Did United States Soldiers Commit War Crimes During the Liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp, April 29th, 1945?
Massacre
of Guards during the liberation of Dachau by Allied soldiers
Upon liberation, a coal yard near the ϟϟ hospital was used to contain
the ϟϟ POWs from the hospital, NCO school and finance centre.
Lieutenant Sparks, shown above trying to call an halt to the massacre,
later described the area as enclosed by an “L-shaped masonry wall, about
eight feet high, which had been used as a coal bin. The ground was
covered with coal dust, and a narrow gauge railroad track, laid on top
of the ground, led into the area.” The prisoners were placed under the
command of Lt. Walsh, the same man who had shot four ϟϟ guards on the
so-called Death Train. The number of men present varies enormously
between accounts, but according to the investigation carried out by the
Assistant Inspector General of the 7th Army, Joseph M. Whitaker (known
as the IG report); all estimates were in the range of 50-125, with the
majority in the range of 50-75. From this point, the accounts of what
happened to these men diverge wildly. Walsh gave the order to the
machine gunner identified in the IG report as “C” and the other soldiers
present to shoot the POWs if they moved. An eyewitness, Karl Mann,
remembered the I-Company officers deciding to shoot the ϟϟ men when
Sparks was no longer in sight, although this also conflicts with the IG
report. According to the IG report, the ϟϟ men thought they were going
to be executed when the machine gunner loaded his weapon, and lurched
forward, triggering the shooting. However, other eyewitness reports,
including the gunman himself, indicate that the trigger had rather been
someone shouting “fire”. This incident, which took a matter of moments,
was interrupted by an irate Colonel Sparks, who ran from where he had
been stationed “about 100 to 200 meters on the other side of the wall”
To stop the shooting, Sparks shot his “.45 in the air while shouting
'Cease Fire!'”, before kicking the shooter away from the gun.
After
the hospital shooting was stopped, some of the U.S. soldiers allegedly
gave a number of handguns to the now-liberated inmates. It has been
claimed by eyewitnesses that the freed inmates tortured and killed a
number of captured German troops, in retaliation for their treatment in
the camp. The same witnesses claim that many of the German soldiers
killed by the inmates were beaten to death with shovels and other tools.
A number of Kapo prisoner-guards were also killed, torn apart by the
inmates.
ϟϟ guards being fished out of the canal, and as it appears today
After entry into the camp, personnel of the 42nd Division discovered the presence of guards, presumed to be SS men, in a tower to the left of the main gate of the inmate stockade. This tower was attacked by Tec 3 Henry J. Wells 39271327, Headquarters Military Intelligence Service, ETO, covered and aided by a party under Lt. Col. Walter J. Fellenz, 0-23055, 222 Infantry. No fire was delivered against them by the guards in the tower. A number of Germans were taken prisoner; after they were taken, and within a few feet of the tower, from which they were taken, they were shot and killed.from the IG Report of the U.S. Seventh Army
Introduction: 800
In the wealth of historical knowledge regarding the liberation of the infamous Dachau concentration camp, there is an often neglected group of victims whose suffering has gone unnoticed until relatively recently. The perpetrators have gone unpunished in any meaningful sense, and their families have received little recognition or justice. We have read innumerable accounts of the horrors of the concentration camps, from the Jews, Poles, Slavs, Gypsies, Jehovah’s witnesses and political prisoners of the NSDAP regime. The story which has hardly been told is that of the guards murdered during the liberation of Dachau.
