Liberating Dachau 1945

At the end of April

1945

, in a Dachau concentration camp near Munich, more than 30,000 people were barely clinging to life and brutal SS guards. Time was quickly running out for the prisoners as the war situation continued to deteriorate, for Germany action had to be taken and done quickly. but who would take that action on April 25,

1945

? Germany had been divided in two when American and Soviet troops joined at the town of Torgul on the Elbe River, the next day American forces crossed the Danube at Newburgh, Ingolstadt and Kelheim to Dachau. The concentration camp was severely overcrowded due to the Nazi policy of evacuating Western prisoners from camps in danger of being invaded by the Red Army.

SS Commander Obersturmbannführer Edouard Vita' had written to Heinrich Himmler requesting permission to hand over the camp to the Americans. Himmler had responded angrily by forbidding any such action and added it to the end of his letter. He quotes: No prisoner will be permitted to fall alive into the hands of the enemy. Unquote, the prisoners at Dachau were ordered to be evacuated south to the Tyrolean Alps as part of German preparations. for the Alpine read there semi-mythical last stand in the mountains the SS were also busy burning archives and documents in the camp in the hope of erasing their traces Dachau was the first concentration camp opened shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933. retained to Jewish political prisoners, German and Austrian common criminals and foreign citizens from almost all the countries attacked by Germany.

The facility generated more than 100 subcamps to house prisoners who were used for forced labor. More than 30,000 people died at Dachau, including many who perished in a program. of medical experimentation by SS doctors. The Kommandant vitae made efforts to follow the TLA evacuation order on 26 April. On March Day, thousands of people were executed or died of exhaustion, hunger and exposure. A mass grave was later discovered to contain 1,071 vitae corpses and then escaped by fleeing to the Austrian mountains. SS Untersturmführer Heinrich Vicar, an extremely junior officer, was left in command at Dachau with around one hundred and fifty guards.

There were still tens of thousands of starving prisoners inside the camp and the supply situation had already completely broken down. Next to the camp were several hundred Waffen-ss troops who would probably be used to exterminate the surviving prisoners in At one point, as the Americans were rapidly approaching the vicinity of Munich, the cradle of Nazism, the situation in The concentration camp was in confusion since Commander Vitala, the officers and most of the guards had escaped on April 26 escorting a large group of prisoners south of the tollgates. The ss-untersturmführer vicar with the scar on his face had been left in charge, although only one very young official vicar had risen through the ranks; there was an experienced and decorated combat veteran due to wounds received in battle who had been assigned to camps.

The concentration camp was still over. There were 30,000 prisoners inside the camp and food and water had run out a few days before. Vickers' orders were unclear. He knew that Himmler did not want the camp to surrender, but he lacked the manpower to kill all the prisoners, so the vicar waited for orders that did not come. On April 29, Red Cross official Victor Mara convinced the vicar not to attempt to evacuate the camp, which would have killed thousands of people, and instead hand over the facility and its inmates to the Americans. Mara promised that if the vicar did this, he and his men would be allowed to do it. to escape unmolested, of course, the Americans had no idea of ​​this agreement, but they did have an idea of ​​the possible horrors they would encounter at Dachau thanks to an escaped prisoner on April 28.

Karima had managed to get out of the field and walk. during the night to the city of Farfán; American forces had already reached the settlement and were briefed by Reimer on the conditions of the camp and the desperate situation of the remaining prisoners, Lt. Col. Felix Sparks, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 150th, 7th Infantry Regiment, 45th. º of infantry. The division was ordered to relieve Dachau. He was not impressed with the work, considering the camp was a non-military objective. At 9:22 a.m. on April 29, Sparks received a message from Intelligence Officer S3 of the 157th Infantry sent to everyone. companies that after the capture of Dachau would oppose the guards around the camp and not touch anything and would also make sure that no one left the complex.

Sparks commanded a small task force consisting of his own battalion of the 157th Infantry and the 191st Tank Battalion. He divided the task. force in two prongs advancing along parallel paths towards Dachau the first column under his personal command the second and a Major George Kessler the problem for the Americans was that units from two of their infantry divisions were converging on backup sparks the 157th Infantry of the 45th Division arrive at approximately the same time as elements of the two 22nd Infantry Regiments of the 42nd Infantry Division created serious jurisdictional clashes at 10:00 a.m. m., Lieutenant Colonel Donald Downard, commanding the 2nd Battalion of the 22nd Infantry, reported a skirmish at a roadblock near the camp and captured several Germans.

An hour later, Colonel Sparks Minh also had a brief firefight with the retreating German forces. At noon, the inmates inside the camp saw the American soldiers for the first time outside the perimeter, they rushed cheering and crying towards the perimeter fences and the SS opened fire knocking down a man 15 minutes later. Sparks later conferred briefly with Lieutenant William Walsh, commanding Company I 157th Infantry, ordering him to secure the camp and keep the prisoners inside, not let them out. Sparks ordered, we have all kinds of food, medicine and what is coming after us? and we are going to take good care of them Sparks ordered the machine gun platoon of Em company to accompany them Yes, simultaneously Sparks sent L company to secure the city of Dachau Well, those Sparks did not know Vica and many Germans had gathered unarmed at the main gate of the camp awaiting the arrival of the Americans, fearing strong resistance, he ordered Company I to advance along the railroad to the branch line instead of passing through the main gate of the railroad.

