The Dachau Massacre was a war crime commited by American troops at Dachau, Germany on April 29, 1945 during World War II.
Following the surrender of the town of Dachau to soldiers of the 45th Division of the US Seventh Army, more than 560 unarmed German Prisoners of War were lined up along a wall outside a Waffen SS barrack with their hands in the air and gunned down. Many of the POWs were wounded soldiers from the Eastern front unfit for duty and housed in a nearby Red Cross hospital, despite this, US soldiers entered the hospital and ordered everyone out. Hours earlier, 122 unarmed POWs had already been killed by machine gun fire including Lieutenant Heinrich Skodzensky , the Commander of the garrison. Those killed included members of the regular Wehrmacht and Waffen SS volunteers from Germany, Hungary, the Nertherlands, and Denmark. The mass execution had been ordered by Lieutenant Jack Bushyhead, without authorisation from the Seventh Army command. Bushyhead claimed the prisoners had "moved forwards when ordered to move back" but this cannot explain why the POWs were lined up in a row and two machine guns placed in front of them, and that those killed were piled up against the wall where they fell. None of the US medics present assisted any of the wounded POWs.
Lt. Col. Joseph Whitaker, the Seventh Army's Assistant Inspector General, was subsequently ordered to investigate after witnesses came forward testifying to the massacre. The soldiers involved in shooting the POWs were courtmartialed however General George Patton ordered that they receive no further penalties. Many of the documents and name tags of the POWs were subsequently destroyed and the victims buried in umarked mass graves, in violation of the Geneva Convention in regard to the treatment of war dead.
References
- Goodell, Stephen, Kevin A Mahoney; Sybil Milton (1995). "1945: The year of liberation". Washington, D.C., U.S.A.: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. ISBN: 0896047008
- Buechner, Howard A. (1986). Dachau - The Hour of the Avenger: An Eyewitness Account. Metairie, La., U.S.A: Thunderbird Press. ISBN 0913159042
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