Alleged massacre of POWs at Webling

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Alleged massacre of POWs at Webling

#1

Post by David Thompson » 27 May 2004, 19:05

On George Duncan's WWII massacre website is this incident:
THE WEBLING ATROCITY
(April, 1945)

On the same day that the Dachau Concentration Camp was discovered, a massacre took place in the little hamlet of Webling, about ten kilometres from the camp. A Waffen-SS unit had arrived at the hamlet, which consisted of about half a dozen farm houses, barns and the Chapel of St. Leonhard, to take up defensive positions in trenches dug around the farms by French POW workers. Their orders were to delay the advance of American tanks of the 20th Armoured Division and infantry units of the 7th. US Army which was approaching Dachau. The farms, mostly run by women (whose husbands were either dead, prisoners of war or still fighting) with the help of French POWs, came under fire on the morning of 29th.April causing all inhabitants to rush for the cellars. One soldier of Company F of the US 222nd Infantry Regiment of the 42nd Rainbow Division, was killed as they entered the hamlet under fire from the Waffen-SS unit. The first German to emerge from the cellar was the owner of the farm, Herr Furtmayer. He was promptly shot dead. Informed by the French POWs that only civilians, not SS, were in hiding in the cellers, the GIs proceeded to round up the men of the SS unit. First to surrender was an officer, Freiherr von Truchsess, heading a detachment of seventeen men. The officer was immediately struck with a trenching tool splitting his head open. The other seventeen were lined up in the farmyard and shot. On a slight rise behind the hamlet, another group of eight SS were shot. Their bodies were found lying in a straight line with their weapons and ammunition belts neatly laid on the ground. This would suggest that the men were shot after they surrendered. Altogether, one SS officer and forty one men lay dead as the infantry regiment proceeded on their way towards Dachau. Next day the local people, with the help of the French POWs, buried the bodies in a field to be later exhumed by the German War Graves Commission and returned to their families.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres.html
Does anyone have any additional information on this event? It appears as No. 14 on the "Seidler-De Zayas list" of alleged American war crimes at:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=46211

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#2

Post by Rob - wssob2 » 28 May 2004, 05:23

Andrew Mollo’s 1980 ATB article is the first printed source that I know.
I wrote a lengthy post about this article at

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=365309


There’s some biographical details about Freiherr von Truchsess at
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=261007

It’s interesting to note that he was assigned to the HSSPF Munich office in Feb 1945. Also that he served in the SS Cavalry Brigade starting in May 1941 – which may indicate that he was in the unit during the massacres later that summer in the Pripet Marshes.


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#3

Post by David Thompson » 28 May 2004, 05:31

Thanks, Rob, for your invaluable help, as ever.

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#4

Post by michael mills » 28 May 2004, 06:06

Rob-WSSOB,

What is the point you are trying to make?

Are you obliquely denying that the alleged summary execution took place?

Are you inferring that the Mollo article is the obly source of information about the alleged massacre, and that the information in it is false? If that is what you are inferring, are you able to demonstrate that the claim of a massacre was not corroborated by the French POWs who supposedly witnessed it? Or are you saying that there were in fact no French POWs there at all?

Are you, as a fall-back position, implying that if the summary execution of the captured SS-men did in fact take place, they were by definition all war criminals and that therefore the execution, even if irregular, was a form of rough justice?

I do not know anything about this alleged summary execution at all. But if you think you can prove that it did not take place and the local villagers were lying, or conversely that it did take place but the executed men were all war criminals who thoroughly deserved their punishment, then please present your evidence, rather than simply making insinuations.

By the way, Rob, at the end of your critique of the Mollo article, you wrote the following:
Given that, I imagine that GI’s would be ruthless to eliminate any resistence whatsoever – the sooner they killed the Nazi beast, the sooner they could get home to Brooklyn in one piece.
Would not that rationalisation also apply to the behaviour of German soldiers in the Soviet Union? After all, the Bolshevik regime had a pretty unsavoury reputation; as of June 1941, the number of its victims was vastly greater than that of the victims of National Socialist Germany up to that point.

