The US 45th Infantry Division at Dachau

[ZARATHUSTRA]

Interesting fact is that the US 45th Inf Division liberated Dachau and did a little dirty work of their own.

In 1920, the 45th Infantry Division was formed from elements of the National Guard units of Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. When it was first formed, the Division wore an ancient symbol of good luck, the swastika. When Hitler came to power, the division wisely adopted a new symbol, the Thuderbird.

I wonder if their old symbol was to be bad luck, at Dachau as number of Germans were lined up against a wall and told to stand there with their hands up. Over time, they began to lower their hands. A soldier set up a machine gun, in order to guard them, and when the prisoners saw this they began to move, thinking they were about to be shot. At this point the machine gunner opened fire, numerous testimonies mention only a short burst, of this group about 17 were killed. Most of the rest of the group hit the ground, at the urging of an older German prisoner on the scene. Three remained standing, no doubt in shock. An officer or senior non-com saw all of this happening, and immediately went over and kicked the machine gunner in the back, asking him what he was doing. The gunner looked up and was crying. This officer pulled out his pistol and fired several shots into the air, attempting to restore order.

There were several other shootings at the camp at the time of the liberation. Col. Howard A. Buechner Medical Corps A.U.S. Ret. documents 122 Killed on the spot, 40 Killed by camp inmates, 12 Machine gunned by "Birdeye", 346 Machine-gunned by Lt. Bushyhead. 520 is the total thus executed. There were half a dozen recommendations for courts martial at the time (including Lieutenant Bushyhead), according to the Inspector General's report.

[Dan W.]

Please see the thread "Warcrimes" in this same section. This has been argued recently. Buechner has been discredited by most, and his figure of 520 is grossly exaggerated.

Please look here

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/pack ... ideo.shtml

[StandartenfuehrerSS]

‘Please see the thread "Warcrimes" in this same section. This has been argued recently. Buechner has been discredited by most, and his figure of 520 is grossly exaggerated.’

The usual hollow baloney. They ‘discredited’ him, or tried to at least, because they could not deal with the facts and therefore had to try the backhand strategy. Mr. Weakly tells us that even the figure of 520 is ‘grossly exaggerated’ but fails to provide any sources, facts, data or orders that would support this point.


‘Please look here

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/pack ... ideo.shtml’

Utterly expendable. A stupid link with what, some interviews where the interrogated persons either lied their socks off or can’t remember the day or hour? I refer to my postings in the ‘war crimes’ thread for a rebuttal of the lies of the friends and admirers of mass murderers.


Zarathustra:

Thank you for your posting in the judophile colony, the ‘holocaust & war crimes ‘ section.

Your number of 17 executed men at 12:05 by a soldier nicknamed ‘Birdeye’ is correct, when we look at the official U.S. documents. Buechner, however, puts the number at 12. The U.S. report is doubtful, although it questions correctly, and proves them as lies, the testimonial of Lt. Walsh (the one who murdered Wickert) regarding the killings of the six SS soldiers in Tower B who had just surrendered, and the shooting of the four soldiers in the train wagon and their subsequent death by having their heads bashed in by the ‘innocent’ yankees.

The total number of executed SS soldiers, however, is 560. The 40 men you left out were:

30: killed during ‘combat fighting’ inside the camp.
10: temporally escaped, were brought back and clubbed to death by the camp inmates, Polish camp inmates.

We can dismiss Mr. Weakly and the clique of U.S. judophile-apelogist by picture evidence alone. The picture you posted, I posted a same but larger and clearer version below, clearly shows more than 17 and even 40 bodies. It shows about sixty German Waffen-SS soldiers, most of them dead, several still alive, but wounded. But let me also remind you, this is but a fragment of the entire scene. As we also learn from the picture, they were executed lined up behind the hospital compound, a wall which was longer than pictured. This picture indicates the ‘final killing spree’, the shooting of the last 346 German soldiers. They were lined up in three packs, the one we see is the middle group. Somewhat more to the left, were the inmates doing their grisly work. To the right, were two more groups of lines up men. As you can see, they were lined up closely together to make the killing easier.

