US soldiers scalping Germans soldiers. Did it happen?

[Sergey]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1027043.html

The Holocaust, Tarantino-style: Jews scalping Nazis

For weeks, Germany's tabloids and culture pages have been preoccupied with Quentin Tarantino's film "Inglorious Bastards," slated to start filming next week in Germany.
...
An early draft of the script leaked onto the Internet three months ago suggested the film would contain scenes of bloody vengeance exacted by Jews against Nazis. One campaign would be carried out by Jews in the U.S. Army intent on scalping Nazi soldiers on occupied French soil; another would be a Jewish refugee's revenge against the Nazi officer who murdered her parents.

Pitt is to play Jewish-American Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of a revenge squad known as "The Bastards," who launch a killing spree in which they hang, torture, disembowel and scalp German soldiers and engrave Swastikas on their foreheads, according to the leaked draft.

The film looks as absolutely unacceptable and anti-Semitic. However had something similar happened during WW2 or the film is a pure fantasy?

[Steen Ammentorp]

A post by Tonyh which added nothing to this thread was removed. Sergey has put forward a legit question pertinent to this section. Please refrain from personal comments.

/Steen Ammentorp

[JamesL]

However had something similar happened during WW2 ...

I recall reading that some members of the US 45th Infantry Division scalped German soldiers during the Anzio campaign.* The 45th was a National Guard division composed mainly of soldiers from Oklahoma. Some of the Soldiers were of Indian descent and took scalps. Needless to say the practice was not US Army policy.

As an aside, German newspapers in World War I predicted that "tomahawks and scalping knives will soon appear on the American front." (The Cologne Gazette as quoted by The New York Times, July 18, 1918.) When our local NG outfit paraded before shipping off to Iraq, they too carried tomahawks.


*Source The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy by Rick Atkinson, page 493.

[David Thompson]

I've read of a very small number of scalping incidents during WWII. I don't recall any of them involved Jews.

As a general observation, the practice of scalping requires a base camp area where the scalps can be cured, tanned, jerked or smoked to preserve them. Otherwise, the scalper has to carry around a patch of hairy, disgusting rotting meat on his belt wherever he goes.

[LWD]

That's if he plans on keeping it. I wouldn't want to be captured with a scalp on my person or even found on the bodies of any troops around me.

[David Thompson]

I wouldn't want to be captured with a scalp on my person or even found on the bodies of any troops around me.

Truly. A captured scalper invites a hair-raising fate.

[schutze_MG34]

i dont see how this is anti-semitic. There are anti-nazi films condemning their crimess and ideology etc., why not make one about jew murderers to prove that jews weren't always the victims?

[michael mills]

Here is a link to some basic information about the film:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglorious ... 2009_film)

It seems to be essentially fictional, described by tarantino as a "spaghetti western".

It is noteworthy that the film is to be produced by the Weinstein Company, which presumably did not have any ideological reservations.

[Larso]

Donald Burgett, in his volume on his Normandy experiences, wrote of his intention to scalp a dead German. Something about the dead mans surprisingly long blonde hair - it just mesmerised him. Burgett had been a hunter as a boy and I guess this sort of thing didn't seem to far from skinning small animals. Despite his best efforts he was dissauded by machine gun fire everytime he moved towards the body.....

Burgett was not religious at all though.

[tonyh]

A post by Tonyh which added nothing to this thread was removed. Sergey has put forward a legit question pertinent to this section. Please refrain from personal comments.

/Steen Ammentorp

Steen, my post had EVERYTHING to do with the thread and there was nothing "personal" in it. The simple fact is, is that Tarrantino's film is based on a 1977 Italian exploitation flick and he hasn't made anything good since "Reservoir Dogs". Also, there's about as much "history" in the original as there will be in the remake.

In addition, my question to Sergey is just as "legit" and still stands...would he have felt the same way if the movie showed a German scalping a Jew?



Tony

[Sergey]

i dont see how this is anti-semitic. There are anti-nazi films condemning their crimess and ideology etc., why not make one about jew murderers to prove that jews weren't always the victims?