And the commissars were leading supporters of the Bolshevik regime, and could well have been involved in the innumerable crimes committed by that regime; so perhaps the german soldiers were justified in summarily executing them.

Perhaps the Germans thought that the sooner they killed the Jewish Bolshevik beast, the sooner they could get home to Wedding in one piece.

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#5

Post by Rob - wssob2 » 28 May 2004, 06:54

What is the point you are trying to make?
DT asked if anyone had any additional information, and I provided 2 links.
Are you obliquely denying that the alleged summary execution took place?
It is commonly assumed some sort of summary execution took place at Webling, based on an article written by WWII historian. I am challenging that common assumption, saying that we need more corroborating sources and additional evidence.
Are you inferring that the Mollo article is the obly source of information about the alleged massacre,
It is the oldest source that I have seen. I have also seen other, more recently published sources refer to it. Based on my research so far, it appears to be the first source of information about the alleged massacre.

and that the information in it is false?
As I pointed out in my post, I think Mollo made a lot of assumptions and speculations – too many to definitely claim this incident was a war crime.
If that is what you are inferring, are you able to demonstrate that the claim of a massacre was not corroborated by the French POWs who supposedly witnessed it? Or are you saying that there were in fact no French POWs there at all?
The claim of a massacre will be more credible if we can find additional sources that provide more information. Names of the French POWs for instance. Their accounts of what happened, for another. The exact 42nd Division unit and commanding officer’s name, for a third.

Are you, as a fall-back position, implying that if the summary execution of the captured SS-men did in fact take place, they were by definition all war criminals and that therefore the execution, even if irregular, was a form of rough justice?
The fact that Freiherr von Truchsess was the HSSPF of Munich or a member of his staff is interesting – it may indicate that the SS troops at Webling that day weren’t from the Dachau KZ (as is often assumed) but were from Munich. It also may indicate that they did not belong to an W-SS unit (as commonly assumed) but were part of the Higher SS and Police Leader security apparatus.

The fact that Freiherr von Truchsess may have served as an officer in an SS unit that participated in war crimes during Barbarossa is also interesting. He’s usually portrayed as a victim of American injustice. This adds an interesting and perhaps ambiguous twist to the story.
I do not know anything about this alleged summary execution at all. But if you think you can prove that it did not take place and the local villagers were lying, or conversely that it did take place but the executed men were all war criminals who thoroughly deserved their punishment, then please present your evidence, rather than simply making insinuations.
Well, you admit that you know nothing about this summary execution at all, but it’s clear that you assume that it’s a fact. I am challenging that assumption, based on the shortcomings I see in Mollo’s article. I don’t think we can assume this summary execution happened, based on the scant information we have so far.
Would not that rationalization also apply to the behavior of German soldiers in the Soviet Union? After all, the Bolshevik regime had a pretty unsavoury reputation; as of June 1941, the number of its victims was vastly greater than that of the victims of National Socialist Germany up to that point.

And the commissars were leading supporters of the Bolshevik regime, and could well have been involved in the innumerable crimes committed by that regime; so perhaps the german soldiers were justified in summarily executing them.

Perhaps the Germans thought that the sooner they killed the Jewish Bolshevik beast, the sooner they could get home to Wedding in one piece.
Couple of points: First my quote that you cited is not my rationalization projected onto the possible criminal actions of the 42nd ID troops. I am supplying a possible motive, which is simply if the US troops did kill surrendered SS men, it may have been because the GI’s were sick of the war, wanted to go home, and were pissed off that these diehard SS fanatics were still willing to make pointless rearguard stands and kill a few Americans in the process.

By suggesting a possible motive, I’m not implying that any such summary execution was in any way justified or “right” – just that the GIs may have considered such action as justified or right.

I’m sure that many German troops thought they were doing the right thing in 1941 by killing Soviet commissars and Jewish civilians. However, as I do not believe in conspiracist anti-Semitism, I have a hard time accepting the “Judeo-Bolshevist” threat as anything but racist gobbledegook.

Besides, the Germans weren’t going back to Wedding – they were planning to stay, setting up their utopian farming villages filled with SS wehrbauen (soldier-farmers) across the steppes and forests to keep the Asiatic hordes at bay.

