WHAT YOU NEED NOW - CONTENT UPDATED THROUGH THE DAY -
May 27, 2005
BOOK REVIEW: 'Soldiers and Slaves' Recounts WW II German Selection of
American POWs for Slave Labor with Holocaust Victims
Reviewed by David M. Kinchen
Hinton News Network Book Critic
Hinton (HNN) —Some books are difficult to read because - even though
they're not large in terms of pages - they're so heartbreaking that they can
be read only in segments. Such was the case for me with "Soldiers and
Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble" by Roger Cohen
(Knopf, 320 pages, 16 pages of illustrations, 4 maps, $25.95).
Inspired by a documentary film by World War II veteran Charles Guggenheim,
"Berga: Soldiers of Another War," (PBS, 2003), Cohen's carefully researched,
fully documented and elegantly written book should be read by everybody who
thinks the war crimes of the Germans were limited to fellow Europeans. In
"Soldiers and Slaves," he tells the story of 350 American POWs captured in
the final days of 1944 and the first few days of 1945 during the Battle of
the Bulge and how they were transported to a slave labor camp near the city
of Berga on the Elster River in eastern Germany to construct underground
facilities to produce and store synthetic fuel.
The POWs arrived in February 1945 to find themselves working in appalling
conditions alongside European slave laborers, many of them from nearby
concentration and death camps. Cohen, a foreign affairs correspondent for
The New York Times, incorporates into the story of the Americans the
parallel tale of Mordecai Hauer, a young Hungarian Jew transported to Berga
from Auschwitz, where his mother was murdered. Hauer, blond and blue-eyed,
could be played by actor Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller's sidekick in so many
movies. As a young man, he looked just like Wilson.
What makes the 350 prisoners unusual is that they were chosen because they
were Jewish, or looked Jewish to their German captors, or were
"troublemakers." The non-Jews among the POWs included Johann "Hans" Kasten,
an Hawaiian-born private of German descent who was repeatedly beaten by his
captors because he refused to distinguish between Jews and non-Jews among
the POWs.
To Kasten, a loyal American soldier who contributed to Cohen's account of
Berga, his captors were the ones dishonoring German culture and tradition
and he finally managed to escape along with two other prisoners. The Kasten
family is prominent in Milwaukee financial circles. Kasten, born in 1916,
told Cohen that he was raised a Lutheran but really was a devout atheist. He
was a self-described hell raiser. After the war he moved to Manila, vowing
after his ordeal in Berga to "never live in a place where it snows." He is a
retired manufacturing executive. He sounds like a guy I'd like to meet!
The rest, including about 80 American Jews selected at Stalag IX-B near the
spa city of Bad Orb before being shipped off to Berga, were worked to
exhaustion digging tunnels. At least 73 of the 350 died or were killed by
the Germans led by an exceptionally brutal German National Guard sergeant,
Erwin Metz. Metz was imprisoned by for less than 10 years by the Americans;
by way of contrast, SS Lt. Willy Hack, another brutal slave-driver, was
captured by the Russians in 1951, tried and hanged in 1952. When Kasten was
liberated by American soldiers, he went on a fruitless but vividly described
quest in a commandeered Mercedes to find and kill Hack.
Despite a thorough investigation by a U.S. Army major named Vowell, the very
existence of American POW's at Berga was hushed up by high-ranking American
officials. Cohen says the American powers that be decided we needed the
Germans - even the worst war criminals among them - in our cold war against
the Soviets. This was also the case with another beneficiary of slave labor
named Werner Von Braun, as well as Albert Speer, who was spared hanging at
Nuremberg.
All the survivors of Berga had to sign a document ensuring secrecy about the
German slave labor camp. Despite Major Vowell's comprehensive report,
bureaucrats denied the existence of the camp to inquiring relatives of those
who died. None of the survivors received U.S. Army compensation or
disability benefits based on their mistreatment at the camp. It wasn't until
a few years ago that the Germans themselves finally paid compensation to the
surviving POWs under slave labor legislation enacted under pressure from
death camp survivors and nations, including Russia and Israel.
Metz was released from prison in the mid 1950s. The author presents
convincing evidence that he murdered in cold blood Morton Goldstein, a
German-speaking Jewish soldier, "while attempting to escape." The dispute
over Goldstein and the cover-up by American forces was deplored by Kasten
and all the other survivors of Berga.
The methodical Germans closed down Berga as Allied forces neared and led the
POWs and the concentration camp workers on separate death marches, following
a pattern described by author Daniel J. Goldhagen, Max Hastings and other
historians. The senseless forced march resulted in the deaths of at least 50
of the estimated 73 among the POWs. The European prisoners fared even
worse-including being shot for stealing apples along the march route. To the
"law-abiding" Germans, this constituted "theft of German property"!
As I said, this is a heartbreaking book to read. It incorporates interviews
with many of the survivors of Berga, Jews and Gentiles alike. Once they were
under the thumb of their German slave masters, there was no distinction
based on religion: All the POWs were all treated horribly. Needless to say,
there was no comparable American treatment of German and Italian POWs, some
of whom were having a "good war" in places like West Virginia, including
Alderson and White Sulphur Springs.
The year 2005 - marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II -
has seen the publication of many excellent books about the events of the
"end times" of World War II. I've reviewed a number of them, including Max
Hastings' outstanding "Armageddon," also published by Knopf. "Soldiers and
Slaves" clearly belongs in this distinguished company. The events of Berga
are also covered in "Given Up for Dead" (2005) by Flint Whitlock, and
"Forgotten Victims" (1996) by Mitchell G. Bard.
Publisher's web site: www.aaknopf.com
HNN is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
David M. Kinchen is the Editor of HuntingtonNews.Net, repsponses and article submissions can be made to .
As a precaution against “spam” and viruses this e-mail address has been presented with a JavaScript. If you do not see this e-mail address, please check your security settings or upgrade your Web browser, links are available on the HNN Links page. Alternately by changing the appropriate portions you may manually enter the following address:
stories[at]huntingtonnews[dot]net