I would like to explain it. Scalping itself is a barbarism. It is inhuman practice, apparent violation of laws and customs of war. So the Jews are exposed in the films as barbarians, as war criminals, as brutal force and unprepared viewer could ask a question: maybe barbarism of Jews was a cause of the Holocaust? So the film maybe unintentionally gives ground to Holocaust deniers and Holocaust diminishers. They (not me of course) could say: look both sides made bad things and if the Nazis would not try to exterminate the Jew then the Jews would exterminate the Germans.

[Sergey]

A post by Tonyh which added nothing to this thread was removed. Sergey has put forward a legit question pertinent to this section. Please refrain from personal comments.

/Steen Ammentorp

Steen, my post had EVERYTHING to do with the thread and there was nothing "personal" in it. The simple fact is, is that Tarrantino's film is based on a 1977 Italian exploitation flick and he hasn't made anything good since "Reservoir Dogs". Also, there's about as much "history" in the original as there will be in the remake.

In addition, my question to Sergey is just as "legit" and still stands...would he have felt the same way if the movie showed a German scalping a Jew?



Tony

Dear Tony, in both cases (a German scalping a Jew and a Jew scalping a German) my attitude would be equal - it is a barbarism, it is an inhuman act, it is a war crime.

Personally I stropngly oppose 'historical' films that are not based of proven facts, on historical truth. Such films vulgarise new generations. Their knowledge about history becomes primitive.

[LWD]

... in both cases (a German scalping a Jew and a Jew scalping a German) my attitude would be equal - it is a barbarism, it is an inhuman act, it is a war crime...

That does bring up a question. Was scalping a corpse a war crime during WWII? Obviously scalping a living oponnet would be. In some ways it's a very human act, however it's definitly a throwback to an eralier time and the description of barbaric is not at all unwarrented. There is also the fact that as a group the Germans committed much worse acts where it's hard to say the same about Jews with any veracity. Thus if Germans had been portrayed as doing it the divergence from history isn't as great.

[tonyh]

A post by Tonyh which added nothing to this thread was removed. Sergey has put forward a legit question pertinent to this section. Please refrain from personal comments.

/Steen Ammentorp

Steen, my post had EVERYTHING to do with the thread and there was nothing "personal" in it. The simple fact is, is that Tarrantino's film is based on a 1977 Italian exploitation flick and he hasn't made anything good since "Reservoir Dogs". Also, there's about as much "history" in the original as there will be in the remake.

In addition, my question to Sergey is just as "legit" and still stands...would he have felt the same way if the movie showed a German scalping a Jew?



Tony

Dear Tony, in both cases (a German scalping a Jew and a Jew scalping a German) my attitude would be equal - it is a barbarism, it is an inhuman act, it is a war crime.

Personally I stropngly oppose 'historical' films that are not based of proven facts, on historical truth. Such films vulgarise new generations. Their knowledge about history becomes primitive.

Then I think we'd find ourselves in agreement. I, too, find objection to historical films (especially war films) being made up largely of Hollywoodised nonsense. When one considers the vast wealth of real historical stories that's available from actual WWII occurances, it's an absolute crime in itself to produce the giberish that gets the green light on a regular basis.

In conclusion, I don't think you'll have anything to worry about regarding "Inglorious Bastards", as I don't believe Tarrantino is setting out to make anything historical in any respect. It'll be yet another example of Tarrantino's parrotting of 70's exploition movie culture.

Enjoyable to some, but I am tiring of it.


Tony

[JamesL]

I came across another 'scalping' discussion.

U. S. Army sergeant John Fulcher was a scout/sniper squad leader with the 36th Infantry Division, Texas National Guard. He was a Cherokee and others in his squad were Sioux. During the Salerno Campaign his 6 man squad ambushed a German patrol, killing 9 Germans (one was killed with a tomahawk). They scalped the German dead and then sat them up along a wall with their hands crossed in front of them. Follow up German troops were horrified to find their comrades in such condition.

Fulcher's comment: "Scalping struck fear into the Germans. It made them overcautious and leery of taking chances. If you looked at it that way, scalping was helping to win the war. It saved GI lives."

As a result Fulcher noted that American Indians captured by the Germans were put to death, regardless of whether they were snipers or not.

Source:
"One Shot One Kill - American Combat Snipers World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Beirut" by Sasser and Roberts. page 37.