Hellstorm Page #7

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And I was horrified. Quite a few of us were

horrified. And I went to him and told him,

you know, that this was against all international

law, and humanity. My good buddy, who I'd

spent so much time with, grabbed me, and said

"This nut will shoot you. You better knock

this off." And he got enough guys, and they

shot these.. about twenty five prisoners.

It was a terrible thing to see, and I talked

to a lot of my buddies who had shot these guys,

and they were horrified too.

Unaware of the deep hatred the Allies harbored

for them, when proud SS units surrendered,

they naively assumed that they would be accorded

respect as the unsurpassed fighters that they

had proven to be. As soon as they were

disarmed, most were slaughtered where they stood.

For those members of the German military lucky

enough to survive capture, death often awaited

behind the lines, where thousands more perished.

With General Eisenhower turning a blind eye

to the Geneva Convention, only the threat

of retaliation against Allied POWs still held

in Germany prevented a massacre

of prodigious proportions.

Soon after US combat soldiers moved out of a

community and the rear echelon troops moved in,

the reality of occupation became clear to the

German citizens. The second wave of soldiers,

wanting to experience a bit of war on

their own, took out their aggression on

the helpless Germans by looting,

raping, killing, and destroying.

In many towns, the invaders unlocked jails,

prisons and concentration camps and invited

the inmates to join in the revelry.

Amy Schrott:
They just opened up the camps

and let them go. The Russians and Poles were

looting the houses and killing the

shopkeepers. Then they began raping the girls.

Similar mayhem engulfed most towns in western

Germany as Americans and British pushed onward.

US sergeant:
Our own Army and the British

Army have done their share of looting

and raping. We too are

considered an army of rapists.

Although brutal rapes persisted against defenseless

females, the Allied troops quickly discovered

that hunger was a powerful incentive to sexual

surrender. Although sex could be bought for

a bit of food, a cigarette or a bar of soap,

some victors preferred to take what they wanted,

whenever and wherever they pleased.

American soldier: Hunger made German women

more available, but despite this, rape was

prevalent and often accompanied by additional

violence. In particular I remember an eighteen-year old

woman who had the side of her face smashed

with a rifle butt and was then raped by two GIs

Even the French complained that the rapes,

looting and drunken destructiveness on the

part of our troops was excessive.

Despite the numerous atrocities committed

on the western front, such savagery never

became officially sanctioned. Considering the

blood-thirsty propaganda from the primarily

Jewish-owned media, as well as the active

incitement of their political and military

leaders, the average British and American

soldier comported himself amazingly well,

and certainly far, far better

than his Soviet counterpart.

Although the Allies in the West might have

easily pushed on to Berlin, they were ordered

to halt just short of their goal. As a token

of their great love and gratitude, Roosevelt

and Churchill had already awarded the

German capital to Stalin as a prize.

After days of hopeless fighting in which little

boys fought, and all too often died, like men

Berlin was finally overwhelmed on May 2nd.

And with the suicide of Adolf Hitler, the

war effectively ended. Now that there was

virtually no chance for reprisals against

Americans held in German POW camps, Eisenhower's

pathological hatred of Germans was given free rein.

DEATH CAMPS:

With the final capitulation in May, 1945,

the supreme allied commander found himself

in control of over five million ragged, weary,

but living, enemy soldiers. Since Eisenhower

could not kill more armed Germans in war,

the American desk general decided to kill

disarmed Germans in peace.

Because the Geneva Convention guaranteed POWs

the same food, shelter and medical attention

as their captors, Eisenhower simply circumvented the

treaty by creating his own category for prisoners.

Under this reclassification, German

soldiers were no longer considered POWs, but

DEFs - Disarmed Enemy Forces. With this

sleight-of-hand, and in direct violation of the Geneva

Convention, Eisenhower could now deal in secret

with those in his power, free from the prying eyes of

the outside world.

Even before the wars end, thousands of

German POWs had died in American captivity

from starvation, neglect, and,

in many cases, outright murder.

With the German surrender and the threat of

retaliation against Allied POWs entirely erased,

deaths in the American concentration

camps accelerated dramatically.

While tens of thousands died of starvation and

thirst, hundreds of thousands more perished from

overcrowding and disease.

German prisoner:
Its incomprehensible to

me how we could stand for many, many days

without sitting, without lying down, just

standing there, totally soaked. During the

day we marched around, huddled together to

try to warm each other a bit. The latrines

were just logs flung over ditches next to

the barbed wire fences. To sleep, all we could

do was to dig out a hole in the ground with

our hands, then cling together in the hole.

Because of illness, the men had to defecate

on the ground. Soon, many of us were too weak

to take off our trousers first. So our clothing

was infected, and so was the mud where we

had to walk and sit and lie down. There was

no water at all at first, except the rain.

More than half the days we had no food at

all. On the rest, we got a little K ration.

I could see from the package that they were

giving us one tenth of the rations that they

issued to their own men. I complained to

the American camp commander that he was

breaking the Geneva Convention, but he just said,

"Forget the Convention. You havent any rights."

Within a few days, some of the men who

had gone healthy into the camps were dead.

I saw our men dragging many dead bodies to

the gate of the camp, where they were thrown

loose on top of each other onto

trucks, which took them away.

As if their plight were not already hideous

enough, prisoners occasionally became the

targets of drunken guards who sprayed

the camps with machine-gun fire.

At one compound, amused guards formed lines

and beat prisoners with clubs and sticks as

they ran the gauntlet for their paltry rations.

At another camp of 5,200 men, ten to thirty

bodies were hauled away every day. Prisoners

who did not succumb to hunger or disease often

died of thirst. Many men were forced to drink

their own urine even though streams ran a

few feet from the barbed wire.

There was no lack of food or shelter among

the victorious Allies. Actually, American

supply depots were bursting at the seams.

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