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#6

Post by michael mills » 28 May 2004, 08:37

Besides, the Germans weren’t going back to Wedding – they were planning to stay, setting up their utopian farming villages filled with SS wehrbauen (soldier-farmers) across the steppes and forests to keep the Asiatic hordes at bay.
Neither did the Americans go back to Brooklyn.

When I was a student in Germany in 1969, the place was crawling with them. Particularly Heidelberg - there was a very large settlement of them there, not a farming village, more a shopping mall.

Presumably they were in Germany to keep the Asiatic hordes at bay, albeit a thousand kilometres or so to the west of where the German bases would have been.

Obviously once the United States had slain the "Nazi beast", it considered the Bolshevik beast to be as much a threat as Germany had previously considered it to be. It did not consider the Bolshevik threat to be gobbledygook, as Rob-WSSOB apparently considers it to have been.

If the Soviet Union was a threat to Europe in 1947, it was probably just as much of a potential threat in 1941. Of course, in 1947, Bolshevism was not nearly as Jewish as it had been in, say, 1924, when the national Socialist image of it had been formed, so perhaps it was now safe to oppose it without being accused of "antisemitism".

The fact is that Germany, in attacking the Soviet Union, was attempting to destroy a beast every bit as bad as it was itself. I personally see no reason why the West should have assisted the Bolshevik beast to kill the Nazi beast rather than the reverse. I guess the reason is that the Nazi beast was the enemy of the Jews while the Bolshevik beast was not. But I think that most Balts, Hungarians and Romanians were unhappy with the West's choice, and perhaps not a few Poles, Czechs and Slovaks also.

Anyway, in the case of the alleged summary execution of captured SS-men at Webling, it is apparent that those men at least existed. The name of their commander is preserved. Apparently they are buried in the vicinity. I repeat, if Rob-WSSOB has proof that they were killed in battle rather than being summarily executed, then perhaps he could present it.

The SS-men may have been killed in battle, or they may have been summarily executed; I do not know. So far ROB-WSSOB has simply pooh-poohed the account of their being summarily executed (just as he pooh-poohed the existence of a Bolshevik threat in which many Western leaders patently believed, both before and after the Second World War), and not presented any backing for the alternative scenario of their being battle casualties.

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Arminiusder Cherusker1
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Webling

#7

Post by Arminiusder Cherusker1 » 31 May 2004, 16:55

On 29th April 1945 43 soldiers of the Waffen-SS under command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Freiherr Veit-Heinrich Truchsess von Wetzhausen were killed on the ground of family Furthmayr in Webling Nr. 6, killed by GI's from 42th Inf.Regiment.
They were murdered after they had surrendered. I don't need Mollo or somebody else, it is a fact.
It is true, there were french POW's working on that farm who spoke to the GI's, but tell me, who will remember the names of this POW's after that long time? They were called by the first name, an experience I made on other places too.
BTW, Johann Furthmayr senior wasn't shot ,he died long time later in his bed.
His son and the grandson are still alive and can tell you the whole incident.If you take a trip to Dachau you may visit the farmers and speak to them, they will tell you what happened on their ground.Then you may visit the little memorial, build on the place the massacre happened.
I have a list of the 43 killed members of the Waffen-SS and this list is provided by DRK, Standesamt Dachau und Wehrmachts-Auskunftsstelle.
The bodies got buried in a massgrave, later they were brought to Schwab-stadl, Augsburg and at least some of them buried in their hometowns.
You can get the list at Standesamt Dachau.
Georg Scherer, a former inmate of KZ Dachau wrote in "Dachauer Nach-richten from 10th May 1975, that he witnessed near the Webling-church the execution of about 20 - 30 men, they were SS-men.
Even Rob will think that a former KZ-inmate would not lie.
I am sure that it wasn't necessary for the involved GI's to be "sick of war",they had orders to kill prisoners long time before.
Look at the famous book "BAND OF BROTHERS" by Stephen E. Ambrose and you will see, that the GI'S of the E Company 506th Reg. 101st Air-
borne were not sick of war when they jumped on D-Day over Normandy
and her General Maxwell Taylor told them "to fight with knives until day-
light " and "don't take any prisoners"(page 65), on page 67 "Joe Toye recalled Lt. Meehan coming over to his place to tell the men:"No prison-ers, we are not taking any prisoners!"and so on , see pages 206, 207,218 and some more.

