Джеймс Бак: Жизнь и творчество канадского писателя.

Canadian writer (1929–2019)

James Bacque (19 May 1929 – 13 September 2019) was a Canadian writer, publisher, and book editor. He was born in Toronto, Ontario.

Bacque was educated at Upper Canada College in Toronto and then the University of Toronto, where he studied history and philosophy, graduating in 1952 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He was a member of Seaton's House, one of the school's boarding houses.

Bacque was a mainstream fiction writer and essayist before turning his attention, in 1989, to the fate of German soldiers held as POWs by the Allies after World War II. His recent works include Dear Enemy (2000), with Richard Matthias Mueller, essays on Germany Then and Now. Bacque had just completed a comic drama for the stage entitled Conrad, about a media mogul in prison, which was scheduled for production on 2 October 2009 at the George Ignatieff Theatre in Toronto. Bacque's latest book, Putting On Conrad, about the experiences of producers trying to put on his play in the face of libel chill, is an amusing satire on Canada's literary establishment.

In Other Losses (1989), Bacque claimed that Allied Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower's policies caused the death of 790,000 German captives in internment camps through disease, starvation and cold from 1944 to 1949. In similar French camps some 250,000 more are said to have perished. The International Committee of the Red Cross was refused entry to the camps, Switzerland was deprived of its status as "protecting power" and POWs were reclassified as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" to circumvent recognition under the Geneva Convention. Bacque argued that this alleged mass murder was a direct result of the policies of the western Allies, who, with the Soviets, ruled as the Military Occupation Government over partitioned Germany from May 1945 until 1949. He laid the blame on Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, saying Germans were kept on starvation rations even though there was enough food in the world to avert the lethal shortage in Germany in 1945–1946.

In a subsequent book, Crimes And Mercies (1997), Bacque claimed that Allied policies led to the premature deaths of 5.7 million civilians among the indigenous population of East and West Germany (in excess of recorded mortality) between censuses in October 1946 and September 1950, 2.5 million ethnic German refugees from Eastern Europe and 1.1 million German P. O. W. s due to Allied starvation and expulsion policies in the five years following World War II. The book also details the charity work conducted by the Allies, primarily Canada and the United States, crediting it with saving or improving the lives of up to 500 million people around the world in the post war period. This work was led by Herbert Hoover at the behest of President Truman, and by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, together with Norman Robertson and Mitchell Sharp. This was the largest relief program ever organized, and expressed the ideals of many of the allied combatants. Bacque's figures for prisoners of war and expellees are in excess of those accepted by historians, and his claim of 5.7 million unrecorded civilian deaths in East and West Germany between 1946 and 1950 censuses has no correspondence at all in historical literature. A review of "Crimes and Mercies" by German historian Bernd Greiner considers the aforementioned 5.7 million claim to have no substance, contextualizes Bacque's book with attempts of the extreme right to gain mainstream acceptance, and expresses surprise at historians' passivity in the face of such tendencies ("Es ist mehr als erstaunlich, wie Wolfgang Wippermann unlängst zu Recht anmerkte, daß die seriösen Fachhistoriker diesem Treiben noch immer ungerührt zusehen."). A panel of scholars gathered at the annual German Studies Association meeting in Salt Lake City in October 1999 and found the charges of "Crimes and Mercies" even more extravagant than those proffered in "Other Losses". The panel's papers were never published, however, since the participants thought that the business of refuting Bacque's claims again and again and in detail gives more credence to his wild conspiracy history, and trying to revive the debate was yet another attempt by him to gain acceptability in the scholarly community. According to the German Federal Archives in 1956, more than 2 million refugees/expellees from the eastern territories of the former German Reich in its 1937 borders and from ethnic German minorities outside Germany's 1937 borders perished during and after the war. However, this order of magnitude is under considerable dispute by historians.

The Lonely Ones (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969) London: Macmillan, 1970. First paperback edition published under the title: Big Lonely (Toronto: new press, 1971). Second paperback edition, #148 in the New Canadian Library series; foreword by D. M. R. Bentley. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1978. A Man of Talent (Toronto, new press, 1972). Fiction. The Queen Comes to Minnicog (Toronto: Gage, 1979). 177 p. Short stories. Our Fathers' War; A Novel (Toronto: Exile Editions, 2006). 628 pp. A novel of World War II.

