'Let's get those Nazi dogs:' How 70 years ago, enraged by the horrors they found at Dachau,

Thanks for the clarification.

Trying to make war “civilized” is a fools errand.

“Trying to make war “civilized” is a fools errand.”

Germany captured 95,532 American POWs in World War Two, and I am certain most of those who survived that captivity and their families are grateful such protections existed for them no matter how inadequate.

I know one of them personally. He assures me his time as a guest of the Third Reich was nothing like Hogans Heroes. A quarter of his fellow prisoners died of starvation, disease, or from beatings administered by the guards.

So spare me, will you? Those SS monsters had it coming, in spades.

L

“I know one of them personally.”

One of the members of my family was relieved to finally reach a German POW camp. He was captured when a Waffen-SS Panzer unit overran his truck convoy without warning at the very beginning of the Ardennes Offensive in mid-December 1944. He and his fellow American POWs were held prisoner in the most wretched winter conditions imaginable in snow and ice filled ditches and other outdoor locations until they finally reached a POW camp in Germany in March 1945. I still have the International Red Cross post card for POWs he sent home to his wife to let her know he was still alive after all. Each day they had to make heartbreaking decisions about whether or not they should give a dying man a morsel of food or save it for someone who still had a thin hope of surviving. When he had the pleasure of enjoying a holiday feast like a Thanksgiving Day dinner after the war with his family, he could not help himself and would shed tears down his face as he recalled his fallen comrades who died of exposure and starvation on their way to that POW camp.

Hardly fourteen years after the end of the war I suffered a serious head wound which a surgeon had to patch up with some treatments and stitches. As I watched him sew up my forehead, I could see a tattoo on his arm as it passed in front of my eyes. I asked him if the tattoo meant he was in a World War Two concentration camp. He looked surprised, smiled, and then responded saying that he was. He was a Jewish surgeon who had been imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and he was among the prisoners transferred from Auschwitz to Dachau, where he was liberated when these events took place at Dachau.

I have had the privilege of meeting a number of American and other POWs over the years and hearing their views about their captivity. I was also on Air Force duty and a member of the reception group when the OPERATION HOMECOMING flights brought our American POWs home from Vietnam in February 1973.

“He assures me his time as a guest of the Third Reich was nothing like Hogans Heroes.”

I never said or suggested anything of the sort, so it is rather strange for you to say such a thing.

“A quarter of his fellow prisoners died of starvation, disease, or from beatings administered by the guards.”

Yes, and tens of thousands of American POWs survived their captivity, and sometimes with some small kindness from Wehrmacht and even Waffen-SS soldiers who respected the POWs and their dire circumstances.

“So spare me, will you? Those SS monsters had it coming, in spades.”

Many and perhaps most of them deserved the ultimate punishment for crimes they committed, but you don’t sacrifice your own integrity, the integrity of your unit, and jeopardize the lives of all future American combatants by indulging in the sin of undisciplined revenge rather than retribution. Justice and capital punishment can be meted out without encouraging the enemy to fight on and kill and wound tens of thousands of more Americans who would otherwise have been spared by the enemy’s surrender. just because someone selfishly wanted to exact personal revenge.

Trust me, we are killing the bastards every day. Not fast enough and not in the numbers we need, but every dead terrorist helps.

Look at ISIS - they march 50 people to the ocean and behead them... why don’t they fight back? Because the torture involved would make being beheaded a piece of cake...