At the end of April 1945, the American army liberated the Dachau concentration camp. The pictures of mass extermination of people the soldiers saw made such a strong impression on them that they dealt with some of the SS men right in the camp and did not stop the prisoners from settling scores with their tormentors. These events became known as the "Dachau massacre". In May 1945, an investigation into this incident was carried out, but at the highest level it was decided not to punish the military for this failure.
Liberation
At 11 a.m. on April 29, the 3rd Battalion of the 157th Infantry Regiment of the 45th American Division, having overcome several sniper ambushes, approached the western gate of the Dachau concentration camp.
By this time, most of the guards had already left the camp. Selected Nazis from the SS-Totenkopfverbände (special units involved in guarding concentration camps) fled on April 28. The last commandant of Dachau, Martin Weiss, also fled with them (flight did not help him, after the war he was executed for numerous crimes). The SS men who remained in the camp were imprisoned in a disciplinary prison for various offenses. Together with them were Hungarians from the 26th Waffen-Grenadier SS Division and a group of wounded Wehrmacht soldiers stationed in a local hospital. They probably no longer had enough transport to evacuate.
At the beginning of the twelfth hour, the Americans discovered a “death train” at the western gate. This was the name of the trains into which the bodies of dead prisoners were loaded to be sent to the crematorium. This sight shocked the soldiers. 40 carriages filled with naked bodies of people. The dead were extremely emaciated and looked like skeletons. As one of the Americans recalled, it was the most terrible sight of his entire life. Many soldiers felt sick, and some began to experience uncontrollable hysterics.
At this time, a group of four SS men moved towards the Americans from the opposite end of the train, intending to surrender. They clearly chose not the best time for this; the soldiers, shocked by what they saw, did not even begin to negotiate with them. They were ordered to climb into the carriage, after which Lieutenant Walsh shot everyone.
Surrender
At 11:20 the first American soldiers entered the camp. According to the memoirs of camp prisoner Neren Gun, events developed as follows. SS Obersturmführer Heinrich Skodzenski came out to meet the Americans in a smart SS uniform and highly polished boots and shouted: “Heil Hitler!” The contrast between him and the American officers, unshaven and “bruised” after several days of fighting, was so impressive that they were simply furious. The American officer spat in his face and shouted “Schweinhund!” (“pig dog”) shot him in the head with a pistol.
This story is popular in journalism, but is disputed by professional researchers. In addition, the surrender process was filmed by numerous American correspondents and the photo shows a completely different person, whose identity has been reliably established.
It was SS Untersturmführer Heinrich Wicker, the senior officer remaining in the camp. He arrived at the camp only at the beginning of April 1945, along with a group of prisoners who were being driven on foot from Neckarelz to Dachau. In mid-April, he also led the “death march” of 1,700 prisoners from Hessental to one of the Dachau complexes.
Vicker is present in photographs in different parts of the camp, which means that he remained alive for at least several more hours after the Americans arrived. However, he was not found in the Dachau city prison, where all the surviving prisoners were housed. Officially, he was considered missing. According to the testimony of two surviving German guards, Wicker was killed by one of the American soldiers.
Hour of the Avenger
Around noon, American soldiers began sorting out the prisoners. The SS men were taken into one column, and the Wehrmacht soldiers (mostly from among the wounded remaining in the hospital) and hospital staff into the other.
At the same time, another group of soldiers entered the camp through another gate. Shooting rang out. The fire was carried out by several SS men holed up in the camp tower (about 5-6 people). After a short firefight, the tower was captured. The survivors were shot next to the building.
Selected SS men (about 70 people) were taken to the coal yard. Along the way, several people were killed, and even a special investigation did not make it possible to clarify the circumstances of their deaths. In the courtyard, the prisoners were left against the wall under the supervision of a machine gunner.
As soon as the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Sparks, left the courtyard, machine gun fire was heard. The shooter was an Indian machine gunner nicknamed Bird's Eye. Sparks immediately ran back and fired several shots into the air with his pistol to stop him. According to the officer’s recollections, the machine gunner was hysterical, sobbing and shouting that the prisoners were trying to escape. The machine gunner was taken away, and his place was taken by another shooter - with stronger nerves. As a result of this shooting, 17 people were killed and several more were injured.
After Sparks left again, a group of prisoners armed with shovels and clubs came to the coal yard. They started beating some SS men. Some soldiers tried to stop them, others did not interfere with the beatings. As stated in the materials of the American investigation, they turned away and pretended not to notice what was happening.
Night of Blood
By the evening of April 29, the liberators left Dachau. A guard company took their place, and engineers arrived. The prisoners were sent back to the barracks. There was a typhus epidemic in the camp, and the Americans closed it for quarantine.
