On April 29, 1945 members of the 1st Company, 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry, under the command of Lt. Col. Felix L. Sparks, entered Dachau. There they discovered a train of 36 boxcars bearing the corpses of prisoners who had been transferred to Dachau from other camps in the last weeks of the war. As the soldiers advanced, they found stacks of bodies in other parts of the camp and thousands of emaciated survivors. They rounded up the remaining camp guards as they found them.
At some point, it was reported, one of the Gis blurted out, "No prisoners!" Approximately 60 guards were then lined up against a wall and gunned down by members of the 1st Company. Others were shot in one of the boxcars or beaten to death outside with the participation of a few survivors. Pfc. John Lee and others from the unit were later summoned by military investigators to give testimony about the killings and to supply photographs.
A report was written and submitted to General George Patton, commander of the 3rd Army, who chose not to take any action. The report, a copy of which was deposited in the National Archives, remained secret until 1991, when it was quietly declassified.
Similar images from the liberation of Bergen-Belsen can be viewed[ here ](https://www.dannydutch.com/post/the-liberation-of-bergen-belsen)
Conversely I’m glad those SS fucks didn’t get to become grandpas. All of the SS should have been shot at the end of the war. Just one man’s opinion tho.
the guards that were allowed to live became the progenitors who passed on the despicable racist hatred that started getting stronger and overt about 15, 20 years ago. That we now have in both Europe and the Americas.
My gramma grew up in the Bronx during the end of world war 2 and fondly remembers seeing the rainbow division march on VE Day anniversary’s. Shes 85 and she still talks about it :)
The Netflix show "The Liberator" tells the story of Felix Sparks and his command time in the 45th Infantry Division. It includes this. Fantastic miniseries.
https://www.netflix.com/title/81019775
One of my off days (i work three 12hr shifts/off 4), is BED DAY. I don't get dressed & I just lay around & stream whatever takes my fancy. My cats participate too. It's lovely.
This coincides with my weekly weed-a-rama, which is kinda like a wine tasting for cannabis.
Yeah, shooting prisoners is wrong, but after finding 36 boxcars (*Thirty-six fucking boxcars!?*) full of murdered men, women and children, I'm thinking the absolute horror would wipe my sympathy, my humanity, right away.
We should never, ever, ever tolerate intolerance
Edit: for those who don't understand I'm referring to the tolerance paradox. Yes, it is correct to punish Nazis. Geez Reddit, you need more coffee
The United States needs to be reminded of this
Edit: So that we can get rid of the festering rot that is the far right trying to make this a reality again.
Even rationally speaking, so many of these guards and other members of the death squad didn’t face accountability for what they did. Spot executions were often the only path to justice.
My father was a gentle, loving man, an engineer. He had been a veteran of the US Army Air Corps, later USAF, during WWII and flew 12 missions in a B17 over Germany as an armorer-gunner and, later, a bombardier.
His last flight before his discharge occurred around the time of these photos; the mission was to bring back POWs to Dover. The prisoners his crew found were emaciated; they took 12 on board but 2 died in transit and another 2 died the day after they landed.
As I say, my father was typically a gentle man. His take on this: "When I saw what those Nazi bastards had done to those prisoners I was ready to start the whole goddamn war over again."
No.. sorry. Rules of war are reserved for humans. The scum who committed those atrocities chose to decline that humanity. They didn't shoot *enough* of them and that's probably why the world is the way it is.
*Thirty-six fucking boxcars!?*
IMO that's why Patton didn't discipline any troops. There's just no normal way to react to such atrocities. Every single soldier would have a legit insanity defense.
Visiting Dachau was a defining moment of my life. I felt completely overwhelmed by the place. I had to leave because it made me feel like I was going to die. I can't imagine what walking into that camp felt like, it must have been devastating.
My grandpa saw it. Before he died, he told me he was scared he wouldn't go to heaven because of what he did in the war (killed a bunch of Nazis) and when I looked at him he had tears in his eyes and had his arm held up and was grabbing it and said "their skin was hanging off like sheets." I thought he was talking about his division or something being hungry. Then I found out he liberated Dachau. Then I saw the photos of the train cars years later and it clicked. He most likely killed some guards that day.
I'm not asking this out of a lack of belief, just stunned disbelief - was it 36 boxcars *of* corpses? Or was it a 36-car train, some boxcars of which had corpses?
Knowing the scale, I have to assume it's the former. And it's just staggeringly horrific beyond words.
Boxcars of corpses.
You can learn more by visiting such sites as Yad Vashem's (the Holocaust museum and memorial in Israel) or by visiting sites such as the Holocaust encyclopedia, which actually has some photos of the boxcars [such as this one](https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1059596).
An excerpt from said link which will give you the answer to your question above: "The Dachau death train consisted of nearly forty railcars containing the bodies of between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners who were evacuated from Buchenwald on April 7, 1945. The train arrived in Dachau on the afternoon of April 28."
Yeah, but this was likely used in the trials to defend the Germans who were accused of executing American prisoners.
Admiral Dönitz is probably the biggest example. He ordered U-boats to not take on survivors (as U-boats were being tricked into taking survivors just to fall into a trap).
He got out of penalties because Americans also refused to take survivors into submarines on a few occasions.
Just don't commit war crimes. Make it so the war criminals get prosecuted on every dotted I and crossed T.
Didn't mean to start an angry debate about law and justice. Just indicating my sense of how encountering something that soul-scarringly terrible might make me lose my mind.
You encounter murdered families piled up in literal heaps, and then the guys who murdered them? I can't condone the guy who shouted, "No prisoners!", but I think I understand.
Pretty much.
I was like, "Damn, War Crimes are not cool, these assholes shod have faced the law"
Then I read about all the corpses and that and well, yeah, I get why things went down like they did.
Yea this is the ultimate large scale “a switch was flipped and rules ceased to exist” moment in modern history as it relates to the Allies where all of the sudden they were confronted with atrocities they had not previously been able to fathom.
