My father survived Dacheau. He weighed 165lbs when he was put in the camp. He weighed 63.5lbs when the camp was liberated. The stories he has told me not only of the war but of the camp. It makes the things today lol like a walk in the park. There isn’t a horror movie today that could come close to the horror of what he had gone through. My father passed away peacefully at the age of 82 in 2005.
My great grandfather (Mexican American) was sent to Dacheau as a supplyment unit with warm clothes, food,medical equipment even tent showers for the prisoners. when it was liberated,my cousin who was more close to him explained the smell before entering the camp in which he will never forget. He said he came from a poor village in mexico but never had he seen people so skinny and weak.
my grandad was a tanky in the Coldstream Guards 21st army group he parked a tank outside belsen,told the war office too stick the service medals up there arse didnt want to remember my dad has his medals bless em never forget
My late cousin Julius Bendorf was transferred to Dachau from Auschwitz. He survived and passed away in Los Angeles so many years back. When I found him, he was 99 years old and he told me some stories regarding these horrible experiences. He has interviews posted on TH-cam. Horrible moments in history. what do I think, per the request at the end of this video? While I do not condone acts of violence of any sort, If such "war crimes" were committed, I am willing to bet they were committed out of extreme stress over what the American's observed. It twisted their sanity, this was no war crime, this was an act of stress over the total and complete evil that had consumed innocent people by the hands of the Nazi's and it was met in kind. There should have never been any energy put forth for any investigation. The American Troops acted in kind regarding such conditions they encountered while fighting a disgusting war at the doorstep of the Nazi's. I am glad my cousin was saved by the Americans, by the way.
My father was part of the 20th tank battalion in the US Army that helped to liberate the Dachau concentration camp. He spoke of the horror. It was horrific. I'm glad your father was liberated
In the 1970's I worked with a man who claimed that he was one of the first G.I.s to enter that camp. The guy was rather quiet & reserved. I have always had an immense amount of appreciation for men of that generation so I questioned him about what the liberation of Dachau was like. After explaining about the horrific sights that greeted him he then talked about killing all of the guards that could be rounded up. He said that there were G.I.s who installed themselves at the local train stations looking for escaping guards who were brought back to Dachau & summarily executed, & you know what? Those assholes got a better death than they deserved.
@@willemventer3935 Revenge murder is the best in this case. Maybe at the last moment of their lives the SS realized they are not the superior race. Also in prior years Hitler had ordered the mass execution of Americans and other POW's. Maybe the what goes around comes around.
@@willemventer3935 I remember an older teacher who was a journalist during the war he would describe taking photos inside the cremation boilers realizing how many Jews were killed seeing bones of adults and children became disheartening for him telling us it’s something he will never forget. So I imagine the soldiers seeing how many women children and adults bodies who could not defend themselves became disheartening and they reacted as any human would.
@@theblade9024 When was the direct order for the killing of allied troops issued ? What I,m trying to point out is that the allies should just come out and acknowledge that they also committed war crimes. The only order was for spies [that would be people fighting out of uniform] to be executed. And yes the allies also executed spies.
My Uncle Tony survived brutal combat, yet what what haunted him the most was the liberation of Dachau. The PTSD from seeing the horrors of the camp contributed to an alcoholic death when he got back to the States. Wars take victims long after they are “finished”.
he had to be drunk to go into this war for Zion :)) US has this problem with fighting all peoplesa of the world since founding. hunting Amelek all over^^ idiotics !
Some members of my family were imprisoned in Dachau. Two great aunts managed to escape and went home on foot for 600km . We are Istria Croatians and a lot of my people was sent to Dachau after all the villages were burnt down in 1944 by the SS troups. They were only women and children. My mothers village was incenerated to the ground. Not one house left.... It was a village of almost 600 souls and from 1944 untill the liberation was completely empty. Entire families were exterminated and the village never recovered... SO I DON'T BLAME THOSE AMERICAN SOLDIERS. THEY DID THE RIGHT THING.
Absolutely. A fitting end for scum! They were tenacious soldiers, but what was committed in the camps destroyed any hope for sympathy for them. If they had ALL been gunned down, how could anyone try to blame the soldiers that had to live with those gruesome images in their minds! When the Germans were filmed executing Jewish people, the Germans were smiling and laughing! That's the face of evil and hate!
@Elvis Bozic: HVALA ELVIS!! You are so right; German guards being slaughtered at Dachau is not Dachau's "Massacre", it is more like Dachau's Miracle. Greetings from another Croatian.
This has been in the public domain since it happened. It was also common knowledge fifty years ago. No one tried to hide it. The film clips were seen on TV. It was not considered a war crime, it was considered justice.
@@kishascape *psuedo-intellectual, and how is it psuedo intellectual to point out the crimes committed by both sides of the war? It seems you are trying to convince yourself it's not true when the Allies and Axis both did horrible things like in every major war. Who are you to tell them they're pretentious?
@@jordanwebster1728 I think the real question comes down to the motivation for pointing out US war crimes. Anyone who knows even a little about WWII knows that all parties involved committed war crimes to some extent, but why bring it up when we’re talking about the Nazis? I think there are only two reasons for why someone would do this: One, they sympathize with the Nazis, or two, they hate America. It could also be both. There’s no question that America has committed war crimes in every single conflict we’ve been involved in, but it’s come nowhere near committing genocide on entire ethnic groups. What kind of asshole would bring that up when we’re talking about Nazi death camps? So, my question to you is, which of the two groups do you fall into?
My grandfather was part of the 42nd Rainbow Division that helped liberate Dachau. My dad said he only talked about it once. They were hiking at they came across a dead and decomposing deer. My grandfather said “It smells like Dachau.” That was all. That one sentence is the only thing he ever said about it.
The deer must once have been a beautiful creature ...I would have been upset at it’s tragic loss of its life. The comparison defiles that innocent animal.
My Dad was part of the 42nd Rainbow, but was not there. He was liberated from a German POW camp on his 19th birthday April 2nd and they were not treated very well at all. Men in that POW camp were removed and never seen again if they could not make it to roll call. War is not fair, just horrible. 😔🇺🇸🇺🇸
My Father Told Me about this finding of the Box Cars with the Bodies in them. He said you could smell this from miles away. My Father was one of the soldiers who helped execute the guard. But he had Nightmares the rest of his life about what he seen in the Death Camp that day.
I was stationed in Germany in the mid-70's and traveled to Dachau.I was in disbelief at the place.If I had been there liberating it in the 40's,I would have taken out as many as I could.This was justice, not a war crime.
Every german attending a school (aka everyone bcuz we have no home schooling) visits a concentration camp when theyre 15-17 i dont think anyone but actual fascists and their sympathizers would call this anything but justified
It may feel like justice but it lacked judicial process so it was not justice in the legal sense of the word. If it happened it was very very understandable... but it was a war crime. Once individuals have surrendered they have legal protection of liberating forces. That is the legal position. If this did happen it was a war crime however on balance it seems reasonable that energy & resource was not expended to locate such individuals whose horror may offer extenuating circs for their actions.
@@prolebenz251 You would care if it was you on the receiving end. Taking revenge may be good for the feeling of satisfaction, but it has nothing to do with justice. You are but a human being, you cannot know at first glance who is guilty and who is not. You shoot someone wearing a german uniform, you may as well shoot an innocent person. Guilt has to be established by law, always. If you cannot control your primal urges, you're no better than the barbarians you claim to despise.
My father was part of the 84th Infantry Division and participated in the liberation of camps in the German towns of Hannover-Ahlem and Salzwedel. Although he was interviewed for a couplie of books about WWII he never spoke to me much about it until he was dying from cancer in 2005. He and his unit shot some guards and he watched prisoners kill others. He personally gave an M-1 carbine that they had converted to full auto by filing down the sear to a boy of 12-13 he shot some guards with it. No one he knew had any issue with what was done that day. I support him and the other soldiers that were liberating these camps. No man has any right to judge their actions.
Filing a sear does not convert to full auto. The hammer follows the bolt home and doesn't have enough inertia to hit the primer hard enough. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a bullsh1t artist.
Hey, Paul. My dad was also in the 84th. I only recently learned the 84th helped liberate one or more of the concentration camps. Dad was a medic, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he treated some of the poor survivors. He seldom talked about his experiences and never mentioned the camps, which is perfectly understandable. Anyone who criticizes GIs for killing SS guards is either mentally ill, anti-American or lives in a fantasy world. If those evil guards didn’t deserve death then no one has ever deserved it.
War is Hell. I visited Dachau and it is something I will always remember; the finger scratch marks in the concrete walls trying to escape from the gas. I don't think we should judge the soldiers, we weren't there.
An old friend of mine, who has sadly passed now, was with the 157th Inf when they liberated Dachau. He told me he had never seen such horror, before or since, as the evidence he had witnessed to the Nazis treatment of the people in Dachau. As for me, I feel we didn't wipe the Nazi bastards off the face of the Earth soon enough before they could visit such destruction on other human beings.
Azov have nazi symbols, nazi slogans, swastikas, photos and some have tatoos of Hitler over their bodies, killing and torturing civilians, being white supremacists and still not the same. Why? Because they are fighting Russia and it's fine by you? I bet you haven't watched the reports of the civilians, even YT keeps deleting them.
There are still videos of SS torch-lit marches in Kiev and what they have been doing to WW II veterans every Victory Day for years. That doesn't seem to bother anyone.
I'm sure the mental state of the combat soldiers seeing the condition of the prisoners and realizing what was going on was a lot to deal with. You never know what you would do in a particular situation until you are in that situation.
Victorious American soldiers all see Germans as an enemy, and what would you expect if they liberate prisons?, would you expect them to be Lenient to the cruel SS Guards?
Imagine still beliving this propaganda keep thinking Germany was the bad guy while your country is getting destroyed by those so called "victoms" have fun with your degeneracy, Pedophilia and liberal 1984 communism
It wasn't a "death camp", but that didn't stop the nazis from murdering people there. They were murdering people at Dachau long before the war even started.
@@mollykeane2571 Wrong. "Over the years of its operation, from 1933 to 1945, thousands of Dachau prisoners died of disease, malnutrition and overwork. Thousands more were executed for infractions of camp rules. Starting in 1941, thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were sent to Dachau then shot to death at a nearby rifle range. In 1942, construction began at Dachau on Barrack X, a crematorium that eventually consisted of four sizeable ovens used to incinerate corpses.
My father served with the 71st infantry and even though he was not at this camp his division did liberate Gunskein. The things he saw and from what I have read it must have been horrifying to have seen. I cannot believe that these American soldiers could found at fault for what they did. the rage and disgust of this had to been overwhelming. Those camp guards got what they had coming although they received some mercy by being executed and not enduring the same treatment that the inmates had to endure.
Hmm i think if the usa would have been under siege and surrounded and bombed into oblivion for years and they had prisoners of war, what would a foreign army find in us prisoner camps when they would arrive? I mean having not enough water, unclean water, almost no food to sustain the civilian population as well as all the prisoners. What would you all expect in such a case? Well fed healthy imprisoned workers? Dont get me wrong i dont like the nazis one bit, but you have to get an understanding of the whole war situation, the broken logistics and the bad circumstances. Its quite easy to jugde while one owns country is in good conditions. Why do you never talk about the sowjet gulags or the rheinwiesen camp where likely 100 of thousends of german soldiers died of starvation on purpose, the bombing of dresden, the starvation of 20 to 30 million ukranien and russian civilians under the sowjetunion. What is with Mao when his political actions caused the death of prop 30 Million of his chinese landsmen?
One thing you should ask yourself, did the germans had the water and food supplies to feed their prisoners of war? Were they capable of doing so. From a logistical point of view i mean. Almsot all of you commenters seem to forget to ask this question.