On the first night after the liberation of Dachau, about 300 prisoners died in the camp. Some of them were killed for collaborating with the Germans. The rest died from disease and exhaustion. According to Neren Gun, several previously starving prisoners died from overeating.
The next day, local residents were brought from the surrounding settlements and were involved in unloading the bodies from the “death train.” Not far from the camp, bulldozers dug several large trenches in which the dead camp prisoners were buried. Some of the bodies were buried in the Leitenberg cemetery, and carts with corpses were specially transported through the city center so that residents could clearly see the cruelty of German concentration camps.
Orthodox Easter and final liberation
In 1945, Orthodox Easter fell on May 6. The camp was still closed for quarantine, but among the prisoners there were 18 clergy: Serbs, several Russians and Greeks. They received permission to hold a festive service, for which they were given a separate room. They tried to get vestments, candles and icons for the service through the Americans traveling to Munich. However, due to the confusion that reigned there, the messengers were unable to find anyone in the local Orthodox parishes.
Having constructed improvised vestments from hospital towels, the clergy held a service with the participation of the prisoners. As one of the witnesses later recalled, in the history of the Orthodox Church, perhaps, there was no more unusual Easter service.
Despite the quarantine and the efforts of American doctors, the typhoid epidemic could not be brought under control for a long time. In May 1945, over 2 thousand prisoners died from the disease. In June, typhus began to decline, and 196 people died during that month. It was not until mid-summer 1945, two months after the end of the war, that all the Dachau prisoners finally gained freedom.
How many people were executed
In 1986, a book was published by Howard Buechner, a former American army medic who participated in the liberation of the camp. In a book with the telling title “Hour of the Avenger,” he picturesquely talks about how American soldiers executed every single German and Hungarian that day (while 40 people were killed by former prisoners).
In May 1945, the US Army conducted an investigation into the abuse of prisoners. The commission found that on the day of the liberation of Dachau, about 50 SS men and other camp workers were killed. 10–12 of them were killed by former prisoners, the rest were shot by the Americans. Lieutenant Colonel Sparks maintained throughout his life that his soldiers shot and killed no more than 30 people. And the rest of the prisoners were imprisoned in the city of Dachau, which was located next to the camp. The party of prisoners, on Sparks' orders, was accompanied by Lieutenant Walsh and Chaplain Lowe.
For obvious reasons, the surviving concentration camp guards did not talk about their service after the war. But at least two SS men and one medic are known to have survived. Another survivor, Hans Lineberger, left a short memoir about the events of that day, in which he confirmed Sparks' earlier testimony. Lineberger was in a group of SS men at whom Bird's Eye opened fire with a machine gun, but survived and was not even wounded.
Although the investigation identified by name almost everyone who took part in the executions, General Patton ordered the case to be closed, citing the difficult psychological state of the soldiers who saw horrific images of death during the liberation of the camp. The investigation materials were classified for almost 50 years. They were published only after the release of the sensational book “The Hour of the Avenger.”
Western gate to KL "Dachau". photo - May 1945.
American soldiers are now widely accused of killing nearly five hundred prisoners of war during the liberation of Dachau. I decided to figure it out. And yes - this is a very difficult post. Below is a story about the murders and photographs of dead bodies.
Aerial view of Dachau (the camp itself is in the background), photo from May 1945.
10:45 Soldiers under 1st Lt. L.R. Stewart and 1st Sgt. Robert Wilson of L Company reaches a footbridge defended by a lone German machine gunner. After shooting about one belt, the German retreats, and Company I, under the command of 1st Lt. Jack Bushyhead crosses the bridge. Tanks and infantry from Company L remain to clear Dachau and continue the advance on Munich.
10:55 The reconnaissance patrol reaches the outskirts of the concentration camp, but is fired upon by the enemy. And the jeep with four servicemen sent to accept the surrender turns around and leaves, being also fired upon.
11:00 The Americans from Company I reach the western gate. On the railway line, near the camp, they found a train: about forty carriages full of dead bodies:
"These people were filling the carriages. There were bullet holes all over, apparently from shelling on the way to Dachau. (There is version that the train traveling from Buchenwald to Dachau was fired upon by American aircraft, and the dead people found in the carriages were killed precisely during this raid. Moreover, the bullet holes were much larger than from German small arms -my note). Most of the soldiers simply stood silently and did not believe what was happening. We've seen people get torn to pieces in battle, burned, and die in many different ways, but we weren't prepared for this. Some of the dead lay with their eyes open. It seems that they looked at us and said: “What took you so long?” - from the memoirs of Private John Lee, a soldier 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th US Thunderbird Division.