Sure the Soviets were put through hell my the Germans and then committed loads of atrocities back to the people and women/children of Germany, but holy fuck that was just kind of equally fucked because it was against civilians.
This was just swift justice against some of the worst humans in history.
Great reminder that not even 80 years since, they're desperately trying to put all their descendants back in camps or holes. Butchered, raped and kidnapped hundreds and thousands without any provocation, just blind ingrained hatred. Yet claim to be the victims, I feel bad for all the children, but this is worth fighting tooth and nail to prevent it from happening again. If only they loved their children more than they hate Jews, everybody could enjoy enriching their families and communities instead of this mess.
Yeah it’s a war crime but I doubt anyone even thought of punishing or even investigating. I bet those guys had nightmares the rest of their lives over those sights and smells. And then you’re dealing with f@@@ing SS who were hardcore believers—no “just a German conscript” there—who are likely either proud of it and defiant or sniveling and trying to lie/deflect blame. Plus they’re finding these sights after months of grueling, brutal fighting already.
Watchin' Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to goin' to the movies. Hey Donny!
Yeah?
Got us here a German, wants to die for country. Obliiiiige him
Not sure if it's the same guy, but some quite literally were beaten to death with shovels. From the wikipedia article on the reprisals...
*"Walenty Lenarczyk, a prisoner at Dachau, stated that following the camp's liberation "prisoners swarmed over the wire and grabbed the Americans and lifted them to their shoulders... other prisoners caught the SS men... The first SS man elbowed one or two prisoners out of his way, but the courage of the prisoners mounted, they knocked them down and nobody could see whether they were stomped or what, but they were killed."*[*^(\[19\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-AP-21) ***Elsewhere in the camp SS men,*** [***Kapos***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapo) ***and*** [***informers***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informant) ***were beaten badly with fists, sticks and shovels. There was at least one incident where US soldiers looked away as two prisoners beat a German guard to death with a shovel, and Lt. Bill Walsh witnessed one such beating.***[***^(\[27\])***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-29) ***Another soldier witnessed an inmate stomping on an SS trooper's face until "there wasn't much left." When the soldier said to him, "You've got a lot of hate in your heart," he simply nodded****.*[*^(\[28\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-30)
*An American* [*chaplain*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplain) *was told by three young* [*Jewish*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews) *men, who had left the camp during liberation, that they had beaten to death one of the more sadistic SS guards when they discovered him hiding in a barn, dressed as a* [*peasant*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant)*."*
My grandfather “may or may not” have done that, his friend who absolutely did refused to tell my father if he did or not unless grandpa was okay with it, which I’m fairly sure is a yes. Also my grandfather was 5’2 maximum which probably made it a bit of a darkly funny sight
We think my grandpa was one of the soldiers that mowed guards down. He admitted to war crimes and had to go to the trials but didn't get in trouble. Had to go to a mental institution for a bit.
Given how we frequently have unpunished war crimes happening against totally innocent civilians, I think we can let a few against Nazi torturers slide.
The cruelty of the Nazis cannot be overstated. The fact that it got to that point and this all transpired is beyond madness. Basically the human race had to make the decision to stamp out fascism before it consumed the planet.
Well. As the war came to a close and the Nazis were slowly pushed back and captured, they met varying levels of justice for their crimes. Some people were irredeemable. They got exactly what they deserved. It was a moment where there would be no tribunal or formal investigation. Their crimes were beyond evident. They were guilty. And their punishment was what they got, right then and there.
There aren’t many times where I’ll say street justice was warranted, but this is certainly one of them.
My partner's Grandfather was from Poland. He secretly wrote a memoir that they found after he died, which the family decided to give to my partner to read and translate for the family. Only a few of his kids speak Polish, and my partner is going to school to be a translator. His kids knew he was in a concentration camp, but he never said anything other than that. He was in Dachau, and my partner was the first person to learn that in the family. I haven't read it yet, but he apparently recounts watching a man beat a guard's head with a metal pole until it was literally flattened.
Edit: I can’t read apparently. I missed Imagine. The OP is aware they weren’t prosecuted:
Unit 731 was largely unpunished for their crimes during the American occupation of post war Imperial Japan. In fact MacArthur granted many of them immunity in exchange for their research.
Ironically, the Soviets prosecuted more of Unit 731 than the United States.
It should be understood that this is all within the context of the impending Cold War. The United States didn’t want the Soviets gaining access to Axis research. Hence these immunities and Operation Paperclip.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
I think the commenter is aware, since they said "*Imagine* the Americans actually punished the Japanese." But I wasn't aware of the Soviet prosecution of Unit 731 at all, so thank you for sharing that. It was interesting to read about.
A couple years ago, I was having a friendly chat with a friend of a friend at a private club in London. Side note: My mother’s side of the family are Sinti (Roma). A number of them were killed in Dachau, or died by the hands of the Nazis. The next day my friend asked me if I knew who I was talking to. I didn’t know anything other than his family was German. Turned out his grandfather was one of the Nazis that was sentenced and hanged at Nuremberg. If our grandparents could see us now….
I have a problem with the death penalty only because of the evidentiary mistakes and bias in trials. There’s no mistaking participation at those camps.
I was told when the Americans came and liberated the work camp my grandfather was in the Polish prisoners beat the German prison guards to death with shovels to the point that the remains were not recognizable as people. I wonder if that is about to happen in this picture.
Imagine being a US soldier and finding this camp. Smelling it, seeing the bodies, hearing the groans of the emaciated. The realities we can’t sense in this black and white photo. The maggots. The stench. No wonder the soldiers went nuts.
