When Americans And British (And Other Allies) Went 'Bad' During WW2
Napoleon once observed that "History is a lie agreed upon."
If you believe that the Allied soldiers, American and British soldiers were angels compared to the evil German and Russian soldiers; you are mistaken. (I do not talk of the cruel nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nor of the terror bombing of Dresden in 1944)) World War Two did weird things to all the fighters of all nations. They too had the blood lust. Even the American and British soldiers. Below are instances when the 'good' Allied soldiers went bad. One hardly hears of them. But to be a impartial student of history one has to be single-minded in the devotion to fairness. Other wise it would not be history, but mere western propaganda.
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Among scores of Allied witnesses interviewed for this narrative, almost every one had direct knowledge or even experience of the shooting of German prisoners during the campaign... Many British and American units shot SS prisoners routinely, which explained, as much as the fanatical resistance that the SS so often offered, why so few appeared in POW cages."
Patton wrote in his diary on 4 January 1945: "The Eleventh Armored is very green and took unnecessary losses to no effect. There were also some unfortunate incidents in the shooting of prisoners. I hope we can conceal this."
German resistance continued on into the Fall and "the discipline of even some of the finest U.S. units was cracking," including the famous 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. On 5 November 1944, Eisenhower's driver and girl friend, Kay Summersby, recorded: "General Betts reports that disciplinary conditions in the army are becoming bad. Many cases of rape, murder, and pillage are causing complaints by the French Dutch, etc." A month later, General Leroy Lutes remarked: "The French now grumble that the Americans are a more drunken and disorderly lot than the Germans and hope to see the day when they are liberated from the Americans." Lutes discovered that the Allied propaganda which portrayed the Germans as brutes was untrue: "I am informed the Germans did not loot either residences, stores, or museums. In fact the people claimed that they were meticulously treated by the Army of Occupation." By the end of the war, over 450 GIs were sentenced to death by courts-martial, nearly all for having committed nonmilitary offenses like rape and murder.
In sharp contrast with the picture long held up to us of American GIs being welcomed by a grateful French populace, David Irving ("War Between The Generals") is one of several historians who are casting new light on these events. It seems that far from acting like Boy Scouts out on a mission of mercy, American soldiers terrorized many of the people they were supposed to be liberating from the clutches of the nasty Nazis. As Irving informs his readers: "An ordeal began for the French who stayed behind in Normandy to welcome their liberators. They were liable to be vandalized, robbed, raped, murdered. Indeed, the behavior of GIs throughout liberated Europe was causing apprehension in Washington. The Joint Chiefs reviewed a report from Rome too that conditions now were worse than when the Germans had been there." Following a visit to Caen, B.H. Liddell Hart, the famous British military strategist and historian, pointed out that "Most Frenchmen speak of the correctness of the German Army's behavior. They seem particularly impressed that German soldiers were shot for incivility to women and compare this with the American troops' bad behavior toward women." According to an official U.S. Army report, "Unfortunately most of these undisciplined acts were caused by colored troops."
From cwporter
American author Marguerite Higgins visited Germany during the time in question and later wrote of her experiences. In her book, "News in an singular thing" she described a visit to a GI "Interrogation Center"
"The GI led us to the main door of the camp...Behind the bars of the cell we saw 3 uniformed Germans. Two of them, beaten and covered with blood, were lying unconscious on the floor. A third German was lifted up by the hair on his head, and I shall never forget, he had red hair like a carrot. A GI turned his body over and struck him in the face. When the victim groaned, the GI roared, "Shut your mouth, damned Kraut!" ....It turned out that for almost a quarter of an hour, the doubled rows of 20 to 30 GI’s stood aligned taking turns methodically beating the six captured Germans...It came out later that the worked-up GI’s had captured six young German boys, who had never even been members of the SS. The youngsters had only recently been inducted into a government work battalion. The boy with the red hair was 14 years old. The other 5 German boys in the cell blocks were between 14 and 17 years old."
WAFFEN SS POW MISTREATED BY AMERICAN SOLDIERS
(Source)
January 1945
Two members of the Waffen SS were pulled out of their camouflage holes , led to a hollow and shot. Both of their hands were raised at the time.
A Waffen SS member, K., who was convalescing in a hospital due to a bullet in his lungs, was shot to death by an American soldier as he was being transferred to another hospital in the company of a Red Cross Nurse.
April 1945
Paderborn. An SS officer is ordered by his interrogators to take off his shirt and undershirt. He is then beaten about the face and back with a whip. An MP extinguishes his lit cigarette on the man’s back. He is then ordered to stand with his face against a wall, while his interrogators press the muzzle of a gun against his neck. A chain is placed around his wrist and twisted until the man collapses from the pain.