“We were traveling in a jeep with guards and before reaching the camp a few hundred yards we saw a railway track leading into the camp, with a large number of open cars. When we crossed the track and got out, we saw the most terrible sight that I had ever seen before of this time. The cars were loaded with corpses. Most of them were naked, and they were all skin and bones. Their legs and arms were only a couple of inches in diameter, and they had no buttocks at all. Many of them had bullet holes in the back head.... I couldn't even speak - from a letter to the parents of First Lieutenant William Cowling, who accompanied the brigadier general Henning Linden from the 42nd Rainbow Division and journalists who were traveling to accept the capitulation of the camp. (This was around 11:45 a.m., a little after the discovery of the train by Company I).
11:00 - 11:15 Along the train, four SS men were walking towards the soldiers from Company I, trying to surrender. They were shot on the spot, on the orders of Lieutenant William Walsh, an officer of Company I (according to other sources, he shot them with his own hands):
11:20 American soldiers enter the camp through the western gate:
The photo was taken after April 29 (a large photo of this gate is at the very beginning of the post)
Prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp greet American soldiers. Photo from here
"At the beginning of our entry into the camp, the soldiers of Company I, all battle-hardened veterans, became extremely distraught. Some wept, others raged. About thirty minutes passed before order and discipline could be restored. During this time, those more than thirty thousand prisoners camp, the survivors began to understand the full significance of the events taking place. They poured out of the crowded barracks in the hundreds, soon reaching the holding fence of barbed wire. They began to shout “Americans!!!”, such a cry that it soon turned into a roar. time, several bodies were rushing about in the crowd, torn apart by a hundred hands. Later I was told that they were killing “informants” (obviously we are talking about “capos” - prisoners who collaborated with the camp administration - my note). After about ten minutes of screaming, the prisoners calmed down " - from the memoirs of Felix L. Sparks, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th American Thunderbird Division.
11:25 Soldiers discover mountains of corpses near the crematorium and in the rooms around it. A gas chamber disguised as a shower room is also discovered. .
All photos below are posted by me 11:25 , made in Dachau already in May 1945. But the soldiers of Company I saw exactly this picture:
11:30 American soldiers reach the entrance to the hospital building. At least a hundred Germans were taken out of the hospital, including staff, including women. The company commander, First Lieutenant Jack Bushyhead and Lieutenant William Walsh, with the help of Polish prisoners, sort the prisoners of war and separate the SS men:
(my note - it is worth noting that the concentration camp itself was located inside training buildingsSS compound, so both the disciplinary prison and the hospital were located outside the camp).
Gate leading from the complex to the camp:
The same ones with the inscription on the gate “Work makes you free”:
At the same time, the Germans surrendered throughout the complex, they were also sorted and lined up in columns:
Some former prisoners try to attack the Germans and kill them. Also, at least one SS man was shot dead by the Americans.
11:30 -13:00 At the same time, soldiers of the 42nd "Rainbow" division - scouts and soldiers of the 222nd regiment - enter the camp territory. They were met by security fire from Tower B. The soldiers fired a volley into the tower, after which the guards surrendered. They were built. What happened next, we will probably never know. But the fact is that the American soldiers opened fire on the already captured SS men. Six dead remained lying near the tower:
, as well as three were later caught from the canal:
All three photos above are of Sgt. John N. Petro, 232 Infantry, E Company
12:00
Resistance has largely ceased and order has been temporarily restored. 358 German soldiers are captured, many of them wounded Waffen SS soldiers from a military hospital.
From 50 to 75 prisoners are brought to the coal yard next to the hospital and lined up along the wall. The German prisoners of war remain under the supervision of a machine gun crew and several soldiers from Company I. A photographer is also present - Arland B. Musser, 163rd Signal Photographic Company.
12:05 Lieutenant Colonel Felix L. Sparks heads towards the center of the camp, where there were SS men who had not yet surrendered. He hadn't gone far when he heard soldiers shouting, "They're trying to get away!" , and then firing from a machine gun.
Col. Buechner tested on May 5, 1945 in the investigation conducted by Lt. Col. Joseph Whitaker. The following is a transcript of his testimony:
Date: 5 May 1945. By: Lt. Col. Joseph M. Whitaker, IGD, Asst. Inspector General, Seventh Army.
The witness was sworn.
363Q. Please state your name, rank, serial number and organization.
A. Howard E. Buechner, 1st Lieutenant, MC, 0-435481, 3rd Bn., 157th Infantry.
(The witness was advised of his rights under the 24th Article of War.)
364 Q. Do you remember the taking of the Dachau Concentration Camp?
A. Yes, sir.
365 Q. Were you the surgeon of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry, at that time?
A. Yes, sir.
366 Q. Did you see or visit a yard by the power plant where some German soldiers had
been shot?