Kroetsch, Robert, James Bacque, and Pierre Gravel, creation. Toronto: new press, 1970. CONTENTS (James Bacque contributions): "The High Snow," pp. 67–72; "A small Film," 73–80; "Sun and Earth for a Dollar," 81–88; "the truth shall make you weird ," 88–97; "On the morning of the death of Colonel Alexander Ramsay, O. B. E.," 98–114; "The Nancy Poems," 115–119; "A Conversation with Milton Wilson," 120–146. Litteljohn, Bruce M., and Jon Pearce. 1973. Marked by the Wild; An Anthology of Literature shaped by the Canadian Wilderness. [Toronto]: McClelland and Stewart, 1973. Includes excerpt from James Bacque's The Lonely Ones on pp. 144–147. Bailey, Don, and Daile Unruh. 1991. Great Canadian Murder and Mystery Stories. Kingston, Ont: Quarry Press, 1991. Includes James Bacque's "Desire and Knowledge in Key West," pp. 150–158. Kick, Russell. 2003. Abuse your Illusions: The Disinformation Guide to Media Mirages and Establishment Lies. New York: Disinformation Co., 2003. Includes James Bacque's "A Truth so Terrible: Atrocities against German POWs and civilians during and after WWII," on pp. 261–267.

James Bacque, "The Last Dirty Secret of World War Two," Saturday Night, v. 204, no. 9, whole no. 3714 (September 1989) 31–38. For related stories, (Sept. 1989) issue, see John Fraser, "Diary: Slow Death Camps," pp. 13–14; also John Gault, "A Story he [Bacque] didn't Want to Know," pp. 43–46. For the response of readers and former POWs to these allegations, see also "Eisenhower's Death Camps: Our Readers Kick up a Fuss (cover title)," v. 104, no. 12, whole no. 3717 (Dec. 1989) entitled "Other Losses: Letters," pp. 7–13. Other Losses; An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans after World War II (Toronto: Stoddart, 1989; London: MacDonald, 1989). Futura paperback (London: MacDonald, 1991); General Paperjack (Don Mills: General, 1991). Just Raoul; Adventures in the French Resistance (Toronto: Stoddart, 1990). Also Just Raoul; The Private War Against the Nazis of Raoul Laporterie, Who Saved Over 1,600 Lives in France (Rocklin, CA: Prima, 1992). Der geplante Tod; Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in amerikanischen und französischen Lagern 1945–1946. Aus dem Kanadischen übertragen von Sophie und Erwin Duncker Berlin: Ullstein, 1989. Translation of Other Losses. Expanded and revised paperback edition (9th printing), Berlin: Ullstein, 2002. Other Losses; The Shocking Truth behind the Mass Deaths of Disarmed German Soldiers and Civilians under General Eisenhower's Command (Rocklin, CA: Prima, 1992). On cover: Foreword by Dr. Ernest F. Fisher, Jr. Col. A. U. S. (Ret. ), formerly a Senior Historian, U. S. Army. Verschwiegene Schuld: die alliierte Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland nach 1945. Vorwort von Alfred de Zayas. Übersetzung aus dem Englischen: Hans Ulrich Seebohm. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1995. Translation of: Crimes and Mercies. The first edition of Crimes and Mercies; the original English version was published two years later. Crimes and Mercies; the Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation, 1944–1950 (Boston: Toronto; Little, Brown, 1997). Also published as paperback: London: Little Brown, 1997; London: Warner, 1998, reprinted 1999; Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2007. Other Losses; An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans after World War II. 2. rev. edition. Bolton, ON: Fenn, 1999. Includes "Foreword" by Col. Ernest F. Fisher, xix–xxi; also "Introduction to the second revised edition," by James Bacque, xxiii–lxx. Projected new edition: Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2011. James Bacque and Richard Matthias Müller, Dear Enemy; Germany Then and Now (Bolton, ON: Fenn, 2000). The published correspondence of James Bacque of Canada and Richard Matthias Müller of Germany. Verschwiegene Schuld; Die alliierte Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland nach 1945. Vorwort von Alfred de Zayas. Überseztung aus dem Englischen: Hans Ulrich Seebohm. Selent: Pour le Mérite, 2002. Translation of: Crimes and Mercies. Der geplante Tod; Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in amerikanischen und französischen Lagern, 1945–1946. Aus der englischen Sprache übersetzt von Sophie und Erwin Dunker, Anette [i. e., Annette] Roser. Selent: Pour le Mérite, 2008. Translation of: Other Losses.