i never said they all were a jews.
but i just know for sure that for some jewish soldiers the war was a personal vengenace.
For isntance in Red Army the jewish soldier hated the GErmans very much, and they oftem executed the POWs or killed the wounded enemy soldiers if command was not able to prevent it.
I know a lot of such cases from the Russian veterans recollections from site excellent www.iremember.ru
Also i know that in Americans army were a number of jews, weren’t they?
And of cource the jews have the personal reason for cruel vengenace - this can explain the many cruel treatment of GErmans pows.
So i guess the Jews among GIs can be impressed by view of handreds of jewish corpses in Dachau more than average native american soldier.
And probably some leutenant of jewish origin order to open fire at the unarmed SS guard.
Say that this was not possible?
The US Army did have a number of Jews. And certainly they did have a personal chip against the Germans. But the death camps were only a vague rumor with sporadic reporting until the very end and I doubt many joined with the intention of tit-for-tat killing with the Reich. More likely they had greater reason to fear for their fates if the Third Reich won. Hindsight on your part.
In fact, I’ve heard many Jewish fathers insisted that their kids go into the US Coast Guard, assuming they’d have a greater chance of survival, fearing racial and sectarian annihilation if the rumors were true and if numbers of Jewish men were killed in combat, they would lose their ethnicity…
Nobody told them that it was coast guardsmen that drove US landing craft to the beaches. Or that civilian members of the US Merchant Marine were statistically more likely to die than the average US soldier was…
And as for your question, I didn’t say that it was “impossible.” Only that there probably wasn’t a Jewish officer directly involved in giving orders for the killings nor is it likely that regular GIs are going to simply start shooting prisoners based on the orders of one low ranking (possibly) Jewish officer. In fact, if you read the text, that particular officer merely “followed orders” seemingly reluctantly, and then left…
Are you sure the reason was vengeance? Quite a lot of people would see it as Justice - after all, for a long time both the UK and Soviet Union were in favour of summary execution of captured senior Nazis, and the Nuremberg trials only happened after the US talked the Soviets around. This isn’t so very different, and is an only too human reaction to the magnitude of the crime they found. Certainly given how reluctant the Allied high command were to publicise the Holocaust until very late in the war, it is entirely possible that Allied troops in the West would not assume such people were Jewish. Why should they?
Indeed. One has to wonder why there weren’t a lot more recorded summary executions of SS…
Do you mean that Holocaust was a TOP secret for Allied troops in 1945?
But they seen it by their own eyes in Dashau.
And there were alot of jews amond dead bodies.Wny the american soldier by jewish origin couldn’t commit their own “justice” over pows?
As i said i know a plenty of such stories ( self-justice) in Red Army , commited for personal reasons.
Of course Buchner did change his story, if you look on the net his testimony from the Army enquiry exists and he makes no reference to hundreds of dead. In fact he was threatend with court martial as he left the wounded untreated (he was a medical officer) and so may have had an axe to grind against his employers. Certainly stuff I’ve read now suggest to me I was wrong and the people were camp staff and not Waffen SS as I stated earlier. In fact what the picture shows is a US Officer preventing the slaughter of all the SS, certainly on the sites I’ve seen they put a convincing argument for 50-60 dead. Certainly revisionists make a big thing of the massacre and use it to say the US Army and the SS were no different, bearing in mind that inmates were dying at 200 odd a day it doesn’t wash with me.
Very few among the Allies knew about it, and even fewer believed. The first all but a few in Intelligence knew of it was in December 1943 when Anthony Eden announced it in the House of Commons (with simultaneous announcements in Moscow and Washington). Fighting soldiers on the front line tend to have little time for outside news - they’re too busy and too cut off. It is entirely plausible that they dismissed this as little more than rumour.
Agreed that they saw a lot of dead bodies and emaciated people, speaking a whole bunch of languages the troops didn’t themselves speak. How are the American soldiers to know that these people are Jewish? The only identifying mark is a yellow star - the association of this with the Jews would not have been strong in the minds of US soldiers at the time, if it existed at all. How else are they going to realise what is going on within the first few hours, causing exclusively Jewish officers to go over the top and order a massacre? I think you’re really straying into cloud cuckoo land if you think this is the most likely explanation.
they should have they desrved it.do onto others as you want done to you.