A. I did, sir.
367 Q. Can you fix the hour at which you saw this?
A. Not with certainty, but I would judge about 4:00 o"clock in the afternoon.
368 Q. Of what day?
A. I can't give the exact date.
369 Q. Describe to me what you saw when you visited this yard.
A. We learned that one of our companies had gone through the camp and that it was
something to see out there. So, we got on one of the jeeps to visit there and we were
detained for some time by the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 157th Infantry,
because he didn't know whether the place had been cleared. When we got there we saw
a quadrangular enclosure; there was a cement wall about ten feet high and inside this
enclosure I saw 15 or 16 dead and wounded German soldiers lying along the wall.
370 Q. Did you determine which were dead and which were wounded?
A. I did not examine any of them, sir, but I saw several of them moving very slightly.
371Q. Did you make any examination to determine whether or not those who were not
dead could be saved?
A. I didn't.
372 Q. Was there any guard there?
A. There was a soldier standing at the entrance of this yard whom I assumed to be a
guard.
373 Q. Do you know the soldier or what company he was from?
A. No, sir.
374 Q. Do you know whether or not any medical attention was called for these wounded
German soldiers?
A. I don't.
All. A curtain. He revealed all the terrifying details only in 1986.
Video materials:
Liberation of Dachau in Color by brest44
- one of the first concentration camps in Germany. Founded in March 1933 near Munich. It became the first “testing ground” where the system of punishment and other forms of physical and psychological abuse of prisoners was worked out.
Before the outbreak of World War II, Dachau held political opponents of the Nazi regime, primarily communists, socialists, clergy who opposed the regime, etc. During the war, Dachau gained ominous fame as one of the most terrible concentration camps in which medical experiments were carried out on prisoners.
In 1941-1942 alone, about 500 experiments on living people were carried out there. Many Dachau prisoners worked as free labor at surrounding industrial enterprises, including at the production facilities of the IG Farbenindustry concern.
During the entire existence of the Dachau concentration camp, about 250 thousand people from 24 countries passed through it. Of these, 70 thousand died. Among those tortured were 12 thousand Soviet prisoners of war. At the time of liberation, there were 30 thousand prisoners in the camp.
An underground organization of prisoners led by the International Committee operated in the camp. The International Committee was led by communists and figures of the social democratic movement, such as Oskar Müller (later vice-president of the German Resistance Fighters Committee), Raymond Prunier and Edgard Franchot (France), Joseph Lauscher (secretary of the Vienna City Committee of the Communist Party of Austria, member of the Central Committee), Franz Lauscher (member of the Central Committee of the Austrian Communist Party), etc.
The Russian Underground Committee in the Dachau concentration camp was formed in the fall of 1943. The Soviet resistance group was led by Lieutenant Colonel Illarion Panov.
A military department was created to prepare an armed uprising, headed by Major General Sergei Vishnevsky.
The center of the underground was the infirmary. The underground members distributed reports from the Sovinformburo, selected reliable people and created combat groups for an armed uprising.
Prisoners who worked in the weapons workshop smuggled pistols into Dachau piece by piece. Among the faulty weapons in the workshop were machine guns and rifles, ready for battle at any moment.
In April 1945, the camp commandant received a telegram signed by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, which ordered the camp to be evacuated and, if impossible, liquidated.
Preparations for an uprising began underground. A cache of dressing materials was organized in the infirmary in case the wounded needed help.
In the camp, the old-timers of the underground arrested several capos (guards, prisoners who worked for the administration) and hanged them all.
On April 29, 1945, the Dachau concentration camp was liberated by units of the 45th Infantry Division of the 7th American Army.
After the liberation of the camp, the former prisoners took an oath to fight against fascism, in whatever form it may appear.
The created International Committee of Prisoners of Dachau (International Dachau Committee, CID) functions to this day. The CID represents all former prisoners, survivors and victims of the Dachau camp between 1933 and 1945. He conducts active anti-fascist propaganda and maintains the Dachau Memorial Complex (museum, archive, library). The CID also attracts the younger generation of anti-fascists to its activities.
SS Untersturmführer (lieutenant) Heinrich Wicker (left) and Red Cross representative Victor Maurerof (in the center, you can see the pole of the white flag he is holding) are trying to surrender the Dachau camp to the Americans
The Dachau massacre occurred at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany on April 29, 1945, during World War II. American soldiers from the US 45th Infantry Division, part of the 7th Army, and camp prisoners brutally murdered 560 German prisoners of war and civilians without trial, most of them machine-gunned in American mafia style.