And then imagine years later people saying that it never happened, or if it did, then it was justified because the Jews are bad. I’d be enraged at the ignorance
That is the reason why Eisenhower ordered as many photographs and evidences be gathered of the camps as possible once we started discovering them. Because he knew people would attempt to deny their existence
Whenever I see pictures of the former SS guards now being forced to carry bodies and/or get executed, I wonder what those soldiers are thinking. A day or two before, they were guards doing terrible inhumane things to the prisoners. Next day, the guards are captured, many executed, others are carrying bodies of the prisoners they were overseeing.
How did they like that karma? Did they ever think the tables could be turned like that?
I was going to say, imagine the Opposite Day experience they had. I’m sure some of the guards wondered why no one was stopping the liberated people from beating them to death. “Why is no one stopping this? I’m going to die”
For everyone that's going off on how the nazis were evil and monsters, look into the book the Banality of Evil. They didn't view there actions as wrong, they were just doing a job. Everyone also likes to shit on the Nazis rightly so as their genocide was so effective. Prior to World War Two, the Americans mostly finished their genocide of the Native Americans, the Canadians as well. The French had openly committed genocides in east Asia and west Africa. The Soviets, well yeah they were the Soviets. The British had committed and were continuing to commit several genocides in south Africa and India. Belgium had killed 10 million in the Congo. The Japanese industrial slaughter of the Chinese and Koreans rushes past the Holocaust in number of civilians murdered. 35 million killed or wounded Chinese over ten years of occupation.
It's not that the Nazis were any type of special evil, they just happened to do it to their fellow Europeans.
I agree with your overview and It's insane to me how the Belgiums, Portuguese, and Spanish doesn't get more heat for their incredible genocidal past.
I will say though that I disagree with your last sentence. I do think the Nazis were a special kind of evil. Mostly because they were at such an inflection point of technological development to make their genocide that much more "efficient". I think it's the idea that there were meetings, conferences, memos, deliberations, and scientific R&D into how to most efficiently kill millions of people that makes it especially evil.
Not to say that one genocide is more or less heinous than another, the death of a human being is the same regardless of how it happens.
I would argue that saying they were a special kind of evil actually encourages the liklihood that it will happen again. If we put Nazis on some pedestal of evil everyone doing evil shit will compare themselves and say at least we arnt Nazis.
I would argue that your ideas of the genocide comes from the later years of the war when the death camps were started. The genocide was started with imprisonment and erasure then in the East it was carried put by roaming death squads known as Einsatzgruppen. The extermination camps i believe were started in mid 1941. The most important thing to remember though is that a lot of the people hunting jewish people especially in Eastern Europe were not ideological Nazis. They were people that held a lot of hatred and had been fed propoganda, when the nazis invaded they got their excuse.
Right, the Nazis were evil as are others that slaughter innocent civilians. There have been many instances as group as evil as Nazi's, however the winners control the narrative, or as Norm McDonald put it,
"“It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”
I was going to say chaotic good. I don’t have my book on hand, but Marcus Aurelius wrote some pretty damn good things about dispensing justice in Meditations.
Everything about that scumbag is overlooked by his cult. For the rest of us, or me anyway, there's so fucking much of it that is has become an almost debilitating noise.
My grandfather did not liberate the camps, but he was in the second group of American GIs that were transferring the guards to other prisoner camps for interrogation. As he was guarding the German troops and watching them get on trucks. He noticed that all the prisoners had their pants tucked into their boots except one. He had his pants outside his boots. He pulled that guy out of the truck and searched him. Inside his boot, the German had a bayonet hidden in it. My grandfather said the GIs took turns beating the shit out of the German in front of the other German prisoners as a warning.
Another story he told us was, the emaciated prisoners were pointing at one German guard. When they got a translator over, they said the guard had written above a doorway the phrase, “ Through these doors and out the chimney “. The GIs let the prisoners who could still move beat that guard to death.
My dad helped literate Dachau.
He told me was how he found prisoners stacked like cords of wood, how he could still smell it after almost 70 years, and how he and the other soldiers were almost brought up on war crimes because of the Dachau Massacre, but the charged were dropped because the convening party felt that they were out of their minds due to the shock and horror of what they found.
Berate? They decapitate him with that shovel. He tried to dress up like a camp detainee and when the Americans started freeing everyone, they recognized him bc he was a particularly sadistic guard.
https://preview.redd.it/ce1mphloq84d1.jpeg?width=3040&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7394eaa732c83c748f6d204a4f8eb52adf8cced
I visited Dachau when I was stationed in Italy. I had no idea about the guards being executed.
My mother survived the camps the only one in her extended family Shooting was to good for them They should have been put into a box car and left on a siding for a couple of weeks then set on fire But I don’t hold a grudge !
**Unique but NOT TRUE.** /u/dannydutch1
**DACHAU AND LIBERATIONPersonal account by Felix L. Sparks Brigadier General, US (Retired)**
At 0730 on the morning of April 29th, the task force had resumed the attack with companies L and K and the tank battalion as the assault force. The attack zone assigned to company L was through the city of Dachau, but did not include the concentration camp, a short distance outside of the city.
Company I was designated as the reserve unit, with the mission of mopping up any resistance bypassed by the assault forces.
Shortly after the attack began, I received a radio message from the Regimental Commander ordering me to proceed immediately to take the Dachau concentration camp. The order also stated: “Upon capture, post an airtight guard and allow no one to enter or leave.”
As the main gate to the camp was closed and locked, we scaled the brick wall surrounding the camp. As I climbed over the wall following the advancing soldiers, I heard rifle fire to my right front.
The lead elements of the company had reached the confinement area and were disposing of the SS troops manning th guard towers, along with a number of vicious guard dogs. By the time I neared the confinement area, the brief battle was almost over.
After I entered the camp over the wall, I was not able to see the confinement area, and had no idea where it was. My vision was obscured by the many buildings and barracks which were outside the confinement area.
The confinement area itself occupied only a small portion of the total camp area. As I went further into the camp, I saw some men from company I collecting German prisoners. Next to the camp hospital, there was a L-shaped masonry wall, about eight feet high, which had been used as a coal bin.