/Rudi

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#8

Post by David Thompson » 31 May 2004, 23:59

Arminiusder Cherusker1 -- You said:
On 29th April 1945 43 soldiers of the Waffen-SS under command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Freiherr Veit-Heinrich Truchsess von Wetzhausen were killed on the ground of family Furthmayr in Webling Nr. 6, killed by GI's from 42th Inf.Regiment.
They were murdered after they had surrendered. I don't need Mollo or somebody else, it is a fact.
It may very well be a fact. Every Army has criminals in it. When a person isn't sure about what happened, he asks for more information -- as I did. If you share the information you have, we'll all be better informed about the incident. For example, I would like to see the list of the 43 killed members of the Waffen-SS provided by DRK, Standesamt Dachau und Wehrmachts-Auskunftsstelle, but I don't get over to Standesamt Dachau very often. Any details you can provide are welcome here.

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#9

Post by Rob - wssob2 » 01 Jun 2004, 06:29

On 29th April 1945 43 soldiers of the Waffen-SS under command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Freiherr Veit-Heinrich Truchsess von Wetzhausen were killed on the ground of family Furthmayr in Webling Nr. 6, killed by GI's from 42th Inf.Regiment.
Freiherr Veit-Heinrich Truchsess von Wetzhausen a.k.a. Freiherr von Truchsess is the SS officer who died at the Furthmayr farm in Webling.

Forum member Rouille posted some biographical information on Freiherr von Truchsess at

at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=261007

Rouille’s post includes the line
b.HSSPF München in 2.45
The “b” in this case is most likely the German abbreviation for “beim “, or “with” - thus the notation is “with HSSPF Munich Feb 1945”

Kurt Mehner’s Die Waffen-SS und Polizei list him as commanding the 5th Squadron of the SS-Kavallerie Brigade from Feb to July, 1941. If anyone has access to John Moore’s CD, I’d welcome them to post whatever additional biographical data they can find on this officer.

So in Feb 1945, 2-3 months prior to the events at Webling, Freiherr von Truchsess was assigned to the HSSPF (Higher SS and Police Leader) command system. This is the last command assignment that we know of to date for this officer.

The HSSPF system was a regionally based subset of the larger SS internal security organization. Each regional command had a commander who reported directly to Himmler. The HSSPF headquarters for Wehrkreis VII was located at München 2, Ettstr. 4/11. (see p. A4 of Axis Europa’s The German Police

The commander of HSSPF Wehrkreis VII was a guy named Friedrich Karl Freiherr von Eberstein - there’s some biographical info available on him in the book

Die Generale der Waffen-SS und der Polizei volume 1 (Abraham - Gutenberger) by Andreas Schulz and Günter Wegmann

The HSSPF command structure isn’t normally considered part of the Waffen-SS. If Freiherr von Truchsess was still assigned to HSSPF München on April 29, 1945, then he was probably commanding SS soldiers assigned to the HSSPF as opposed to a W-SS unit. That seems more likely, although it is thoretically possible that he could have commanded a scratch unit of W-SS troops or W-SS/HSSPF or any other myriad of permutations.

Following DT’s lead, I too would like to see a list of the 43 SS troops killed in and around the Furthmayr farm. The more we know about these troops, the better we will be able to attempt a reconstruction as to the events at Webling.
They were murdered after they had surrendered. I don't need Mollo or somebody else, it is a fact.
No, it is not a fact. The HWC rules at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=47046 clearly state
If a poster raises a question about the events, other posters may answer the question with evidence. If a poster stops asking questions and begins to express a point of view, he then becomes an advocate for that viewpoint. When a person becomes an advocate, he has the burden of providing evidence for his point of view. If he has no evidence, or doesn't provide it when asked, it is reasonable for the reader to conclude that his opinion or viewpoint is uninformed and may fairly be discounted or rejected.
The claim of a massacre will be more credible if we can find additional sources that provide more information. The origin of this incident as war crime seems to be Andrew Mollo’s 1980 article for the Dachau issue of After the Battle magazine. As I pointed out in my post, I think Mollo made a lot of assumptions and speculations – too many to definitely claim this incident was a war crime - and have provided reasons why I question this claim at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=365309