I discovered an abandoned train without an engine. They counted 39 wooden cars lying on the track and around the track. In the fields bordering the line there were many bodies, most with signs of gunshot wounds. When the GIS opened one of the carriage doors, they were shocked by what they discovered. It was finally established that there were two thousand three hundred and ten bodies of men, women and children on or near the Train, some naked, some wearing striped concentration camp uniforms, all were very thin and many appeared to have died of hunger or thirst inside. the locked carriages that the fleeing SS cruelly left to die, while others showed evidence of execution by gunfire, the SIG was furious, many also sought immediate revenge against the Germans they managed to capture shortly after, the company's commanding officer I, Lieutenant Walsh, shot for surrendering to the SS inside a wooden railway carriage, Private Albert Pruett then climbed inside and finished off each of the Germans with a shot to the head.

Walsh's men took Colonel Sparks to see the SS kennels where the Germans kept Alsatian guard dogs. Most of the animals were already lying in pools of blood after an enraged G was shot dead. Between 25 and 30 of them, Sparks and his men from the 45th Infantry Division. Units of the US 42nd Infantry Division began advancing toward the city of Dachau at 1:00 p.m. The assistant division commander, Brigadier General Henning Linden, quickly assembled a small task force in five jeeps led by Lyndon. The group also included Brigadier General Charles Banville, deputy commander of American operations. 8th Army Air Force, several staff officers and a handful of workers correspond and photograph.

Linden's group ran toward the camp's main entrance through the abandoned train and its gruesome human cargo after dodging the barrage of incoming small arms fire. Linden's group dismounted from their jeeps and cautiously approached the front door, its large wooden doors crowned with an enormous Nazi eagle and a swastika. Führer Vika, accompanied by an unarmed adjutant and the representative of the Red Cross, Victor Maura, went out to meet Linden's group and found General Linden and his soldiers in a very dark mood, Linden actually beat Vika with a British-style swagger stick, forcing the German officer to raise his hands at Linden's order.

The vicar was brought to see the evidence shortly after the last Dachau commander was murdered under mysterious circumstances, further investigations suggest. that the inmates used the rifle of a young American soldier to execute the vicar and his assistant. A court-martial was initiated for this private first class, but the vicar was then abandoned, although an SS officer and a concentration camp veteran had been left behind to hand the camp over to the Americans and should have been treated as prisoners of war, the atmosphere on that liberation day was very ugly as American troops confronted what the men of Vickers' service arm had done to the prisoners at Dachau, troops from Company H to the 22nd Infantry Regiment they reached General Linden's group before the main gate, now a huge crowd of hysterically cheering prisoners rushed towards the American soldiers. 25-year-old war correspondent Marguerite Higgins wanted to get into the field and get a big scoop on the liberation of Dachau.

Colonel Sparks and the men of the 157th Infantry Regiment arrived. Discussions between the officers of the two competing divisions broke out against the background of applause from the prisoners. Sparks adamantly refused to allow Higgins onto the field per her orders. Senior Lyndon Sparks tried to override him, but Higgins managed to get in alone. To be harassed and nearly trampled to death by hundreds of inmates, soldiers from the 222nd and 157th Infantry Divisions fired their weapons into the air to disperse the out-of-control inmates and rescue Higgins. It seems that General Lyndon took offense to one of the Sparks soldiers. who swung from a bottle and wrapped it around the helmet with his staff of arrogance, sparking in an outrageous display of gross insubordination, perhaps fueled by the somber and emotional scenes in the camp, he drew his Colt 45 pistol and pointed it at General Lyndon saying: yes no Don't get the F out of here.

I'm going to blow your brains out. Another version of this story has sparks. Scream, if you ever touch one of my men again, I will kill you either way. The two men almost came to blows before the lieutenant. Colonel Walter's criminals on Linden's staff jumped on each other, but a new confrontation developed between Sparks and villains. I'll see you after the war threatened to use the son of a scream. What's happening right now? Fortunately, Linden's group left before things got ugly. Meanwhile, troops from the 222nd and 157th Infantry Regiments entered the camp with a machine gun and killed 16 SS, where with their hands raised in a coal dump they were part of a larger group that included Vormax troops from the captured nearby hospital. by Company I.

The company executive officer of the 157th Regiment, Lieutenant Jack Bushy Head, sued the Native Americans. He segregated the SS from the other prisoners and marched them towards the coal depot. The young soldier manning the machine gun shouted that the prisoners were trying to escape and opened fire. An officer kicked the teenager away from the weapon he and his squad managed to kill or wound many of the prisoners. Between 25 and 50 SS and the prisoner Capo were summarily dispatched by enraged prisoners, the American soldiers who stood back and watched, in some cases GIS handed the weapons to the prisoners.

Another 17 SS were executed outside Guard Tower B, while many more were shot by sick American troops, horrified and deeply traumatized by the piles of decomposing skeletal bodies that lay unburied throughout the facility. Eventually, his officers brought the American troops under control and order, albeit understandable, was restored. US retaliation constituted a war crime, a potentially deeply embarrassing situation forthe allies. For a time there was serious talk of bringing some officers before a court-martial; However, General George S. Patton, the newly appointed military governor of Bavaria, dismissed all charges against many of the perpetrators of the attacks. The horrors of death at Dachau caught up with them very soon.

Former Dachau commander Edward Vita' tried to hide in the Austrian mountains. Ironically, he was probably killed on the spot by a fellow SS officer on May 2, 1945 to the Americans now there. began the long and difficult task of trying to save as many lives as possible among the emaciated and sick prisoners of Dachau. Thanks for watching, subscribe and share. You can also support my channel on PayPal and Patreon details in the description box below for some really great videos. Audio Stories, check out my new channel War Stories with details from Mark Felton below.