My friend Curtus Whiteway I and R platoon G company 394th IR 99th divison was one of the first soldiers to see Dachau he liberted Camp 13 and recived Israil’s Highest Military Honor in 1994.
Here is a piece of his account. " My men and I which was comprised of a mix of US troops taken from other units and used as a special ops unit was given the task of looking for and capturing a German Officer who was supposed to be in a castle on this mountain when we were on the mountain we hear a strange sound like a whail crossed with a moan so we decided to check it out, when we got to the gate we found 3 jewish men hanging by their private parts strung up with piano wire.
I orderded my men to cut them down some of the men became sick at this site this was one of the first camps liberated we entered the camp and then the fight was on there were still SS Gards there and we had an all out fight with them it was bloody I entered one of the prison barracs where there was a woman lying there and I sat her up so she could watch as my men gave them the business (the germans) . Later we made the female gards bury the dead.
Later after the war was over and Sargent Whiteway was on leave in Colonge a woman grabbed him and started crying and thanking him and he was like who are you? then she explained and started giving them food and wine she had recovered and was now healthy and working at the cafe where they were eating…
One other incident which I find to be important is up unill about 2004 Curtus couldnt understand why the germans who captured him during the bulge had beaten him up and the History professor at Johnson state college asked hm “Curtus are you circumsized?” Reply “yes why would that matter?” “they probably thought you were jewish”
“sometimes you have to use the enemys ways to defete them” Better the lesser of two evils than the greater evil"
Irony He wasnt even jewish
war brings out the worst in men.
Ask yourself this Boys what would you have done in their situation?
All we can expect from soldiers is to try to uphold the greatest of nobel beliefs as best as possible under the worst circomestances.
you can quote me on that one.
Dachau wasn’t a death camp it was a concentration camp, over two thirds of its inmates were political prisoners from all over Europe, only one third was Jewish
I think Chevan is harboring some anti semetic intentions on this tread who cares what Nationality or religion somone is soldier’s do horrible things to each other in times of war and extreme stress.
JUDAISM is a Religion Not a RACE!
Of course, the reasons for the Dachau incident must be understood and taking in consideration the great stress that American soldiers had gone through during previous battles and at the sight of whatever horrific scenes they found at Dachau…NOT! As with many other things and events, we’re quick to excuse the behavior of those that fought on “our” side while vilifying the actions of our enemies.
The Waffen SS soldiers who were executed at Dachau weren’t the guards of the camp. THey were assigned to a garrison not too far from the camp. They weren’t in charge of the camp and at no time had any relationship with the camp operation. Not only was this a war crime, but it was also a case of blaming “the just for the sinners”.
There were also reports by survivors that Americans killed unarmed men at the hospital. There is also a report that LT. Walsh himself shot four soldiers that had surrenedered to him, soldiers that were later finished off by a private. Of course, just like it happened at Nuremberg, any mention of American atrocities gets “stricken out”. After all, how could it possibly be true that Americans could so such a thing?
As for the reasons why anyone would do this, whether it becomes personal or not, perhaps is something that could more easily be explained by the theory of “mob mentality”. Who knows? Whatever the reason, it is certainly not enough to excuse it. More than in any country in the world, except perhaps Britain, history in the US tends to be treated with a tendency for “heroification”. Our men and leaders can do little wrong. By doing so, not only are we not telling the whole truth, but we’re also feeding the same self righteousness that so many other countries loathe us for. We also make it impossible for our society to learn from our mistakes. How can we learn from mistakes that “we’ve never made”? Who has heard of Schnelessy (sp?) and his court martial for indiscriminately killing several civilians in a German village during an apparent drunken rampage? I was certainly not taught about that in school. Every time that Dachau or any other questionable action by Americans is brought into conversation or discussion, there are always those who immediately wave our flag in the faces of those that question history as it has been told. As if to tell the truth was unpatriotic. I think it is more patriotic to tell the truth and then seek redemption and a way for those mistakes never to be made again, than to slide them under the rug and keep committing the same mistakes over and over again.