I will find your claim of the Webling incident as war crime creditable if you can provide additional information to support it.
It is true, there were french POW's working on that farm who spoke to the GI's, but tell me, who will remember the names of this POW's after that long time? They were called by the first name, an experience I made on other places too.
I would like to see additional biographical information on these French POWs. What happened to them? Were they from the Dachau KZ? Where did they go after the war? Did any of them leave a written account of the events at Webling? Are there any 42nd Div reports that mention them? They are tracable, especially if they were POWs, DPs and/or affiliated in any way with the Dachau KZ. There’s an entire international tracing service which gathers and maintains information on former KZ inmates.

BTW, Johann Furthmayr senior wasn't shot ,he died long time later in his bed.
Mollo’s article which states on p. 31
Having lost one of their comrades the Americans were in a foul mood when they entered the farmyard. The first German to clamber out of the cellar and approach the American soldiers was the owner of the farm, Herr Furtmayer, but the suspicious and edgy Americans shot him on sight.
So was Herr Johann Furthmayr senior the owner of the farm on April 29, 1945?
Was he shot by US GI’s? Who was the owner of the farm shot by GI’s, if not Herr Furthmayr? Andrew Mollo interviewed a “young man” and “an elderly Bavarian farmer eye-witness” (p29) for the 1980 article - was this Johann Furthmayr ? Then who was shot? And how did Johann Furthmayr survive? In addition, did anyone of the Furthmayr ever write about their perspective of what happened? Lodge a complaint with the US Army? All we have are secondhand accounts of a supposed summary execution.

His son and the grandson are still alive and can tell you the whole incident.If you take a trip to Dachau you may visit the farmers and speak to them, they will tell you what happened on their ground.
So how many German farmers were there who witnessed this incident? Are the son and grandson repeating a story passed down?

Then you may visit the little memorial, build on the place the massacre happened.
I have a list of the 43 killed members of the Waffen-SS and this list is provided by DRK, Standesamt Dachau und Wehrmachts-Auskunftsstelle.
The bodies got buried in a massgrave, later they were brought to Schwab-stadl, Augsburg and at least some of them buried in their hometowns.
You can get the list at Standesamt Dachau.
There is no doubt that German troops were killed in a firefight at Webling. Perhaps some - or even all? - of these 43 men were killed in combat as opposed to executed?

Georg Scherer, a former inmate of KZ Dachau wrote in "Dachauer Nach-richten from 10th May 1975, that he witnessed near the Webling-church the execution of about 20 - 30 men, they were SS-men.
Georg Scherer (1906-1985) was a German and former KZ inmate of Dachau who later became the mayor of the town. Here’s some links on him:

http://members.aol.com/zbdachau/fates/ger/scherer.htm
http://www.effner.de/haeftlinge/scherer.htm
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScr ... edhof.html

Scherer was involved in the ill-fated KZ inmate/Dachau civilian rebellion on April 28 1945 see -

http://members.aol.com/zbdachau/history/eng4.htm

along with a guy named Walter Neff. A translated version of Neff’s testimony about the uprising is at
Link


Basically, the uprising quickly failed, with SS troops (often described as coming from the KZ) crushing the resistance and leaving the bodies of several of the rebels in front of the town hall as a warning (see Marcuse’s Legacies of Dachau)

“Dachauer Nach-richten” I assume refers to the town newspaper. I’d like to see the May 10th 1975 article which supposedly has Scherer claiming to have witnessed the massacre of SS troops at Webling on the 29th.

