Other Losses - Criticism of Other Losses - The New Orleans Panel

The New Orleans Panel

After the publication of Bacque's book, a panel of eight historians gathered for a symposium in the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans from December 7–8, 1990 to review Bacque's work. The introduction to a book later published containing each panelists' papers noted that Bacque is a Canadian novelist with no previous historical research or writing experience. The introduction concludes that "Other Losses is seriously — nay, spectacularly — flawed in its most fundamental aspects.". The historians conclude that, among its many problems, Other Losses:

• misuses documents
• misreads documents
• ignores contrary evidence
• employs a statistical methodology that is hopelessly compromised
• made no attempt to see the evidence he has gathered in relation to the broader situation
• made no attempt to perform any comparative context
• puts words into the mouths of the subjects of his oral history
• ignores a readily available and absolutely critical source that decisively dealt with his central accusation

As a consequence of those and other shortcomings, the book "makes charges that are demonstrably absurd." Panel member Stephen Ambrose later wrote in the New York Times:

Mr. Bacque is wrong on every major charge and nearly all his minor ones. Eisenhower was not a Hitler, he did not run death camps, German prisoners did not die by the hundreds of thousands, there was a severe food shortage in 1945, there was nothing sinister or secret about the "disarmed enemy forces" designation or about the column "other losses." Mr. Bacque's "missing million" were old men and young boys in the Volkssturm (People's Militia) released without formal discharge and transfers of POWs to other allies control areas. Maj. Ruediger Overmans of the German Office of Military History in Freiburg who wrote the final volume of the official German history of the war estimated that the total death by all causes of German prisoners in American hands could not have been greater than 56,000 approximately 1% of the over 5,000,000 German POWs in Allied hands exclusive of the Soviets. Eisenhower's calculations as to how many people he would be required to feed in occupied Germany in 1945-46 were too low and he had been asking for more food shipments since February 1945. He had badly underestimated the number of German soldiers surrendering to the Western Allies; more than five million, instead of the anticipated three million as German soldiers crossed the Elbe River to escape the Russians. So too with German civilians — about 13 million altogether crossing the Elbe to escape the Russians, and the number of slave laborers and displaced persons liberated was almost 8 million instead of the 5 million expected. In short, Eisenhower faced shortages even before he learned that there were at least 17 million more people to feed in Germany than he had expected not to mention all of the other countries in war ravaged Europe, the Philippines, Okinawa and Japan. All Europe went on rations for the next three years, including Britain, until the food crisis was over.

Historians Gunter Bischof and Brian Loring Villa stated that a research report from the panel "soundly refuted the charges of Other Losses, especially Bacque's fanciful handling of statistics." The historians further stated: