Gerald F. Beane, said that rape represents no problem to the military police because "a bit of food, a bar of chocolate, or a bar of soap seems to make rape unnecessary." Think that over if you want to understand what the situation is in Germany.'"

Google confirms Keeling's statement that "A Russian General told General Ira Eaker, Commander of the Mediterannean air forces: 'We've decided just to kill all the German men, take 17,000,000 German women and that will solve it," but goes on to say, "Eaker and Western Allied commanders generally rejected such genocidal proposals, focusing their strategy instead on unconditional military surrender, regime change, and eventual political re-education of the German populace." Keeling was skeptical of the attempt to reeducate the German populace: "The Allied program to reeducate the Germans is a case of one deluded group trying to disillusion another. Our conviction that the Germans have been filled with poisonous propaganda is quite correct and our impulse to extirpate the effects of that propaganda is a good one. However, we cannot accomplish our purpose when so many of our own ideas are false, and especially when the Germans know from direct experience that they are false." Google claims that "The Allied re-education program was a mixed success. While heavy-handed immediate programs were largely ineffective, structural reforms in education and exposure to democratic governance helped lay the groundwork for a stable democracy in West Germany." This statement makes me think that *Gruesome Harvest* may have been largely correct when it was written in 1947.

[Aerik]

Important book, especially because of when it was written. There are other books that cover its topic in greater detail since, but it's easier, I think, for those to be dismissed as products of modern division in politics regardless of proper practices in historiography.

Get it and share it.

[Ronel Owens]

Brilliant, but brutal!