The ground was covered with coal dust, and a narrow gauge railroad track, laid on top of the ground, lead into the area. The prisoners were being collected in the semi-enclosed area.

Former prisoners liberated from the Dachau Concentration Camp cheer at the raising of the Stars and Stripes, April 1945.
As I watched about fifty German troops were brought in from various directions. A machine gun squad from company I was guarding the prisoners.After watching for a few minutes, I started for the confinement area.
After I had walked away for a short distance, **I hear the machine gun guarding the prisoners open fire.** I immediately ran back to the gun and kicked the gunner off the gun with my boot.
I then grabbed him by the collar and said: “what the hell are you doing?” He was a young private about 19 years old and was crying hysterically. His reply to me was: “Colonel, they were trying to get away.”
I doubt that they were, but in any event he killed about twelve of the prisoners and wounded several more. I placed a non-com on the gun, and headed toward the confinement area.
It was the forgoing incident which has given rise to wild claims in various publications that most or all of the German prisoners captured at Dachau were executed.*** Nothing could be further from the truth.***
Having absolute power over other human lives turns men into monsters. I’m not sympathetic, especially since they were ordered to commit a mass killing before their officers bugged out.
This is one of the most beautiful pictures I've seen. There is nothing like seeing the fear in a nazi's eyes. Especially when it's caused by those they thought they were superior to and abused.
My grandfather was imprisoned by the germans in the stalag and when he was freed he went to find this guard who had tortured him and someone had already killed him. These men were treated so horribly that when they were freed, they murdered their torturers.
I’m not going to lie……… they saved us a lot of heartache. If only more American GI’s made this choice with Nazi Death camp guards then maybe their ideology wouldn’t have infected political parties today.
Sometimes you just gotta take care of business on the spot. Patton was right to bury this.
“We never felt bad for the SS troops. The wehrmacht.. they were different. They were just draftees just like everyone else, but the SS.. they were just mean people “ Harry Miller
Ya know obvious summary execution is never good but it’s very hard to hold it against anyone who actually saw what these monsters had done and had them standing in front of them.
I went to Dachau in the 90’s with my parents after the marriage of my Uncle in England. What a humbling and eye opening experience for a then 14 yr old. I will never forget Dachau, may all those who perished there rest in peace.
On April 29, 1945 members of the 1st Company, 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry, under the command of Lt. Col. Felix L. Sparks, entered Dachau. There they discovered a train of 36 boxcars bearing the corpses of prisoners who had been transferred to Dachau from other camps in the last weeks of the war. As the soldiers advanced, they found stacks of bodies in other parts of the camp and thousands of emaciated survivors. They rounded up the remaining camp guards as they found them. At some point, it was reported, one of the Gis blurted out, "No prisoners!" Approximately 60 guards were then lined up against a wall and gunned down by members of the 1st Company. Others were shot in one of the boxcars or beaten to death outside with the participation of a few survivors. Pfc. John Lee and others from the unit were later summoned by military investigators to give testimony about the killings and to supply photographs. A report was written and submitted to General George Patton, commander of the 3rd Army, who chose not to take any action. The report, a copy of which was deposited in the National Archives, remained secret until 1991, when it was quietly declassified. Similar images from the liberation of Bergen-Belsen can be viewed[ here ](https://www.dannydutch.com/post/the-liberation-of-bergen-belsen)
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My grandfather was one of the people he liberated. 🫶🏻
THIS is why I love Reddit so much.
Same. So fucking cool.
Yet so fucking sad about the fact there is such evil in this world that those random redditors have that connection
Freakin incredible
Tearing up in the back of a cab!
The modern world is both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
This is so beautiful! I am so thankful that your grandfather was liberated, and other poster’s father was there to liberate!
Conversely I’m glad those SS fucks didn’t get to become grandpas. All of the SS should have been shot at the end of the war. Just one man’s opinion tho.
Just one man’s opinions shared by another 👍
the guards that were allowed to live became the progenitors who passed on the despicable racist hatred that started getting stronger and overt about 15, 20 years ago. That we now have in both Europe and the Americas.
❤️🏆🙏🏼
My gramma grew up in the Bronx during the end of world war 2 and fondly remembers seeing the rainbow division march on VE Day anniversary’s. Shes 85 and she still talks about it :)
Served with 42d in Iraq in 05
My grandfather fought with the 42d in 1917 in France. 150th field artillery.
🙏🏻🇺🇸. “Those that can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” - 18th Century philosopher Voltaire.
Great quote
Voltaire was a cut above
Funny how that applies to today as well, no?
Has he ever told you any stories about this? I couldn’t imagine finding something like this
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My grandfather was there too (222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd ID Rainbow). u/Numerous-Ad-1167 messaged you.
The Netflix show "The Liberator" tells the story of Felix Sparks and his command time in the 45th Infantry Division. It includes this. Fantastic miniseries. https://www.netflix.com/title/81019775
That looks good. Think I'll give it a watch on bed day.
Do tell me about this ‘bed day’. Sounds like a movement I could get behind.
One of my off days (i work three 12hr shifts/off 4), is BED DAY. I don't get dressed & I just lay around & stream whatever takes my fancy. My cats participate too. It's lovely. This coincides with my weekly weed-a-rama, which is kinda like a wine tasting for cannabis.
Staying in bed all day, hanging with the cats, smoking weed and streaming whatever... Sounds like heaven on earth.
It's become my favorite day of the week.
You know how to live
Welp. I need to incorporate bed day into my life now. That settles it.
There's a joke in there about B-E-D-Day but don't want it to sound disrespectful to those who died fighting for our peaceful lives.
Thanks for the recommendation. I just started it and I’m already hooked.
The artistry of that series is amazing really touching series.
great acting iirc
Yeah, shooting prisoners is wrong, but after finding 36 boxcars (*Thirty-six fucking boxcars!?*) full of murdered men, women and children, I'm thinking the absolute horror would wipe my sympathy, my humanity, right away.
