Dachau massacre

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Aftermath of the Dachau hospital shooting. Most of the prisoners on the ground are wounded or playing dead, at least 12 are killed
Aftermath of the Dachau hospital shooting. Most of the prisoners on the ground are wounded or playing dead, at least 12 are killed

The Dachau massacre took place in the area of Dachau concentration camp, near Dachau, Germany, on April 29, 1945 during World War II. The incident happened following the surrender of Dachau to soldiers of the 45th Infantry Division of the U.S. Seventh Army.

Contents

[edit] Liberation overview

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, issued a communique over the liberation of Dachau concentration "Our forces liberated and mopped up the infamous concentration camp at Dachau. Approximately 32,000 prisoners were liberated; 300 SS camp guards were quickly neutralized."[1] The military historian Earl Ziemke describes the incident:

The Americans came on 29 April, a Sunday. Work had stopped in the camp on Wednesday, and an evacuation was being organized. One transport of 4,000 prisoners was able to get away, but the 42d and 45th Infantry Divisions covered the forty miles from the Danube faster than the Germans expected. At noon on Sunday the camp was quiet, and the SS guards were at their posts in the towers when the cry "Americans!" went up. A prisoner rushed toward the gate, and a guard shot him. Outside, a single American soldier stood looking casually at the towers while the guards eyed him and others who were two or three hundred yards way. When the Americans opened fire, the guards in the gate tower came down, hands in the air. One held a pistol behind his back, and the first American shot him. In the next few minutes a jeep drove up; in it were a blond woman war correspondent and a chaplain. The chaplain asked the prisoners, now crowding to the gate, to join him in the Lord's Prayer. ...Troops of the 42d and 45th Divisions who liberated Dachau in the afternoon on 29 April were fighting in Munich the next morning and by nightfall had, along with XV Corps' other three divisions, captured the city that was the capital of Bavaria and the birthplace of Nazism.

– Earl F. Ziemke [2]

[edit] Killings by the American soldiers

The photograph shows the bodies of six of the guards at the base of Tower B
The photograph shows the bodies of six of the guards at the base of Tower B

U.S. soldiers, shocked at what they discovered in the concentration camp, shot and killed a number of German SS guards as they attempted to surrender, including the crew of the Tower B [3]. A group of four SS soldiers who having already surrendered to Lt. William P. Walsh were shot by him, and a soldier under his command, in a railway box car (see below: United States Army investigation). In another incident about twelve German POWs were shot and killed with another three or four wounded in a coal storage area. The Officers and soldiers involved pleaded that the prisoners were trying to escape, but the United States official investigation into the incident cast serious doubt on this defense.

[edit] Sparks account

Col. Felix L. Sparks, a battalion commander of the 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, Seventh United States Army wrote about the incident. Sparks watched as about 50 German prisoners captured by the 157th Infantry Regiment were confined in an area that had been used for storing coal. The area was semi enclosed by an L-shaped masonry wall about eight feet high and next to an hospital. The German POWs were watched over by a machine gun team from Company I. As he left those men behind to head towards the center of the camp where there were SS guards who had not yet surrendered, he had only gone a short distance when he heard machine gunfire coming from the direction he had just left. He ran back, and kicked a 19 year old soldier who was manning the machine gun and who had killed about twelve of the prisoners and wounded several more. The gunner who was crying hysterically said that the prisoners had tried to escape. Sparks said that he doubted the story, and placed a NCO on the gun before resuming his journey towards the center of the camp.[4] Sparks continues:

It was the forgoing incident which has given rise to wild claims in various publications that most or all of the German prisoners captured at Dachau were executed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The total number of German guards killed at Dachau during that day most certainly not exceed fifty, with thirty probably being a more accurate figure. The regimental records for that date indicate that over a thousand German prisoners were brought to the regimental collecting point. Since my task force was leading the regimental attack, almost all the prisoners were taken by the task force, including several hundred from Dachau.

– Felix L. Sparks[4]

[edit] Buechner account

In the U.S. military "Investigation of Alleged Mistreatment of German Guards at Dachau" conducted by Lt. Col. Joseph Whitaker, the account given by Col. Howard Buechner (then a Colonel in the Unites States Army and medical officer with the 3rd Battalion of the 157th Infantry), to Whitaker on 5 May 1945 did not contradict the Sparks account. He said that he arrived in the yard where the German soldiers had been shot at around 16:00, and that he "saw 15 or 16 dead and wounded German soldiers lying along the wall." That he assumed that some of them were wounded as they were moving, but he did not examine any of them. He also told Whitaker that he did not know the soldier guarding the yard or what company he was from. [5]

However according to the book Dachau: The Hour of the Avenger : An Eyewitness Account written by Howard Buechner, in 1986[6], 520 German soldiers were executed, including 346 killed on the orders of 1st Lt. Jack Bushyhead, a Native American officer, in an alleged mass execution in the coalyard several hours after the first hospital shooting. Buechner did not witness the alleged incident himself, however, and there was no mention of a second shooting in the official investigation report.[5] David L. Israel disputed this account in his book The Day the Thunderbird Cried:

Buechner's inaccuracies and arbitrary use of figures in citing the untrue story about the total liquidation of all SS troops found in Dachau was eagerly accepted by Revisionist organizations and exploited to meet their own distorted stories of Dachau.

