US Dirty Secrets - shooting prisoners

I don't think that is as sinister as it sounds. That German soldier is lethal until he surrenders.

I don't recall that any of my superiors ever said 'Der einzige gute Amerikaner ist ein toter Amerikaner.' And that GI is lethal until he surrenders.

I don't remember Patton saying that. He stated that taking prisoners and treating them humanely was of considerable assistance in the war effort. (He did seem to be of a different opinion about SS, thinking that taking them prisoner was a mistake.) He did like to leave dead Germans on battlefields while removing American bodies, for the morale effect.

In his exhortations to the troops invading Sicily he told them to make sure the German really is surrendering before exposing themselves, and his words were twisted by the defense in a couple of court-martials of Americans who murdered German prisoners. The press seemed to like to misquote him (and since he did have dyslexia he was easy to misquote), and somebody may well have attributed that quote to him. It's sort of an American saying anyway, and may not be prevalent in any form in

Apparently nobody has given you an answer to your original question. The above quotation is a paraphrase of a quote attributed to Gen. Philip Sheridan during our Indian wars of the 1870s: 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian.' Sheridan didn't really say that, but it sounded so good it's gone down in history that way. If Patton really said what you say, he was making a reference to someone else's bel- ligerent talk from 70 years earlier.

Interestingly, Patton was at least somewhat 'tied up' in two war crimes cases during US fighting in Italy. There were two different cases (one, IIRC, Sgt. West) of the execution of groups of German prisoners. To make a long story short, Patton wanted Omar Bradley to 'bury' the cases, but Bradely refused. It then turned out that part of the soldiers defense was that they had listend to Patton give a speech in which

I think it's a mis-quotation from, I believe, Little Phil Sheridan, who said 'the only good indian is a dead indian'

I dunno about shooting prisoners but the US army sure didn't take much care of the tens of thousands of Wehrmacht and SS prisoners in the cage at Remagen. The high death rate from malnutrition, exposure, lack of medical attention and just being beaten up on is something that tends to be glossed over.

Howard Wortley

Of course, at that point in time, there wasn't a whole lot of excess medical support or food for the Allied troops or even the civilian population in the Allied occupied areas, either.

For those who think it was planned, as part of some kind of conspiracy, I think you may need to reconsider your position.

(There was also the very believable attitude from the Allied troops of 'screw 'em, the germans didn't do a whole lot for those they had captured.' Not very nice, to a lot of people today, but it happened.

GW Roberts

On 10 May 1999 07:27:51 -0700, 'steven j forsberg'

If I'm not mistaken, the 80 Axis prisoners shot by Sgt. West in Sicily were Italians, not Germans. Not that this really matters; just for historical detail.

As I've previously posted, there was a documentary a while back on UK TV including eyewitness interviews and film footage about PoW camps just after the end of WW2. Part of what was said was there was plenty of food available, it was a deliberate policy to give the prisoners what was seen as the absolute minimum. Through judging this based on calories used by someone sitting in a chair in a warm room they came up with what turned out to be a ridiculously low for soldiers arlready rather run down and often wounded who lived in muddy holes in open fields. So the starvation was not quite deliberate, but they were deliberately not fed all the food they could have been.

As close as you get to being planned (and ordered) without actually being planned. It wouldn't take much imagination to think that the General who ordered the calorific limit realised what would happen. As the US camp guards repeatedly reported starvation etc to their superiors then someone is responsible for ignoring the results of the policy.

Of course, I suppose it could have been a hige conspiracy in the other direction. Involving faked film footage and witnesses from both sides of the fence... still continuing to confirm one another's version 50+ years after the event.

Both true and understandable.

The fury of US troops seeing Russians go through German villages killing everything which moved is also understandable. Friend of mine's father was an eyewitness to such a Russian atrocity BTW.

Andy O'Neill www.l-25.demon.co.uk/index.htm Liverpool Wargames Association www.l-25.demon.co.uk/LWA.htm

Perhaps they did in the case of the UK & USA - but prisoners of war taken in Eastern Europe - Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Beyo Russian etc. were brutally treated.

Yes I know the Nazi Government did not sisgn the Geneva Convention relative to treatment of POWs of the Soviet Union (what about Poland I wonder)?

I raise this point to illustrate that German Government behaviour was guided by Nazi policy towards the people based on their national, ethnic or political characteristics hence the treatment accorded was governed by whether or not the people were regarded as humans on par with the Nordics race or sub-humans.

I followed the thread regarding brutality towards the German prisoners in US hands on the Rhine and wish to say that this illustrated the inherent brutalization of human beings by war - it brtalizes all - US British German or Soviet. However while this type of brutality is the charateristic of individulas and groups the Nazi brutality was state policy and the result was death by beatings, starvation, exposure, medical experiments, etc. of millions of Soviet and other Eastern soldiers. There lay the distinction.