@@chrisbo5288 The majority of concentration camp victims were not POWs but civilians and the Nazis had no right to imprison them in the first place. As a signatory of the Hague Conventions (of 1899 and 1907) and of the Geneva Convention (of 6 July 1906), Germany was under obligation to take proper care of POWs. It's an established fact that with Soviet and other East European POWs, the Nazis didn't not even bother to try to fulfill that obligation. They deliberately starved them to death.
The 7th Army held an investigation within 2 weeks of the killings, did not belive the statements of the trigger happy GI's involved in the shootings and recommended disciplinary action towards the perpetrators. Patton decided against further judicial prosecution of them. To him, there wasn't any point as the place itself was nothing but a warcrime with dead and dying people all over the place. From Jan- April 1945, over 100 Dachau inmates died per day of overwork, execution, malnutrition and illness - well over 12,000 total - and that number doesn't include the 2,000 found dead on trains outside the camp or the 1,000+ plus inmates that died on the forced death march, nor the 2,466 inmates who died after being liberated despite the best efforts of medical personnel to save them. Araund 50 SS personnel according to a sober estimate was summarily executed by US troops and inmates on April 29th, 1945 and thousand of inmates were liberated from the hellhole, too late for many of the ones that still was breathing air as it turned out. The cold numbers of the dead pretty mush sums up Patton's decision to put the incident to rest.
@@revolution1423 That number are not taken seriously outside certain circles. Its humbug. There was no Lt Skodzensky at Dachau or anywhere else for that matter. He is not listed any SS officer list because he was a fictive character journalist and former Dachau inmate Nerin Gun made up for his book The Day of the Americans, where Skodzensky had 560 men under his command. There was however a Swizz red cross representative there , Victor Maurer, who helped surrender the camp. He estimated the number of SS guards present at Dachau to be rougly 120
@@revolution1423 First they killed them all, then tortured them post mortem? Those savage Yankees! Anyhow: After the initial trigger happiness the SS men that was still in working order were tasked with burying the decaying corpses laying around in and outside the camp in massgraves.
@@Ragnar06 Yes, eventhough they were "hardened veterans who experienced heavy combat veterans", they still got defeated by unequipted abused and probably maleutrished German soldiers. That can mean only two things. Wanna talk about that, Dana? Or just virtue signal a little?
I have visited Dachau twice. Once when I was single, once with my family. It is very sad experience for anyone that has a compassion for humanity. Both tines I was brought to tears, especially seeing the Crematorium and the “Ash Pit”. It still reeks of burned human flesh. I fell apart there. I could not imagine the horrors these poor souls went through. What they ate to sustain life and the conditions. No one on this earth would treat a dog this bad.
Nazi guards DID treat their dogs like that - they deliberately starved and hurt them so they would brutally attack and sometimes even eat prisoners. German soldiers were sent from the depths of hell, to which most returned
Nobody can judge those soldiers while sitting in front of the laptop, with air conditioning and running water. The stress, the emotion, the shock of such horror may have heavily influenced their decisions in those moments. If I agree or not is another story, I just think that I understand their reaction.
Its funny how Americans always think so deeply about how trauma impacts one’s decisions when it comes to soldiers…but I rarely see that same level of nuance applied to civilians who commit crimes after a life of terror and trauma and end up being imprisoned for life or murdered by the state.
@@fibonaccisequins4637 We’re talking about guys who have already gone through an 80% casualty rate , watching their brothers in arms getting blown up next to them and coming across a mass extermination camp. They must have thought the Germans were the most evil vile people ever to live. I grew up with a heroin addicted father and a mother who didn’t want me, I was on the streets at 14. I’ve never robbed or killed. I’ve had my problems in life, but nothing compares to what these guys went through and had seen. There’s absolutely no comparison, and they hope there never is again.
The execution of SS guards and SS soldiers was standard practice during WW2, especially where the bodies of their victims of their crimes were found close by, be they civilians or Allied soldiers. The wisdom of so doing is confirmed by just how few SS were court martialled after the war and how small were their sentences in the western Allied sectors. The Soviets, Poles and others who had directly suffered from German invasion, occupation and terror took a far more pragmatic, ruthless and robust approach: execution of most if not all SS, field gendarmerie, Gestapo, Police and their auxiliaries, collaborators such as Hiwis.
More war crimes of the winners! There is no honor among killing the enemy after the war is over, more Germans died after surrendering- this is bullshit! I only have justice for the history books, and you would not like it! These President need to be impeached- historically and only referred to by the number and removed from all naming of ships and or memorial sites! I hate most of my presidents, from what I have found out since world war 2 , with the exception of Kennedy and Carter. They are all bad and worthless!!
Underated comment and it's still going on now. Look at all the pedos like the Clintons, Bidens and other politicians on both sides that went to Epstein island! Not a single person has been prosecuted
Same in every war, I've saw it happen in Afghanistan and Iraq sadly where we claimed they were squirters or were spotting for the Taliban. You'd be surprised how quickly good boys from the first world turn into cold cruel killers. Ain't war hell? Then the officers above cover for you because their careers are the ones on the line been commissioned officers
PS: One of my uncles who was part of the very first British [Scots] liberation forces that first arrived at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, were confronted with this very same sickening senario of a mass of living human misery, and also masses (literally great piles) of dead, stinking, rotting human corpses. He told us that, at the time, it was just mind bending for them to try and mentally process and accomodate what they were seeing. It just seemed inconceivable to them that such a situation as they were witnessing could even be real.
My father was commanding the first tank there and was told by his commanding officer to help control the outrageous actions of the infantrymen. He didn't tell e numbers but that it was hard for him. He did help several inmates get medical treatment & food.
This is, was, and will be the atrocity we judge atrocities by. Being confronted with unimaginable cruelty and evil must be more than most people could deal with. I don't blame them for the reaction
I mean, a war crime is still a war crime. Once you start splitting hairs and justifying violations you're on a slippery slope. It's all or nothing really.
I am from Vermont and I met a gentlemen named Paul Hayes who was 94 at the time, so if he is alive maybe 98 now. He told me he was sitting on the Chaffee that busted through the gate and it was men in his company that did this. He told me about being there as I had just returned from visiting friends in Karlsfeld which is close to Dachau. It was a very surreal experience especially after him rendering this situation in full detail.
I toured Dachau while stationed in Germany (USAF, Ramstein AB; 1983-86). Walked through the barracks, viewed the crematorium, saw the blood ditch, the whipping bench (that had so many victims tied to it that the writhing of their bodies had dished out its surface). Was always disgusted with the massacre of those surrendered/captured allied soldiers that were machined gunned down in the snow. There is a code for the treatment of captured enemy soldiers that is international. It's upon each individual soldier to honor the code otherwise you're no better than those you despise. War makes men animals. It's happening now in Ukraine. God forgive/save us all.
My dad WAS there and he survived. Short, but stocky, he had about 110lbs when the camp was liberated. He survived by sleeping as much as possible, to conserve the enrgy and having THE goal: building a novel water boiler when he WILL come home. Scratching the design on the wall with the nail he found. He did make it around 12 years after the war, still have his pencil drawings on yellow paper. Lived to 92. HARD guys. I imagine that most of them would take the guns and finish the guards, IF they could.
With all due respect, none of us were there and even you had arrived years later. None of us saw the horror and smelled the overwhelming stench of death so I'm not going to judge those soldiers. Sometimes the horror of war reduces men to animals.
My father-inlaw was 15yo and was liberated in Dachau now he is 93 still strong :)) He took me some 20y ago visiting Dachau and telling stories of what happened there. He say that the guards were so cruel that after announcing their freedom at the appelplatz they started shooting the crowds with machine guns and those prisoners in the front lines of the crowd were killed after their freedom was announced. Then the guards fleeing and most of the prisoners just stayed back in the camp.. noone could believe this is actually happening to them. He say that most of the guards were ukrainian or lithuanian ss. They were barely speaking german but many got arrested they all had the ss tattoos in their armpits.
My Dad was a combat infantry officer, he was in the Bulge, the Hurtgen Forest, crossed the Remagen Bridge hours after its capture, and various and sundry other places. I remember him talking about what happened at Dachau and how the GIs executed the SS but it didn't bother him as I suppose he felt that it was just a payback. I asked him if he ever went through a concentration camp and he just brushed it off, but he did say he went through where the Germans were making the V2 rockets. I checked and it seems that was a slave labor/concentration camp known as Nordhausen and I always wondered if he and his men would have done the same thing. And, after the surrender, he spent about 6 months in Germany searching to find more SS before coming home. He was always pretty guarded as to what stories he told us and I'm sure that he saw and did more than he could ever let on. Rest in peace, Dad.
@@delyne6860t was so ,so long ago. There have been other war crimes more recently: yet we always have to be told that this is THE ONE we all need to care about. Every death since is literally considered unworthy to be remembered ,because the Jews harp on about this one ,80 years ago... Let the Jews commemorate it and let our own people reflect on what is important to them. We have our own agonies! These particular guards were innocent of any wrongdoing , having only just arrived yet the Jews and the Americans murdered them. Where is their memorial ?
My father was a platoon Sergeant, 232, Company I. All he said was his platoon were approximately 2 miles out of Dachau. He had told me he knew what was there from what he smelled.
There shouldn't be, but there is a difference between the law and justice. What the solders did may have been against the law, but it was definitely justice.
It was lawful...the Geneva rules allows summary execution of spies, acting outside the conduct of war. SS Genociders did far worse, I mean turning civilians into soap! MIEN GOTT ! All those American liberators deserve a medal.
I have reason to doubt the evidence. The commentary talks about an investigation and the filing of charges long after the events of which the USA soldiers were accused; and then the commentary states that the investigation went no further because General Patton canceled all the charges. The commentary is inaccurate because General Patton dies in an auto accident only several months after the investigation while the commentary suggests that the investigation took years. How could Patton have dismissed the charges which were filed years after his own death? This looks like a lame effort to equate the conduct of our soldiers with that of the German guards, SS personnel, etc. The fact is that any inappropriate action by US soldiers, if there was any, was only a result of their being suddenly confronted with the greatest genocide in the history of mankind. The SS had no such trauma to justify their studied extermination of millions of innocents.
I'm a vet and will speak no more of that. I only say this because I understand. Had I been the commanding officer, I would have have shut my mouth and simply have gone away.
I can say this...in 1990 I was stationed in Germany. When I visited Dachau I could smell Death around the furnace and other locations around the camp...it gave you the creeps and sicking feeling how someone can treat another person so horrible....the Nazi's were lucky not more were killed!!! A soldier can only see so much till he or she thinks what is right might be wrong but is the price u pay when I now have a weapon and have the power of your life in my hands...this is the way war can be..
@@dewaynedavis4224 a couple dozen compared to over 13 million people counting the jews and politcal prisoners who died in the camps?Stay on topic thats another show!
A uncle of mine was a Brit Commando during WW2. They liberated a camp connected to Bergen-Belsen camp, he said that his troop came across this dirt track that looked like it had heavy traffic so they followed it to make sure no-one could come up behind them. He said that all of a sudden there was an appalling smell after about a mile they found the camp they forced entry (jeep's with 4 x50cal mounted) as they were still shooting prisoners, they gave the guards 1 chance to surrender.
My dad saw his CO take out his pistol and shoot some guards at Bergen Belsen. They were the fat ones trying to hide in plain sight wearing prison garb.
As far as I know the Brits didnt react like the Americans. Instead, they remained extremely disciplined despite the horror. There must be something else in the equation.
@@mickeypip1524 did you not know that the concentration camp inmates were starving to death and many emaciated dead were bulldozed into mass graves by the liberating soldiers. There were no fat prisoners, mostly literally at death’s door.
