World History

- Liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp, April 19, 1945. The BRUTAL Reaction of US Soldiers after Discovering a HORRIFYING Death Camp in WWII.
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and US Troops at the Liberation of Dachau concentration camp on April 19, 1945. The actual number of SS Guards killed that day is unknown but estimates range from 30-100. The count varies based on reports made by US officials and the later accounts of American soldiers-witnesses.
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- More, https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/liberation-of-dachau

- DACHAU LIBERATION REPRISALS. During the Dachau liberation reprisals, German SS troops were killed by U.S. soldiers and concentration camp internees at the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945, during World War II. It is unclear how many SS men were killed in the incident, but most estimates place the number killed at around 35–50. In the days before the camp's liberation, SS guards at the camp had forced 7,000 inmates on a death march that resulted in the death of many from exposure and shooting. When Allied soldiers liberated Dachau, they were variously shocked, horrified, disturbed, and angered at finding the massed corpses of internees, and by the combativeness of some of the remaining guards who allegedly fired on them.

.. Killings by the inmates: Walenty Lenarczyk, a prisoner at Dachau, stated that following the camp's liberation "prisoners swarmed over the wire and grabbed the Americans and lifted them to their shoulders... other prisoners caught the SS men... The first SS man elbowed one or two prisoners out of his way, but the courage of the prisoners mounted, they knocked them down and nobody could see whether they were stomped or what, but they were killed."
> Elsewhere in the camp SS men, Kapos and informers were beaten badly with fists, sticks and shovels. There was at least one incident where US soldiers looked away as two prisoners beat a German guard to death with a shovel, and Lt. Bill Walsh witnessed one such beating. Another soldier witnessed an inmate stomping on an SS trooper's face until "there wasn't much left." When the soldier said to him, "You've got a lot of hate in your heart," he simply nodded.

An American chaplain was told by three young Jewish men, who had left the camp during liberation, that they had beaten to death one of the more sadistic SS guards when they discovered him hiding in a barn, dressed as a peasant.

- United States Army investigation: Lt. Col. Joseph Whitaker, the Seventh Army's Assistant Inspector General, was ordered to investigate after witnesses came forward testifying about the killings. He issued a report on June 8, 1945, called the Investigation of Alleged Mistreatment of German Guards at Dachau, also known as The I.G. Report. In 1991, an archived copy was found in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and made public. Whitaker reported that close to the back entrance to the camp, Lt. William P. Walsh, commander of Company "I", 157th Infantry, shot four German soldiers in a boxcar who had surrendered to him. Pvt. Albert C. Pruitt then climbed into the boxcar and performed a coup de grâce on the wounded men.

After he had entered the camp, Walsh, along with Lt. Jack Bushyhead, the executive officer of Company "I", organized the segregation of POWs into those who were members of the Wehrmacht and those who were in the SS. The SS were marched into a separate enclosure and shot by members of "I" Company with several different types of weapons. The investigation resulted in the U.S. military considering courts-martial against those involved, including battalion commander Lt. Col. Felix Sparks, while Lt. Howard Buechner was cited in the report for dereliction of duty for not giving medical aid to the wounded SS men in the coal yard. However, Gen. George S. Patton, recently appointed military governor of Bavaria, chose to dismiss the charges. Therefore, the witnesses to the killings were never cross-examined in court. Col. Charles L. Decker, an acting deputy judge advocate, concluded in late 1945 that, while there had probably been a violation of international law, "in the light of the conditions which greeted the eyes of the first combat troops, it is not believed that justice or equity demand that the difficult and perhaps impossible task of fixing individual responsibility now be undertaken"...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals



- Soldiers of the U.S. Seventh Army guard SS prisoners in a coal yard at Dachau concentration camp during its liberation. April 29, 1945 (U.S. Army photograph).