The description of the surrender is described by Brigadier General Henning Linden, in a memorandum from Major General Harry J. Collins entitled "Report on the Surrender of the Dachau Concentration Camp":
"As we approached the southwest corner, three men came out with a white flag. We met them about 75 meters north of the southwest corner. These three men were representatives of the Swiss Red Cross, Victor Maurer, and two SS soldiers who said , that they were the camp commandant and his assistant. They came here on the night of April 28 to assume authority to surrender the concentration camp to the advancing Americans. A representative of the Swiss Red Cross said that about 100 SS guards remained in the concentration camp, who laid down their arms, with the exception of the SS in tower... He asked that no shots be fired. He also reported that there were about 42,000 "half-insane" prisoners, many of whom were infected with typhus... He asked what officer position I was in. I replied: “I am the assistant commander of the 42- 1st Infantry Division and will accept the surrender of the concentration camp to the United States Army...” (Lieutenant Colonel Felix L. Sparks)
6.00 American intelligence officers are approaching the outskirts of the concentration camp. Obersturmführer Heinrich Skodzensky tried to surrender the camp to the Americans, but was shot. According to the memoirs, the Americans were infuriated by the fact that the SS men came out to surrender in perfectly clean uniforms with polished boots.
At present, it is not possible to establish which unit of the American Army was the first to enter the camp, because many US Army soldiers of various ranks contradictively claim that the laurels of liberators belong to them. There were also many war correspondents present at the scene, who naturally “saw everything with their own eyes.” If we add to this the stories of those who “miraculously survived,” then the chronology of the liberation of the camp becomes entangled in an intricate myth.
The commander of the SS garrison, Lieutenant Heinrich Skodzenski, impeccably dressed, came out to meet the Americans and, saluting, addressed the commander of the 45th Thunderbird GI unit, Colonel Jackson, in English with the words: “I am the commander of the camp guard. I have the authority to hand over the camp to you.”
In many sources, Heinrich Skodzenski appears as the last commandant of Dachau, holding this position for only one day. The actual commandant of Dachau, Obersturmführer Eduard Weiter, left the camp on April 26, shortly before the American invasion.
The author of the book “Day of Deliverance,” Michael Selzer, points out that Skodzenski was dressed in a formal black SS uniform and clean, shiny boots, and this solemnity and neatness unsettled the Americans.
According to the testimony of the surrendered Heinrich Skodzenski and three other soldiers, Lieutenant William P. Walsh, commander of Company I, 157th Infantry, ordered a "death train" near the rear entrance to the concentration camp and personally shot them to death. Private Albert S. Pruitt then climbed into the car and finished off the groaning wounded with “mercy shots” from his rifle—the first victims of the massacre.
The Germans, through the mediation of the Red Cross, are negotiating with General Henning Linden about the conditions for transferring the camp to the Americans. Pictured from left to right: concentration camp commandant Untersturmführer Heinrich Wicker (almost obscured by an assistant in a cap), P. Levy, Belgian journalist (in a helmet, with a scarf around his neck), Red Cross representative Dr. Victor Maurer (from the back, with a flagpole), General Henning Linden (in helmet) and some American soldiers. Maurer holds a white flag above his head.
The transfer of the camp to the Americans was carried out by SS Untersturmführer Heinrich Wicker and Red Cross representative Victor Maurer. It is not known whether Heinrich Wicker was the “acting” commandant of the camp or simply, as a senior officer, independently took on the responsibilities of transferring the camp under the jurisdiction of the US Army.
According to archival documents, Wicker headed the training center "Kampfgruppe Sud" from April 15, 1945, a unit of 250 people formed from guards who had previously served in Neckarelz, Kochendorf and Hessental - subcamps of the Natzweiler.
Belgian journalist P. Levy translates General Linden's question to Vicker
The newly appointed commandant of the Dachau camp, Heinrich Wicker (in the background, wearing a cap, was in office for only a few hours. Before that, he was a combat officer, transferred to rear work due to injury). A Red Cross representative holds a white flag above his head
The Germans surrender to the Americans
Surrendered camp guards
The Dachau security garrison consisted mainly of Luftwaffe soldiers, who for various reasons were sent from the front line to the rear and were only nominally assigned to the Waffen SS unit.
The first group is led to execution. The prisoners show the guards to the American soldiers. Lieutenants William Walsh (fourth from left with his back to the camera) and Bashihid organized the selection of prisoners into those who served in the Wehrmacht and those who were in the SS. Then a group of about 200 SS men moved to the coal yard near the boiler room. Along the way, all the Waffen-SS were robbed of their watches, rings, mechanical pencils, pens and money at gunpoint. They were shot at once from various types of weapons - machine guns, carbines and pistols.
