Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

Ben Ferencz, the 98-year old chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Dachau who calls “the greatest generation” those men and women who resist war, not those who fight.

By far, the best show on NPR is Reveal, a hour-long show co-produced by the Center for Investigative Journalism and PRX, a distribution network for public radio. When I wake up early on Saturday morning, as I did today, I tune in to WNYC to listen to the show that begins at 6am.

Today was an exceptionally powerful episode that dealt with the January 1, 1945 massacre in Chenogne, Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge when American soldiers murdered 71 German soldiers who had just surrendered. Just days earlier, the Germans had killed about the same number of GI’s who had surrendered in the town of Malmedy. I paid close attention to the story since my father had been close to the fighting in Bastogne, about 5 miles away. My father was a mess sergeant assigned to the 10^th Armored division while the men fighting in Chenogne were in the 11^th Armored division.

Part of the show consisted of an interview with a GI, who had fought in Chenogne. He describes the mass killing but did not take part in it. That being said, he admits to killing two Germans in a foxhole who had their hands up earlier in the day. Now in his 90s, the act still haunts him. Another interviewee is a Belgian who was born in 1946 and became obsessed with the events that day, so much so that he built a house in Chenogne where he began an career as an amateur historian trying to get to the bottom of what happened. Finally, there’s an interview with Ben Ferencz, a Jewish soldier and the last surviving prosecutor of German war crimes at a trial in Dachau after the Germans surrendered. Just before he got the job as a prosecutor, he had been a janitor in company headquarters. They selected him because he had a Harvard law degree with a specialty in international law. He is still alive at 99 and quite lucid, as would be indicated by the interview.

Basically, he regarded the Chenogne massacre as a war crime but one that would never be prosecuted by a state that had just won the war. When asked if Stephen Spielberg and Tom Brokaw were justified in calling WWII GIs “the greatest generation”, he scoffed at the notion and stated emphatically that the greatest generation are those who resist war, like during Vietnam.

Like the soldier who killed two Germans in Chenogne, Ferencz has direct experience on the dehumanization war breeds. In a 2005 Washington Post article titled “Giving Hitler Hell” that dealt with Jewish soldiers during WWII, he recalled what that hell meant:

Ferencz, who today is 85 and lives in New York, cautions against making sweeping armchair moral judgments. “Someone who was not there could never really grasp how unreal the situation was,” he says. “I once saw DPs beat an SS man and then strap him to the steel gurney of a crematorium. They slid him in the oven, turned on the heat and took him back out. Beat him again, and put him back in until he was burnt alive. I did nothing to stop it. I suppose I could have brandished my weapon or shot in the air, but I was not inclined to do so. Does that make me an accomplice to murder?”

Ferencz — who went on to a distinguished legal career, became a founder of the International Criminal Court and is today probably the leading authority on military jurisprudence of the era — cannot specifically address Weiss’s actions. But he says it’s important to recall that military legal norms at the time permitted a host of flexibilities that wouldn’t fly today. “You know how I got witness statements?” he says. “I’d go into a village where, say, an American pilot had parachuted and been beaten to death and line everyone one up against the wall. Then I’d say, ‘Anyone who lies will be shot on the spot.’ It never occurred to me that statements taken under duress would be invalid.”

To hear the Reveal episode titled “Take No Prisoners”, go to https://www.wnyc.org/story/take-no-prisoners-rebroadcast.

Also, there is a Wikipedia entry on the Chenogne massacre at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenogne_massacre

It refers to the Reveal episode:

According to a declassified file Harland-Dunaway got access to, a soldier named Max Cohen described seeing roughly 70 German prisoners machinegunned by the 11th Armored Division in Chenogne. General Dwight D. Eisenhower demanded a full investigation, but the 11th Armored were uncooperative, saying “it’s too late; the war is over, the units are disbanded.” Ben Ferencz, an American lawyer who served as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, upon acquainting himself with the declassified report said: “it smells to me like a cover-up of course.”

I usually don’t pay much attention to Memorial Day but when I came across a film in progress on the Turner Classic Movie channel titled “Battleground”, I took notice because it was about the Battle of the Bulge that my father served in. As part of its holiday programming, TCM was featuring war movies. That included John Wayne in “They Were Expendable” earlier in the day, a 1945 film about PT boats defending the Philippines from an invasion. Needless to say, the movie did not take into account that the country had been occupied by the USA since 1898.