This history will be continuilally rewritten for years to come as more personal stories come out, Blame the mad men who started the madness soldiers are but pawns in a bigger picture and when you send children off to war what do we expect?
All armies in WW II comitted crimes Patriotism is an even sadder excuse for all of this, right or wrong History is written by the winners Imagine what history would be like today if the Natzis had won?
Better the lesser of two evils than the greater evil I say and good on the soldiers who tried to stop the Shooting.
Payback is a bitch the SS comitted far more atrocities on a far larger scale than anything the Americans could have ever done in WW II, and killing of prisoners was wholsale with the German Army I have personal accounts to prove this, And for someone who has never been in long term combat or ever been in the Military you shouldnt judge the actions of Boy / Soldiers subject to a brutality they shouldnt have been in in the first place.
Place Blame where it is due The German people allowed their Governemt to do what ever they wanted regardless of other nations sovrenty, they cast the first stone and killed far more POW’s Than any army in History/excluding the Imperial Army.
Throwing Mud on the memories of soldiers who erred under extreme conditions while fighting for our freedoms is small and juvinile you aught to be thanking them for making mistakes hence a lesson learned.
Instead of trying to compare the crimes nothing NOTHING American soldiers did can compare to the Atrocities the Germans comitted In the second world war. Nothing,
If you disagree then explain that to the MILLIONS of people the Germans deported Murdered and the HUGE amount of destruction that was caused by one nation led out of controll by a Little madman corporal Hiltler.
Now Chevan states personal reasons, How about watching your friends die in a war caused by the guys you are fighting then watch them taken prisoners through a field glass and shot, hmm put yourself in that situation wouldnt you want some payback? War is personal to the Soldiers when it’s just you and your foxhole buddy.
Our generation shouldn’t even try to compare us with them it’s pointless that was then this is now, how about trying to live up to a greater moral and ideal to never repete the mistakes of the past and to abolish Ignornance and Racisim, and foster something better.
I’ve stayed away from this paticular site for may reasons this being one you cant rewite history only learn from or add to it I find far to many revisionist here on this site and subtle racisits, I personally have ZERO Patience, Humor or sypathy for these types of people.
My Grandfather had nightmares the rest of his life because of that war he earned 4 bronze stars for his actions not to mention the silver star and he was in malmedy the day after the massacare.
They did what they did so we wouldnt have to fight wars like that again and do we learn? Right and wrong are opinions reality is another thing.
BRO forever semper peratus
Place Blame where it is due The German people allowed their Government to do what ever they wanted regardless of other nations sovrenty, they cast the first stone and killed far more POW’s Than any army in History/excluding the Imperial Army.
…I disagree with this statement. I think the German elections to put Hitler into Power were recorded in history as being rigged. I also don’t think the German people knew that Hitler would turn out to be a monster. You are saying that Germans knew about the concentration camps etc…Well, I have 7 Uncles on my father side and 9 uncles on my mothers side who were born in Germany in WW-2. Some were in the war and others not. My grandparents were in the war. Nobody knew about the concentration camps. Some still to this day can’t believe it and are shocked that nobody knew. If they did, I am sure there would have been an uprising. Germans are not all evil just because the stupid Hitler brainwashed some to do his dirty work. Hitler hid the dirty stuff very guarded. The German people are not be blamed for ALLOWING Hitler to do whatever he wanted. Hitler and his henchmen are to blame. When Idi Amyn killed hundred thousand Ugandans do you blame all Ugandans? No, You blame the dictator and those that served under him. I take offence that your statement blames the German people for allowing Hitler to power. Leave the German people alone. Blame those in power and those that exercised the power for abuse.
oh ok so then he didnt have speach after speach about how evil the jew gypsies were or excluding them of their rights and so on and so forth? Interesting anyone who says that the german people were 100% unaware of their masters doings or that the camps existed needs their head to be checked. I also suppose that the hundres of thousands of propaganda books and posters making the JEW out to be the greatest evil didnt exist either get real. Sure not all germans were for Hitler many many people tried to stop him and were “sent to the camps” pretending that your forfathers had ZERO Idea what was going on is rediculous your false pride clouds your view of reality Have you ever been in combat ? have you ever been shot at shell bombed for months at a time?
