Full Version: Why Is Wikipedia Censoring Me?
Why is Wikipedia Censoring Me?
by James Bacque – Serendipity
In 1989, I published the first in a series of books about the Second World War and its aftermath. The first, Other Losses, showed the tremendous atrocities committed against enemy prisoners in the prison camps of the US and France after 1945. The next, Just Raoul, was a biography of a hero of the French Resistance who saved many refugees from Nazi death camps. The next, Crimes and Mercies, described the full extent of all allied crimes against Germans, plus the wonderful charity work of Canada and the USA in saving 800 million people, including Germans, Japanese and Italians, from starving to death in the hungry years after 1945. The next, Dear Enemy, illuminated the attitudes of the western allies to Germany from 1945 to now.
Wikipedia reviews and criticizes only Other Losses, and in such a biased way, that I finally tried to correct their many errors. Starting in March, 2006, I tried repeatedly over many weeks to correct the errors, but found that within a day at first, then within hours, and finally within minutes, some Wikipedian editor had expunged my corrections, replacing them with ever more hostile and denigrating allegations. Friends of mine tried also to correct the flawed Wikipedia article, but found the same situation. Finally we decided that Wikipedia was deliberately censoring my contributions, and that it was pointless to continue trying to present the facts on Wikipedia. After Serendipity (already acquainted with censorship at Wikipedia) heard of this situation I was offered the chance to publish the real story, which appears below.
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Wikipedia quotes Stephen E. Ambrose as saying that <>Other Losses<> is "... spectacularly flawed ..." without saying that Ambrose also wrote that "You have made a major historical discovery which will ... span the oceans and have reverberations for decades, yea centuries to come. You have the goods on these guys ..."
Wikipedia does not say that Ambrose changed his mind only after he was retained by the US Army to lecture at the War College in Pennsylvania. Nor does Wikipedia mention that in his attack on me in the New York Times, he admitted that he had not done the necessary research to reach the conclusions that he published in that same article. Wikipedia fails to mention that the Ambrose it cites as an authority admitted that he had plagiarized several other authors. Wikipedia does not concern itself with the accusations that Ambrose stole work from a graduate student which he published as his own.
Wikipedia ignores my book, Crimes and Mercies, which goes far towards balancing the record of western actions after World War Two. The book shows the great charity extended by the western allies, chiefly Canada and the USA, towards the starving around the world after WW2, including the Japanese and Germans. Saying that the overwhelming majority of professional historians reject my work, and citing as an authority one historian who has never worked in this field, Wikipedia ignores the support given me by the eminent US Army military historian Col. Dr. Ernest F. Fisher, a former Senior Historian of the US Army Center for Military History, Washington. Fisher, a professional historian for decades, wrote the official US Army history of the campaign in Italy. He assisted me for months in researching documents in the US National Archives, wrote the Introduction to my book Other Losses, and has supported me with public statements for the seventeen years since its first publication. He helped me for many months researching in the archives.
Wikipedia does not mention the expert editing, research help and public support given me by the eminent epidemiologist and biostatistician, Dr Anthony B. Miller, former head of the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Toronto.
Wikipedia also casts aside the support given my work by Richard Overy, King's College, University of London; Otto Kimminich, University of Regensburg; Dr Alfred De Zayas, author of many books on postwar German history; Prof. Dr. Peter Hoffmann, McGill University, author of the most expert books on the German resistance; Prof. J. K. Johnson, Carleton University, Ottawa; Professor Ralph Raico, University of Buffalo; Prof. Ed Peterson, University of Wisconsin; Prof Ralph Scott, University of Iowa; Prof. Pierre Van Den Berghe, University of Seattle; Prof. Dr Richard Mueller, former head, Department of English, University of Aachen; Prof. Hans Koch, University of York and many others.
Among writers who have approved my work and supported me are Julian Barnes; Nikolai Tolstoy; John Fraser, Master of Massey College, Toronto; John Bemrose of Toronto; Robert Kroetsch, Winnipeg; and many others. My work has been published around in the world in ten languages by Macmillan, Little, Brown, Prima, Ullstein, Editions Sand, McClelland and Stewart, New Press, and many many others.
Finally, the most glaring omission is that the massive and detailed KGB Archives in Moscow have millions of documents whose evidence completely confirms the statistical work in Other Losses. The math is simple: about 1.5 million German prisoners alive in allied prison camps at the end of the war never came home, nor were their deaths reported to the German government, their families, the International Red Cross or the UN. The figure was determined by the Adenauer government in Germany, submitted to the UN, and has never been disputed by anyone. Thus when Other Losses came out in 1989, alleging deaths of about one million in French and American camps, that left about 500,000 to be accounted for. They could have died only in the KGB camps, because there were not half a million prisoners in any other camps in the world. Thus, in effect Other Losses was predicting that when the communists opened the KGB archives, they would show deaths of about 500,000. And lo and behold, when Gorbachev brought down the communist rule, and the archives were opened, I went there, and found the Bulanov Report which showed that 356,687 Germans died in Soviet captivity, plus another 93,900 civilians taken as substitutes for dead or escaped prisoners for a total of 450,587
This astonishing discovery is not mentioned in Wikipedia, nor by any other of the "professional historians." Except one, Stefan Karner, who went to the KGB archives, saw the evidence piled up in enormous quantities, and said he did not believe it. Instead, he preferred to publish his own "estimates," which confirm the conventional view.
