Review Of Martin Brech's After The Reich: The Invasion Of Normandy

The invasion of Normandy was a decisive battle in World War II. For the Germans, the defeat in France undermined their whole position in Western Europe because it demanded the transfer of forces from the Eastern front. If this invasion had failed, the war would have certainly lengthened. Without transferring troops to the Western Front, Germans could have possibly had enough manpower on the Eastern front to halt the Soviet advance. Then if the Russians were still victorious over the Germans without the help of the United States, the world could have looked entirely different today. The United States would likely not be the global policing power to keep society from the dangers of radical regimes. Ultimately, the successful invasion of France …show more content…
Beyond that, MacDonogh claims that after the war, infamous camps such as Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Auschwitz remained open, packed instead with German captives.Moreover, Martin Brech, an American prison guard during the time wrote a memoir in 1990 detailing what he saw in the German Prisoner of War (POW) camps. Brech describes that prisoners threw "grass and weeds into a tin can containing a thin soup...to help ease their hunger pains." He explains, "We had ample food and supplies, but did nothing to help them, including no medical assistance." Brech claims he protested to officers but that "they explained they were under strict orders from higher up." Those "orders from higher up" came from General Eisenhower, because "the Allied generals had received their instructions form Eisenhower." When Brech tried to feed the captives, he was threatened with imprisonment. Overall, he describes that the other guards were "cold blooded killers filled with moralistic hatred" towards the Germans. The most striking event Brech describes is when he discovered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down a group of German civilian women with a pistol. When Brech asked why the captain was doing this, he responded, "Target practice" and fired until the gun was …show more content…
There are opposing sources out there that claim Eisenhower and the Allied power would never do this, that German POW 's were not grossly mistreated, but there are far too many first hand accounts to prove otherwise. My Grandfather, Ike Donnelly, served in World War II as a navigator in the Air Force. He was captured as a POW and escaped twice. He told me that near the end of the war, he met a young nineteen-year old German that wished to surrender. My Grandfather offered to walk with him back to American lines. However, this young man had the mark of Schutzstaffel (SS) on his uniform, and was shot within a few minutes, even though he surrendered. My grandpa was upset about that, because he was a young kid, but orders for Americans were not to take any SS soldiers because they had received special treatment during the war and had committed more of the heinous