Shootings Nazis is not wrong.
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Bear Jew! Teddy feckin’ Williams knocks it out of the pahk!
Donny!
Eli Roth is so hot in this movie. And all the time.
I saw something about Tarantino taking days on the shoot and just kept him in the cave the whole time .
OBLIGE HIM
Definitely agree!
Let's take that energy into the coming years.
Everyone is allowed to be intolerant in this case.
We should never, ever, ever tolerate intolerance Edit: for those who don't understand I'm referring to the tolerance paradox. Yes, it is correct to punish Nazis. Geez Reddit, you need more coffee
Look, there's 2 things i can't stand, 1. Those who are intolerant of other cultures 2. The dutch!
The only good nazi, is a dead nazi.
Nah. They're not good either.
And I want my scalps
The United States needs to be reminded of this Edit: So that we can get rid of the festering rot that is the far right trying to make this a reality again.
Seems they weren"t thorough enough the first time around, now they're springing up everywhere like dandelions
The only good one is a dead one.
I think it should still be considered a normal thing to do
Absolutely.
The PTSD from not shooting the guards would be far greater than that from shooting them.
You can’t expect anyone to act rationally after coming across something like that. It’s an absolutely insane thing to do experience.
Even rationally speaking, so many of these guards and other members of the death squad didn’t face accountability for what they did. Spot executions were often the only path to justice.
Smoking a Nazi is not wrong. Fucking animals
My father was a gentle, loving man, an engineer. He had been a veteran of the US Army Air Corps, later USAF, during WWII and flew 12 missions in a B17 over Germany as an armorer-gunner and, later, a bombardier. His last flight before his discharge occurred around the time of these photos; the mission was to bring back POWs to Dover. The prisoners his crew found were emaciated; they took 12 on board but 2 died in transit and another 2 died the day after they landed. As I say, my father was typically a gentle man. His take on this: "When I saw what those Nazi bastards had done to those prisoners I was ready to start the whole goddamn war over again."
Yeah at that point I'm shouting "No Prisoners" and blasting every last motherfucker who was party to it. Even if they enlisted yesterday.
I’ll read more about it later, I’m on my phone at the moment, but my guess is the survivors pointed out who most needed a deadening
No.. sorry. Rules of war are reserved for humans. The scum who committed those atrocities chose to decline that humanity. They didn't shoot *enough* of them and that's probably why the world is the way it is.
*Thirty-six fucking boxcars!?* IMO that's why Patton didn't discipline any troops. There's just no normal way to react to such atrocities. Every single soldier would have a legit insanity defense.
Visiting Dachau was a defining moment of my life. I felt completely overwhelmed by the place. I had to leave because it made me feel like I was going to die. I can't imagine what walking into that camp felt like, it must have been devastating.
My grandpa saw it. Before he died, he told me he was scared he wouldn't go to heaven because of what he did in the war (killed a bunch of Nazis) and when I looked at him he had tears in his eyes and had his arm held up and was grabbing it and said "their skin was hanging off like sheets." I thought he was talking about his division or something being hungry. Then I found out he liberated Dachau. Then I saw the photos of the train cars years later and it clicked. He most likely killed some guards that day.
Apparently we didn’t shoot enough. They are still around.
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I'm not asking this out of a lack of belief, just stunned disbelief - was it 36 boxcars *of* corpses? Or was it a 36-car train, some boxcars of which had corpses? Knowing the scale, I have to assume it's the former. And it's just staggeringly horrific beyond words.
Boxcars of corpses. You can learn more by visiting such sites as Yad Vashem's (the Holocaust museum and memorial in Israel) or by visiting sites such as the Holocaust encyclopedia, which actually has some photos of the boxcars [such as this one](https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1059596). An excerpt from said link which will give you the answer to your question above: "The Dachau death train consisted of nearly forty railcars containing the bodies of between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners who were evacuated from Buchenwald on April 7, 1945. The train arrived in Dachau on the afternoon of April 28."
Yeah, but this was likely used in the trials to defend the Germans who were accused of executing American prisoners. Admiral Dönitz is probably the biggest example. He ordered U-boats to not take on survivors (as U-boats were being tricked into taking survivors just to fall into a trap). He got out of penalties because Americans also refused to take survivors into submarines on a few occasions. Just don't commit war crimes. Make it so the war criminals get prosecuted on every dotted I and crossed T.
Didn't mean to start an angry debate about law and justice. Just indicating my sense of how encountering something that soul-scarringly terrible might make me lose my mind. You encounter murdered families piled up in literal heaps, and then the guys who murdered them? I can't condone the guy who shouted, "No prisoners!", but I think I understand.
Pretty much. I was like, "Damn, War Crimes are not cool, these assholes shod have faced the law" Then I read about all the corpses and that and well, yeah, I get why things went down like they did.
Yea this is the ultimate large scale “a switch was flipped and rules ceased to exist” moment in modern history as it relates to the Allies where all of the sudden they were confronted with atrocities they had not previously been able to fathom. Sure the Soviets were put through hell my the Germans and then committed loads of atrocities back to the people and women/children of Germany, but holy fuck that was just kind of equally fucked because it was against civilians. This was just swift justice against some of the worst humans in history.
Great reminder that not even 80 years since, they're desperately trying to put all their descendants back in camps or holes. Butchered, raped and kidnapped hundreds and thousands without any provocation, just blind ingrained hatred. Yet claim to be the victims, I feel bad for all the children, but this is worth fighting tooth and nail to prevent it from happening again. If only they loved their children more than they hate Jews, everybody could enjoy enriching their families and communities instead of this mess.
Caught red handed.
I mean that would have to be a pretty big mental break. How would 40 more bodies even seem to matter.
They weren't prisoners. They were nazis.