– David L. Israel[7]

Unlike revisionists, Buechner was unapologetic about the actions committed by the American soldiers at Dachau and in fact described it as justified in his book.

[edit] Other accounts

Abram Sachar reported that "Some of the Nazis were rounded up and summarily executed along with the guard dogs."[8]

According to George Stevens Jr. and Michael Seltzer, 122 SS POWs were killed "in the first hour".[5]

[edit] Killings by the inmates

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 soldiers, both SS guards and regular troops. 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.[4] An eye-witness at Dachau, was quoted in the book Inside the Vicious Heart, by Robert H. Abzug:

Control was gone after the sights we saw, and the men were deliberately wounding guards that were available and then turned them over to the prisoners and allowing to take their revenge on them. And in fact, you've seen the picture where one of the soldiers gave one of the inmates a bayonet and watched him behead the man. It was a pretty gory mess. A lot of the guards were shot in the legs so they couldn't move and ....and that's all I can say...

– Jack Hallet[5]

[edit] United States Army investigation

Lt. Col. Joseph Whitaker, the Seventh Army's Assistant Inspector General, was subsequently ordered to investigate after witnesses came forward testifying about the massacre. He issued a report on 8 June 1945, called the "Investigation of Alleged Mistreatment of German Guards at Dachau" and also known as "the I.G. Report." In 1991 an archived copy was found in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and was made public.[5]

Whitaker reported that close to the back entrance to the camp Lt. William P. Walsh commander of Company "I", 157th Infantry, shot four German soldiers in a box car who had surrendered to him. Pvt. Albert C. Pruitt then climbed into the box car performed a coup de grâce on the wounded men.[5]

After he had entered the camp Walsh, along with Lt. Jack Bushyhead, the executive officer of Company "I" organized the segregation of POWs into those who were members of the Wehrmacht and those who were in the SS. The SS were marched into a separate enclosure and were shot by members of "I" company with several different types of weapons.[5] In Paragraph 16 Whitaker comments:

Lt. Walsh testified that the SS men were segregated in order to properly guard them, and were then fired upon because they started moving toward the guards. However, the dead bodies were located along the wall against which they had been lined up, they were killed along the entire line, although Lt. Walsh only claims those on one flank moved, and a number of witnesses testified that it was generally "understood" that these prisoners were to be shot when they were being segregated. These facts contradict the defensive explanation given by Lt. Walsh.

– Lt. Col. Joseph M. Whitake in "Investigation of Alleged Mistreatment of German Guards at Dachau."[5]

The investigation resulted in the U.S. Military considering the court-martialling of those involved including the Battalion commander Lt. Col. Felix Sparks, while Col. Howard Buechner cited in the report for dereliction of duty for not giving the wounded SS men in the coal yard medical aid, [5] but as General Patton, the recently appointed military governor of Bavaria, chose to dismiss the charges, the witnesses to the massacre were never cross examined in court and no one was found guilty of the massacre.[4]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Staff, quoting Abram Sachar on The Liberation of Dachau, Nizkor Project.
  2. ^ Earl F. Ziemke The U.S. Army in the occupation of Germany 1944-1946, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D. C., 1990, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-619027 Chapter XIV: Eclipse pp. 252,253.
  3. ^ Quotes from the report by the Office of the Inspector General of the Seventh Army regarding the shooting of disarmed German soldiers during the Dachau liberation Scrapbookpages.com
  4. ^ a b c d Albert Panebianco (ed). Dachau its liberation 57th Infantry Association, Felix L. Sparks, Secretary 15 June 1989. (backup site)
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Staff. A review of Col. Howard A. Buechner's account of execution of Waffen-SS soldiers during the liberation of Dachau, Scrapbookpages.com, 28 July, 2006
  6. ^ Buechner, Howard (June 1986). Dachau: The Hour of the Avenger : An Eyewitness Account. Metairie, Thunderdbird Press, Inc.. ISBN 0913159042. 
  7. ^ Israel, David L. (September 30, 2005). The Day the Thunderbird Cried: Untold Stories of World War II. Emek Press. ISBN 0977059103. 
  8. ^ Staff, quoting Abram Sachar on The Liberation of Dachau, Nizkor Project. citing Sachar, Abram L. The Redemption of the Unwanted. New York: St. Martin's/Marek, 1983

[edit] Further reading

  • Goodell, Stephen, Kevin A Mahoney; Sybil Milton (1995). "1945: The Year of Liberation". Washington, D.C., U.S.A.: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. ISBN 0-89604-700-8
  • Marcuse, Harold (2001). "Legacies of Dachau : The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933-2001". Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-55204-4
  • Zarusky, Jürgen, "'That is not the American Way of Fighting:' The Shooting of Captured SS-Men During the Liberation of Dachau," in: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): Dachau and the Nazi Terror 1933-1945, vol. 2, Studies and Reports (Dachau 2002), pp. 133-160. (German original in Dachauer Hefte vol. 13, 1997).