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And then there was the repercussions on the survivors, vide:
"Nutritional levels and Famine
For several years following the surrender German nutritional levels were very low, resulting in very high mortality rates. Throughout all of 1945 the U.S. forces of occupation ensured that no international aid reached ethnic Germans. <27> It was directed that all relief went to non-German displaced persons, liberated Allied POWs, and concentration camp inmates.<28> During 1945 it was estimated that the average German civilian in the U.S. and U.K occupation zones received 1200 calories a day.<29> Meanwhile non-German Displaced Persons were receiving 2300 calories through emergency food imports and Red Cross help.<30> In early October 1945 the U.K. government privately acknowledged in a cabinet meeting that German civilian adult death rates had risen to 4 times the pre-war levels and death rates amongst the German children had risen by 10 times the pre-war levels. <31> The German Red Cross was dissolved, and the International Red Cross and the few other allowed international relief agencies were kept from helping Germans through strict controls on supplies and on travel.<32> The few agencies permitted to help Germans, such as the indigenous Caritas Verband, were not allowed to use imported supplies. When the Vatican attempted to transmit food supplies from Chile to German infants the U.S. State Department forbade it.<33> The German food situation became as worst during the very cold winter of 1946-1947 when German calorie intake ranged from 1,000-1,500 calories per day, a situation made worse by severe lack of fuel for heating.<34> Meanwhile the Allies were well fed, average adult calorie intake was; U.S. 3200-3300; UK 2900; U.S. Army 4000.<35> German infant mortality rate was twice that of other nations in Western Europe until the close of 1948.<36> (see also Eisenhower and German POWs)
Forced labor reparations
As agreed by the Allies at the Yalta conference Germans were used as forced labor as part of the reparations to be extracted . By 1947 it is estimated that 4,000,000 Germans (both civilians and POWs) were being used as forced labor by the U.S., France, the UK and the Soviet Union. (see also Eisenhower and German POWs) German prisoners were for example forced to clear minefields in France and the low countries. By December 1945 it was estimated by French authorities that 2,000 German prisoners were being killed or injured each month in accidents.<37> In Norway the last available casualty record, from August 29, 1945, shows that by that time a total of 275 German soldiers died while clearing mines, while 392 had been injured.<38> Death rates for the German civilians doing forced labor in the Soviet Union ranged between 19% - 39%, depending on category. (see also Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union).
The social effects of Rape
Norman Naimark writes in "The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949." that although the exact number of women and girls who were raped by members of the Red Army in the months preceding and years following the capitulation will never be known, their numbers are likely in the hundreds of thousands, quite possibly as high as the 2,000,000 victims estimate made by Barbara Johr, in "Befrier und Befreite". Many of these victims were raped repeatedly. Naimark states that not only had each victim to carry the trauma with her for the rest of her days, it inflicted a massive collective trauma on the East German nation (the German Democratic Republic). Naimark concludes "The social psychology of women and men in the soviet zone of occupation was marked by the crime of rape from the first days of occupation, through the founding of the GDR in the fall of 1949, until—one could argue—the present."<39> Some of the victims had been raped as many as 60 to 70 times.<40> See also (Soviet war crimes (WWII)).
Hostility against Germans
The post-war hostility shown to the German people is exemplified in the fate of the War children, sired by German soldiers with women from the local population in nations such as Norway where the children and their mothers after the war had to endure many years of abuse. In the case of Denmark the hostility felt towards all things German also showed itself in the treatment of German refugees during the years 1945 to 1949. During 1945 alone 7000 German children under the age of 5 died as a result of being denied sufficient food and denied medical attention by Danish doctors who were afraid that rendering aid to the children of the former enemy would be seen as an unpatriotic act. Many children died of easily treatable ailments. As a consequence more German refugees died in Danish camps, "than Danes did during the entire war.""<9><10><11>"
Wikipedia
Yet, all that sticks in the minds of those poor mutts, is the sight of German troops marching triumphantly into Paris, etc. As Joe Bageant remarked, in the face of similar stupidity: "Let me go and slit my wrists" (...or words to that effect).
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