Bavaria. A Police General is taken prisoner and led to a cell, where an American soldier holds a pistol to his head and then urinates all over his body.
At a special camp run by the Americans for captured SS and Nazi Party members, a sadistic American Sergeant, Paul Doyle, brutally torments the men under his charge. Daily he beats men into unconsciousness, often breaking their ribs. The men are beaten so frequently and so badly that they have to be hospitalized. One night he enters a cell and beats a man for an exceptionally long period of time. When the victim becomes unconscious, water is thrown into his face to revive him. He is then beaten again. Finally, he is dragged from his cell unconscious. The man is later hospitalized for severe injuries, internal and external. Another SS officer is so badly beaten by Doyle that he later dies of his injuries. Another victim has his head pushed under water for long periods of time and his buttocks so severely whipped that the skin is torn and hanging.
An SS man is beaten repeatedly on the soles of his naked feet.
Two SS men are forced to smear each other’s face with human vomit.
Two SS men are shot to death after they surrender their arms to Americans.
Schesslitz. A deputy Ortsgruppenleiter is beaten bloody by Americans with rubber truncheons and fists about the head. He is then compelled to eat lit cigarettes. In a garden the form of a grave is measured out, then the man is bound hand and foot and is left lying on the floor all night long in a room lit by candle light. The next day the man is ordered to dig a grave and then stand in it, while an American soldier has his picture taken defecating and urinating in the pit.
Two SS men are spat at by an American Sergeant and then kicked in the genitalia until they collapse.
May 1945
An SS member is burned repeatedly with cigarette butts all over his body.
An SS man is chained by his legs and hung up over a latrine with his head in the toilet.
Altenburg. SS members are forced to completely disrobe. Americans then whip them so badly that they lose consciousness. In that condition they are left lying on the floor.
Herford. A severely wounded SS officer is compelled by the Americans to carry heavy rolls of barbed wire on his naked shoulders, running at double time. The man soon collapses when the skin from his back is ripped from his body.
June 1945
A group of SS leaders are laden down with heavy stones and then commanded to exercise barefoot over broken stones and gravel, until they collapse and have to be carried away.
Two amputees are bound together with cords and forced to remain standing without any nourishment for 48 hours. Whereupon the "interrogator" Sergeant Wertheim quips: "Now you have two legs."
Cage 22: Prisoners are forced to clean the latrines night after night-with their bare hands.
Cage 23: The American camp Sergeant whiles away the hours by sticking needles into the stomachs of helpless prisoners. Note: The above occurred in camps in France.
July 1945 Stuttgart. A man was dragged out of his bed in the middle of the night by American soldiers because he was accused of being a member of the Allegemeine SS.
He was dragged into the street and cudgeled. One half hour later, he was again dragged out of his bed by 2 Americans and driven to an open field and ordered to get out. The man refused, fearing he would be shot in the back. Consequently he was beaten with rifle butts and fists until he was unconscious. Water was thrown on his face and he regained consciousness, whereby he was again beaten unconscious for a second time. As a result of the attack he suffered broken ribs, gaping head wounds, brain damage, and loss of teeth.
In the vicinity of Munich, Waffen SS members were forced to eat their uniform insignias.
August 1945
In the POW camp Wolfhagen, a severely wounded SS corporal is tortured by Americans in order to extract a confession. He is kicked in the genitals and burned over and over again with lighted cigarettes. The young man is 20 years old.
Weiden. POW camp. Two SS men are handcuffed to each other while interrogators beat them. They are repeatedly struck in the kidneys.
Special mention should be made for the Ziegenhain camp, where we have the identities of the American inquisitors. The methods of torture used were even worse than the above mentioned cases. The chief interrogators at this camp were Inspector Simon, Watson, and Lieutenant Goodman. One of their favorite games was to play "Autobahn", whereby a victim had the hair of his eyebrows and eyelashes cut or ripped out. Later the hair was shoved into the victims mouth or nostrils for long periods of time.
Here are a few more examples of "special treatment":
A machine technician had his head banged into a wall so many times that blood spurted out of his nostrils.
A man was brought in for "interrogation". He was beaten extensively on the hands, face, neck and ears with a rubber truncheon festooned with barbed wire. Afterwards he was struck in the face repeatedly with bare fists. He was forced to stare in blinding lights for hours on end and threatened with hanging or shooting. He had swastikas painted on his neck and forehead.
A victim is forced to swallow a postcard with Hitler’s photo, along with a burning cigarette.
