Remember, you are talking about a total of 50 million losing their lives across the board on the Eastern front.
And even after what we Americans thought was the end of the war, the
slaughter continued.
Due to the communist/socialist aspect of the FDR administration and highly placed communist agents in British intelligence, Tito was placed in power in the artificially manufactured county called "Yugolsavia" which included Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Herzegovinia and Macedonia.
The second most number of deaths in Nazi concentration camps was in a camp in Croatia.
Tito didn't shut that camp down but kept it running for six more years after the end of WWII until political pressure had him move his gulag to an island in the Adriatic. The victims were political dissidents, mostly Serbs who had been our steadfast allies throughout the two world wars.
It is important to stress that the plight of German civilians in the Balkans is only a small portion of the Allied topography of death.
Seven to eight million Germans -- both military personnel and civilians -- died during and after World War II. Half of those perished during the final months of the war, or after Germanys unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945. (It was FDR's bright idea that there could be no end to the war other than unconditional surrender back in 1943 and even though Hirohito offered to surrender Truman dropped the bombs and only accepted peace after the USSR was allowed to declare war on Japan.)
German casualties, both civilian and military, were
arguably higher in "peace than in "war.
In the months before and after the end of World War II,
ethnic Germans were killed, tortured and dispossessed throughout eastern and central Europe, notably in Silesia, East Prussia, Pomerania, the Sudetenland, and the Wartheland region. Altogether 12-15 million Germans fled or were driven from their homes in what is perhaps the greatest ethnic cleansing in history.
Of this number, more than two million were
killed or otherwise lost their lives. [14]
The grim events in postwar Yugoslavia are rarely dealt with in the media of the countries that emerged on the ruins of communist Yugoslavia, even though, remarkably, there is today greater freedom of expression and historical research there than in such western European countries as Germany and France. The elites of Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, largely made up of former Communists, seem to share a common interest in repressing their sometimes murky and criminal past with regard to the postwar treatment of German civilians.
As already noted, ethnic cleansing is nothing new. Even if one regards the former Serb-Yu*goslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and the other defendants being tried by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague as wicked criminals, their crimes are trivial compared to those of Communist Yugoslavias founder, Josip Broz Tito.
Tito carried out ethnic cleansing and mass killings on a far greater scale, against Croats, Germans and Serbs, and with the sanction of the British and American governments. His rule in Yugoslavia (1945-1980), which coincided with the Cold War era, was generally supported by the Western powers, who regarded his regime as a factor of stability in this often unstable region of Europe. [15]
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The largest settlement in the southern part
of the Banat, located at the estuary of the rivers Temesch and Donau, lies the city of Pantschowa. It is one of the oldest settlements in the area.
Together with the Germans, other nationalities had made their homes there, i.e. Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians, Slovaks, and others. For over 200 years they all had co-existed in peace.
Due to their efficiency and inborn diligence, albeit living under a foreign government, most of the Germans were able to prosper quite nicely, and managed to accumulate a fair amount of personal wealth, primarily in agricultural endeavors.
Pantschowa had by the beginning of Second World War over 25,000 residents. Besides the already mentioned other ethnicities over 12,000 of them were Germans.
The town's prestige and economic boom was primarily owed to these Germans. It grew to an economic center, from where goods were transported via hundreds of Donauschleppern (large, flat bottom boats) up and down the Donau to many other countries.
Thousands of Germans, as well as men from other ethnic backgrounds, were employed in this profitable undertaking, residing either in Pantschowa itself, or in any of the smaller communities surrounding the town.
The Russian Army entered these areas already during the first days of October 1944. Under their protection - the Yugoslav Partisans, under the command of the notorious Josip Broz Tito, immediately usurped all local control, and established their brutal authority.
Every one who they considered being opposed to Communism was liquidated. Not only supporters of the Serb General Neditsch, but also the Serbs loyal to the king, the Tschetnici Drascha Michailowitschs, but especially the Germans were completely annihilated.
From the nearly 40,000 Germans in Pantschowa and it's environ, only a few thousand were able to leave the country. The remaining, not having a guilty concience of any wrongdoings, feared no reprisals. They could not have forseen in their wildest dreams what fate awaited them under the new regime.
They were all liquidated and their properties confiscated. Today the entire area is completely cleansed of all Germans.
Shortly after their takeover the Partisans began the
imprisonment of the most prominent and affluent men among the German community. The first victims were the ones whose possessions and homes were most appealing to them, moving into the houses immediately and confiscating everything in sight.
All Germans, rounded up in Pantschowa, were incarcerated first in the Stockhaus, an old prison facility which was part of the district court annex. From the surrounding areas many more men and women were brought here, resulting in an overflow capacity. Therefore a camp, surrounded by barbed wire and omnipresent rifle-toting guards, had to be constructed.
When the Partisans, primarily after extensive alcohol consumption, felt like entertainment, they dragged Germans, hands tied, from the overcrowded areas of the prison facility - either single or in groups - and brutally tortured them until they were either dead or the tormentors were too tired to continue the cruelty.
The torture technique, typical for other areas in Yugoslavia, consisted of brutally throwing the victims to the ground facedown and ramming with full force the rifle butts into the kidney areas.
Thrusting them on their backs, they used their heavy boots to stomp on these helpless victims, breaking ribs and inflicting other internal injuries. Another favorite was breaking teeth and the bridge of the nose with vicious blows with pistol grips. Many, many of the incarcerated Germans died from the inflicted mutilations.
After a few days, when this form of savagery lost its iniitial appeal, Partisans began to round up groups within the camp, and marched them outside the confines and shot them.
Before this took place, however, they were ordered to strip down naked, because the clothes of the victims were a highly treasured booty. From the camp in Pantschowa alone a total of 1,666 Germans were taken outside the confines, mostly at night, and nobody ever saw them again! The road leading to the township Jabuka was used as a favorite place for executions; also the airport was selected for this gruesome handiwork. In 1946, close to the starch producing plant near the airport, twelve mounds were still visible.
These were mass graves of larger groups of victims, killed there and covered with dirt. Most of these groups consisted of about one hundred victims. Many Germans who had died in the prison facilities were also buried there.
While there is no debate that the conditions set at the conclusion of WWI made WWII inevitable, I don't think Wilson consciously knew that. He may have been a liar, but he couldn't "disguise" a contract for another war, if he was ignorant to that being the unshakable course of events. Reviewing history from present to the past can play tricks, if one lets it.
The only ignorance afoot is the true intentions of Woodrow Wilson from the beginning when influential forces were able to convince Teddy Roosevelt to run on a third party ticket, enabling puke face Wilson to win the White House. (
House being a key word)
(the same tactic used by Bubba Clinton who continues to glorify the sorry administration of Woodrow Wilson)
For one was Wilson's rejection of Ho Chi Mihn who wanted very much to be an ally of the US and was quite fond of the US Constitution. (we'll get more into the whole Vietnam conflict if you care to, I have a lot to add to the misinformation most people believe on that topic.)
Ho practically begged Woodrow to help him throw off the yoke of French colonialism but Wilson was a
Trotskyite.
Wilson's worst crime was to, through deception, place America again underneath the yoke of international banking, it is our crime if we do not throw off this yoke for the future of our children and the future of the American Republic.