This topic is, of course, controversial. Used for many years by the right wing movement to propagate the idea that such “US-killers” were the norm of American combat, and thus in some way minimize the horrors of National Socialism[1] by comparison, many, including US government officials, were unwilling to deal with this issue. Indeed, the deaths of a handful of men, who by all accounts were implicated in the horrors of the concentration camps, surely pales in comparison with the million victims of the camp system, and war at large. As Churchill stated, History is written by the victors, and it is clearly an unpleasant aspect of the History for the Allies to address. A commonly understated fact of the end of the war, was the harshness with which the Allies imposed their occupations; as Eisenhower made unequivocally apparent, “they arrived not as liberators [towards the Germans], but as victors.”[2]
Despite these considerations, the issue of culpability for the US soldiers involved is nonetheless serious. In light of the products of the war, such as the United Nations and new Geneva protocols determining war crimes and crimes against humanity, it would seem important for the victors to hold themselves to the same standard they are expecting for everyone. While the loophole remains that these new criteria were created post facto, the US was still bound by ethical standards of treatment for prisoners of war.
However, in determining whether more appropriate should have been taken, a few issues remain. Was the mental duress experienced by the soldiers at the time an extenuating circumstance for further prosecution, or should the mistaken identity of the guards stationed at the camp be a factor?
What happened at liberation?
The liberation of Dachau concentration camp on the 29th April, 1945 occurred during an auspicious time for the Allies. That same day, SS General Karl Wolff signed an armistice for Italy, and the next day, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. Merely a week earlier, on the 21st of April, Soviet soldiers under the command of General Zhukov rolled tanks into the Northern suburbs of Berlin, beginning a siege that would escalate to a final assault incorporating 464,000 troops, 12,700 guns and 1500 tanks.[3] However many soldiers, wearied after many years of fighting, and with constant refrains such as “End The War In Forty-Four” and “Stay Alive In Forty-Five” making their way through the ranks, had become disillusioned, with no clear idea of what they were fighting for.[4] Eisenhower himself, after having visited the concentration camp Ohrduf, ordered all the troops in the vicinity to show them what they were fighting for. It was this reality the troops would shortly be faced with, with no preparation for the fact. Short[5]
On orders to head towards Munich, after serving in Italy, France and Southern Germany, the soldiers of the United States Seventh army had no notion of the real terror mechanisms of the Nazi regime, either[6] They were to meet this reality at Dachau, and simultaneously find a reason for what they had suffered, and to Dachau, a small Bohemian town 12 miles north of Munich, housed the first Nazi concentration camp for political opponents of the Reich. Established in March 1933, merely 5 months after Hitler assumed the Chancellery, Dachau became the springboard for the growing Nazi terror throughout the Reich. SS guards, who were to run the fast opening concentration camps across the Reich, were trained in Dachau in the cruelty and sadism that were endemic throughout the camp system. While conditions in the camp were never humane, the last months saw an unthinkable deterioration of the situation. Originally built to house 5,000 inmates[7], Dachau had swollen to 32, 325[8] by liberation. This was due primarily to prisoner transports, sent to avoid the advancing Soviet troops, to hide the human evidence of the Nazi cruelty. The influx of these new inmates, already dead or dying from the inhumane transport- one such train from Buchenwald arrived with only 1,200 survivors out of 5,000[9]- stretched the facilities of the camp to breaking point. It was upon this scene of death and decay that the liberators stumbled on the 29th April, 1945.