My cousin a catholic priest, Bernhard Heintzman from Bohmenkirck (a small farming village where my family is from in) Germany in (what is now) Baden-Wurttemberg was interned in Dachau as a political prisoner (#24433) on April 11th 1941. Not before of course the gestapo had harassed him for about two years before. Then on August 10th 1942 he was transported to Schloss Hartheim castle near Linz Austria and was murdered with over 2000 other clergy from various faiths and backgrounds by gas. The Catholic church during that time disowned him. He had preached against National Socialism (the Nazis) and those that should have supported him removed him from his position and deserted him. Later his body and the bodies of other clergy we're burned (by order of Himmler) to hide the evidence as the allies closed in.
The Catholic church wonders why we Catholics are fleeing the church! Your story and many more like it is the reason. Thankfully you have a story of a courageous man.
Thank you for your story. I think John Cornwell's book Hitler's Pope, should be required reading. This is not Catholic bashing, I have utmost respect for the work of Father Patrick Desbois and many other unknown individuals who helped where they could.
I and my children had the privilege of meeting a survivor of Dachau while we were visiting there. He was a very kind gentleman. He took us around the camp himself, showed where his barracks had stood, told of the things endured. He even took a picture with my children, which I cherish. He said he wanted to be sure that my children heard the truth from someone that survived.
They were doing their job and fighting pure evil. They did what they needed to do. They were there on the ground. My respect for them means I trust their judgement.
They were pissed off! They said to the guards “don’t flinch“ and they flinched! They were told not to! Continuously, yet they chose to do it like they were still in charge so they learned the hard way. Very hard way. Like “you ain’t leaving here alive” hard way.
I am an infantry combat veteran of The Vietnam War in 1968. I was conscripted (drafted) for 2 years as were many thousands of 20 year olds. My platoon’s first action involved the shooting of two young South Vietnamese males who were carrying what we considered may have been rifles in hessian bags over their shoulders. Intelligence had advised there were no friendly forces in the immediate area. The Lieutenant ordered to engage. The sight of a tracer bullet entering one’s back haunts me more & more as I age. And yes, I also shot some rounds at them as it was war. I felt absolutely nothing at the time - neither elation nor disgust or any faint degree of these emotions. My job was as the platoon sig ( radio operator ). I really adore Vietnamese people now, as they are so forgiving, hard working & very happy. They can teach us a lot. I now apologise when I meet them as that war was so unjust, as are many wars.
Be at peace over the matter. The way you state it implies they were not carrying rifles, which does not mean that they were not enemy and would be carrying one later, had no one shot. I was in intel over there in the delta, and if we spotted someone in the U Minh forest, they were enemy and we shot without determining they were or were not carrying a weapon.
@@timmoore6055 Our battalion was at FSPB Coral. Those Super Sabres were magnificent along with Spooky ( DC3 with Gatlin guns) & Huey gunships. Our artillery & mortars also outgunned this NVA battalion. Every time I hear a trumpet I get chills down my spine. My father & his brother were intel officers in New Guinea WW2. Wars are a nasty business.
@@geoffphillips5872 I was down in Can Tho in IV Corp and farther south in Ca Mau, 69-70. I was long gone before the NVA got that far south, with the exception of some advisers I was indirectly involved in the capture of - Seals did one extraction, and the other 2 were the result of Seals action. They made the Green Berets look like boy scouts. Are you Australian? My dad was in the 41st Infantry Division in WW2; they consolidated in Australia and then started working their way up toward Japan - he was a cannon cocker - 105's.
"... if we spotted someone in the U Minh forest, they were enemy and we shot without determining they were or were not carrying a weapon." So indeed Nick Turse is correct. "Shoot anything that moves" as the US military documents he found reveals. Those actions are why you might have killed a lot of VC but they were always going to have more massive recruits in the coming months and years, those angry Vietnamese youth. Way to win the Vietnameses "hearts and minds" who mostly united to fight off the US imperialism and totally corrupt South Vietnamese leadership there and finally succeeded in 1975. Agent Orange, massive carpet bombing of Vietnamese countryside on a scale that dwarfed the entirety of WW II, strategic hamlets, machine gunning innocent farmers/peasants and counted them as "enemy kills." Yeah, that Vietnam Vet that David Hoffman interviewed was right. All he and his patrol had to do was to walk through a village and then the VC had all the VOLUNTARY recruits they wanted.
My grandfather said there weren't any guards, just old, and sick people who starved. If I was a guard, and knew my side was losing, I wouldn't have stuck around either
Those SS guards weren't human and therefore their deaths do not fall in any crimes against humanity as they clearly proved to be lacking in any humanity in themselves. Died too quickly IMHO, and if you or I were one of those prisoners we'd have acted exactly the same.
There was rumors of the camps, but until our guys actually broke into one they didn't realize what they were really fighting for. What they lost friends for. They shot the dogs because they were Killers just like their masters
These guards were not common solders but sadistic animals. In war, when you see horrible things there is the desire to strike back- if they we killed in revenge, so be it!
I spent a whole day at Dachau during the winter about 5 yrs ago. It was bitter cold so no one else at all was there except my husband and me. I did research ahead of time, spoke with Germans between Munich and Dachau, and even questioned the workers/guides at the camp itself: no one had anything to say about this.
Im a german abd a history buff and ive never heard of this before. What i think mightve happened is that the american effirt to keep this from the german population was succesful enough to kerp this from becoming a commonly known fact
There’s no problem , soldiers who murder civilians who are non combatants ,outside military operations are considered war criminals and are libel for instant execution .this is not a criminal act by the Americans that’s why it was dismissed.
Not to be a Nazi sympathizer......but the soldiers who were at the camp...weren't the original soldiers who were original there....when the original commander ran away..most if not all ,HIS troops also ran away...and the new commander who was told to go to that camp and turn it over to the Americans..had to get some young soldiers to come to the camp and help in the control and the turn over OF THE CAMP to the Americans.....so to kill the commander and the new young German soldier...( WHO BY THE WAY HAD ALL GIVEN UP THEIR ARMS AND HAD SURRENDER) .if you ask me WAS A CRIME..and to prove my point...why did the US government hide this act for so many years.....BECAUSE THEY KNEW IT WAS WRONG AND A CRIME
After everything these soldiers had been through how can one really expect them to have kept composure after seeing piles of dead children and their parents . These camp workers ran an efficient mass murder factory ! I’m surprised their actions were so controlled actually .
Given what the Nazis in these camps did to other humans including babies I wouldn’t consider summary executions of them as a war crime. They worked in a factory of death and they murdered over five million souls they got a quicker death than the people they processed.
@@federalreservebrown2507 What happened to the 2.8 million Polish Jews (not to mention the other Jews) that are no longer around at the end of the war?
This was at the end of the war. A lot of the GI's had lost buddies, had suffered themselves and had enormous built up anger....and then to see this. There comes a point in all of us where we have a breaking point. Although I have never witnessed and likely never will the type of sadistic behavior perpetrated on the prisoners of Dachau, I imagine this was it, the final straw, for a lot of soldiers, who then reacted like many of us likely would have. War is war, killing is part of it. Holding these soldiers accountable for something they were trained to do? I don't think so. I think it was an easy way out for the SS. At least they didn't have to live with the horrors who have survived.
This was not a war crime. This was justice. Innocent civilians were not harmed. The sadistic butchers who murdered untold numbers of victims deserved nothing but execution.
To quote a vet, when I said they should have been shot on sight, he said, we fought the war to prevent that kind of thing. He was angry about it. Put them on trial. Let the law do its work.
God bless each and every one of those soldiers who took out those scumbags. How wonderful it must have been for the prisoners to see someone kicking their asses. I would have done it too. I wouldn't have wanted to hold myself back.
Evil for evil, what a motto! Self-serving platitudes, justifications for enormities that continue to this day. 500k Iraqi children "collateral damage", vermin to be eradicated by the never-erring US. wait, americans
David Harrison. USMC 64 -- 68. Vietnam 65 -- 66. Thank you very much. It seems like One day Parris Island the next day Camp Lejeune and low and behold the next day. VIETNAM. So proudly we serve. So gallantly we fight. And that is all of us. Not just the Marines. God Bless.
While in the Army 1972-1973 I toured Dachau when stationed in Germany. Saw the actual file footage when the Americans liberated the camp and all the other details of the camp first hand. It was horrifying to say the least! Still haunts me today... I believe the camp is haunted as you can feel a heaviness when you walk into the camp through the entrance gate. It's just erie. Saw to much to write here. No mention of troups massacreing gaurds but did show prisoners attacking gaurds.Tyranny is just an awful thing when perpetrated on human beings. Let's never forget the suffering of humanity in the 20th century that cost the lives of an estimated 100 million people. Pray to God this dosen't happen again, the Lord is our blessed hope..... AMEN and AMEN..
My uncle was there. He said that they put the guards in the ovens and turned them back on one last time. I asked him if they had shot them first. He replied, "We didn't waste the bullets."
My great great grandma took a boat over from Poland before ww1 when all the bull shit started to happen, I want to try and trace her family. All those men had to live with those horrors, their actions were certainly just
Regarding the 300 German Nazi Soldiers that were possibly massacred.. Upon witnessing the mind numbing atrocities such as 40 rail cars filled with rotting corpses, mass graves, torture and death apparatus, and 1000s of people obviously seriously abused and tortured, I would think of those 300 Nazis as deranged twisted tortured souls who have been released from a hell of their own making, and those 1000s of souls remaining, would maybe find the beginning of healing in that. Also I'm not sure one could deal with another who is obviously psychotic, out of their flippin minds and that kind of out of control dangerous criminal any other way
Not quite the same I know but for me it sums this up quite well also….One of my very good friend’s dad served in Vietnam and when my buddy and I enlisted he sat down with us about a week before I was set to leave for basic training and after a few drinks he told us, and I’m paraphrasing here, “The army does a very fine job of training you and preparing you for basically every aspect of combat and warfare….but they can NEVER prepare you for what it’s like to see the unimaginable horrors that it brings upon the innocent civilians.” He told us he saw things there that he can never reconcile in his mind and they left obvious scars on his psyche. My buddy told me later that that was the first, and last time he’s ever heard his father talk about his experiences over there. No one who wasn’t there could ever judge how they would react to witnessing something so inhumane firsthand.
@@mikeforte7585 Before my time too. Both the Germans, Japanese and Italians did not abuse by The Geneva Convention Rules of engagement. My Father fought in The Philippines during WW2.
Cest facile, des années plus tard, dans le calme d'un salon de venir dire que ces exécutions furent des crimes de guerre. Les SS n'ont pas eu tant d'égards pour leurs victimes, qui se sont comptées par millions, et dont les survivants ont continués a mourir après la guerre d'avoir été aussi mal traités, maltraités. En tant que fils d'un déporté parmi d'autres, je vous dénie totalement le droit de porter un jugement de valeur sur ces faits, ce que vous sous entendez s'apparente à du négationnisme. Ces SS ont eu ce qu'ils méritaient. - It was easy, years later, in the quiet of a living room to come and say that these executions were war crimes. The SS did not have so much regard for their victims, who numbered by the millions, and whose survivors continued to die after the war from having been so badly treated and mistreated. As the son of a deportee among others, I totally deny you the right to make a value judgment on these facts, what you imply is akin to negationism. Those SS got what they deserved.