Information about books written by James Bacque may be found on his website World War 2 Books.
Mass Starvation of Germans 1945-1950
Censorship at Wikipedia
http://serendipity.li/hr/bacque_on_wikipedia.htm
Wikipedia: The untimely rise and expected fall
It is nothing new. I found Indian Wikipedia Administrators banning Pakistani members, some of them without due reason as I discussed in the above linked article. Wikipedia is not really favoured in scientific research circles due to their attitude and the trollish nature of its users and administration.
It is nothing new. I found Indian Wikipedia Administrators banning Pakistani members, some of them without due reason as I discussed in the above linked article. Wikipedia is not really favoured in scientific research circles due to their attitude and the trollish nature of its users and administration.
they have a gang of indian members and moderators who constantly keep track of india and Pakistan related articles.
QUOTE
During the final collapse of Nazi Germany (1945), between 3.4 and 5 million p-1 German PoWs fell into US hands. Thousands would die of hunger, exposure, and neglect; many hundreds of thousands would barely survive 3-4 months of such conditions; and millions would still be imprisoned many months after the war was ended.
The German annual death rates in US hands (1%?) p-2 and French hands (2.6%) p-3 were a whole order of magnitude less than for US PoWs in Japanese hands (27%) p-4, German PoWs in Soviet hands (35-50%) p-5, or, worst of all, Soviet PoWs in German hands (60-80%). They were comparable to, but probably higher than, the annual death rate of US PoWs in German hands (1%). p-6
Source:
edited by Günter Bischof and Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower and the German PoWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London, 1992; cloth, 258 pp.
The German annual death rates in US hands (1%?) p-2 and French hands (2.6%) p-3 were a whole order of magnitude less than for US PoWs in Japanese hands (27%) p-4, German PoWs in Soviet hands (35-50%) p-5, or, worst of all, Soviet PoWs in German hands (60-80%). They were comparable to, but probably higher than, the annual death rate of US PoWs in German hands (1%). p-6
Source:
edited by Günter Bischof and Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower and the German PoWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London, 1992; cloth, 258 pp.
http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/for/us-germany-pow.html
James Bacque's 'Other Losses', A Review by Stephen E. Ambrose
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/b/bacque-james/
QUOTE
the greatest number of "other losses" is revealed in the August 1945 Report of the Military Governor. (These monthly reports are in the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan., in the National Archives in Washington and elsewhere; they are a basic source on every aspect of the occupation, including food shortages and prisoners. Mr. Bacque did not cite them and there is no evidence he examined them.) The August report lists the numbers of disarmed enemy forces discharged by American forces and those transferred to the British and French for forced labor.
The report continues: "An additional group of 663,576 are listed as 'other losses,' consisting largely of members of the Volksturm [Peoples' Militia], released without formal discharge."
It takes little imagination to see what happened here. The People's Militia consisted of older men (up to 80 years of age, mainly World War I veterans) and boys of 16 or sometimes less. American guards and camp authorities told the old men to go home and take care of their grandchildren, the boys to go home and return to school. Along with the transfers to other zones that Mr. Bacque ignores, these people account for all the "missing million."
In short, 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 militia.
The report continues: "An additional group of 663,576 are listed as 'other losses,' consisting largely of members of the Volksturm [Peoples' Militia], released without formal discharge."
It takes little imagination to see what happened here. The People's Militia consisted of older men (up to 80 years of age, mainly World War I veterans) and boys of 16 or sometimes less. American guards and camp authorities told the old men to go home and take care of their grandchildren, the boys to go home and return to school. Along with the transfers to other zones that Mr. Bacque ignores, these people account for all the "missing million."
In short, 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 militia.
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/b/bacque...mbrose-001.html
Wikepedia is ok for scientific issues when their is fact and their is fiction. But for more opinion oriented topics like politics, history etc the opinions expressed on it are often bias.
For opinion oriented subjects and articles the unbias and highly eduacated writers are often pushed aside by bias less educated writers as a result of the editing system. That is why you can never wholeheartedly trust wikepedia on non-factual/opinionated issues.
Wikepedia needs to do more to combat the bias caused by these amateurs to acquire good standards. I think it should also use qualifications as a deciding factor for editing ie one who has a PhD (and has proved it) and written something, what he writes cannot be edited by one with a lesser education having just a degree or less.