Untill you have been in the situation those soldiers were in you have ZERO right to judge them or their actions.
Me well thats another issue you have your opinion I have mine the blessing of Democracy is we dont have to agree or see eye to eye. Unlike 30’s Germany.
Ironic that my forfathers are German and Itilian on one side you should read everything I wrote before you take sides or offence you need the get some prespective also 70 years ago things were very different.
While I agree that it is wrong to accuse all Germans alive during the Nazi era of being pro-Nazi, it is not credible that only those in the government or the party knew what was going on. It is argued (see following quote) by one historian that most Germans had some knowledge of what was happening to the Jews and that the relationship between many Germans and the Nazi Party / Government was bound up with critical issues of national identity and survival.
It is a convenient cop-out to put all the blame on Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy. They didn’t force people to participate in Kristallnacht; to boycott Jewish businesses; to volunteer for the SS and Waffen SS; and so on. The people who supported the Nazis couldn’t be blind to their racial policies and intentions and they share the blame for everything the German Government did, although there are different degrees of support and knowledge which result in different degrees of guilt or responsibility. Germans who didn’t support the Nazis don’t share any blame.
Fear of Germany’s destruction drove Nazism’s appeal, scholar says
6/17/08
Craig Chamberlain, Education Editor
217-333-2894; cdchambe@illinois.eduCHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Seventy-five years after the Nazis rose to power, historians still struggle to explain how the Nazis could take such effective hold of Germany and bring it to such murderous extremes in war and in the Holocaust.
In a new book that draws extensively on German diaries and letters of the period (1933-45), University of Illinois historian Peter Fritzsche argues that much of the Nazis’ appeal was driven by deep German fears of national destruction. At the same time, however, most Germans ultimately were not seduced by Hitler and the Nazis, but made deliberate and informed political choices.
The politics of the Third Reich were “premised on both supreme confidence and terrifying vulnerability; both states of mind co-existed and continuously radicalized Nazi policies,” Fritzsche writes in his introduction to “Life and Death in the Third Reich,” published by Harvard University Press.
“The sense of ‘can do’ was wrapped in ‘must do’ ” – including the eventual large-scale murder of Jews, which most Germans were well aware of – because they believed they were fighting for their very existence as a nation, he writes. “The Nazis delivered upon their enemies the very destruction they imagined awaited Germans.”
“It is a huge enabling thing, this worldview,” Fritzsche said. “The perpetrator murders because he believes he is a victim.” It meant “being able to accept almost everything.”
The Nazis shared with many Germans a strong sense of victimhood resulting from the nation’s defeat in World War I, followed immediately by revolution. It was the foundation on which the Nazis built their racial ideology and a national sense of community, and through which many Germans were attracted to Nazi ways of thinking.
The Nazis “completely mobilized the ground on which they stood,” Fritzsche writes, meaning they thoroughly understood the German sense of vulnerability and used it.
“Life and death were thus deeply entangled in the Third Reich,” he writes. “The ways in which Nazism promoted an ideal of German life were inextricably linked to the near-death they believed Germany had suffered in 1918.”
Ultimately, it led to a “dynamic of unconditional destruction that led to the Holocaust. Given these aims, German life meant death.”
In his book, Fritzsche documents that Germans knew quite a bit about the Holocaust, starting with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, during which Jews were killed en masse. The knowledge was common enough that Germans on the home front were warned by the government in 1942 that they would hear some “pretty hard stuff” from soldiers returning on leave from the eastern front, Fritzsche said.
Rather than being duped or seduced by Hitler and the Nazis, German citizens, to a large extent, made “deliberate, self-conscious, and knowledgeable political choices,” Fritzsche writes. National Socialism “exerted strong pressure on citizens to convert” to Nazi ideas and ways of thinking, he writes. But it also designed institutional settings, such as community camps, in which citizens had to grapple with many of the issues involved.
National Socialism “did not succeed through seduction or paralysis or hypnosis. It was by turns unsettling and meaningful to millions of people,” he writes. In letters and diaries, as well as reports from visitors at the time, Germans showed a surprising willingness to discuss their political experiences, he writes.