In the Dachau hospital, there were wounded Wehrmacht soldiers and teenagers from the Volkssturm: several hundred people. The Americans took the hospital staff - doctors and nurses, and the wounded - those who could not walk, were dragged from their beds - 358 people in total. Disabled disabled people were shot on the spot. The doctors, pharmacist and medical staff wore white coats with Red Cross bands. The hospital's chief physician, Dr. Schroeder, called the Americans to order, but he was beaten and suffered a fractured skull. This group included all camp employees, including school teachers. The group was executed on the orders of Lieutenant Jack Bushyhead
Vicker with an assistant and a representative of the Red Cross, Maurer. Victor Maurer is one of two Germans left alive.
Heinrich Wicker and Victor Maurer below left, on the parapet General Linden
The bodies of six guards killed by the Americans at the base of Tower B. April 29, 1945
An American soldier near the bodies of SS men executed by American troops during the liberation of Dachau
The guards were separated from the other prisoners by Lieutenant Walsh and lined up near the hospital wall in the coal yard next to the boiler room (a pile of coal can be seen to the right). There they began to shoot them with rifles and machine guns. The photo shows about 60 dead and wounded German guards lying at the base of a long wall (only a quarter of the total length of the wall is visible). Four German soldiers still stand alive next to their fallen comrades who were shot moments before this photo was taken. In the center, a machine gunner crouched next to a .30-06 caliber Browning M1919A4 machine gun.
To the right is a hospital building with a huge Red Cross sign on the roof. Photo taken at approximately 14:47. (Photo: W. Arland Musser, US Army. Courtesy National Archives, Washington, DC/ US Army photo SC 208765)
Dan Dougherty, who was a 19-year-old soldier at the time and also participated in the shooting, told the Northern California Jewish Weekly News in April 2001 that there were about 10 people in the coal yard when the second group was brought in for execution. journalists who looked at the piles of corpses of SS men. Here is a quote from his interview:
"This pile of corpses was about 2 or 3 feet high and 15 feet across. And they were SS men. One of the corporals in my company pulled out a bowie knife and cut off a finger from one of the corpses. He wanted an SS man's ring for a souvenir."
It is believed that Lieutenant Felix Sparks tried to stop the execution of the SS men, but it is more likely that he was in charge. It appears that Sparks had fired all the rounds in the magazine and the bolt of his pistol remained in the rearmost position. Other Americans continue to fire. Photo courtesy of Arthur W. Lee Jr.
M1919 A4 is a standard heavy machine gun for all branches of the US Army. Cartridge.30-06 US.
Total length: 1041 mm. Barrel length: 610 mm. Weight: 14.05 kg. Power system: 250 round belt. Rate of fire: 500 rounds/min.
Victims of the shooting
Shot prisoners
The Americans examine the executed in order to mercifully finish off the wounded.
The bottom photo was taken from almost the same angle as the top one, it is noticeable that the number of corpses has increased.
Corpses of shot SS men. The SS uniform, shoulder straps and chevrons are clearly visible.
The unscrupulous scum from the Holocaust propaganda center Yad Vashem posted the previous photo on their website with the caption "Dachau, Germany, 1945, after liberation. Bodies of prisoners abandoned in the corner."
Killed Germans lie against the wall. The closest person shot is a Wehrmacht soldier, an eagle is visible on his chest and buttonholes, and his cap lies nearby.
American soldiers mocked dead Germans
Shot Germans on the ground near the eastern wall of the camp. April 29, 1945. Photo - John Petro
Shot Germans in camouflage uniforms near the eastern wall of the camp.
Photo by Sgt. John N. Petro, 232 Infantry, E Company
Shot Germans at the eastern wall of the camp.
Contrary to the stubbornly propagated opinion, not only “unfortunate Jews subject to extermination” were kept in Dachau. At the time the Americans captured the camp, Jews made up no more than 5% of the total number of prisoners. A third of the camp prisoners were criminals and professional criminals serving various sentences in the camp.
At this time, the released prisoners emptied the camp administration's warehouses and celebrated their liberation with good wine. Note the man in the center in the bottom row - he will appear in the next two photos. April 29, 1945. Arland Musser. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park.
American soldiers did not interfere with the seizure of weapons by already released prisoners and their torture and murder of captured Germans - both guards and regular soldiers. The prisoners beat many Germans to death with shovels and other improvised means. The former prisoners also tore apart guards from among the prisoners who collaborated with the administration (the so-called “capos”), their number is unknown.
Drunken prisoners, using a shovel, carry out lynching on a guard named Weiss, who has only a few seconds left to live; he is lucky only that the prisoner is not in the hands of a chainsaw. In the background you can see heaps of shot Germans; on the left, against the wall, there are three guards who are about to be shot. Behind the killer's right shoulder is visible the roof of a one-story hospital for staff, from where the wounded were taken out for execution.
(Photographer unknown, probably Arland B. Musser, US troops. Reproduction from "Day of the Americans" by Nerin Gun).