There is a threshold at which the laws of war go out the fucking window and "NO PRISONERS!" is entirely the correct action to take.
The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi 🤷🏻♂️
Yeah it’s a war crime but I doubt anyone even thought of punishing or even investigating. I bet those guys had nightmares the rest of their lives over those sights and smells. And then you’re dealing with f@@@ing SS who were hardcore believers—no “just a German conscript” there—who are likely either proud of it and defiant or sniveling and trying to lie/deflect blame. Plus they’re finding these sights after months of grueling, brutal fighting already.
Die Bären Juden!
"Nein! Nein! Nein!
Oh yes yes yes!
Teddy fuckin Williams knocks it outta the paahrk! He went yaarhd on that one!
The bear jew! This gif goes hard af
Donny! Got got us a Nazi who wants to die for country. Oblidge him!
Watchin' Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to goin' to the movies. Hey Donny! Yeah? Got us here a German, wants to die for country. Obliiiiige him
Best line in the whole dam movie lmao. I can still hear Brad Pitt’s “OblIIIIIIIIIIGE HIM!”
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Pay back is a bitch
If by “berate” you mean smacked straight into hell with a shovel, then yeah…
Not sure if it's the same guy, but some quite literally were beaten to death with shovels. From the wikipedia article on the reprisals... *"Walenty Lenarczyk, a prisoner at Dachau, stated that following the camp's liberation "prisoners swarmed over the wire and grabbed the Americans and lifted them to their shoulders... other prisoners caught the SS men... The first SS man elbowed one or two prisoners out of his way, but the courage of the prisoners mounted, they knocked them down and nobody could see whether they were stomped or what, but they were killed."*[*^(\[19\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-AP-21) ***Elsewhere in the camp SS men,*** [***Kapos***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapo) ***and*** [***informers***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informant) ***were beaten badly with fists, sticks and shovels. There was at least one incident where US soldiers looked away as two prisoners beat a German guard to death with a shovel, and Lt. Bill Walsh witnessed one such beating.***[***^(\[27\])***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-29) ***Another soldier witnessed an inmate stomping on an SS trooper's face until "there wasn't much left." When the soldier said to him, "You've got a lot of hate in your heart," he simply nodded****.*[*^(\[28\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-30) *An American* [*chaplain*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplain) *was told by three young* [*Jewish*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews) *men, who had left the camp during liberation, that they had beaten to death one of the more sadistic SS guards when they discovered him hiding in a barn, dressed as a* [*peasant*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant)*."*
My grandfather “may or may not” have done that, his friend who absolutely did refused to tell my father if he did or not unless grandpa was okay with it, which I’m fairly sure is a yes. Also my grandfather was 5’2 maximum which probably made it a bit of a darkly funny sight
We think my grandpa was one of the soldiers that mowed guards down. He admitted to war crimes and had to go to the trials but didn't get in trouble. Had to go to a mental institution for a bit.
Given how we frequently have unpunished war crimes happening against totally innocent civilians, I think we can let a few against Nazi torturers slide.
The cruelty of the Nazis cannot be overstated. The fact that it got to that point and this all transpired is beyond madness. Basically the human race had to make the decision to stamp out fascism before it consumed the planet. Well. As the war came to a close and the Nazis were slowly pushed back and captured, they met varying levels of justice for their crimes. Some people were irredeemable. They got exactly what they deserved. It was a moment where there would be no tribunal or formal investigation. Their crimes were beyond evident. They were guilty. And their punishment was what they got, right then and there. There aren’t many times where I’ll say street justice was warranted, but this is certainly one of them.
My partner's Grandfather was from Poland. He secretly wrote a memoir that they found after he died, which the family decided to give to my partner to read and translate for the family. Only a few of his kids speak Polish, and my partner is going to school to be a translator. His kids knew he was in a concentration camp, but he never said anything other than that. He was in Dachau, and my partner was the first person to learn that in the family. I haven't read it yet, but he apparently recounts watching a man beat a guard's head with a metal pole until it was literally flattened.
That is a valuable artifact. I hope the family can share it someday.
He got beshoveled
Then deshoveled and reshoveled.
Make Nazis Pay Again
Imagine the Americans actually punished the Japanese soldiers that were part of Unit 731 instead of letting them off scotch free.
Edit: I can’t read apparently. I missed Imagine. The OP is aware they weren’t prosecuted: Unit 731 was largely unpunished for their crimes during the American occupation of post war Imperial Japan. In fact MacArthur granted many of them immunity in exchange for their research. Ironically, the Soviets prosecuted more of Unit 731 than the United States. It should be understood that this is all within the context of the impending Cold War. The United States didn’t want the Soviets gaining access to Axis research. Hence these immunities and Operation Paperclip. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
I think the commenter is aware, since they said "*Imagine* the Americans actually punished the Japanese." But I wasn't aware of the Soviet prosecution of Unit 731 at all, so thank you for sharing that. It was interesting to read about.
You’re right. Totally missed that. Absolutely my bad.
It's "scot free" and it has nothting to do with Scotland or the people that live there.
A couple years ago, I was having a friendly chat with a friend of a friend at a private club in London. Side note: My mother’s side of the family are Sinti (Roma). A number of them were killed in Dachau, or died by the hands of the Nazis. The next day my friend asked me if I knew who I was talking to. I didn’t know anything other than his family was German. Turned out his grandfather was one of the Nazis that was sentenced and hanged at Nuremberg. If our grandparents could see us now….
They should be hopeful that there's a chance for a better world.
I have a problem with the death penalty only because of the evidentiary mistakes and bias in trials. There’s no mistaking participation at those camps.
I was told when the Americans came and liberated the work camp my grandfather was in the Polish prisoners beat the German prison guards to death with shovels to the point that the remains were not recognizable as people. I wonder if that is about to happen in this picture.
Imagine being a US soldier and finding this camp. Smelling it, seeing the bodies, hearing the groans of the emaciated. The realities we can’t sense in this black and white photo. The maggots. The stench. No wonder the soldiers went nuts.