Wayne appeared in 8 other WWII movies over the years, all of them prefiguring the super-hero films that featured Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris, ones in which they would charge headlong into machine gun fire and always ending up victorious. Despite the image, Wayne did not serve during WWII. With his four kids, he was eligible for a deferment. His frequent director John Ford, a WWI veteran, had big problems with that as PBS reported:

Throughout the war, Ford urged the young actor “to get in it,” and each time Wayne would beg off until he finished “just one more picture.” Ford was disappointed to say the least, and he let Wayne know it. Wayne was growing richer as other men died. As the war continued, Ford’s strong disappointment fueled a growing conflict between the men and fostered a sense of guilt within Wayne. Wayne’s decision to stay out of the service would haunt him for the rest of his life.

By contrast, the men in “Battleground” want nothing more than to go home in one piece and continuously plea with officers to be spared from the almost certain death that awaited them in Nazi Germany’s last offensive. Whether it is high fever or frost bite, they soldier on. (The film can be rented on Youtube or Amazon for $2.99)

While the film is not cliché-free, it is certainly a lot more realistic than any WWII movie I have ever seen. There is very little hand-to-hand combat of the sort you find in “Saving Private Ryan”. Rather men hunker down in foxholes firing away at Wehrmacht soldiers about a 100 feet away, whose presence is marked only by the flashes from their muzzles.

This no doubt is a function of having a screenplay written by Robert Pirosh who served in World War II as a Master Sergeant with the 320th Regiment, 35th Infantry Division. During the Battle of the Bulge, he led a patrol into Bastogne to support the surrounded American forces there. Like Pirosh, my father supported the 101^st Airborne Division that was under siege in Bastogne.

Going through my father’s WWII memorabilia for the first time in 11 years when I wrote “Ruminations on WWII” triggered by the Ken Burns PBS documentary, I reread the commendation that went along with the Bronze Star he received:

It stated:

For Heroic Achievement

Bronze Star Medal

is awarded to

Staff Sergeant Jacob Proyect, 32 048 069

S/Sgt Jacob Proyect, 32 048 069, Hq Co 3d Tank Bn, U.S. Army. For heroic achievement against an enemy of the United States in Belgium on December 19th, 1944.

During the siege of Bastogne, Belgium S/Sgt Proyect, a mess sergeant, traveled several miles of infested enemy territory over a route being fired on by heavy artillery, mortar and automatic-weapons to deliver water to a unit that was surrounded. After distributing the water he volunteered to evacuate a wounded officer over the same route to Monte, Belgium. Both missions were successfully completed. The outstanding courage and personal concern for the comfort of his comrades in arms reflects great credit upon himself and the military forces of the United States.

My father was in the 10^th Armored Division that was part of the Third Army led by General George Patton. Just 38 days after my father got his medal, I was born in Kansas City. I am not sure when he came back to the USA but he probably had difficulty bonding with me as was often the case when servicemen are not present at the birth of a child. My only connection with him is through the box of memorabilia that he painstakingly put together when he was in the army—perhaps a way of marking his trail in the same way that I blog.

One of the things I came across today that was new to me was a letter he wrote to my mother on November 5^th from France, just 11 days before the Germans would launch their offensive. I am struck by both the beauty of his script—a dying art—as well as the tenderness he showed to my mother. After I reached the age of 10 or so, it became obvious to me that he didn’t like me very much and as such became a sticking point with my mother to whom nothing like the sentiments expressed in the letter would ever be offered again. (The missing snippet in the letter was no doubt the censors removing something that might have breached security. The image beneath it is some French mud my dad sent on the back of the letter.)

I am not into putting wreaths on a gravestone but this post is my way of memorializing a courageous and distant figure on Memorial Day.

Dearest wife,

I just got another V-mail tonite. It’s latest so far, written on the 17^th. Only eighteen days late. Glad everything is fine with you. Hope you stay that way and that nothing ever happens to hurt you in any way. Honey, I keep worrying about you all the time. I know what a hard time you’re going thru and I feel a little guilty about not being there to help you to the end [ie., my birth]. Next time will be peace time and I’ll be there with you from start to finish.

I’ve seen Paris—its quite a town. And the people are quite a … [couldn’t quite this make out because of the censor a bit of a let-down in my dad’s script.]

Guess they were sick and tired of the Boschies [Nazis]. But not all Frenchmen are friendly. I’ve come across batches of them that I’d hate to trust as a friend of the Allies—They look hate and distrust at us.

Have you received that fifty I sent from France? Are you receiving all the allotments you’re supposed to? How is the money holding out? We got enough saved yet to send the baby through college?

I’m okay—never better—not a thing to worry about—bye.

I love you, Jack