The mention of Georg Scherer is interesting since he was one of the rebels for the ill-fated Dachau uprising. It makes me wonder if there is some other connection between Scherer and SS troops possibly associated with HSSPF München. It would totally make sense if HSSPF troops put down the Dachau rebellion as part of their internal security mandate. Perhaps Freiherr von Truchsess was looking for rebel Scherer in Webling. Guess we’ll have to read the May 1975 article to find out!

Even Rob will think that a former KZ-inmate would not lie.
Multiple sources make evidence more reliable. Andrew Mollo relied heavily on former KZ inmate Nerin Gun’s account of the liberation - The Day of the Americans - which is unfortunate because Gun’s 1966 book has multiple inaccuracies which Mollo perpetuates in 1980 and Howie Buechner repeates in 1986 in his book The Hour of the Avenger

I am sure that it wasn't necessary for the involved GI's to be "sick of war",they had orders to kill prisoners long time before.
OK. Burden of proof time. Show me orders from a subcomponent of the US 42nd ID issued on or around April 29, 1945 that specifically state Rainbowmen were no to take prisoners.

Look at the famous book "BAND OF BROTHERS" by Stephen E. Ambrose and you will see, that the GI'S of the E Company 506th Reg. 101st Air-
borne were not sick of war when they jumped on D-Day over Normandy
and her General Maxwell Taylor told them "to fight with knives until day-
light " and "don't take any prisoners"(page 65), on page 67 "Joe Toye recalled Lt. Meehan coming over to his place to tell the men:"No prison-ers, we are not taking any prisoners!"and so on , see pages 206, 207,218 and some more.
Dachau scrapbook makes pretty much the same allegation on
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScr ... cre03.html

I suppose you’re attempting to demonstrate an overall criminal intent by linking 2 completely separate units in completely different campaigns almost 11 months apart. The US army took hundreds of thousands of Germans POWs - yes even W-SS men- from June 1944 to May 1945. Allegations against the 506th PIR in June 1944 do not implicate the 222nd IR of criminal activity on April 29th 1945.

The Webling-warcrime account as provided by Duncan does specify a GI from company F as being killed by the SS troops at Webling, which is an interesting additional bit of information not mentioned by Mollo. I wonder where he got it?

Regarding company F, I wanted to include a couple excerpts from the book Dachau 29 April 1945: The Rainbow Division Memoirs, which a compilation of interviews with 100-odd members of the 42nd Infantry Division around the time of the liberation of Dachau. I wanted to see if I could find any recollections that may concern the Webling incident. I didn’t find any “smoking gun” admissions of shooting POWs, nor any accounts that specifically mentioned Webling. But here are the ones that might describe the incident documented in the Signal Corps photos that Andrew Mollo wrote about:

Lt. Col. Donald E. Downard, CO, 2nd Battalion, 222nd IR - p 74:
”...Earlier that day, we were about six kilometers from Dachau, when one of my sargeants brought a civilian to me who said there was a large Concentration Camp. I’d was the first I’d ever heard of Dachau. I passed the word along to my Companies that a) I’d received the report b) it might not be true; c) it could be a trap, and d) if true, care must be taken because of possible disease, etc. At any rate, I moved quickly toward Dachau along a country road with my lead rifle company F, 222d, and my attached Tank Destroyer Platoon (2nd Platoon, A Company, 692d Tank Destroyer Battalion). We were well within my assigned zone of attack. We came under small arms fire at the foot of a long, not too steep hill. We halted, dispersed, and dispatched the offending Krauts, about a platoon, maybe two. We remounted the Tank Destroyers and moved on...
Sargeant Olin L. Hawkins, F Co. 222nd IR - p79:
...It was early in the morning. We started walking down the road towards Munich. All of a sudden we got orders to “Load up!”. We loaded up on every available vehicle, and we charged ahead, hell-bent for election! The I & R (Intelligence and Reconnaissance) platoon was in front. I was platoon leader, 3rd Platoon, Company F, 2d Battalion, and our battalion commander, [Lieutenant Colonel) Downard, was leading the way. We ran into little pockets of resistance, and the I&R platoon gave them machine gun bursts and we drove right through them. The German soldiers just looked at us. They couldn’t understand it. Why we didn’t want to stop and fight?