A man is led into one of the torture chambers. There he is compelled to undress and lie in vomit, urine, and filth. He is then compelled to perform acts so disgusting that they shall not be recited here.
MASSACRES BY BRITISH SOLDIERS
NAHRENDORF (Near Hamburg, 1945)
A week after the discovery of the Belsen Concentration Camp, a rumour reached the British Army's 'Desert Rats' that the 18th SS Training Regiment of the Hitler Jugend Division, had shot their prisoners at the nearby village of Rather. The 'Rats' were engaged in a fierce battle with the SS defenders in the village of Nahrendorf. Slowly, and in groups, the SS began to surrender. As the noise of battle died away the villagers emerged from their cellars and found the bodies of 42 SS soldiers lying in a shallow grave.The bodies were then interned on a hilltop cemetery near the village. Each year, hundreds of SS veterans visit the cemetery to pay tribute to their fallen comrades whom, they say, were shot in cold blood on the orders of a ‘crazed blood-thirsty British NCO’. (Perpetrators are honoured, victims are forgotten)
The "London Cage", a MI19 prisoner of war facility in the UK during and immediately after the war, was subject to allegations of torture.
* The Dachau massacre: killing of German prisoners of war and surrendering SS soldiers at the Dachau concentration camp.
* In the Biscari massacre, which consist of two instances of mass murders, U.S. troops of the 45th Infantry Division killed roughly 75 prisoners of war, mostly Italian.
* Operation Teardrop: Eight of the surviving, captured crewmen from the sunk German submarine U-546 are tortured by US military personnel. Historian Philip K. Lundeberg has written that the beating and torture of U-546's survivors was a singular atrocity motivated by the interrogators' need to quickly get information on what the US believed were potential missile attacks on the continental US by German submarines.
In the aftermath of the Malmedy massacre a written order from the HQ of the 328th US Army Infantry Regiment, dated December 21, 1944, stated: No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but will be shot on sight. Major-General Raymond Hufft (U.S. Army) gave instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in 1945. "After the war, when he reflected on the war crimes he authorized, he admitted, 'if the Germans had won, I would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of them.'" Stephen Ambrose related: "I've interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans. Only one of them said he shot a prisoner... Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans...however, related incidents in which they saw other GIs shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up."
The "London Cage", a MI19 prisoner of war facility in the UK during and immediately after the war, was subject to allegations of torture.
MASSACRE BY AMERICANS
* The Dachau massacre: killing of German prisoners of war and surrendering SS soldiers at the Dachau concentration camp.
* In the Biscari massacre, which consist of two instances of mass murders, U.S. troops of the 45th Infantry Division killed roughly 75 prisoners of war, mostly Italian.
* Operation Teardrop: Eight of the surviving, captured crewmen from the sunk German submarine U-546 are tortured by US military personnel. Historian Philip K. Lundeberg has written that the beating and torture of U-546's survivors was a singular atrocity motivated by the interrogators' need to quickly get information on what the US believed were potential missile attacks on the continental US by German submarines.
American soldiers killing SS guards at Dachau
In the aftermath of the Malmedy massacre a written order from the HQ of the 328th US Army Infantry Regiment, dated December 21, 1944, stated: No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but will be shot on sight. Major-General Raymond Hufft (U.S. Army) gave instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in 1945. "After the war, when he reflected on the war crimes he authorized, he admitted, 'if the Germans had won, I would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of them.'" Stephen Ambrose related: "I've interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans. Only one of them said he shot a prisoner... Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans...however, related incidents in which they saw other GIs shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up."
DACHAU MASSACRE: Closeup of the bodies of SS personnel lying at the base of the tower. Their uniforms are camouflage patterned.
DACHAU MASSACRE: The photograph shows the bodies of six of the guards at the base of Tower B
DACHAU MASSACRE: SS men confer with Gen. Henning Linden during the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Pictured from left to right: SS aide, camp leader Untersturmführer Heinrich Wicker (mostly hidden by the aide), Paul Lévy, a Belgian journalist (person with helmet looking to the left), Dr. Victor Maurer (back), General Henning Linden (person with helmet, looking right) and some U.S. soldiers.
---------------------------AN INQUIRY INTO A MASSACRE (From Dachau: The Hour of the Avenger : An Eyewitness Account by HOWARD A. BUECHNER)
Date: 5 May 1945. By: Lt. Col. Joseph M. Whitaker, IGD,
Asst. Inspector General, Seventh Army.
The witness was sworn.
363 Q Please state your name, rank, serial number and organization.
A Howard E. Buchner, 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 peeps 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.
371 Q Did you make any examination to determine whether or not those who were not dead could be saved?
A I did not.
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 do not.
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