I congratulate our brave soldiers who were traumatized by what they saw, and considering all options, did what had to be done. I really hope they did it well. I, to this day cannot look upon the horrors of these camps. I was born in 1942, so all this was going on during my lifetime. Sincerely & with no regret I remain at 80 years old, Sentebey in USA
War Crime? A public service is more like it. If I was there I would have willingly participated in this just revenge against these murderous monsters. There was more. When our troop in a specific area found out that the SS were murdering our unarmed POWs they dealt some rough justice on their own. In those cases not a lot of SS POWs survived. The bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki give great cause these days for hand wringing and second guessing the need for it by people ignorant of the circumstances of the times. What I wonder is why there is no ceremony honoring the 200.000 Chinese dead of Nanking or the 90.000 civilian men women and children murdered by the Japanese Imperial forces? The JIF murdered tens of thousands of innocent civilians, men women and children and you hear not a peep. The same crowd that whines about our bombing of civilian targets in Germany never mentions the 25.000 English men women and children killed by indiscriminate Nazi bombings. Read a book and you will not be subject to manipulation by the second guessers of history.
Mỹ Lai massacre (March 16, 1968) and No Gun Ri/Nogeun-ri/노근리 massacre (July 26-29, 1950) are others you can look into. Don’t see a lot of vids on those.
You're in the wrong video discussion group....and your distraction skills are childish. This is a discussion about justified mercy killing (or not). If you talked about putting rabid dogs to sleep you might have made a point.
I agree. It was justice. Anyone who thinks differently should put themselves in the shoes of those GIs who liberated that camp. I often wonder if they should have let the inmates exact justice on the guards. I am surprised the guards didn't flee when they saw the US Army heading their way.
That was not a death camp and those soldiers were every bit as influenced by propaganda as you are. The horrid conditions were caused by allied bombing of supply lines and the bodies in those cars were those who died of typhus.
Anyone working at a death camp deserved exactly what they got. Death camps aren't warfare, its a crime against humainty. And all those who took part deserved what they got. There's what's right, and then there's what's right. These men were tried in the eyes of their victims, and the GI's could clearly see what had to be done.
The reaction of those soldiers to the nightmare they found in Dachau is understandable. That doesn’t make it right - and wondering how much restraint I may or may not have had in that same situation - I can’t say it was wrong. So what was it?
It could be called extra-judicial justice. It would be about the same as coming upon someone raping a woman and shooting the rapist on the spot. The military, because it is in the business of killing people, needs to keep control over its soldiers; combat can cause such emotions that troops who are not controlled can go off the deep end. For example, troops could have gone into nearby German towns and started shooting citizens because those citizens had to have known at least some of what was occurring in the camps. On the other hand, the troops walked into one of the most horrific organized intentional killing of mass numbers of people who were innocent of any crime at all; most of the troops had been in combat repeatedly, and the guards were crystal clearly responsible for the conditions of dead and dying, literally into the thousands. Military law held that the guards should have been detained for a proper trial as we are supposed to be a society of order and law. Effectively the trials were of near instantaneous response, and non-appointed individuals acted as judge, jury and executioners. I cannot believe anyone honest and not extremely prejudiced could say that justice was not done; not justice in terms of confinement, trial with defense attorneys and duly appointed judges and a hangman or firing squad, but in the justice that comes from deep within individuals who can immediately see pure evil in front of them. justice that comes from the most basic understanding of right, wrong, and evil.
The US has always been able to escape responsibility for atrocities, and even as we know, today still demand immunity from war crimes should they engage in military confrontation. Two to three million dead Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians consequent to indiscriminate bombings during the Vietnam conflict, the large majority innocent civilians, are an example of US murder for which no one is held accountable. Having said that, that the concentration camp survivors went berserk and took revenge is totally understandable.
While the defense of “temporary insanity” would not be widely recognized in the courts for at least a couple of decades, it is apparent that the authorities considered the soldiers’ actions to fall under that defense. Even if the defense didn’t apply, no unbiased jury in all the world would convict them. And no prosecutor wants to try a case that can’t be won. While I don’t want to say the soldiers’ behavior should be accepted as normative, I can accept the outcome, as the soldiers’ conduct was arguably excusable under the circumstances.
You say no unbiased jury would convict , I say no unbiased jury NOT convict. So it is not a war crime to execute prisoners who have surrendered before they are "adjudicated" if "our"side does it ? Yeah , Nurnburg was a drumhead but at least they tried to fake justice there , this is simply murder . More interesting question would be why pretend WAR has rules ? Neither side will follow them anyways , at least based on past gov actions .
Ah, another "history" guy that tells the story he wants his way.. I am 70 years old have seen my fair share of war and we all know this story and how they was going to be court marshals but ole Patten pardoned these fellows.. and rightly so.. was it right.. no.. was it understandable.. yes... You sit in your comfy room with your coffee talking over a video of things you have know understanding of.. My bet is you haven't even seen war.. I think your version is jaded and holds only limited truth.. you can not possible explain what went on there in 8 minutes and 48 seconds with fancy title and all.. this is not history.. it is a passing over and condemning of something that takes time and information (more than your have done here) to understand.. You do these people (each one that was there) an horrendous injustice with this.. It is important.. but it is important know everything about the situation before you go casting aspersions on these fellows and what these (teenagers mostly) had to deal with,
So I will have to fight against you to stop war crime murder. Once a devilish person is defeated and without weapon, he is a matter of a court and nothing else. I will be proud to stop people who believe they are god, placed above the law.
The American soldiers involved had fought hard, were exhausted and battle weary and then they came across this harrowing sight that enraged them and acted understandably. Should they have done it? Probably not but I don't see any crime in what they did, an act of vengeance in the name of humanity against SS guards who had no humane instinct at all.
Apparently they didn't cover it up, you know about it. My feeling after having visited Dachau myself is so what , also camp guards were not soldiers they were murderers.
If anything, those SS members who were lined up and shot got off very lightly. Any real form of justice would have involved what they themselves did to their countless helpless victims: they would have been humiliated, starved, tortured and worked to death over weeks and months, only prolonging their agony. By their very own standards they were treated well with a quick death.
My Mother's family went through WW2 as Prussian ppl. I think when the American Soldiers saw what the German soldiers had done to these prisoners, they lost it and took care of it themselves. Anyone who can treat another human like that deserves what they get! My Mother remembered clearly when the Americans liberated the German ppl from Russian hands. The Americans were the Saviors she said, Russians, brutal and cruel.
I agree and all of them should get medals.Can you imagine seeing the condition of that camp and the conitions of the inmates along with the brutality that was done to American prisoner.I often watch these documentaries and tears fall from my eyes,but none didnt fall when i heard what the American,i hope all of them are R.i.p
Shit happens, My uncle, John Taylor spent 4 years in a POW camp in Poland, as liberation came close the commandant of the camp ordered their execution , the order was refused by the lower ranking officers, His incarceration traumatised him for the remainder of his life , he passed in 1990
I knew a British soldier captured in Crete. With others he was sent to a POW CAMP AT MONOWITZ. 300 yards away was the Auschwitz III CAMP for Jews. They both had to work in the gigantic 2 mile long I G Farben Plant. Dennis Avey has now passed RIP. He once changed his clothes and shaved his head to spend a night in the Jews Camp- changing back next day. See book 'I broke into Auschwitz'
I think the lads can be given a pass on this one. What the eyes of those American soldiers beheld prior to liberating the camp, and then the horror beyond words they witnessed once arriving at Dachau, I think could provide the defence of temporary insanity. Those men were heroes. To disparage the sacrifice each soldier undoubtedly suffered is a prime example of an unthinking mind, an unfeeling heart, and an ungrateful, disgusting soul.
I think those bastard head German SS guards got their fair share of karma and payback in the end. It is also understandable why the prisoners acting the way they did, those dirty Germans killed their friends and family.
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The INFAMOUS WAR CRIME carried out by the US in World War II...?by whom?US? or U did U mean Germans?
Poetic Justice
The commanders and guards should have been buried alive. NO CRIME WAS COMMITTED TOWARD THESE EVIL ANIMALS
That wasn't a crime in my book, it was justice. They should totally on hell. Good for the Yanks I say.
It was not a crime ! To kill SS criminals in Dachau was right ! I would do it !
My father survived Dacheau. He weighed 165lbs when he was put in the camp. He weighed 63.5lbs when the camp was liberated. The stories he has told me not only of the war but of the camp. It makes the things today lol like a walk in the park. There isn’t a horror movie today that could come close to the horror of what he had gone through. My father passed away peacefully at the age of 82 in 2005.
My great grandfather (Mexican American) was sent to Dacheau as a supplyment unit with warm clothes, food,medical equipment even tent showers for the prisoners. when it was liberated,my cousin who was more close to him explained the smell before entering the camp in which he will never forget. He said he came from a poor village in mexico but never had he seen people so skinny and weak.
my grandad was a tanky in the Coldstream Guards 21st army group he parked a tank outside belsen,told the war office too stick the service medals up there arse didnt want to remember my dad has his medals bless em never forget
My late cousin Julius Bendorf was transferred to Dachau from Auschwitz. He survived and passed away in Los Angeles so many years back. When I found him, he was 99 years old and he told me some stories regarding these horrible experiences. He has interviews posted on TH-cam. Horrible moments in history. what do I think, per the request at the end of this video? While I do not condone acts of violence of any sort, If such "war crimes" were committed, I am willing to bet they were committed out of extreme stress over what the American's observed. It twisted their sanity, this was no war crime, this was an act of stress over the total and complete evil that had consumed innocent people by the hands of the Nazi's and it was met in kind. There should have never been any energy put forth for any investigation. The American Troops acted in kind regarding such conditions they encountered while fighting a disgusting war at the doorstep of the Nazi's. I am glad my cousin was saved by the Americans, by the way.
Your dad's soul is resting now in heaven. Sorry your dad had to go through that horrible situation.
My father was part of the 20th tank battalion in the US Army that helped to liberate the Dachau concentration camp. He spoke of the horror. It was horrific. I'm glad your father was liberated
In the 1970's I worked with a man who claimed that he was one of the first G.I.s to enter that camp. The guy was rather quiet & reserved. I have always had an immense amount of appreciation for men of that generation so I questioned him about what the liberation of Dachau was like. After explaining about the horrific sights that greeted him he then talked about killing all of the guards that could be rounded up. He said that there were G.I.s who installed themselves at the local train stations looking for escaping guards who were brought back to Dachau & summarily executed, & you know what? Those assholes got a better death than they deserved.
murder is murder no matter the justification.
@@willemventer3935 Revenge murder is the best in this case. Maybe at the last moment of their lives the SS realized they are not the superior race. Also in prior years Hitler had ordered the mass execution of Americans and other POW's. Maybe the what goes around comes around.
@@willemventer3935 I remember an older teacher who was a journalist during the war he would describe taking photos inside the cremation boilers realizing how many Jews were killed seeing bones of adults and children became disheartening for him telling us it’s something he will never forget. So I imagine the soldiers seeing how many women children and adults bodies who could not defend themselves became disheartening and they reacted as any human would.
@@theblade9024 When was the direct order for the killing of allied troops issued ? What I,m trying to point out is that the allies should just come out and acknowledge that they also committed war crimes. The only order was for spies [that would be people fighting out of uniform] to be executed. And yes the allies also executed spies.
@@mariawilson-jimenez993 T he guards should have been placed on trail , remember NUREMBERG? TAKE THE LAW IN YOUR OWN HANDS AND YOU COMMIT MURDER.
My Uncle Tony survived brutal combat, yet what what haunted him the most was the liberation of Dachau. The PTSD from seeing the horrors of the camp contributed to an alcoholic death when he got back to the States. Wars take victims long after they are “finished”.
Yet people still glorify war and teens are 🧠-washed into joining the army. Disgusting.
Bob what year he passed on
I know it haunted my uncle.
he had to be drunk to go into this war for Zion :))
US has this problem with fighting all peoplesa of the world since founding.
hunting Amelek all over^^
idiotics !