It is obvious why this writers work is being censored because t shows that allied soldiers after world war 2 did commit attrocities against their enemies often malnurishing them. These fatality figures if published will change the perception of many people of the war and its aftermath. These fatality figures are true aswell which is rather sad.
People generally think of allied soldiers as being repsective towards their enemy counterparts and being highly proffesional but the fact is the media has been used to manipulate peoples perception of the aftermath of world war 2 bringing them to this false premonition. In addition some historians have been selectively barred because of their views on this issue, which are often true like in this case. The media has been used as a tool to express this stereotype of the allied soldier as loving and humane unlike the blood thirsty German.
For opinion oriented subjects and articles the unbias and highly eduacated writers are often pushed aside by bias less educated writers as a result of the editing system. That is why you can never wholeheartedly trust wikepedia on non-factual/opinionated issues.
Wikepedia needs to do more to combat the bias caused by these amateurs to acquire good standards. I think it should also use qualifications as a deciding factor for editing ie one who has a PhD (and has proved it) and written something, what he writes cannot be edited by one with a lesser education having just a degree or less.
It is obvious why this writers work is being censored because t shows that allied soldiers after world war 2 did commit attrocities against their enemies often malnurishing them. These fatality figures if published will change the perception of many people of the war and its aftermath. These fatality figures are true aswell which is rather sad.
People generally think of allied soldiers as being repsective towards their enemy counterparts and being highly proffesional but the fact is the media has been used to manipulate peoples perception of the aftermath of world war 2 bringing them to this false premonition. In addition some historians have been selectively barred because of their views on this issue, which are often true like in this case. The media has been used as a tool to express this stereotype of the allied soldier as loving and humane unlike the blood thirsty German.
WW2 was brutal. An uncle of mine, who fought in the US Army across Europe once confided that he stopped taking prisoners after Malmedy (battle of the bulge). There's never been any denial that attrocities occured at an individual level. The difference in POW death rates is telling, however: attrocities were systematic in some place and not in others.
QUOTE(penguin @ Dec 22 2007, 07:15 PM) 
WW2 was brutal. An uncle of mine, who fought in the US Army across Europe once confided that he stopped taking prisoners after Malmedy (battle of the bulge). There's never been any denial that attrocities occured at an individual level. The difference in POW death rates is telling, however: attrocities were systematic in some place and not in others.
I agree. Interesting story from your uncle.
The people do deserve the truth though at the moment they are brainwashed into thinking the allies were innocent young soldiers that were honourable and didn't do such things while the truth is that many of them commited such attrocities.
The fact is most people are unaware of the scale of attrcoities commited by the allies, they know full well of attrocities commited by the axis but dont know the scale of the attrocities commited by the allies. Many seem to think that crimes commited by the allies were very rare but they were not.
QUOTE(asamih @ Dec 23 2007, 11:35 PM)
I agree. Interesting story from your uncle.
The people do deserve the truth though at the moment they are brainwashed into thinking the allies were innocent young soldiers that were honourable and didn't do such things while the truth is that many of them commited such attrocities.
The fact is most people are unaware of the scale of attrcoities commited by the allies, they know full well of attrocities commited by the axis but dont know the scale of the attrocities commited by the allies. Many seem to think that crimes commited by the allies were very rare but they were not.
The people do deserve the truth though at the moment they are brainwashed into thinking the allies were innocent young soldiers that were honourable and didn't do such things while the truth is that many of them commited such attrocities.
The fact is most people are unaware of the scale of attrcoities commited by the allies, they know full well of attrocities commited by the axis but dont know the scale of the attrocities commited by the allies. Many seem to think that crimes commited by the allies were very rare but they were not.
I strongly and vehemently disagree with what you are suggesting here. War is hell and debases all that partake in it but especially the guy on the front. The point is not that some individuals under pressure do horrible stuff e.g. no longer taking prisoners after hearing an SS troop butchered some 80 disarmed and bound US POWS of your unit for kicks at Malmedy (not to mention many documented attrocities against civilians during the battle of the bulge). The point is about the routine and systematic physical destruction of captured enemies: the differences in POW death rates clearly show that if you were russian and ended up in German captivity you pretty much were worked to dead or died of malnutrition in no time at all. I'm sure the chinese have similar experiences concerning treatment of POWs by the japanese. The Russians weren't too nice to captured Germans eithers, but not entirely surprising considering German views on Slavic people and routine attrocities against civilian population. The rest of the numbers however are so much lower there is no comparison. The allies in most cases really were innocent young soldiers and mostly honourable, at least on the western front. The truth is that relatively few of them commited such attrocities.
ps: if one expects non-pakistanis to respect pakistan's national heroes, then vv also applies
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