clarecountyreview.com | 04May2009 | Richard S. Allen
http://www.clarecountyreview.com:80/?p=2381
War Crimes
President Obama thinks we’re “losing our moral bearings”
because we water boarded some terrorists to make them talk. Other
prominent Democrats are eager to put President Bush, former Vice-
President Cheney, and various Justice Department lawyers on trial for
“war crimes” and “torture.”
Alright, if we’re going to investigate war crimes let's skip the small
potatoes of water boarding and get to something we can sink our
vindictive teeth into.
As our Justice Department pointed out last week when they tried to
deport 89 year old John Demjanjuk to Germany to stand trial for being
the war criminal Ivan the Terrible, “there’s no statute of limitations
on genocide.”
Of course, Demjanjuk had already been found not to be Ivan the Terrible
by The Supreme Court of Israel. The case against him was dismissed. But
the boys at Justice never give up. So, let’s give them something to
work on.
Let’s start with the U.S. Army on April 29, 1945. On that day the 3rd
Battalion of the 157th Infantry Division, part of the 45th Infantry
Division and elements of the 42nd Infantry Division liberated Dachau
Concentration Camp near Munich Germany.
Even though the war was nearly over [Hitler committed suicide the next
day] on the 29th these American units were attacking toward Munich when
they overran the notorious Dachau Concentration Camp.
The camp commander and many of the guards had left the day before. What
was left was some guards, patients in the military hospital, and SS
trainees from a separate facility -- which was part of the camp.
What happened next is confusing and chaotic. A German Lieutenant had
been left in charge. His name was either Lt. Heinrich Wicker or
Skodzensky depending on which source you read. When he came to the main
gate to surrender Lt. William Walsh shot and killed him.
Four more Germans came to the gate. Walsh took them to an empty
railroad car and killed them with his .45 pistol.
At 11:30 122 surrendering Germans were killed by machine gun fire.
At 12:00 358 Germans, most from the hospital, were lined up against a
brick wall. Pvt. William Curtin from the 157th killed them with a
machine gun. Edwin Gorak from the 158 Field Artillery saw it and took a
picture. Colonel Sparks, Curtin's regimental CO finally stopped his
shooting.
12:15 Brigadier General Henning Linden and his staff arrive. He argues
with Col. Felix Sparks the Regimental commander. Then he leaves.
At 2:30 Lt. Walsh and part of I Company leave the camp to take part in
the advance on Munich.
At 2:35 Lt. (Doctor) Howard Buechner, the Regimental Medical Officer
and Lt. (Doctor) Robert Kinsey are the first doctors on the scene.
At 2:45 1st Lt. Jack Busheyhead, a Cherokee Indian, and Executive
Officer of I company (The 45th Div was made up of National Guard units
from Southwestern states) ordered two machine guns set up in front of
the wall -- one on top of a shed and the other on the ground.
Browning Automatic Rifleman was also there. They opened fire and killed
346 POWs. It was filmed.
Two minutes later Doctor Buechner hears the firing and comes to the
scene.
Sgt. Ralph Rosa and his medics also arrived. Nobody gave the wounded
Germans medical care.
Doctor Buechner in his book Hour of the Avenger, written in 1986, says
a total of 520 German prisoners were killed that day.
The 163rd Signal Photographic Company made a film of the massacre. Most
of the film was destroyed in the cover-up but individual pictures still
remain. You can see them on the Internet.
Despite the books, interviews, and pictures taken at the time the Army
kept the official report classified until 1991.
Dr. Buechner was charged with conduct unbecoming an officer. Col.
Sparks, whose men committed the massacre, was court martial for failing
to control them. General Patton had both charges dismissed. Nobody else
was ever charged with a crime.
If Senators Schumer, Feinstein, Levin and Leahy are so hot to uncover
“war crimes” this might be a good place to start. I’m sure if they
scoured the American Legions and VFW halls they could find some guys
from tbe 157th that took part. Or doesn’t slaughtering German prisoners
count as a war crime?
Maybe they deserved it. This was a concentration camp, after all. But
if camp guards deserve to be killed isn’t it possible that terrorists
that fly airplanes into the World Trade Center killing over 3,000
Americans might deserve to have their heads dunked in an effort to find
out if they plan any other mass murders?