The Germans laid down their weapons, and some prisoners picked them up, although according to another version the Americans armed them. The drunken prisoner with the rifle is the same as in the top photo, talking in a threatening manner to a captured Hungarian soldier, while a young American soldier looks on in amazement. The fate of this and other prisoners is sealed.
The entire camp area was littered with the mutilated bodies of guards.
Shot security guard
German corpses were everywhere
The bodies of two killed SS men near the railway tracks
What lies on the ground was once Heinrich Vicker
A former prisoner admires the bodies of guards floating in the ditch.
April 29, 1945 Dachau, Germany. Credit:US HMM, courtesy of John and Patricia Heelan
The prisoners who committed lynching threw some of the bodies into the moat surrounding the camp.
Guard with a split skull
Guard dogs were also killed
In 1991, the US National Archives declassified a document - a note from Lieutenant Howard Buechner. According to his report, the events in Dachau on April 29, 1945 developed as follows:
6:00 The new camp commandant, SS-Obersturmfuhrer Heinrich Skodzensky, gave his subordinates the order to surrender. At that time, there were about 560 people under his command, some of them were wounded in the hospital.
10:55 The SS guards laid down their weapons and raised their hands. Commandant Skodzenski came out to meet the Americans, but was killed while trying to surrender the camp.
11:00 Units of the third battalion of the 45th American division enter the camp.
11:30 American soldiers kill 122 German prisoners of war, mostly guards. The escaped prisoners kill about 40 more guards, some of them with improvised means.
12:00 In the Dachau hospital there were wounded Wehrmacht soldiers and teenagers from the Volkssturm: several hundred people. The Americans took the hospital staff - doctors and nurses, and the wounded, those who could not walk, were dragged from their beds - 358 people in total.
12:05 The machine gunner nicknamed “Birdeye” suddenly shouted: “They are trying to escape!” and opened fire with a Browning machine gun, killing 12 prisoners.
14:45 The remaining 346 captured German soldiers and hospital staff - helpless and unarmed - were shot on the orders of Lieutenant Jack Bashihid from machine guns near block C. At least one German soldier was beaten to death with a shovel by prisoners there. The wounded were finished off with single shots. There was no one left alive.
The commander of the execution, Lieutenant Howard Buechner himself, dryly reflected this event in the staff memo “The Fate of the Dachau Garrison,” indicating the total number of victims - 560 people.
The aerial photograph shows: “A” - the place of execution (the first and second were carried out in the same place - in the coal yard next to the boiler room); “B” is the place where six SS men from Tower “B” surrendered without a fight, where the corpse of one of them was caught in the canal.
Medical Sergeant Ralph Rosa and his subordinates drew a diagram of the massacre
The bodies remained in the coal yard until May 3, 1945, while the incident was investigated by Lt. Col. Joseph Whitaker, Assistant Inspector General of the 7th Army. The report, entitled "Investigation into alleged ill-treatment of German guards at Dachau," was filed on June 8, 1945. It was classified.
The documents of the killed Germans were destroyed and the medallions were removed. Their bodies were buried in an unknown place by captured military personnel. This was a violation of the Geneva Convention on the identification of fallen enemy soldiers, the prohibition of burial in unmarked graves and forced labor during the burial of the dead.
The Americans flagrantly violated the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War and committed a war crime. None of the participants in the massacre were punished; the charges were dropped by General Patton. When the investigation into the crime was completed, General George S. Patton ordered that all evidence, such as affidavits, photographic negatives, photographs, etc. brought to him, he placed all this incriminating evidence in a metal wastepaper basket, set it on fire with his own hands in the presence of his officers and said: “Gentlemen, this incident is now closed.” The results of Lt. Col. Joseph Whitaker's June 8, 1945 investigation were classified for many years.
Total camp guards:
Shot on the spot - 122
Killed by prisoners - 40
Shot from machine guns - 346+12
Killed in battle - 30
Missing - 10
____________
Total: 560
Ironically, most of the camp's regular guards had left earlier. The SS men shot by the Americans at Dachau were members of the Waffen-SS, transferred from the Eastern Front a few days before the liberation of the camp, their specific task was to surrender it to the Western allies. They probably considered this assignment away from the Red Army a very happy occasion and had nothing to do with what was happening at Dachau.
This is how the American photographer saw the Dachau prisoners. They do not at all look like the skeletal corpses of those who died of typhus. A third of the prisoners were criminals.
On April 29, 1945, the Dachau concentration camp was liberated by units of the 45th Infantry Division of the 7th American Army. On this day, the Dachau massacre occurred: during the capture of the concentration camp, American soldiers from the 45th US Infantry Division, part of the 7th Army, killed and wounded German prisoners of war. (Caution: Material may be disturbing or scary.)