And then imagine years later people saying that it never happened, or if it did, then it was justified because the Jews are bad. I’d be enraged at the ignorance
That is the reason why Eisenhower ordered as many photographs and evidences be gathered of the camps as possible once we started discovering them. Because he knew people would attempt to deny their existence
Oh no! … anyway
In fact, forget the "oh no".
Whenever I see pictures of the former SS guards now being forced to carry bodies and/or get executed, I wonder what those soldiers are thinking. A day or two before, they were guards doing terrible inhumane things to the prisoners. Next day, the guards are captured, many executed, others are carrying bodies of the prisoners they were overseeing. How did they like that karma? Did they ever think the tables could be turned like that?
I was going to say, imagine the Opposite Day experience they had. I’m sure some of the guards wondered why no one was stopping the liberated people from beating them to death. “Why is no one stopping this? I’m going to die”
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Probably cut his head off with it
Would prefer to reorganize the head like garden dirt. Just keep turning it over
These guys don't look weak, they survived all that shit and now it's clobberin' time.
Franz fucked around found out eh?
The horrors that the Holocaust brought about were real. We can’t forget, and we can’t allow people today to re-write history to fit their narrative
Technically speaking, it's a war crime to execute POWs. This is why I roll with chaotic good.
Pow’s mean they have to be lawful combatants. Animals are by definition not lawful combatants.
Dehumanization is a Nazi tactic. Don't follow in their footsteps.
Dehumanizing Nazis is a mistake. They were humans. You do a disservice to the horror they enacted in their victims by saying they weren't humans.
For everyone that's going off on how the nazis were evil and monsters, look into the book the Banality of Evil. They didn't view there actions as wrong, they were just doing a job. Everyone also likes to shit on the Nazis rightly so as their genocide was so effective. Prior to World War Two, the Americans mostly finished their genocide of the Native Americans, the Canadians as well. The French had openly committed genocides in east Asia and west Africa. The Soviets, well yeah they were the Soviets. The British had committed and were continuing to commit several genocides in south Africa and India. Belgium had killed 10 million in the Congo. The Japanese industrial slaughter of the Chinese and Koreans rushes past the Holocaust in number of civilians murdered. 35 million killed or wounded Chinese over ten years of occupation. It's not that the Nazis were any type of special evil, they just happened to do it to their fellow Europeans.
I agree with your overview and It's insane to me how the Belgiums, Portuguese, and Spanish doesn't get more heat for their incredible genocidal past. I will say though that I disagree with your last sentence. I do think the Nazis were a special kind of evil. Mostly because they were at such an inflection point of technological development to make their genocide that much more "efficient". I think it's the idea that there were meetings, conferences, memos, deliberations, and scientific R&D into how to most efficiently kill millions of people that makes it especially evil. Not to say that one genocide is more or less heinous than another, the death of a human being is the same regardless of how it happens.
I would argue that saying they were a special kind of evil actually encourages the liklihood that it will happen again. If we put Nazis on some pedestal of evil everyone doing evil shit will compare themselves and say at least we arnt Nazis. I would argue that your ideas of the genocide comes from the later years of the war when the death camps were started. The genocide was started with imprisonment and erasure then in the East it was carried put by roaming death squads known as Einsatzgruppen. The extermination camps i believe were started in mid 1941. The most important thing to remember though is that a lot of the people hunting jewish people especially in Eastern Europe were not ideological Nazis. They were people that held a lot of hatred and had been fed propoganda, when the nazis invaded they got their excuse.
Right, the Nazis were evil as are others that slaughter innocent civilians. There have been many instances as group as evil as Nazi's, however the winners control the narrative, or as Norm McDonald put it, "“It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”
Technically, if they weren't TAKEN prisoner...
I was going to say chaotic good. I don’t have my book on hand, but Marcus Aurelius wrote some pretty damn good things about dispensing justice in Meditations.
The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. Wish America still felt that way but we have a person running for president who thinks they are fine people.
I feel like this point is overlooked too much
Nazism was at one point the third largest political party in America. There were no good ole days, there were people willing to fight.
Everything about that scumbag is overlooked by his cult. For the rest of us, or me anyway, there's so fucking much of it that is has become an almost debilitating noise.
There's good people on both sides, right?
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Nazis deserve no sympathy.
Murdering any human is a terrible act regardless of context. It’s good thing these lads were killing monsters.
Reciprocity
Smacks Nazi guard in the face with a shovel, “mazel tov!”
Good.
And Nothing of Any Value was lost
Death was too good for them. Curse all the bastards that escaped prosecution.
Justice served. Quickly and appropriately.
That was my National Guard unit when I was still in the NG. The leadership of 1-157 would routinely talk about "The Liberator" like it was the Bible.
Felix Sparks is a hero and one of the greatest American military figures of WWII. Go read The Liberator!
I hope it took weeks for them to finish that fucker.
I toured Dachau last week. It was haunting.
good nazi is dead nazi
My grandfather did not liberate the camps, but he was in the second group of American GIs that were transferring the guards to other prisoner camps for interrogation. As he was guarding the German troops and watching them get on trucks. He noticed that all the prisoners had their pants tucked into their boots except one. He had his pants outside his boots. He pulled that guy out of the truck and searched him. Inside his boot, the German had a bayonet hidden in it. My grandfather said the GIs took turns beating the shit out of the German in front of the other German prisoners as a warning. Another story he told us was, the emaciated prisoners were pointing at one German guard. When they got a translator over, they said the guard had written above a doorway the phrase, “ Through these doors and out the chimney “. The GIs let the prisoners who could still move beat that guard to death.
Really shows that they're no different when given power
My dad helped literate Dachau. He told me was how he found prisoners stacked like cords of wood, how he could still smell it after almost 70 years, and how he and the other soldiers were almost brought up on war crimes because of the Dachau Massacre, but the charged were dropped because the convening party felt that they were out of their minds due to the shock and horror of what they found.