@@seanodwyer4322 what you want to know for, I'm curious?
That wasn't a war crime. That was justice.
It’s a war crime regardless of what your feelings is, the nazis manipulated people feelings to commit their crimes
Exactly👍👍
Murder is murder no matter what, the actions are not justified👎👎👎💀💀💀
@@BrianHayter-zl2uc Murder implies that actual human beings were killed unjustly
@@BrianHayter-zl2ucwell live it with because these Men lived great lives after. scott free , sux to suck nerd
Some members of my family were imprisoned in Dachau. Two great aunts managed to escape and went home on foot for 600km . We are Istria Croatians and a lot of my people was sent to Dachau after all the villages were burnt down in 1944 by the SS troups. They were only women and children. My mothers village was incenerated to the ground. Not
one house left.... It was a village of almost 600 souls and from 1944 untill the liberation was completely empty. Entire families were exterminated and the village never recovered...
SO I DON'T BLAME THOSE AMERICAN SOLDIERS. THEY DID THE RIGHT THING.
Absolutely. A fitting end for scum! They were tenacious soldiers, but what was committed in the camps destroyed any hope for sympathy for them. If they had ALL been gunned down, how could anyone try to blame the soldiers that had to live with those gruesome images in their minds! When the Germans were filmed executing Jewish people, the Germans were smiling and laughing! That's the face of evil and hate!
@Elvis Bozic: HVALA ELVIS!! You are so right; German guards being slaughtered at Dachau is not Dachau's "Massacre", it is more like Dachau's Miracle. Greetings from another Croatian.
@@Ohxinessaxinessa pozzzz
As a german man. I completely agree may God put those shitsacks to justice
They did too little
This has been in the public domain since it happened. It was also common knowledge fifty years ago. No one tried to hide it. The film clips were seen on TV. It was not considered a war crime, it was considered justice.
Also defense. Tired of these pretentious “le both sides” type of pseudointelectuals in the comments here.
@@kishascape *psuedo-intellectual, and how is it psuedo intellectual to point out the crimes committed by both sides of the war? It seems you are trying to convince yourself it's not true when the Allies and Axis both did horrible things like in every major war. Who are you to tell them they're pretentious?
@@jordanwebster1728 I think the real question comes down to the motivation for pointing out US war crimes. Anyone who knows even a little about WWII knows that all parties involved committed war crimes to some extent, but why bring it up when we’re talking about the Nazis? I think there are only two reasons for why someone would do this: One, they sympathize with the Nazis, or two, they hate America. It could also be both.
There’s no question that America has committed war crimes in every single conflict we’ve been involved in, but it’s come nowhere near committing genocide on entire ethnic groups. What kind of asshole would bring that up when we’re talking about Nazi death camps? So, my question to you is, which of the two groups do you fall into?
Yes It's Talibani Justice of US army
Don’t justice into your own hands!!!!!!
My grandfather was part of the 42nd Rainbow Division that helped liberate Dachau. My dad said he only talked about it once. They were hiking at they came across a dead and decomposing deer. My grandfather said “It smells like Dachau.” That was all. That one sentence is the only thing he ever said about it.
I believe you as much as the 2000 other people saying the same shit
no
The deer must once have been a beautiful creature ...I would have been upset at it’s tragic loss of its life.
The comparison defiles that innocent animal.
Rainbow Division!!! Absolute Codswallop! A bit of the ‘Judy Garland’ there !
My Dad was part of the 42nd Rainbow, but was not there. He was liberated from a German POW camp on his 19th birthday April 2nd and they were not treated very well at all. Men in that POW camp were removed and never seen again if they could not make it to roll call. War is not fair, just horrible. 😔🇺🇸🇺🇸
My Father Told Me about this finding of the Box Cars with the Bodies in them. He said you could smell this from miles away. My Father was one of the soldiers who helped execute the guard. But he had Nightmares the rest of his life about what he seen in the Death Camp that day.
I was stationed in Germany in the mid-70's and traveled to Dachau.I was in disbelief at the place.If I had been there liberating it in the 40's,I would have taken out as many as I could.This was justice, not a war crime.
Every german attending a school (aka everyone bcuz we have no home schooling) visits a concentration camp when theyre 15-17 i dont think anyone but actual fascists and their sympathizers would call this anything but justified
It may feel like justice but it lacked judicial process so it was not justice in the legal sense of the word. If it happened it was very very understandable... but it was a war crime. Once individuals have surrendered they have legal protection of liberating forces. That is the legal position. If this did happen it was a war crime however on balance it seems reasonable that energy & resource was not expended to locate such individuals whose horror may offer extenuating circs for their actions.
@@clared1996 who tf cares about the legality of this 😂😂😂
U are tallking about one of the most terrible things humans have ever done to each other here
It's a war crime to kill unarmed people PERIOD!!!
@@prolebenz251 You would care if it was you on the receiving end. Taking revenge may be good for the feeling of satisfaction, but it has nothing to do with justice. You are but a human being, you cannot know at first glance who is guilty and who is not. You shoot someone wearing a german uniform, you may as well shoot an innocent person. Guilt has to be established by law, always. If you cannot control your primal urges, you're no better than the barbarians you claim to despise.
My father was part of the 84th Infantry Division and participated in the liberation of camps in the German towns of Hannover-Ahlem and Salzwedel. Although he was interviewed for a couplie of books about WWII he never spoke to me much about it until he was dying from cancer in 2005. He and his unit shot some guards and he watched prisoners kill others. He personally gave an M-1 carbine that they had converted to full auto by filing down the sear to a boy of 12-13 he shot some guards with it. No one he knew had any issue with what was done that day. I support him and the other soldiers that were liberating these camps. No man has any right to judge their actions.
Filing a sear does not convert to full auto.
The hammer follows the bolt home and doesn't have enough inertia to hit the primer hard enough. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a bullsh1t artist.
But I do agree with the kid shooting guards in retribution.
No qualms at all.
(M2 carbine may have been used)
Hey, Paul. My dad was also in the 84th. I only recently learned the 84th helped liberate one or more of the concentration camps. Dad was a medic, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he treated some of the poor survivors. He seldom talked about his experiences and never mentioned the camps, which is perfectly understandable. Anyone who criticizes GIs for killing SS guards is either mentally ill, anti-American or lives in a fantasy world. If those evil guards didn’t deserve death then no one has ever deserved it.
@@Demaenetus I'll go further and speculate that such sympathy for SS troops is an indication that they're also servants of Lucifer.
My arse they don`t,
War is Hell. I visited Dachau and it is something I will always remember; the finger scratch marks in the concrete walls trying to escape from the gas. I don't think we should judge the soldiers, we weren't there.
An old friend of mine, who has sadly passed now, was with the 157th Inf when they liberated Dachau. He told me he had never seen such horror, before or since, as the evidence he had witnessed to the Nazis treatment of the people in Dachau. As for me, I feel we didn't wipe the Nazi bastards off the face of the Earth soon enough before they could visit such destruction on other human beings.
Yet here we are, supporting them 100% in Ukraine. L.O.L.
@@itchyvet Wrong. There's simply no comparison between these two wars.
Azov have nazi symbols, nazi slogans, swastikas, photos and some have tatoos of Hitler over their bodies, killing and torturing civilians, being white supremacists and still not the same. Why? Because they are fighting Russia and it's fine by you? I bet you haven't watched the reports of the civilians, even YT keeps deleting them.
There are still videos of SS torch-lit marches in Kiev and what they have been doing to WW II veterans every Victory Day for years. That doesn't seem to bother anyone.
So many Russians botts on here
I'm sure the mental state of the combat soldiers seeing the condition of the prisoners and realizing what was going on was a lot to deal with. You never know what you would do in a particular situation until you are in that situation.
Honestly I don’t blame the USA soldiers for what they did the guards got what they deserved
Victorious American soldiers all see Germans as an enemy, and what would you expect if they liberate prisons?, would you expect them to be Lenient to the cruel SS Guards?
Agree.
I agree. Amazingly it is easy for these woke privilege people to judge while all they do is just be keyboard warriors.
Agreed.
It's hard to feel sorry for these "guards" being executed, especially when these criminals were caught in the act.
Imagine still beliving this propaganda keep thinking Germany was the bad guy while your country is getting destroyed by those so called "victoms" have fun with your degeneracy, Pedophilia and liberal 1984 communism
It is a war crime. No excuse.
It wasn't a "death camp", but that didn't stop the nazis from murdering people there. They were murdering people at Dachau long before the war even started.
@@mollykeane2571 Wrong. "Over the years of its operation, from 1933 to 1945, thousands of Dachau prisoners died of disease, malnutrition and overwork. Thousands more were executed for infractions of camp rules. Starting in 1941, thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were sent to Dachau then shot to death at a nearby rifle range. In 1942, construction began at Dachau on Barrack X, a crematorium that eventually consisted of four sizeable ovens used to incinerate corpses.
@@awalk5177 -- Smells like BS!
_History is a set of lies agreed upon._
Napoleon Bonaparte
My father served with the 71st infantry and even though he was not at this camp his division did liberate Gunskein. The things he saw and from what I have read it must have been horrifying to have seen. I cannot believe that these American soldiers could found at fault for what they did. the rage and disgust of this had to been overwhelming. Those camp guards got what they had coming although they received some mercy by being executed and not enduring the same treatment that the inmates had to endure.
A fast humane bullet for any SS still in uniform at the time of camp liberation - absolutely too little too late!
The place name "Gunskein" does not exist.
Hmm i think if the usa would have been under siege and surrounded and bombed into oblivion for years and they had prisoners of war, what would a foreign army find in us prisoner camps when they would arrive? I mean having not enough water, unclean water, almost no food to sustain the civilian population as well as all the prisoners. What would you all expect in such a case? Well fed healthy imprisoned workers?
Dont get me wrong i dont like the nazis one bit, but you have to get an understanding of the whole war situation, the broken logistics and the bad circumstances. Its quite easy to jugde while one owns country is in good conditions. Why do you never talk about the sowjet gulags or the rheinwiesen camp where likely 100 of thousends of german soldiers died of starvation on purpose, the bombing of dresden, the starvation of 20 to 30 million ukranien and russian civilians under the sowjetunion. What is with Mao when his political actions caused the death of prop 30 Million of his chinese landsmen?
One thing you should ask yourself, did the germans had the water and food supplies to feed their prisoners of war? Were they capable of doing so. From a logistical point of view i mean. Almsot all of you commenters seem to forget to ask this question.
@@chrisbo5288 The majority of concentration camp victims were not POWs but civilians and the Nazis had no right to imprison them in the first place.
As a signatory of the Hague Conventions (of 1899 and 1907) and of the Geneva Convention (of 6 July 1906), Germany was under obligation to take proper care of POWs. It's an established fact that with Soviet and other East European POWs, the Nazis didn't not even bother to try to fulfill that obligation. They deliberately starved them to death.
The 7th Army held an investigation within 2 weeks of the killings, did not belive the statements of the trigger happy GI's involved in the shootings and recommended disciplinary action towards the perpetrators. Patton decided against further judicial prosecution of them. To him, there wasn't any point as the place itself was nothing but a warcrime with dead and dying people all over the place.
From Jan- April 1945, over 100 Dachau inmates died per day of overwork, execution, malnutrition and illness - well over 12,000 total - and that number doesn't include the 2,000 found dead on trains outside the camp or the 1,000+ plus inmates that died on the forced death march, nor the 2,466 inmates who died after being liberated despite the best efforts of medical personnel to save them.
Araund 50 SS personnel according to a sober estimate was summarily executed by US troops and inmates on April 29th, 1945 and thousand of inmates were liberated from the hellhole, too late for many of the ones that still was breathing air as it turned out. The cold numbers of the dead pretty mush sums up Patton's decision to put the incident to rest.