Dachau is one of the first concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Over 12 years, more than 240 thousand prisoners passed through it, 70 thousand of whom died. Dachau is notorious for medical experiments on prisoners. Doctors from all over the Reich studied the abilities of the human body in Dachau: survival at low temperatures, exposure to gases or low pressure. With these experiments they intended to create a universal soldier. Himmler himself regularly visited Dachau on inspections to monitor the progress of the experiments.
History of appearance
In February 1933, the Reichstag was set on fire. Hitler, who had received the position of Reich Chancellor two days earlier, accused the Communists of using this event to strengthen the influence of his own party. A state of emergency was introduced for a period of five years and a new law “On the Protection of the People and the State” was adopted. This law became the basis for the creation of a special detention center for political opponents of the Reich. This is how Dachau was born.
At first, more than 10 thousand members of the Communist Party were sent to the camp, but then the law was smoothly extended to all other “polluters of the Aryan race” according to racial theory. This list included Jews, drug addicts, gypsies, the mentally ill, homosexuals, homeless people and even those who refused to serve in the army.
The original camp gate with the inscription “Work sets you free.” After this artifact was stolen and discovered in Norway only two years later, it was placed in a museum
Monument to the victims on the main square of the camp
Prisoners
The life of prisoners in Dachau was not much different from the life of prisoners in other concentration camps. They were used as free labor: the unfortunates built roads, quarried stones and drained swamps. During the war, they were taken to military factories to collect equipment and ammunition. There were so many prisoners in the concentration camps that their labor was sold to private companies.
Upon arrival at the camp, prisoners were deprived of all rights. They were given a striped robe with a color mark depending on the category: gypsy, Jew, political prisoner, and so on. Some were shot immediately upon arrival at the camp. Usually this fate awaited Soviet soldiers.
Bathroom, one for a barrack that housed up to 1,600 people
Washbasins
Experiments on people
Backbreaking work was not the worst thing the Dachau prisoners faced. Numerous medical experiments were carried out here on people in order to determine the ability of the human body to survive. The prisoners subjected to these experiments rarely survived.
The infamous gas chamber
Outside view. Holes in the wall for gas cans
The progress and results of each experiment were carefully documented. Doctors opened the bodies and described the causes of death, drawing conclusions about which parts of the human body were especially vulnerable. By the way, the Nazis’ experiments on living people subsequently formed the basis for many medical discoveries of the 20th century. This fact is rarely mentioned because it sounds like some kind of justification for the Holocaust.
Crematorium building
Some of the experiments carried out at Dachau
Head injury experiment. The man was tied to a chair and struck on the head with a hammer every few seconds with increasing force. The goal was to find out the maximum impact force that the skull can withstand, and to determine the moment when a person can no longer be saved from death.
Freezing experiments. Prisoners were immersed in a cell with cold water, bringing their body temperature to extremely low levels. If the test subject survived, methods of saving him from hypothermia were tested. Experiments revealed that hypothermia at the back of the head led to death faster, so foam inserts were added to the helmets of Luftwaffe pilots to keep their heads afloat in the event of a crash in the cold sea.
There was a moat with water along the perimeter of the camp. When approaching the fence, which was energized, the guards opened fire to kill
Sterilization experiments. German scientists were looking for the most effective way to sterilize groups of people at minimal cost, including using radiation. The reason was the law according to which homosexuals, the mentally ill, alcoholics and other people “harmful to the Aryan race” had to undergo mandatory sterilization. Most often, the drugs caused bleeding or cancer.
Experiments with blood clotting. Prisoners were forced to take various drugs to improve blood clotting, and then they were shot or had their limbs cut off. The goal was to find a medicine that would allow soldiers to survive heavy blood loss.
Dachau massacre
On April 29, 1945, the American army captured Dachau. The soldiers were dismayed by what they saw. In front of the entrance to the camp there were more than 40 carriages filled with corpses. Almost the entire territory of Dachau was littered with bodies. There are two versions of what happened next.
According to one version, the Americans shot all 560 camp employees with machine guns that same evening near the wall of a coal mine, without waiting for an official order. Judging by the memoirs of some of the participating soldiers, they were shocked by the cruelty that their distraught colleagues committed.
Another version is no less cruel. According to it, American soldiers gave some prisoners pistols and shovels so that they could finish off captured camp employees. It’s scary to imagine the cruelty with which the prisoners dealt with those who tortured them for many years.
Poplar alley planted by relatives of prisoners as a sign of memory
Be that as it may, the massacre in Dachau was immediately assessed as a war crime, but then the American military governor who came to power in Bavaria dropped all charges against the soldiers for what happened.
Monument "Think How We Die Here"
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