Then, without warning, we ran into some real resistance. We stopped, we unloaded. It was, as near as I can recall, some fifty SS troops; that’s what they said there were later. We chased them into a dead end draw just outside the Dachau camp. I sent a squad to the left and a squad to the right, and we fired machine guns into them, and motars into them, and killed about two-thirds of them and took the rest prisoner...
Lt. Donald H. Hathaway, F Co. 222nd IR - p 109:
...At the time, I was a Second Lieutenant, commanding F Company. We met a lot of resistance as we approached Dachau. We engaged SS troops who were trying to slip back through our lines. There were about twenty or twenty-five of them trying to escaple the camp. One platoon of F Company took care of them in a gun battle on the outskirts of the town of Dachau...”
What’s interesting about Hawkins testimony is that his mention of a “draw” corresponds to Signal Corps photo SC271391: - this is what Mollo has to say about that photo on p 33 of After the Battle:
”...Photo 271391 shows some SS men laying where they had fallen, roughly in a straight line. The original caption to this photo comments on the ‘unusual position of dead SS members’. It is possible that these are, in fact, the SS men which our eye witnesses remembers as having been executed in the farmyard, or it shows another group of SS men who may have been summarily shot as they prepared to surrender...”
I’ve bolded what I believe are Mollo’s conjectures as regards to the photo. The photo could just as well show SS men trapped and shot in a draw during a firefight - a scenario Mollo seemed unwilling to consider.

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Arminiusder Cherusker1
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Webling

#10

Post by Arminiusder Cherusker1 » 01 Jun 2004, 10:26

Hi David and Rob,
please give me some time to get those sources you want. I'll try to get a copy of the newspaper about Scherer and I print the 43 names and dates you wanted to see.

/Rudi

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#11

Post by Panzermahn » 01 Jun 2004, 12:22

Rob-WSSOb wrote
Quote:
I am sure that it wasn't necessary for the involved GI's to be "sick of war",they had orders to kill prisoners long time before.


OK. Burden of proof time. Show me orders from a subcomponent of the US 42nd ID issued on or around April 29, 1945 that specifically state Rainbowmen were no to take prisoners
It is akin to finding an order from Hitler giving the go ahead for the extermination of Jews. For all your expertise, haven't you hear something like a verbal order? 8O 8O

Even the Russians can give verbal order (Operation Uranus, Beevor Stalingrad) so why not the Americans?

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Arminiusder Cherusker1
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Webling