Well said
According to This figure of "560" was reported by Lt. Heinrich Skodzensky and a Swiss Red Cross official, not 50
@@revolution1423
That number are not taken seriously outside certain circles. Its humbug.
There was no Lt Skodzensky at Dachau or anywhere else for that matter. He is not listed any SS officer list because he was a fictive character journalist and former Dachau inmate Nerin Gun made up for his book The Day of the Americans, where Skodzensky had 560 men under his command.
There was however a Swizz red cross representative there , Victor Maurer, who helped surrender the camp. He estimated the number of SS guards present at Dachau to be rougly 120
@@OleLeik Right, he said a company....anywhere from 100-200 men. They were murdered and survivors were tortured into admission afterwards.
@@revolution1423
First they killed them all, then tortured them post mortem? Those savage Yankees!
Anyhow: After the initial trigger happiness the SS men that was still in working order were tasked with burying the decaying corpses laying around in and outside the camp in massgraves.
Keep in mind that these were combat harden veterans who had experienced heavy combat. They were reacting to something even they could not handle.
Looks like they handled it just fine.
John, ironically thats the reason that the waffen ss soldiers gave for war crimes after they left the eastern front to fight in the west.
Funny that weaponed, experienced, heavy combat Veterans where just beaten to death by hand by the Germans.
@@dregga7638 that's funny to you?
@@Ragnar06 Yes, eventhough they were "hardened veterans who experienced heavy combat veterans", they still got defeated by unequipted abused and probably maleutrished German soldiers. That can mean only two things. Wanna talk about that, Dana? Or just virtue signal a little?
I have visited Dachau twice. Once when I was single, once with my family. It is very sad experience for anyone that has a compassion for humanity. Both tines I was brought to tears, especially seeing the Crematorium and the “Ash Pit”. It still reeks of burned human flesh. I fell apart there. I could not imagine the horrors these poor souls went through. What they ate to sustain life and the conditions. No one on this earth would treat a dog this bad.
Nazi guards DID treat their dogs like that - they deliberately starved and hurt them so they would brutally attack and sometimes even eat prisoners. German soldiers were sent from the depths of hell, to which most returned
Nobody can judge those soldiers while sitting in front of the laptop, with air conditioning and running water. The stress, the emotion, the shock of such horror may have heavily influenced their decisions in those moments. If I agree or not is another story, I just think that I understand their reaction.
I judged them and found them innocent of any wrongdoing.
@@soulesslemming yea as the commenter says: you can't cause you weren't there.
Its funny how Americans always think so deeply about how trauma impacts one’s decisions when it comes to soldiers…but I rarely see that same level of nuance applied to civilians who commit crimes after a life of terror and trauma and end up being imprisoned for life or murdered by the state.
@@fibonaccisequins4637 We’re talking about guys who have already gone through an 80% casualty rate , watching their brothers in arms getting blown up next to them and coming across a mass extermination camp. They must have thought the Germans were the most evil vile people ever to live.
I grew up with a heroin addicted father and a mother who didn’t want me, I was on the streets at 14. I’ve never robbed or killed. I’ve had my problems in life, but nothing compares to what these guys went through and had seen. There’s absolutely no comparison, and they hope there never is again.
As someone who is both Jewish and who has served in the army: Those Nazi Bastards deserved everything that happened to them and then some.
The execution of SS guards and SS soldiers was standard practice during WW2, especially where the bodies of their victims of their crimes were found close by, be they civilians or Allied soldiers. The wisdom of so doing is confirmed by just how few SS were court martialled after the war and how small were their sentences in the western Allied sectors. The Soviets, Poles and others who had directly suffered from German invasion, occupation and terror took a far more pragmatic, ruthless and robust approach: execution of most if not all SS, field gendarmerie, Gestapo, Police and their auxiliaries, collaborators such as Hiwis.
More war crimes of the winners! There is no honor among killing the enemy after the war is over, more Germans died after surrendering- this is bullshit! I only have justice for the history books, and you would not like it! These President need to be impeached- historically and only referred to by the number and removed from all naming of ships and or memorial sites! I hate most of my presidents, from what I have found out since world war 2 , with the exception of Kennedy and Carter. They are all bad and worthless!!
the victims should have taken revenge, that would have been appropriate .
@@lunafringe10 often far too weak and dying from hunger and infectious diseases to do anything...
Underated comment and it's still going on now. Look at all the pedos like the Clintons, Bidens and other politicians on both sides that went to Epstein island! Not a single person has been prosecuted
Same in every war, I've saw it happen in Afghanistan and Iraq sadly where we claimed they were squirters or were spotting for the Taliban. You'd be surprised how quickly good boys from the first world turn into cold cruel killers. Ain't war hell? Then the officers above cover for you because their careers are the ones on the line been commissioned officers
PS: One of my uncles who was part of the very first British [Scots] liberation forces that first arrived at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, were confronted with this very same sickening senario of a mass of living human misery, and also masses (literally great piles) of dead, stinking, rotting human corpses. He told us that, at the time, it was just mind bending for them to try and mentally process and accomodate what they were seeing. It just seemed inconceivable to them that such a situation as they were witnessing could even be real.
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Don’t over-egg the pudding, eh?
My father was commanding the first tank there and was told by his commanding officer to help control the outrageous actions of the infantrymen. He didn't tell e numbers but that it was hard for him. He did help several inmates get medical treatment & food.
This is, was, and will be the atrocity we judge atrocities by. Being confronted with unimaginable cruelty and evil must be more than most people could deal with. I don't blame them for the reaction
This was just another day at the office in the Soviet gulags.
@@seanhammer6296 well that was Russias problem. But they weren't quite the same.
It’s still a war crime.
@@craigclemens986 never said it wasn't...just acknowledged their humanity in commiting it
I mean, a war crime is still a war crime. Once you start splitting hairs and justifying violations you're on a slippery slope. It's all or nothing really.
I am from Vermont and I met a gentlemen named Paul Hayes who was 94 at the time, so if he is alive maybe 98 now. He told me he was sitting on the Chaffee that busted through the gate and it was men in his company that did this. He told me about being there as I had just returned from visiting friends in Karlsfeld which is close to Dachau. It was a very surreal experience especially after him rendering this situation in full detail.
I toured Dachau while stationed in Germany (USAF, Ramstein AB; 1983-86). Walked through the barracks, viewed the crematorium, saw the blood ditch, the whipping bench (that had so many victims tied to it that the writhing of their bodies had dished out its surface).
Was always disgusted with the massacre of those surrendered/captured allied soldiers that were machined gunned down in the snow.
There is a code for the treatment of captured enemy soldiers that is international. It's upon each individual soldier to honor the code otherwise you're no better than those you despise.
War makes men animals. It's happening now in Ukraine. God forgive/save us all.
My dad WAS there and he survived. Short, but stocky, he had about 110lbs when the camp was liberated. He survived by sleeping as much as possible, to conserve the enrgy and having THE goal: building a novel water boiler when he WILL come home. Scratching the design on the wall with the nail he found. He did make it around 12 years after the war, still have his pencil drawings on yellow paper. Lived to 92. HARD guys. I imagine that most of them would take the guns and finish the guards, IF they could.
Absolutely 100% agree with you.
Men make war
With all due respect, none of us were there and even you had arrived years later. None of us saw the horror and smelled the overwhelming stench of death so I'm not going to judge those soldiers. Sometimes the horror of war reduces men to animals.
Those Nazi bastards deserved everything they got! God bless America!
My father-inlaw was 15yo and was liberated in Dachau now he is 93 still strong :))
He took me some 20y ago visiting Dachau and telling stories of what happened there. He say that the guards were so cruel that after announcing their freedom at the appelplatz they started shooting the crowds with machine guns and those prisoners in the front lines of the crowd were killed after their freedom was announced.
Then the guards fleeing and most of the prisoners just stayed back in the camp.. noone could believe this is actually happening to them.
He say that most of the guards were ukrainian or lithuanian ss. They were barely speaking german but many got arrested they all had the ss tattoos in their armpits.
My Dad was a combat infantry officer, he was in the Bulge, the Hurtgen Forest, crossed the Remagen Bridge hours after its capture, and various and sundry other places. I remember him talking about what happened at Dachau and how the GIs executed the SS but it didn't bother him as I suppose he felt that it was just a payback. I asked him if he ever went through a concentration camp and he just brushed it off, but he did say he went through where the Germans were making the V2 rockets. I checked and it seems that was a slave labor/concentration camp known as Nordhausen and I always wondered if he and his men would have done the same thing. And, after the surrender, he spent about 6 months in Germany searching to find more SS before coming home. He was always pretty guarded as to what stories he told us and I'm sure that he saw and did more than he could ever let on. Rest in peace, Dad.
I was there today 5/30/23 at the memorial site...it was very somber. Never forget.
May he rest in peace!🩵
I have a cousin that was in Battle of the Bulge.
@@delyne6860t was so ,so long ago. There have been other war crimes more recently: yet we always have to be told that this is THE ONE we all need to care about.
Every death since is literally considered unworthy to be remembered ,because the Jews harp on about this one ,80 years ago...
Let the Jews commemorate it and let our own people reflect on what is important to them.
We have our own agonies!
These particular guards were innocent of any wrongdoing , having only just arrived yet the Jews and the Americans murdered them.
Where is their memorial ?
The soldiers were completely justified in doing this!
My father was a platoon Sergeant, 232, Company I. All he said was his platoon were approximately 2 miles out of Dachau. He had told me he knew what was there from what he smelled.
There shouldn't be, but there is a difference between the law and justice. What the solders did may have been against the law, but it was definitely justice.
It was lawful...the Geneva rules allows summary execution of spies, acting outside the conduct of war. SS Genociders did far worse, I mean turning civilians into soap! MIEN GOTT ! All those American liberators deserve a medal.
I have reason to doubt the evidence. The commentary talks about an investigation and the filing of charges long after the events of which the USA soldiers were accused; and then the commentary states that the investigation went no further because General Patton canceled all the charges. The commentary is inaccurate because General Patton dies in an auto accident only several months after the investigation while the commentary suggests that the investigation took years. How could Patton have dismissed the charges which were filed years after his own death? This looks like a lame effort to equate the conduct of our soldiers with that of the German guards, SS personnel, etc. The fact is that any inappropriate action by US soldiers, if there was any, was only a result of their being suddenly confronted with the greatest genocide in the history of mankind. The SS had no such trauma to justify their studied extermination of millions of innocents.
I fully agree
I'm a vet and will speak no more of that. I only say this because I understand. Had I been the commanding officer, I would have have shut my mouth and simply have gone away.
I can say this...in 1990 I was stationed in Germany. When I visited Dachau I could smell Death around the furnace and other locations around the camp...it gave you the creeps and sicking feeling how someone can treat another person so horrible....the Nazi's were lucky not more were killed!!! A soldier can only see so much till he or she thinks what is right might be wrong but is the price u pay when I now have a weapon and have the power of your life in my hands...this is the way war can be..
Rah hoorah
The ovens still smelled in the 90's?wow
What about the animals that lynched several thousand people of color?????
@@dewaynedavis4224 a couple dozen compared to over 13 million people counting the jews and politcal prisoners who died in the camps?Stay on topic thats another show!
I was there, army, 1966..not much left...
A uncle of mine was a Brit Commando during WW2. They liberated a camp connected to Bergen-Belsen camp, he said that his troop came across this dirt track that looked like it had heavy traffic so they followed it to make sure no-one could come up behind them. He said that all of a sudden there was an appalling smell after about a mile they found the camp they forced entry (jeep's with 4 x50cal mounted) as they were still shooting prisoners, they gave the guards 1 chance to surrender.