[Roberto]

Yawn …

As I already said in my post of Apr 05, 2002 7:10 pm on the thread

warcrimes
http://thirdreichforum.com/phpBB2/viewt ... e168f98d24 :

For poor Stafü, the world falls apart if someone reasonably points out that the one version of events he blindly relies on, produced more than 40 years after the event by a witness who gave a somewhat different account at the time, may not be the most accurate.

Once again:

Instead of flying at all your opponents, calling them names and mumbling a lot of incoherent nonsense, you should think whether you might not be more convincing if you showed us how Buechner's account is corroborated by other sources you claim to have studied. A comparison of the pertinent passages of Buechner's account, Whitlock's account and the US documents declassified in 1991 would allow readers to judge for themselves and have the additional effect of arousing interest and providing detailed information about this relatively unknown massacre. Merely screaming "Buechner's version [the one in his book, that is; there seems to have been s previous one] is more accurate than all others, and anyone who doubts that is an idiot" is not likely to enhance your credibility. On the contrary, it is likely to make an ever greater number of your fellow posters see you as a sorry gibbering moron.

Still waiting for that comparison …

[R. J. Kimmel]

As a U.S. Army Combat Veteran, in my opinion, the 45th Division made up of mostly American Indians, at least this first company that went in to Dachu, was a discrace to their uniform. Some of the inmates were permitted to have weapons, which now made them partisans (illegal soldiers) and no longer inmates.

Richard

KILROY [retired] WAS HERE

EXPERTS: THOSE WONDERFUL CREATURES WITH THEIR HEADS STUCK IN THE SANDS OF TIME... CHASING WINDMILLS

[Roberto]

What is more interesting than the Buechner vs. Walsh vs. Bushyhead vs. etc. controversy, in my opinion, is the question why soldiers of the 45th ID behaved the way they did at Dachau.

Certainly the gruesome spectacle of 2,310 concentration camp inmates who had died of starvation and thirst inside railway cars prompted the rage that led to the massacre. But other American and British units came upon similar scenes of horror when they liberated concentration camps without having reacted the way the 45th ID did. On the other hand, soldiers of this division are also known to have killed prisoners of war in cold blood during the invasion of Sicily.

So the question is, what made the 45th ID into, as it seems to have been, an atrocity-prone outfit?

[R. J. Kimmel]

So the question is, what made the 45th ID into, as it seems to have been, an atrocity-prone outfit?[/quote]

These American Indians must have been high on fire-water or loco-weed!

Richard

KILROY [retired] WAS HERE

EXPERTS: THOSE WONDERFUL CREATURES WITH THEIR HEADS STUCK IN THE SANDS OF TIME... CHASING WINDMILLS

[Roberto]

So the question is, what made the 45th ID into, as it seems to have been, an atrocity-prone outfit?

These American Indians must have been high on fire-water or loco-weed!

Richard

Is that meant to be a serious answer, or do you have a problem with Native Americans?

[Dan W.]

I think he may have a problem with minorities in general. Just because someone is a vet does not give them the right to make racial slurs.

However, getting back to your question, it indeed is worth looking into.
Perhaps because they were a National Guard unit they were not as well trained or disciplined as some of the other Divisions.

Of the links, one is for the 45th Division, and the other is Native Americans in combat. The last link is their chronology and composition.

http://www.45thdivisionmuseum.com/

http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/NAWWII.html

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/documents/et ... ID-ETO.htm

[Ebusitanus]

Roberto, yet again you find glarring omisions and discredited statements when it comes to the guys with the Stahlhelm.
Your doublestandard in accepting or discarding information amazes me sometimes. Eye witness accounts of Allied atrocities have no validity due the long time elapsed since the events...You have then no problem justifying such scenes as "passion crimes" and understandable due to the situation. Yet, scenes of shootings of partisans by German troops are horrible and unjustificable, if not outright political-racial motivated mass executions. I wonder how German troops were supposed to behave when confronted with mutilated bodies of comrades...I guess "passion crimes" are an imposible feat for the cold harded Teutons. Please, please keep objective, will ya?

As much as I can find Stafu's retoric insulting or demagogic, sometimes you are not very far behind in your personal attacks.