Throwing the term “war crimes” and “torture” around over trivial
mistreatments like water boarding and scaring someone with a
caterpillar cheapens the entire concept. It’s also hypocritical in
light of other incidents that are far more worthy of investigation and
prosecution.
If the worst anyone can say about the United States of America is that
we water boarded some terrorists in the wake of 9/11, I’d say the
United States moral bearings are just fine. They’re certainly better
than they were on April 29, 1945.
[W.Z. There
are photographs on the Internet showing bulldozers pushing corpses into
mass graves in Dachau. One wonders if these were actually Germans
killed by the Americans. Another story claimed that when the Americans
liberated Dachau, they unwisely overfed the starving inmates such that
they died as a result. General Eisenhower was fanatically anti-German
and is said to be respnsible for the deaths of over a million German
POWs via starvation and exposure in open-air camps. War crimes ...
crimes against humanity ... man's inhumanity to man.]
5 comments to War Crimes
eddieo
May 5th, 2009 at 12:32 am · Reply
We were the first to prosecute people for crimes against humanity,
crimes that we defined as being so grave there is no immunity or
statute of limitations for them. We prosecuted Vietnamese for crimes
against humanity for waterboarding our soldiers. Our government has now
knowingly broken these same laws. We are obliged by international law
to prosecute or send our officials to the Hague for prosecution. To NOT
prosecute is not just illegal, it is morally wrong. To NOT prosecute
makes us all complicit in these highest of crimes.
I urge Americans of all political stripes to demand that their
representatives uphold their oath of office and investigate / prosecute
these crimes now.
blackminorca
May 5th, 2009 at 11:22 am · Reply
Mr Allen,
There is a far greater example of the double standard.
Coummunist genocide claimed 100 million in the last century and not one
leftist has been prosecuted for this mass of humanity that is far
greater than all the wars of the last century.
Duranty and the NY Times were its willing agents of cover up.
http://ucca.org/ucca/famine/gordondispatch.html
The Pulitzer at Columbia University festooned Prizes on those that
reported “no deaths” in the “worker’s paradise”.
In fact, this obfuscation probably gave rise to Hitler since the death
toll in the 20’s and 30’s included 1 million Amish, Mennonites, and
other German colonists that made the mistake of moving to Ukraine a
hundred years prior.
http://library.ndsu.edu/grhc/order/general/sinner.html
The left is still in charge and there will be no justice until we
accept the past.
Geseke
May 5th, 2009 at 11:42 am · Reply
This story is a little mixed up. Lt. Walsh was not at the main gate and
he did not shoot Lt. Wicker or Lt. Skodzensky, who did not even exist.
Lt. Walsh shot some unnamed German soldiers near the railroad gate into
the camp.
The story is actually worse than what is written here. Waffen-SS
soldiers had been sent from the battlefield to Dachau to help with the
surrender of the camp. They were killed by the Americans, who must have
known that these men were not the camp guards. Even worse, some of
these Waffen-SS soldiers were shoved inside the camp so that the
prisoners could beat them to death. Some of the bodies of German
soldiers were thrown into the moat around the camp and then the
Americans repeatedly shot them just for fun.
Wounded Wehrmacht soldiers were dragged out of their hospital beds in
the Army hospital at Dachau and lined up to be shot by the Americans.
The Lt. who surrendered the camp was killed later, but no one knows how
or when. He just disappeared.
Geseke
May 5th, 2009 at 2:11 pm · Reply
Another “war crime” committed by Americans at Dachau was the alleged
removal of dog tags from the bodies of the dead German soldiers and
their alleged burial in unmarked graves on the grounds of the SS
garrison at Dachau. The American Military occupied the Dachau SS
garrison for 28 years and the Germans were not allowed to search for
the bodies of the soldiers who were allegedly killed during the
liberation of the camp. Today visitors are allowed to see a small part
of the former garrison where there are mounds of earth that are claimed
to be the rubble from factory buildings that were torn down. The German
people are still forbidden to dig on the grounds at Dachau to determine
if the bodies of German soldiers are buried there. There were allegedly
1.7 million German soldiers who surrendered to the Americans at the end
of World War II and they never returned home to their families. Where
are their graves? No one knows, but there are rumors that they are
buried on military bases still occupied by American troops.
really now
May 7th, 2009 at 1:38 pm · Reply
torture is a crime
simple
many people captured and tortured in the Bush era were actually
innocent, it wasn't just terrorists