My dad saw his CO take out his pistol and shoot some guards at Bergen Belsen. They were the fat ones trying to hide in plain sight wearing prison garb.
As far as I know the Brits didnt react like the Americans. Instead, they remained extremely disciplined despite the horror. There must be something else in the equation.
@@wendyrowland7787 Strange that his CO’s judgement swung of a person’s waist measurement...quite arbitrary and cavalier...
@@mickeypip1524 did you not know that the concentration camp inmates were starving to death and many emaciated dead were bulldozed into mass graves by the liberating soldiers. There were no fat prisoners, mostly literally at death’s door.
My cousin a catholic priest, Bernhard Heintzman from Bohmenkirck (a small farming village where my family is from in) Germany in (what is now) Baden-Wurttemberg was interned in Dachau as a political prisoner (#24433) on April 11th 1941. Not before of course the gestapo had harassed him for about two years before. Then on August 10th 1942 he was transported to Schloss Hartheim castle near Linz Austria and was murdered with over 2000 other clergy from various faiths and backgrounds by gas. The Catholic church during that time disowned him. He had preached against National Socialism (the Nazis) and those that should have supported him removed him from his position and deserted him. Later his body and the bodies of other clergy we're burned (by order of Himmler) to hide the evidence as the allies closed in.
The Catholic church wonders why we Catholics are fleeing the church! Your story and many more like it is the reason. Thankfully you have a story of a courageous man.
As a fallen man who was redeemed by God, I can assure you that your cousin was well-received in Heaven.
Thank you for your story. I think John Cornwell's book Hitler's Pope, should be required reading. This is not Catholic bashing, I have utmost respect for the work of Father Patrick Desbois and many other unknown individuals who helped where they could.
I live in Linz and knew about Mauthausen but not this one.
Absolutely shocking : Fram a Protestant in Northern Ireland.
I and my children had the privilege of meeting a survivor of Dachau while we were visiting there. He was a very kind gentleman. He took us around the camp himself, showed where his barracks had stood, told of the things endured. He even took a picture with my children, which I cherish. He said he wanted to be sure that my children heard the truth from someone that survived.
I say our American soldiers were heroes. God bless them all.
They are all burning in hell
Yes
They were doing their job and fighting pure evil. They did what they needed to do. They were there on the ground. My respect for them means I trust their judgement.
They were pissed off! They said to the guards “don’t flinch“ and they flinched! They were told not to! Continuously, yet they chose to do it like they were still in charge so they learned the hard way. Very hard way. Like “you ain’t leaving here alive” hard way.
That's not a crime. That's justice. Eye for an eye
I am an infantry combat veteran of The Vietnam War in 1968. I was conscripted (drafted) for 2 years as were many thousands of 20 year olds.
My platoon’s first action involved the shooting of two young South Vietnamese males who were carrying what we considered may have been rifles in hessian bags over their shoulders. Intelligence had advised there were no friendly forces in the immediate area. The Lieutenant ordered to engage.
The sight of a tracer bullet entering one’s back haunts me more & more as I age. And yes, I also shot some rounds at them as it was war. I felt absolutely nothing at the time - neither elation nor disgust or any faint degree of these emotions. My job was as the platoon sig ( radio operator ).
I really adore Vietnamese people now, as they are so forgiving, hard working & very happy. They can teach us a lot. I now apologise when I meet them as that war was so unjust, as are many wars.
Be at peace over the matter. The way you state it implies they were not carrying rifles, which does not mean that they were not enemy and would be carrying one later, had no one shot. I was in intel over there in the delta, and if we spotted someone in the U Minh forest, they were enemy and we shot without determining they were or were not carrying a weapon.
@@timmoore6055 Our battalion was at FSPB Coral. Those Super Sabres were magnificent along with Spooky ( DC3 with Gatlin guns) & Huey gunships. Our artillery & mortars also outgunned this NVA battalion.
Every time I hear a trumpet I get chills down my spine.
My father & his brother were intel officers in New Guinea WW2.
Wars are a nasty business.
@@geoffphillips5872 I was down in Can Tho in IV Corp and farther south in Ca Mau, 69-70. I was long gone before the NVA got that far south, with the exception of some advisers I was indirectly involved in the capture of - Seals did one extraction, and the other 2 were the result of Seals action. They made the Green Berets look like boy scouts. Are you Australian? My dad was in the 41st Infantry Division in WW2; they consolidated in Australia and then started working their way up toward Japan - he was a cannon cocker - 105's.
"... if we spotted someone in the U Minh forest, they were enemy and we shot without determining they were or were not carrying a weapon."
So indeed Nick Turse is correct. "Shoot anything that moves" as the US military documents he found reveals. Those actions are why you might have killed a lot of VC but they were always going to have more massive recruits in the coming months and years, those angry Vietnamese youth. Way to win the Vietnameses "hearts and minds" who mostly united to fight off the US imperialism and totally corrupt South Vietnamese leadership there and finally succeeded in 1975.
Agent Orange, massive carpet bombing of Vietnamese countryside on a scale that dwarfed the entirety of WW II, strategic hamlets, machine gunning innocent farmers/peasants and counted them as "enemy kills." Yeah, that Vietnam Vet that David Hoffman interviewed was right. All he and his patrol had to do was to walk through a village and then the VC had all the VOLUNTARY recruits they wanted.
My grandfather said there weren't any guards, just old, and sick people who starved. If I was a guard, and knew my side was losing, I wouldn't have stuck around either
Zero sympathy for those German guards who committed so many horrific crimes against defenseless people.
I think this event deserves a round of applause for those specific US soldiers every 4th of July
I'm still trying to figure out what crime was committed. I hear nothing but a righteous act that needed to be done.
Those SS guards weren't human and therefore their deaths do not fall in any crimes against humanity as they clearly proved to be lacking in any humanity in themselves. Died too quickly IMHO, and if you or I were one of those prisoners we'd have acted exactly the same.
There was rumors of the camps, but until our guys actually broke into one they didn't realize what they were really fighting for. What they lost friends for. They shot the dogs because they were Killers just like their masters
Amen Brother Johnson
These guards were not common solders but sadistic animals. In war, when you see horrible things there is the desire to strike back- if they we killed in revenge, so be it!
Give them a field trial by the inmates and execute them the same way the inmates were executed.
Field Trail??? Kangaroo court??
I spent a whole day at Dachau during the winter about 5 yrs ago. It was bitter cold so no one else at all was there except my husband and me. I did research ahead of time, spoke with Germans between Munich and Dachau, and even questioned the workers/guides at the camp itself: no one had anything to say about this.
Same when I was there, army. 1966...
Im a german abd a history buff and ive never heard of this before.
What i think mightve happened is that the american effirt to keep this from the german population was succesful enough to kerp this from becoming a commonly known fact
Not only glad to hear that the erican soldiers took revenge on theSS Guards but also some of the prisoners as well. Good for them.
There’s no problem , soldiers who murder civilians who are non combatants ,outside military operations are considered war criminals and are libel for instant execution .this is not a criminal act by the Americans that’s why it was dismissed.
Not to be a Nazi sympathizer......but the soldiers who were at the camp...weren't the original soldiers who were original there....when the original commander ran away..most if not all ,HIS troops also ran away...and the new commander who was told to go to that camp and turn it over to the Americans..had to get some young soldiers to come to the camp and help in the control and the turn over OF THE CAMP to the Americans.....so to kill the commander and the new young German soldier...( WHO BY THE WAY HAD ALL GIVEN UP THEIR ARMS AND HAD SURRENDER) .if you ask me WAS A CRIME..and to prove my point...why did the US government hide this act for so many years.....BECAUSE THEY KNEW IT WAS WRONG AND A CRIME
What the Germans did to all those held captive was so horrible and i think it was a swift justice for that moment in time.
After everything these soldiers had been through how can one really expect them to have kept composure after seeing piles of dead children and their parents . These camp workers ran an efficient mass murder factory ! I’m surprised their actions were so controlled actually .
Given what the Nazis in these camps did to other humans including babies I wouldn’t consider summary executions of them as a war crime. They worked in a factory of death and they murdered over five million souls they got a quicker death than the people they processed.
propaganda much?? 5 '' million"'??? bofuknloni
@@federalreservebrown2507 What happened to the 2.8 million Polish Jews (not to mention the other Jews) that are no longer around at the end of the war?
@@federalreservebrown2507 Putting your head up your behind much??
@@suzannehartmann946 not falling for the phony version of history brings on attacks from those who did, like you
@@shanebell2514 Ernst Zundell prevailed in the Canadian Supreme court by subpoena IRC and World Alamanc. 279,301 POWs ONLY
This was at the end of the war. A lot of the GI's had lost buddies, had suffered themselves and had enormous built up anger....and then to see this. There comes a point in all of us where we have a breaking point. Although I have never witnessed and likely never will the type of sadistic behavior perpetrated on the prisoners of Dachau, I imagine this was it, the final straw, for a lot of soldiers, who then reacted like many of us likely would have. War is war, killing is part of it. Holding these soldiers accountable for something they were trained to do? I don't think so. I think it was an easy way out for the SS. At least they didn't have to live with the horrors who have survived.
This was not a war crime. This was justice.
Innocent civilians were not harmed.
The sadistic butchers who murdered untold numbers of victims
deserved nothing but execution.
Totally agree...
To quote a vet, when I said they should have been shot on sight, he said, we fought the war to prevent that kind of thing. He was angry about it. Put them on trial. Let the law do its work.
I don't see the problem! SS were so heartless and cruel . Now they felt what so many prisoners went through.
This is an important story and a warning to present and future dictators that justice occasionally comes early.
George Patton was a great man. His actions can hardly be criticized.
God bless each and every one of those soldiers who took out those scumbags. How wonderful it must have been for the prisoners to see someone kicking their asses. I would have done it too. I wouldn't have wanted to hold myself back.
Good excuse to give vent to the brutality that is in all of us not just the Germans. You're no better than the concentration camp guards.
The video asks for my reaction. My reaction is: "Only 30? Why not more?"
Justice was served to the butchers. Evil can never be dead enough. Long live the USA service men. No guilt just doing gods work.
Evil for evil, what a motto! Self-serving platitudes, justifications for enormities that continue to this day. 500k Iraqi children "collateral damage", vermin to be eradicated by the never-erring US. wait, americans
David Harrison. USMC 64 -- 68. Vietnam 65 -- 66. Thank you very much. It seems like One day Parris Island the next day Camp Lejeune and low and behold the next day. VIETNAM. So proudly we serve. So gallantly we fight. And that is all of us. Not just the Marines. God Bless.
While in the Army 1972-1973 I toured Dachau when stationed in Germany. Saw the actual file footage when the Americans liberated the camp and all the other details of the camp first hand. It was horrifying to say the least! Still haunts me today... I believe the camp is haunted as you can feel a heaviness when you walk into the camp through the entrance gate. It's just erie. Saw to much to write here. No mention of troups massacreing gaurds but did show prisoners attacking gaurds.Tyranny is just an awful thing when perpetrated on human beings. Let's never forget the suffering of humanity in the 20th century that cost the lives of an estimated 100 million people. Pray to God this dosen't happen again, the Lord is our blessed hope..... AMEN and AMEN..
My uncle was there. He said that they put the guards in the ovens and turned them back on one last time. I asked him if they had shot them first. He replied, "We didn't waste the bullets."
right on folks, not bullets for vermin.