Divisions Present
Among the many accounts of that day, a discrepancy arises as to which division actually arrived –and therefore liberated- Dachau first. While that debate is not the subject of this essay, the presence of two different divisions in the camp is nonetheless significant for this topic. The only division commemorated at the Dachau Gedenkstätte today, the 42nd Division’s 222nd Infantry Regiment of the United States Army, nicknamed the Rainbow division, and is the division most often associated with the liberation of Dachau. According to Lieutenant William J. Cowling III, the Rainbows were to meet 222nd Infantry division en route to Munich, when they intercepted two American reporters in search of the concentration camp in the area.[10] Having been ordered to subdue the camp on their way to capturing Munich, the Rainbows changed course for the camp. According to Linden’s official report, the group arrived at Command Post in the town of Dachau at around 1500 hours, before proceeding to the camp. Approaching the camp from the Southwest corner, Linden and Colonel Downward encountered a group intending to surrender the camp. After having accepted this offer, from the Red Cross representative Victor Mauerer and the Camp commander Lieutenant Wicker, “…there were several shots fired in the Northeast corner of the camp.”[11] The shooting, it transpired, had come from the other infantry division, who had arrived at nearly the same time, the Thunderbirds, or the 45th Division’s 157th Infantry Regiment, had fought in Sicily, Italy and France, and on the 29th of April, they were sent to Dachau on their way to Munich. [12] Expecting a long conflict[13] form the SS men remaining at the camp, Battalion Commander Felix S. Sparks diverted his troops to capture the “central military base for soldierly and ideological education of the SS-rank and file.”[14] To enter the camp, as the 45th did, from the Northeastern corner[15] where the SS barracks were, Sparks and his men had to walk past the infamous “Death Train”.[16] The significance of this sight on the troops cannot be overstated; they were unprepared in the slightest for the sights awaiting them in a concentration camp, let alone a freight train full of corpses. The train, which had 39 boxcars full with “2,300 bodies with only one still able to move and moan for help”[17] , travelled for 22 days from Buchenwald while its passengers died of exhaustion, exposure, disease and dehydration.[18] This overwhelming scene of death, dying and neglect, would colour the troops subsequent actions during the liberation of the camp, best expressed by this admission: “After seeing them, we didn’t feel too good towards the SS.”[19]
Violence against the guards
Endemic and Sporadic
These sights left many of the soldiers mixed emotions; disgust, confusion, disbelief, anger. The Pocket Guide issued to troops stationed in Germany, a thoroughly researched document containing in depth information about the culture, customs and attitudes to expect in Nazi-Germany, did not even mention the existence of the camps, despite detailed military and political knowledge of them.[20] In fact, Eisenhower deliberately downplayed “a lot of it [the conditions in the camps]” to avoid “men going nuts and reacting like assassins” up to that point, although as we have seen his policy drastically changed shortly after his own experiences. [21] . However, almost simultaneously, Eisenhower had first-hand experience of the concentration camp at Ohrduf; On April 12th, he toured the camp with General Patton and aides.[22] Shortly thereafter, he ordered all the troops in the vicinity to show them “what they were fighting for”. He also organized an official delegation from the US to visit the camps, because “all written statements up to now do not paint the full horrors.”[23]
Numerous first-hand accounts from liberation portray the anger and disbelief that the soldiers felt, coupled with the combat mindset they still held, was expressed with violence.[24] Letters home from soldiers also evidence this effect; in one of Lt. Cowling’s letters home (written three days earlier than his official report), he stated unequivocally that “I will never take another German prisoner armed or unarmed. How can they expect to do what they have done and simply say I quit and go scot free. They are not fit to live.”[25] This tendency had not gone unnoticed by the Army brass present. It had become apparent to Sparks early on in the day that the emotions of the troops were running high, and so he contacted headquarters for replacements to avoid an “explosion.”[26]
The violent reactions of the troops began early on in their exploration of the camp, which shows how natural the urge was on encountering the camp. Upon inspecting the Death Train, the Thunderbirds came across four Germans, bearing medical insignia, although at the time it was possible this was false decoration. Although they apparently attempted to surrender, Lieutenant William P. Walsh ordered the four into a boxcar and shot them. Private Albert C. Pruitt then “finished them off with his rifle”, after screaming at them about their medical negligence.[27] Other incidents were recorded with a less involved level of physical involvement. Accounts reference SS guards “shot in the legs so they couldn’t move”, allowing the prisoners to take their revenge against their captors.[28] Others handed over weapons to prisoners, or shoot guards pointed out to them by their victims,[29] or simply refused to intervene on the behalf of the SS soldiers, who were under their protection since the surrender of the camp.
