One more example of the disgusting way this country treated its soldiers

[Grandpa Shooter]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/11/11/acevedo.pow/index.html

I suggest you read the entire report.  WWII soldiers were not the only ones sworn to secrecy and threatened with disciplinary action.





Acevedo's story is one that was never supposed to be told. "We had to sign an affidavit ... [saying] we never went through what we went through. We weren't supposed to say a word," he says.

The U.S. Army Center of Military History provided CNN a copy of the document signed by soldiers at the camp before they were sent back home. "You must be particularly on your guard with persons representing the press," it says. "You must give no account of your experience in books, newspapers, periodicals, or in broadcasts or in lectures."

The document ends with: "I understand that disclosure to anyone else will make me liable to disciplinary action."

The information was kept secret "to protect escape and evasion techniques and the names of personnel who helped POW escapees," said Frank Shirer, the chief historian at the U.S. Army Center for Military History.

Acevedo sees it differently. For a soldier who survived one of the worst atrocities of mankind, the military's reaction is still painful to accept. "My stomach turned to acid, and the government didn't care. They didn't give a hullabaloo."

It took more than 50 years, he says, before he received 100 percent disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

[AJ Dual]

I guess I don't understand the point of keeping what happened to the American POW's given the concentration camp treatment a secret.

The E&E tactics and protecting any underground network that helped prisoners makes some sense, maybe out of fear they'd be fighting the Russians for Europe next. However, not in his case since he never escaped or spoke with anyone who was trying to facilitate escape.

Was it just a general attitude of "The war is over, let's put it behind us..."?

[vaskidmark]

Was it just a general attitude of "The war is over, let's put it behind us?

It was more along the lines of keeping the American public from finding out that military duty could involve being badly mistreated.  Immediately after the cessation of hostilities in Europe the Russians went from being our glorious allies to being them commie bastages, and there was a real fear that American troops would be fighting the Russians before most of combat troops were processed for shipment back stateside.

Similar confidentiality oaths were imposed on troops who were POWs held by the Japanese.  There is still speculation that some part of that was related to the decision not to prosecute Japanese for war crimes as the Germans were prosecuted, due to the whole status of the Emperor thing.

Add to that the issue of not wanting the American public to find out that the government could not enforce the provisions of the Geneva Convention and the Hague Protocols, and that we continued to treat German POWs in accordance with those treaties after the Germans refused to allow the IRC to inspect POWs - and even refused to provide responses to IRC inquiries about servicemembers who were documented (both eyewitness accounts and paper documentation (notes dropped from transports, etc.)) as being captured.  It was a major propoganda piece to show the world that America treated the POWs it held in a civilized manner as much as it was a diplomatic concern that if America did not treat POWs well our troops held as POWs would suffer.

[editorial] Seems the American Diplomatic Corps had its head up its ass for most of the war, as reports of German and Japanese treatment of POWs was received with great regularity.  The informaion was either classified in order to keep it from the public or it was discounted by (knowingly false) accusations of exaggeration and lack of credibility. [/editorial]

Why was all that done?  So that American moms would not refuse to send their sons overseas to fight someone else's war.  Even after Pearl Harbor the government was concerned that there would not be sufficient public support for military action in Europe as well as against the Japanese -- in spite of the fact that our actions against the Japanese were pretty paltry compared to our actions against Italy/Germany until V-E Day.

stay safe.

skidmark

[HankB]

I wonder if any soldiers a) refused to sign statements keeping their mistreatment at the hands of the enemy secret; b) were prosecuted for speaking out afterwards after being discharged.

Aren't contracts and agreements only enforceable if the person WILLINGLY signs?

[ilbob]

much the same as military personnel who knew what happened at katyn forest were ordered not to reveal it.

in fact a fair number of military, state department, and other us government personnel were well aware of what was going on in the death camps the Germans were running and they were also ordered not to reveal that knowledge.

[AJ Dual]

Why was all that done?  So that American moms would not refuse to send their sons overseas to fight someone else's war.  Even after Pearl Harbor the government was concerned that there would not be sufficient public support for military action in Europe as well as against the Japanese -- in spite of the fact that our actions against the Japanese were pretty paltry compared to our actions against Italy/Germany until V-E Day.

stay safe.

skidmark

Public attitudes about military service and war were certainly much more aligned in the 1940's then they are now in the post-Vietnam era. In other arguments about Iraq, Afghanistan, AWOT in general, I've pointed out myself how the public's attitude about World War II was not nearly in lockstep as it seems in hindsignt. 1940's newspaper editorials complaining about mismanagment of the European occupation after VE day could be used almost word for word for Iraq if you simply changed a few proper names of cities, peoples, and nations.

I suppose the War Department knew that the treatment of American POW's under the Russians would not be any better than it was under the Germans or the Japanese, and they may have had to engage in a whole second wave of conscription. The fear amongst the Executive branch and the Command staff that they had just fought for Europe for the past four years, to only lose it to the Russians, due to flagging American will must have been galling.

Protracted warfare is the one weakness that democratic/capitalist states have against totalitarian command nations. For the totalitarian state, they can just order their people into battle at gunpoint. Otherwise it's a strategic/tactical, manpower, and resources question. (Although the totalitarian states have their drawbacks. Stalin's paranoid purges cutting into Soviet manpower, Hitler's megalomania, the inneficiencies of production in command economies etc...)

For the "free" society, it requires the willingness of the population to serve. Granted there's the UCMJ, and various war powers acts that can sanction the population, put them under arrest, in prision, or even be executed for desertion in extreme circumstances. But the ability to force it's population into war without their cooperation is still very limited in comparison.

Ahh, that should have been obvious. Makes perfect sense.