Germany’s defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people. Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era that, in many ways, was worse than the destruction brought by war.
In a sobering and courageous book, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, British historian Giles MacDonogh details how the ruined and prostrate Reich (including Austria) was systematically raped and robbed, and how many Germans who survived the war were either killed in cold blood or deliberately left to die of disease, cold, malnutrition or starvation.
His best estimate is that some three million Germans, military and civilians, died unnecessarily after the official end of hostilities.
Most of the two million German civilians who perished after the end of the war were women, children and elderly — victims of disease, cold, hunger, suicide, and mass murder.
Read more here from
The Rape of Germany After World War II
James Bacque – Other Losses: Death of Millions of German Prisoners After World War II
Some surrendered German soldiers had been pressured to hoin French Foreign Legionaires. I know an old Vietnamese man who commanded some of them.
Those Legionaires captured by Viet Minh at the Dien Bien Phu battle (1954) dicided to stay in North Vietnam. CIA mistook them as Soviet advisers !
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The average Wehrmacht and Waffen SS soldier lived an interesting live. No group that large have gone trough some much in history. The German people in general have had a disproportionate big influence on history. It’s hard not to be fascinated by Germany and German people.
It seems that German history in Vietnam is more or less undocumented and/or forgotten.
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