Coal Yard Incident
More implicating than these sporadic and spontaneous acts of violence against the guards are the accusations of a premeditated massacre by US soldiers. It is this reported occurrence that must be considered within the context of war crime and the Geneva conventions, as the SS guards had surrendered. The so-called “Coal Yard Incident” is significant, in that it may have constituted a serious breach of international law regarding prisoners of war (POWs), as the surrendered SS men were at that point.
The area in question, a coal yard near the SS hospital used to power the camp, was used to contain the POWs from the hospital, NCO school and finance center. [30] Lieutenant Sparks later described the area as enclosed by an “L-shaped masonry wall, about eight feet high, which had been used as a coal bin. The ground was covered with coal dust, and a narrow gauge railroad track, laid on top of the ground, led into the area.”[31] The prisoners were placed under the command of Lt. Walsh, the same man who had shot the four SS guards on the Death Train. The number of men present varies enormously between accounts, but according to the investigation carried out by the Assistant Inspector General of the 7th Army, Joseph M. Whitaker (known as the IG report); all estimates were in the range of 50-125, with the majority in the range of 50-75.[32] From this point, the accounts of what happened to these men diverge wildly. Walsh gave the order to the machine gunner identified in the IG report as “C” and the other soldiers present to shoot the POWs if they moved. An eyewitness, Karl Mann, remembered the I-Company officers deciding to shoot the SS men when Sparks was no longer in sight, although this conflict the IG report as well.[33] According to that report, the SS men thought they were going to be executed when the machine gunner loaded his weapon, and lurched forward, triggering the shooting. However, other eyewitness reports, including the gunman himself, indicate that the trigger had rather been someone shouting “fire”. Further evidence is given to this statement of events by the confirmation by C that “Lieutenant W. had wanted to fire the machine gun himself, however, could not get to it on account of the movement of the SS-men.”[34] This premeditation points again to the fact that the I company men were raging, and their POWs at risk. Furthermore, indication was made that the soldiers intended to continue the shooting, past the initial three rounds fired[35], clearly acting as more than a warning against movement of the SS guards. In any case, the IG reported around 17 dead, a fact corroborated by photographic evidence of the event. This incident, which took a matter of moments, was interrupted by an irate Colonel Sparks, who ran from where he had been stationed “about 100 to 200 meters on the other side of the wall”[36] To stop the shooting, Sparks shot his “.45 in the air while shouting “Cease Fire!””, before kicking the shooter away from the gun.[37]
Before the IG report was available, the book published in 1980 by an eyewitness named Howard Buechner was popular account, and has since been the main fodder for neo-Nazi groups, hoping to discredit Holocaust history ever since. Even today this book has attracted attention among radical right wing circles, eliciting neo-Nazi praise in Amazon.com reader reviews, such as calling Elie Wiesel an “academic liar” and praising notorious Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson.[38] It is also worth mentioning that Howard Buechner has also authored a number of sensationalist conspiracy theories, including two books entitled Adolf Hitler and the Secrets of the Holy Lance and Emerald Cup Ark of Gold: Quest of SS Lieutenant Otto Rahn[39]. Despite these three books being published within 5 years of each other, his eyewitness account Dachau: The Hour of the Avenger was received more seriously. Not a Holocaust denier in the slightest, he himself wrote in the book “It finally occurred to me that the silence which has surrounded this episode for more than forty years should be broken and that the truth should be made known to the world. Those who survived the Holocaust, and the kinsmen of those who died in its flames, might draw some small comfort from the knowledge that the murderers of Dachau did not go unpunished”.
The claims Buechner makes in his book, such as the grossly inflated number given of 350 men killed in the coal yard incident, have been shown to be wildly inaccurate from other sources. For example, Buechner falsified in his book the time of the encounter, attributing it as happening much later in the liberation, rather than right after the encounter with the Death Train. He also described executions with 45 pistols, which was completely uncorroborated by the IG report into the issue.[40] Despite these problems, scholars such as Klaus Dietmar-Henke ascribed considerable validity to his account, as the IG report was unavailable at the time. It is from these misconstructions and their misplaced validity that the fuel for the right wing propaganda comes from.