Dope
My great great grandma took a boat over from Poland before ww1 when all the bull shit started to happen, I want to try and trace her family. All those men had to live with those horrors, their actions were certainly just
Regarding the 300 German Nazi Soldiers that were possibly massacred.. Upon witnessing the mind numbing atrocities such as 40 rail cars filled with rotting corpses, mass graves, torture and death apparatus, and 1000s of people obviously seriously abused and tortured, I would think of those 300 Nazis as deranged twisted tortured souls who have been released from a hell of their own making, and those 1000s of souls remaining, would maybe find the beginning of healing in that. Also I'm not sure one could deal with another who is obviously psychotic, out of their flippin minds and that kind of out of control dangerous criminal any other way
Not quite the same I know but for me it sums this up quite well also….One of my very good friend’s dad served in Vietnam and when my buddy and I enlisted he sat down with us about a week before I was set to leave for basic training and after a few drinks he told us, and I’m paraphrasing here, “The army does a very fine job of training you and preparing you for basically every aspect of combat and warfare….but they can NEVER prepare you for what it’s like to see the unimaginable horrors that it brings upon the innocent civilians.” He told us he saw things there that he can never reconcile in his mind and they left obvious scars on his psyche. My buddy told me later that that was the first, and last time he’s ever heard his father talk about his experiences over there. No one who wasn’t there could ever judge how they would react to witnessing something so inhumane firsthand.
The Germans executed POWs after a failed escape attempt. What's fair is fairs, I feel no remorse for their executions.
Exactly...it was before my time... If I was there I would have done the same thing
@@mikeforte7585 Before my time too. Both the Germans, Japanese and Italians did not abuse by The Geneva Convention Rules of engagement. My Father fought in The Philippines during WW2.
Cest facile, des années plus tard, dans le calme d'un salon de venir dire que ces exécutions furent des crimes de guerre. Les SS n'ont pas eu tant d'égards pour leurs victimes, qui se sont comptées par millions, et dont les survivants ont continués a mourir après la guerre d'avoir été aussi mal traités, maltraités. En tant que fils d'un déporté parmi d'autres, je vous dénie totalement le droit de porter un jugement de valeur sur ces faits, ce que vous sous entendez s'apparente à du négationnisme. Ces SS ont eu ce qu'ils méritaient. - It was easy, years later, in the quiet of a living room to come and say that these executions were war crimes. The SS did not have so much regard for their victims, who numbered by the millions, and whose survivors continued to die after the war from having been so badly treated and mistreated. As the son of a deportee among others, I totally deny you the right to make a value judgment on these facts, what you imply is akin to negationism. Those SS got what they deserved.
I congratulate our brave soldiers who were traumatized by what they saw, and considering all options, did what had to be done. I really hope they did it well. I, to this day cannot look upon the horrors of these camps. I was born in 1942, so all this was going on during my lifetime. Sincerely & with no regret I remain at 80 years old, Sentebey in USA
War Crime? A public service is more like it. If I was there I would have willingly participated in this just revenge against these murderous monsters. There was more. When our troop in a specific area found out that the SS were murdering our unarmed POWs they dealt some rough justice on their own. In those cases not a lot of SS POWs survived. The bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki give great cause these days for hand wringing and second guessing the need for it by people ignorant of the circumstances of the times. What I wonder is why there is no ceremony honoring the 200.000 Chinese dead of Nanking or the 90.000 civilian men women and children murdered by the Japanese Imperial forces? The JIF murdered tens of thousands of innocent civilians, men women and children and you hear not a peep. The same crowd that whines about our bombing of civilian targets in Germany never mentions the 25.000 English men women and children killed by indiscriminate Nazi bombings. Read a book and you will not be subject to manipulation by the second guessers of history.
The only thing that I disagree with is that they didn’t execute all of them!
No crime just well deserved justice a judge wasn't needed I wouldn't have shot them I would have cracked their skulls
The hilarious Walt Disney Little Mermaid voiceover.
Mỹ Lai massacre (March 16, 1968) and No Gun Ri/Nogeun-ri/노근리 massacre (July 26-29, 1950) are others you can look into. Don’t see a lot of vids on those.
You're in the wrong video discussion group....and your distraction skills are childish. This is a discussion about justified mercy killing (or not). If you talked about putting rabid dogs to sleep you might have made a point.
I agree. It was justice. Anyone who thinks differently should put themselves in the shoes of those GIs who liberated that camp. I often wonder if they should have let the inmates exact justice on the guards. I am surprised the guards didn't flee when they saw the US Army heading their way.
That was not a death camp and those soldiers were every bit as influenced by propaganda as you are. The horrid conditions were caused by allied bombing of supply lines and the bodies in those cars were those who died of typhus.
if those guards had been held for trial they would have been found guilty of war crimes and hung, same end
@@raymondclark1785 Well, we'd like to think that anyways.
@@seanhammer6296 YOU are foolish or lying. We use medical procedures to this day that was developed by TORTURE on children in those camps.
They could barely stand, if at all. My dad, short stocky man, had less than 110lbs (48kg), when the camp was liberated. Skin and bones.
Anyone working at a death camp deserved exactly what they got. Death camps aren't warfare, its a crime against humainty. And all those who took part deserved what they got. There's what's right, and then there's what's right.
These men were tried in the eyes of their victims, and the GI's could clearly see what had to be done.
It was NOT a war crime.
It was JUSTICE.
JUSTICE was served.
Justice when America does it, a war crime when their enemy does it,typical American hypocrisy and double standards.
The only crime in a war Is to lose the war
2 digit IQ comment.....
It should have been 500 guards instead of fifty
Love this channel
Thank you very much friend😊
The reaction of those soldiers to the nightmare they found in Dachau is understandable.
That doesn’t make it right - and wondering how much restraint I may or may not have had in that same situation - I can’t say it was wrong.
So what was it?
It could be called extra-judicial justice. It would be about the same as coming upon someone raping a woman and shooting the rapist on the spot. The military, because it is in the business of killing people, needs to keep control over its soldiers; combat can cause such emotions that troops who are not controlled can go off the deep end. For example, troops could have gone into nearby German towns and started shooting citizens because those citizens had to have known at least some of what was occurring in the camps.
On the other hand, the troops walked into one of the most horrific organized intentional killing of mass numbers of people who were innocent of any crime at all; most of the troops had been in combat repeatedly, and the guards were crystal clearly responsible for the conditions of dead and dying, literally into the thousands. Military law held that the guards should have been detained for a proper trial as we are supposed to be a society of order and law. Effectively the trials were of near instantaneous response, and non-appointed individuals acted as judge, jury and executioners. I cannot believe anyone honest and not extremely prejudiced could say that justice was not done; not justice in terms of confinement, trial with defense attorneys and duly appointed judges and a hangman or firing squad, but in the justice that comes from deep within individuals who can immediately see pure evil in front of them. justice that comes from the most basic understanding of right, wrong, and evil.
The US has always been able to escape responsibility for atrocities, and even as we know, today still demand immunity from war crimes should they engage in military confrontation. Two to three million dead Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians consequent to indiscriminate bombings during the Vietnam conflict, the large majority innocent civilians, are an example of US murder for which no one is held accountable.
Having said that, that the concentration camp survivors went berserk and took revenge is totally understandable.
While the defense of “temporary insanity” would not be widely recognized in the courts for at least a couple of decades, it is apparent that the authorities considered the soldiers’ actions to fall under that defense. Even if the defense didn’t apply, no unbiased jury in all the world would convict them. And no prosecutor wants to try a case that can’t be won. While I don’t want to say the soldiers’ behavior should be accepted as normative, I can accept the outcome, as the soldiers’ conduct was arguably excusable under the circumstances.
You say no unbiased jury would convict , I say no unbiased jury NOT convict. So it is not a war crime to execute prisoners who have surrendered before they are "adjudicated" if "our"side does it ?
Yeah , Nurnburg was a drumhead but at least they tried to fake justice there , this is simply murder . More interesting question would be why pretend WAR has rules ? Neither side will follow them anyways , at least based on past gov actions .
Ah, another "history" guy that tells the story he wants his way.. I am 70 years old have seen my fair share of war and we all know this story and how they was going to be court marshals but ole Patten pardoned these fellows.. and rightly so.. was it right.. no.. was it understandable.. yes... You sit in your comfy room with your coffee talking over a video of things you have know understanding of.. My bet is you haven't even seen war.. I think your version is jaded and holds only limited truth.. you can not possible explain what went on there in 8 minutes and 48 seconds with fancy title and all.. this is not history.. it is a passing over and condemning of something that takes time and information (more than your have done here) to understand.. You do these people (each one that was there) an horrendous injustice with this.. It is important.. but it is important know everything about the situation before you go casting aspersions on these fellows and what these (teenagers mostly) had to deal with,
It’s a shame they didn’t get them all. Anything with SS on them should have gone to the prisoners for swift justice!
When we commit evil, it justice or perhaps a mistake.
When others commit evil, they are just plain evil.
I absolutely agree with the actions of those brave soldiers. Once upon a time we fought to win, we will be forced to do the same in the future.
So I will have to fight against you to stop war crime murder. Once a devilish person is defeated and without weapon, he is a matter of a court and nothing else. I will be proud to stop people who believe they are god, placed above the law.
The American soldiers involved had fought hard, were exhausted and battle weary and then they came across this harrowing sight that enraged them and acted understandably. Should they have done it? Probably not but I don't see any crime in what they did, an act of vengeance in the name of humanity against SS guards who had no humane instinct at all.
Apparently they didn't cover it up, you know about it. My feeling after having visited Dachau myself
is so what , also camp guards were not soldiers they were murderers.
If anything, those SS members who were lined up and shot got off very lightly. Any real form of justice would have involved what they themselves did to their countless helpless victims: they would have been humiliated, starved, tortured and worked to death over weeks and months, only prolonging their agony. By their very own standards they were treated well with a quick death.
My Mother's family went through WW2 as Prussian ppl. I think when the American Soldiers saw what the German soldiers had done to these prisoners, they lost it and took care of it themselves. Anyone who can treat another human like that deserves what they get! My Mother remembered clearly when the Americans liberated the German ppl from Russian hands. The Americans were the Saviors she said, Russians, brutal and cruel.
I agree and all of them should get medals.Can you imagine seeing the condition of that camp and the conitions of the inmates along with the brutality that was done to American prisoner.I often watch these documentaries and tears fall from my eyes,but none didnt fall when i heard what the American,i hope all of them are R.i.p
The only thing that the German guards was sorry for was they were caught, and the evidence of their cruelty was there for the allies to see.
Crime ??? They done the world a favour
I think I would do the same. I hate injustice and seeing that camp and what the S.S. did would send me over the edge.
Shit happens, My uncle, John Taylor spent 4 years in a POW camp in Poland, as liberation came close the commandant of the camp ordered their execution , the order was refused by the lower ranking officers, His incarceration traumatised him for the remainder of his life , he passed in 1990
I knew a British soldier captured in Crete. With others he was sent to a POW CAMP AT MONOWITZ. 300 yards away was the Auschwitz III CAMP for Jews. They both had to work in the gigantic 2 mile long I G Farben Plant. Dennis Avey has now passed RIP. He once changed his clothes and shaved his head to spend a night in the Jews Camp- changing back next day. See book 'I broke into Auschwitz'
This will never be a crime in my mind
I think the lads can be given a pass on this one. What the eyes of those American soldiers beheld prior to liberating the camp, and then the horror beyond words they witnessed once arriving at Dachau, I think could provide the defence of temporary insanity.
Those men were heroes. To disparage the sacrifice each soldier undoubtedly suffered is a prime example of an unthinking mind, an unfeeling heart, and an ungrateful, disgusting soul.
I think those bastard head German SS guards got their fair share of karma and payback in the end. It is also understandable why the prisoners acting the way they did, those dirty Germans killed their friends and family.
frontier justice, we need more of it
War crime?? Not to me… you get what you deserve