#12

Post by Arminiusder Cherusker1 » 01 Jun 2004, 14:42

Hallo David,
here is the list of the 43 soldiers of the Waffen-SS who got killed in this case:
Veit Heinrich Truchsess von Wetzhausen
born 06.04.1902 in Saarburg/Lothringen
SS-Sturmbannführer beim RuS-Hauptamt and SS-Hauptsturmführer der Reserve (Waffen-SS)
Gustav Eckert
born 12.01.1908 in Wien
SS-Oberscharführer
Karl-Heinz Kalweit
born 04.02.1919 in Barmen-Wuppertal
SS-Oberscharführer
Richard Hilgenfeld
born04.04.1901 in Straßfurt
SS-Unterscharführer
Kurt Weiss (bei WAst nicht ermittelt)
born 02.09.1890
SS-Unterscharführer
Adolf Kimmel
born 02.09.1890 in Gießen
SS-Unterscharführer
Paul Weinberger
born 30.01.1916 in Zuckermantel
SS-Rottenführer
Otto Imminger
born25.12.1913 in Offingen
SS-Oberschütze
Josef Kohlhepp
born21.09.1907 in Waldzell/Unterfranken
SS-Schütze
Max Kriener
born 20.08.1902 in Göggingen
SS-Schütze
Kurt Kammler (lt WAst Kamler)
born 10.06.1908 in Neutischein
SS-Schütze
Franz Kiessling
born 26.02.1901 in Dresden
SS-Schütze
Anton Brazda
born 23.10.1910 in München
SS-Schütze
Hans Lau
born 09.08.1902
SS-Schütze
Konrad Menzinger
born 20.08.1912 in Edenried Krs. Aichach
SS-Schütze (lt.WAst SS-Mann)
Johann Josef Schneider
born 19.05.1913 in Augsburg
SS-Schütze
Josef Missura
born16.07.1900 in Preßburg
SS-Schütze
Joesf Hartmann
born 10.04.1906 in Augsburg
SS-Schütze
Friedrich Böhmer
born 28.07.1900 in Stuttgart
SS-Schütze
Adam August Schied
born 23.06.1903 in Augsburg
SS-Schütze
Ludwig Knittl (bei WAst nicht ermittelt)
born 02.09.1904
SS-Schütze
Engelbert Grau
born 09.01.1902 in München (WAst born 1921)
SS-Schütze
Wilhelm Schmidt
born 17.03.1901 in Saarbrücken
SS-Schütze
Josef Weinmüller
born 19.05.1896 in Bühl
SS-Schütze
Johann Stärk
born 08.01. 1898 ?
SS-Schütze
Helmut Muskoni
born 04.01.1922 in Wissen Krs. Altenkirchen
SS-Schütze
Georg Brandner
born 11.07.1907 in Au Krs. Berchtesgaden
SS-Schütze
Hans Vorstandlechner
born 20.07.1909 inAggsbach/Niederösterreich
SS-Schütze
August Karl Faber
born 16.01.1901 in Wiesbaden
SS-Schütze
Josef Lugenkofer (lt.WAst Luxenhofer)
born 27.05.1910 in Heising Allgäu
SS-Schütze
Josef Engel
born 22.02.1906 ?
SS-Schütze
Hermann Otto Gruber
born04.04.1897 in Nödlingen
SS-Schütze
Josef Niedermaier
born 17.07.1903 in Oberdingermoos
SS-Sturmmann (WAst SS-Schütze)
Franz Kling
born 22.07.1901 in Weiden
SS-Schütze
Willy Blind (lt. WAst keine Todesmeldung)
born 24.10.11918 in Stuttgart
Unteroffizier
Fluvius Aschendorfer (lt. WAst keine Todesmeldung)
born 23.12.1922 in Bartelow
Unteroffizier
Georg Vogel
born 18.11.1899 in Schwetzingen
Unteroffizier
Hans Joachim Jungbauer (bei WAst nicht ermitterlt)
born 23.01.1926
Kanonier
Karl Hörmann (lt WAst keine Todesmeldung)
born 06.04.1904 in Weißenhorn Hrs. Neu-Ulm
Volkssturmmann
Karl Holzhein
born 15.03.1915 in Haunstetten
Volkssturmmann)
Karl Friedrich Fessenmayer (lt.Wast keine Todesmeldung)
born 13.11.1912 in Mainz
rank unknown
Johann Schwetter
born 10.06.1902
rank unknown
Ernst Obel
born05.12.1902 in Dachsenhausen
lt. WAst SS-Schütze


There are 10 more names from soldiers who got killed in action around Webling, but had nothing to do with the group Truchsess was leader.
/Rudi

David Thompson
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#13

Post by David Thompson » 01 Jun 2004, 17:35

Arminiusder Cherusker1 -- Thank you very much for providing those details. I appreciate it.

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Lipton
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Joined: 03 Apr 2004, 19:45
Location: Slovakia

#14

Post by Lipton » 01 Jun 2004, 20:09

From which division were the executed soldiers?

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Arminiusder Cherusker1
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Joined: 14 Feb 2003, 15:01
Location: München/Bayern

Webling

#15

Post by Arminiusder Cherusker1 » 01 Jun 2004, 20:45

Lipton,
as much as I know this soldiers didn't belong to a division, they were put together from several units and got called mostly "Kampfgruppe".
That's why in the group of vo Truchsess were members with a Wehrmachtrank, they all were grabbed somewhere to build a so called
Kampfgruppe, I would say it was something like Volkssturm.

In the last weeks of the war it wasn't possible to ask for divisions, it was necessary to hold a front, nobody cared where the men came from, it was important that they could use a rifle, MP or Panzerfaust.

Rudi

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