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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Bill Flach · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Scott Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Aerik · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, but brutal!