PD: I see that the Hungarian Hollocaust website still uses the executed Waffen SS soldiers among their images without propper captioning. I thought you said you would take care of that.

[Roberto]

Ebusitanus,

The discussion on this thread is a continuation of the one on the thread

warcrimes
http://thirdreichforum.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 47d8c152e5

If you had read through that thread, you would know that the issue is not my trying to discredit a witness to Allied war crimes in order to deny or play down those crimes. The issue is that there are a number of eyewitness accounts to the Dachau massacre which differ considerably, and that the account provided by Mr. Buechner in his book is substantially different not only from those of other witnesses to the event, but also from his own deposition made at the time.

That being so, and considering that Standartenführer considers Buechner the only valid authority and flies in rage at anyone who challenges his contention, I have asked Standartenführer to let us have a comparison of Buechner’s present-day version of events and those of other witnesses and explain why he considers Buechner’s present-day account to be more reliable than all others. This he hasn’t done yet.

For the future, I recommend a more detailed reading of the debate in question. That should keep you from seeing ghosts and raising unsubstantiated accusations of “double standards”.

As to my having no problem with “justifying” Allied crimes as “passion crimes”, I used the latter term once in regard to a fellow poster’s account of how his grandfather, then a soldier in the British army, stabbed to death a Bergen-Belsen guard. Hardly a “justification”, and even less so a basis for making a generalizing statement about a tendency of mine to “justify” Allied crimes.

As to my “personal attacks” being no different from those of Standartenführer, there is one fellow poster who has praised my restraint in discussing with this gentleman. With all due respect for your opinion, I think you are making a rather inappropriate comparison – even though I admittedly have the habit of responding in kind to personal attacks.

[ZARATHUSTRA]

Ebusitanus,

The issue is that there are a number of eyewitness accounts to the Dachau massacre which differ considerably, and that the account provided by Mr. Buechner in his book is substantially different not only from those of other witnesses to the event, but also from his own deposition made at the time.

Medorjurgen your disbelieve in everything that make's Germans look like the victims astounds me.

Most of the material I post here comes from the US Holocaust museum, and your disbelieve of USA Col Buechner's testimony, who certainly has no axe to grind in this affair, is beyond my comprehension.

The picture above is as clear a picture of any murderous event you can find, the clarity is far superior to most pictures of the era, and it is readily admitted to by the US Holocaust Museum, The caption at the museum reads, American soldiers execute SS camp guards who have been lined up against a wall during the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. [Photograph #26282].

For you to blatantly question that such an act did not occurred or is considerably different is absurd, what could differ significantly from that picture?

Any comment you make is so filled with prejudice, that to read your statements can only be regarded as an example of the psychotic effects resulting from those who have been completely brainwashed.

Now here is another picture from the US Holocaust Museum you might comment on.

The bodies of SS guards, who were shot by American troops, lie on the edge of the moat at the base of a guard tower in Dachau. [Photograph #49310]

Or is such a comment worth your or my time, as I already know what your answer will be.

[Dan W.]

I don't think Medojurgen is denying that the atrocities occurred. What is in dispute is this ridiculous figure of 520 Germans executed. This is simply preposterous, and just because some crackpot threw this figure out some want to run with it and accept it as fact.

Do you remember how many U.S. G.I.'s were shot at Malmedy? What Buechner proposes is that almost ten times as many Germans were lined up and shot. Think about it. It simply is not true, and this individual has been discredited by practically everyone else who was there.

[Roberto]

[quote]Medorjurgen your disbelieve in everything that make's Germans look like the victims astounds me.[quote]

Cut out the crap, buddy. I’m not saying that Buechner is necessarily lying. But he is only one of several witnesses and the account in his book strongly contradicts not only the accounts of other witnesses, but also his own deposition at the time. So it’s not too much to ask for a comparative assessment of all available eyewitness accounts to the events in question, don’t you think so? The result may well be that Buechner is 100 % right and everyone else lied, but that has to be demonstrated.

Coming from someone who is more likely than not to dismiss any number of eyewitness accounts regarding Nazi crimes, however coherent, coincident and corroborated by other evidence, the fuss you are making is nothing short of ridiculous.