What is a war crime?
Geneva Conventions for the Protection of War Victims
The various Geneva Conventions consist of the backbone of our modern interpretation of war crimes and human rights, and thus the foundation of any solid definition should begin with them. The specific Convention concerning POWs was created on 27 July 1929.[41] The purpose of the Convention was, in the eyes of the US Congress in 1955, “to improve the treatment to be given persons who become the victims of armed conflict and to relieve and reduce the suffering caused thereby.”[42] It is important to note, at this point, to note some specific clauses relevant to this issue.
Firstly, Article 2, under the General Provisions of Part I of that document, states that POWs are admitted directly into the power of the “hostile government”, rather than that of the individuals who captured them. Secondly, under the same Article, it was decided that “They shall at all times be humanely treated and protected, particularly against acts of violence, from insults and from public curiosity. Measures of reprisal against them are forbidden”[43] Furthermore, not only were POWs meant to be treated humanely, in the event of their deaths, their bodies were to be treated with respect and honorably buried, as assured by Article 76, Part V.[44] Thus we can see, that at the very fundamentals of a war crime, these events are already beginning to qualify.
Actions in Context
During this time of great upheaval, the definitions and criteria for war crimes were being scrutinized and refined, in the wake of the discoveries showing exactly what humans are capable of inflicting on one another. This context of the Nuremberg trials, therefore begs many questions: how these American soldiers should be treated, what jurisdiction would be responsible for the cases, whether they should they be tried under the same criteria, whether there was a precedent applied throughout the rest of the US Army, and whether the matter was even on a large enough scale for upper brass notice.
According to the “Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany and the Assumption of Supreme Authority by the Allied Powers, June 5, 1945”, Article 11, sub-clause b) “The same will apply in the case of any national of any of the United Nations who is alleged to have committed an offence against his national law, and who may at any time be named or designated by rank, office or employment by the Allied Representatives”. This refers to the previous sub-clause, a), Article 11 of the same document, which states “The Principle Nazi leaders as specified by the Allied Representatives, and all persons from time to time named or designated by rank, office or employment by the Allied representatives as being suspected of having committed, ordered or abetted war crimes or analogous offences, will be apprehended and surrendered to the Allied representatives”[45] Therefore the question of whether the same criteria should be applied to the liberating Army is clearly answered, as they were already in force.
The US Army had already started convicting their enemies of war crimes, which appeared very similar to the ones discussed here: On the 7th April, a military commission found a German officer guilty of the murder of two American POWs, during the Ardennes Offensive.[46] In June of the same year, a separate commission held a group of Germans responsible for the death of an American pilot, beaten to death in 1944. Those responsible, a Nazi Party leader and two civilians, were awarded death sentences.[47] This clearly indicates that scale is not an issue for the US Army when investigating war crimes.
More significantly related to this issue are the proceedings and definitions laid down in preparation for the Nuremberg trials. The Nuremberg trials were expanded to include offences committed before the Occupation, at the behest of General Eisenhower, on June 2. The Combined Chiefs of Staff “lifted all previous restrictions on war crimes trials, whether the offences were committed before or after the occupation...and regardless of the nationality of the victim.”[48] The categories under which a crime would qualify for the court, as decided by the London Agreement of the 8th of August between the Americans, British, French and Soviets, were fourfold: war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace and membership of criminal organizations.[49] These four criterion have become the central definitions in international law of war crimes ever since, and to set the precedent of retroactive justice, as well as the ability of International law to overrule State Sovereignty. Clearly, by these principles the timing and jurisdiction would not be a problem in this case.
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Buechner, Col. Howard. Amazon. June 1991. 1 August 2011 .
Committee on Foreign Relations, 86th Congress, 1st Session. Documents On Germany 1944-1959. Ed. J.W. Fulbright. Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1959.
"Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 27 July 1929." International Humanitarian Law - Treaties & Documents. International Committee of the Red Cross, 27th July 1929.
Dann, Sam, ed. Dachau 19 April 1945: The Rainbow Liberation Memoirs. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1998.
Goedde, Petra. GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender,and Foreign Relations, 1945-1949. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Hirsch, Michael. The Liberators. New York: The Random House Publishing Group, 2010.
Israel, David L. The Day the Thunderbird Cried. emek press, 2005.
Johannes Steinhoff, Peter Pechel, Dennis Showalter. Voices from the Third Reich: An Oral History. Washington D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1989.
Keegan, John. The Second World War. London: Penguin Books, 1989.
Mansfield. Geneva Conventions for the Protection of War Victims: Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations on Executives D,E,F and G. Executive Report. Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1955.
Mcnally, Patrick. Authored By Witness, Not Historian. 31 December 2006. 1 August 2011 .
Sparks, Brigadier General Felix L. "Liberation of Dachau." 15 June 1989. 45th Infantry Division. 1st August 2011 .
Zarusky, Jürgen. ""That is not the American Way of Fighting"." Dachau and the Nazi Terror 1933-1945. Ed. Barbara Distel Wolfgang Benz. Vol. II. Dachau: Verlag Dachauer hefte, 2002. 133-160.
Footnotes:
Footnotes:
[1] (Zarusky) pp.134 “Memoirs, Propaganda, Research” [2] (Bessel) [3] (Keegan) pp. 523-525 [4] (Israel)pp.131, “Why? Why? Part II“ [5] (Goedde) pp. 54 [6] (Dann) [7] (Abzug) pp. 89 [8] (Zarusky) pp.148 [9] (Abzug) pp. 89 [10] (Dann) pp. 18, “Report of the Surrender of the Concentration Camp at Dachau” Lt: Cowling [11] (Dann)pp.15, “Report of the Surrender of the Concentration Camp at Dachau” Brigadier General Henning Linden, Assistant Commander, 42nd Infantry Division [12] (Israel) “The Thunderbird Story” [13] (Abzug)pp. 90 [14] (Zarusky)pp. 141 “Shock and Irrational Reactions (Kurzschlussreaktionen)” [15] (Dann)pp.15 “Report of the Surrender of the Concentration Camp at Dachau” Brigadier General Henning Linden, Assistant Commander, 42nd Infantry Division [16] (Hirsch) pp.194 [17] (Israel) pp.132 [18] (Hirsch)pp. 194-195 [19] (Dann) pp.79 [20] (Goedde) [21] (Hirsch) pp.192 [22] (Abzug) pp. 27 [23] (Goedde) pp. 54 [24] (Abzug)pp.92 [25] (Dann)pp.24 [26] (Hirsch)pp.203 [27] (Hirsch)pp.196 [28] (Abzug)pp. 94 [29] (Hirsch)pp.202 [30] (Hirsch)pp.203 [31] (Sparks) [32] (Zarusky)pp. 143, “Shock and Irrational Reactions (Kurzschlussreaktionen)” [33] (Hirsch)pp.203 [34] (Zarusky)pp.144, “Shock and Irrational Reactions (Kurzschlussreaktionen) [35] (Zarusky) pp.144, “Shock and Irrational Reactions (Kurzschlussreaktionen) [36] (Zarusky)pp.145,“Shock and Irrational Reactions (Kurzschlussreaktionen) [37] (Hirsch)pp.203 [38] (Mcnally) [39] (Buechner) [40] (Buechner)pp. 146 “Howard Buechner’s Constructions” [41] (Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 27 July 1929.) [42] (Mansfield) [43] (Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 27 July 1929.) [44] (Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 27 July 1929.) [45] (Committee on Foreign Relations, 86th Congress, 1st Session)pp.13 [46] (Bessel)pp. 207 [47] (Bessel)pp. 207 [48] (Bessel)pp. 208 [49] (Bessel)pp. 208
