In brief, in the aftermath of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp by the US Army, several dozen German POWs (camp guards) were killed by US troops and liberated inmates (who may have been given pistols and bayonets). Overview here.
These killings seem like they may have been murder; though if any case calls for temporary insanity, this seems like one that does.
Should the GIs and inmates have been tried for murder? My answer is no, but it’s hard to put into words why exactly I feel that way. Perhaps it’s because I can’t imagine how I might react were I to see such utter horror.
Wikipedia is a horrifically bad resource for a number of reasons.
Beyond that even the wikipedia article doesn’t support your allegation that “several dozen” German POWs were killed at Dachau.
If the wiki article is to be taken seriously(always a dangerous proposition) then some German POWs were killed, but it’s not clear how many, that it may have only been a few and that it’s not clear how many US soldiers were involved, the circumstances of the killings, or if any prisoners participated in it.
My sense is to say no. But a more detailed explanation of the surrounding facts might change my mind.
As a general principle, prosecutors have the discretion to look at the circumstances and decide what justice warrants. I have no trouble believing that was done here.
When someone has been engaged in the murder of hundreds of innocent people, as far as I’m concerned there are only two requirements: make sure you’ve got the right man, and kill him cleanly - no torture.
Killing them isn’t murder - it’s a failure to follow the recommended procedure.
No, just procedural error. I can’t see how anybody could remain calm with dead bodies lying around everywhere and the perpretrators about to taken away to at the least three square meals a day and a nice, clean cell.
Yes, they should have been tried for war crimes. You don’t shoot prisoners. Doesn’t matter what they did. You hand them over to due process of law.
This doesn’t mean I don’t understand why this might have happened, but that doesn’t make it right.
What has always struck me first about seeing photografs of this incident, is that these ss-men are wearing camouflage combat-uniforms.
Which seems a bit odd for guard duty.
On balance, I’m with Mr Dibble. The mitigating circumstances might bear on whether they would be convicted and of what crime exacly, and if convicted would certainly bear on how they might be sentenced, but shooting prisoners out of hand is always unacceptable, regardless of provocation. “I don’t see how anybody could remain calm” doesn’t negate the possibility of homicide under other circumstances, and it doesn’t here either. An awful lot of homicides are commited in circumstances were people can’t remain calm.
There is, as Bricker said, a certain amount of prosecutorial discretion.
However,
Given your tendency to make foolish, jingoistic statements I hope that you reflect on exactly what you wrote here, Qin/née CurtisLeMay. You’ve described the situation of every POW taken on the battlefield and those that took them prisoner.
Which is still illegal, now matter how silly you may think it is, it is still a crime.
Furthermore, it is not clear, to me at least, that all that were killed were actual camp guards. This account how ss were segregated from Wehrmacht and the camouflage uniforms seems to indicate that normal combat-POW’s were amongst those murdered.
Not that I approve of capital punishment, but firing squads generally come after that “due process of law” I mentioned. Comparing that to summary executions is what’s known in the trade as “The Fallacy of False Equivalency”
No. They had commited genocide, they were not commiting it at the time they were shot, there was no clear and present danger from them.
No, it’s not “rather silly”, it’s in the very body of legal conventions that define “war crime” - they very specifically and pointedly mention this sort of thing:[