“The National Socialist revolution intensified self-scrutiny,” Fritzsche writes. Individuals “debated for themselves the whole question of becoming – of becoming a National Socialist, a comrade, a race-minded German, of remaining true to the old or joining the new.” They grappled with questions of fitting in or going along, with the morality of anti-Jewish policies and the conduct of the war.
“The outcome of these examinations varied from person to person,” Fritzsche writes, but “this struggle is what Germans came to share in the Third Reich.”
In the ongoing historical debate about to what extent Germans became Nazis during the years 1933-45, Fritzsche makes the case that “more Germans were Nazis and Germans more National Socialist than was previously thought.”
Fritzsche also found in diaries and letters that “Hitler was not the central figure that one might think” for those living under the Third Reich. “The political scene in most diaries involves the local activities of the National Socialists and their auxiliary organizations … The Nazi project, not Hitler’s charisma, was the main point of orientation; Nazi ideas, and not Hitler’s words, the guiding maxims,” he writes.
Even after years of researching the topic, Fritzsche says “the whole phenomenon of Nazism represents a fundamental challenge to explanation.”
Given that the Nazis “redescribed the world, and got the German people to go along some of the way, scholars need to take seriously National Socialist ideology and its concepts of community, nation, and race,” Fritzsche writes.
“The Nazis are frightening because they expanded notions of what is politically and morally possible in the modern world.”
http://news.illinois.edu/NEWS/08/0617nazis.html
For a summary of a contemporary personal perspective by a German under the Nazis, see http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/germany-1933.htm
See also http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html from which the following quote is taken, which illustrates just one of the moral and practical complexities facing Germans who were not ardent Nazis.
“I can tell you,” my colleague went on, “of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn’t an anti-Nazi. He was just—a judge. In ’42 or ’43, early ’43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an ‘Aryan’ woman. This was ‘race injury,’ something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a ‘nonracial’ offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party ‘processing’ which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the ‘nonracial’ charge, in the judge’s opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom.”
“And the judge?”
“Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience—a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That’s how I heard about it.) After the ’44 Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don’t know.”
There were complex historical, economic, social and political issues leading to the rise and continuance of the Nazi regime and there is no ‘one size fits all Germans’ explanation, justification, or excuse for it.
I am not saying that the Germans didn’t hate the Jews. I think they did. I also think lots of countries hated the Jews. My own city of Toronto had signs on the beach saying No Jews allowed. There is no denying that many Universities in America and Canada put quota’s on how many Jews can enrol. America sent a ship load of Jews back to Germany who were trying to escape during the war years. BUT, I do not believe that the Germans knew that the Jews were going to be gassed or killed. Just because the Jews were used as a scapegoat by Hitler to incite hatred amongst the German people does not dictate that the German people were all killers and wanted the Jews dead. I am not an expert as RS with my reading material, but I can tell you first hand what I know from my large extended family who lived during the war years in Altona Hamburg. No one thought of killing nor knew of the Jew gassing. I know Hitler talked a lot of bad things about the Jews at his speech’s but did he actually make a speech telling the German people that he was going to gas the Jews? If he did then I will retract my statement and be quiet. But I don’t believe he did, and just because the Germans and many Europeans of the time (probably also Australia but I am not sure) hated or disliked the Jews, does not mean people would actually agree to exterminate them. I think that no normal person, regardless of the times, would agree to that. As for Hitler and his Jew hatred, I haven’t met a single German who did not hate Hitler for what he did to the Jews.(Unless you are Neo-Nazi) No one ever said that Hitler was great for doing what he did to the Jews, BUT they will say that Hitler was great for what he did for unemployment, unity, economy etc. If so many Germans knew about the Jew gassings then why were they so shocked when they heard about it after the war. You can’t say they out to know or should have known or did know. Maybe we will never know the answer, but I firmly believe that the majority were kept in the dark about the gassings but, yes they did unfortunately hate the Jews, just like many other countries, although much much stronger in Germany. Didn’t Italy hate the Jews too?..if not they probably hated the Sicilians. It seems there is always someone to hate and that is what makes this world so cold. Peace out and I respect your opinion 