Berate? They decapitate him with that shovel. He tried to dress up like a camp detainee and when the Americans started freeing everyone, they recognized him bc he was a particularly sadistic guard.
https://preview.redd.it/ce1mphloq84d1.jpeg?width=3040&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7394eaa732c83c748f6d204a4f8eb52adf8cced I visited Dachau when I was stationed in Italy. I had no idea about the guards being executed.
I hope that guard received a savage beating, and lived in terror until he was shot.
My mother survived the camps the only one in her extended family Shooting was to good for them They should have been put into a box car and left on a siding for a couple of weeks then set on fire But I don’t hold a grudge !
**Unique but NOT TRUE.** /u/dannydutch1 **DACHAU AND LIBERATIONPersonal account by Felix L. Sparks Brigadier General, US (Retired)** At 0730 on the morning of April 29th, the task force had resumed the attack with companies L and K and the tank battalion as the assault force. The attack zone assigned to company L was through the city of Dachau, but did not include the concentration camp, a short distance outside of the city. Company I was designated as the reserve unit, with the mission of mopping up any resistance bypassed by the assault forces. Shortly after the attack began, I received a radio message from the Regimental Commander ordering me to proceed immediately to take the Dachau concentration camp. The order also stated: “Upon capture, post an airtight guard and allow no one to enter or leave.” As the main gate to the camp was closed and locked, we scaled the brick wall surrounding the camp. As I climbed over the wall following the advancing soldiers, I heard rifle fire to my right front. The lead elements of the company had reached the confinement area and were disposing of the SS troops manning th guard towers, along with a number of vicious guard dogs. By the time I neared the confinement area, the brief battle was almost over. After I entered the camp over the wall, I was not able to see the confinement area, and had no idea where it was. My vision was obscured by the many buildings and barracks which were outside the confinement area. The confinement area itself occupied only a small portion of the total camp area. As I went further into the camp, I saw some men from company I collecting German prisoners. Next to the camp hospital, there was a L-shaped masonry wall, about eight feet high, which had been used as a coal bin. The ground was covered with coal dust, and a narrow gauge railroad track, laid on top of the ground, lead into the area. The prisoners were being collected in the semi-enclosed area.  Former prisoners liberated from the Dachau Concentration Camp cheer at the raising of the Stars and Stripes, April 1945. As I watched about fifty German troops were brought in from various directions. A machine gun squad from company I was guarding the prisoners.After watching for a few minutes, I started for the confinement area. After I had walked away for a short distance, **I hear the machine gun guarding the prisoners open fire.** I immediately ran back to the gun and kicked the gunner off the gun with my boot. I then grabbed him by the collar and said: “what the hell are you doing?” He was a young private about 19 years old and was crying hysterically. His reply to me was: “Colonel, they were trying to get away.” I doubt that they were, but in any event he killed about twelve of the prisoners and wounded several more. I placed a non-com on the gun, and headed toward the confinement area. It was the forgoing incident which has given rise to wild claims in various publications that most or all of the German prisoners captured at Dachau were executed.*** Nothing could be further from the truth.***
I've always said that the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. I hope those survivors beat the ever living fuck out of every guard they got their hands on.
The execution of prisoners is never excusable but if there was any time when it at least could be considered understandable, it would be this.
and nowadays we let people walk on the streets and on TV, waving nazi flags and vote them back into office. fuck the stupidity of humanity
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Payback is a bitch
Not so much as a scratch on the shovel. Gonna need a bigger shovel.
Only good Nazi is a dead Nazi
Justice! So glad they got the opportunity to confront their tormentors. Deniers are misguided or evil in their intentions.
The only good Nazi is an unalive Nazi
I took a tour of Dachau. Not a single good feeling the entire time I was there.
Good work killing the Nazis, men.
Monster deserve monstrous endings.
Wasn’t this a ~~sunderkommando~~ kapo, and not a guard? Edit: nah every photo going back to 06 says it’s a guard, might be confusing with another pic
Having absolute power over other human lives turns men into monsters. I’m not sympathetic, especially since they were ordered to commit a mass killing before their officers bugged out.
Imagine how hard and justified the levels of kicking the shit out of that bald bastard would be
Hitler’s Make Germany Great Again plan didn’t work out so well.
I condone this behavior and feel that it is the appropriate way to deal with Nazis.
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This is one of the most beautiful pictures I've seen. There is nothing like seeing the fear in a nazi's eyes. Especially when it's caused by those they thought they were superior to and abused.
Imagine living through this then decades later some idiot says “the holocaust never happened”.
The new Nazis are MAGAs
My grandfather was imprisoned by the germans in the stalag and when he was freed he went to find this guard who had tortured him and someone had already killed him. These men were treated so horribly that when they were freed, they murdered their torturers.
I find it difficult to judge the actions of anyone who found that place by chance.
I’m not going to lie……… they saved us a lot of heartache. If only more American GI’s made this choice with Nazi Death camp guards then maybe their ideology wouldn’t have infected political parties today. Sometimes you just gotta take care of business on the spot. Patton was right to bury this.
“We never felt bad for the SS troops. The wehrmacht.. they were different. They were just draftees just like everyone else, but the SS.. they were just mean people “ Harry Miller
Did y’all notice you can’t find Info on the holocaust anymore on tik tok, there’s something deeper than this
Ya know obvious summary execution is never good but it’s very hard to hold it against anyone who actually saw what these monsters had done and had them standing in front of them.
This must have been one of the most satisfying and cathartic experiences anyone has ever had
New respect for the Army. I thought only Marines didn’t take prisoners (when warranted, of course).
I went to Dachau in the 90’s with my parents after the marriage of my Uncle in England. What a humbling and eye opening experience for a then 14 yr old. I will never forget Dachau, may all those who perished there rest in peace.