New photo: Nazis dig up mass grave of U.S. soldiers

[sabra]

Source: CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The photograph is a jarring image that shows Nazi Party members, shovels in hand, digging up graves of American soldiers held as slaves by Nazi Germany during World War II.

While the men dig up the site, U.S. soldiers investigating war crimes stand over them. Two crosses with helmets placed atop them -- the sign of a fallen soldier -- are visible. Two Germans are knee deep in mud. Another, with a handlebar mustache, has the look of a defeated man. The bodies of 22 American soldiers were found in at least seven graves, according to the photographer.

On the back of the photo is written, "Nazi Party members digging up American bodies at Berga."

Berga an der Elster was a slave labor camp where 350 U.S. soldiers were beaten, starved, and forced to work in tunnels for the German government. The soldiers were singled out for "looking like Jews" or "sounding like Jews," or dubbed as undesirables, according to survivors. More than 100 soldiers perished at the camp or on a forced death march.

It was on this day six decades ago, April 23, 1945, when most of the slave labor camp soldiers were liberated by advancing U.S. troops. The emaciated soldiers, many weighing just 80 pounds, had been forced by Nazi commanders to march more than 150 miles before their rescue.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/22/berga.folo/index.html

---

Members of the Nazi Party are forced to dig up mass graves of U.S. soldiers while American GIs look on.


Bernard Vogel died in the arms of U.S. medic Tony Acevedo at the slave camp known as Berga.


The son of Elmore Martin, a war crimes photographer, donated photos to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

[leftynyc]

1. Never forget

It's been a very emotional week with Holocaust Remembrance Day. I'm glad these are making their way into a museum.

[emilyg]

2. To my dying day

I'll never forget.

[aquart]

3. Yes.

[bobthedrummer]

11. I never forgot...

[lies and propaganda]

4. and to think..

we arent much better than them in this regard.. Where are our war crimes inspectors?

[cali]

26. sorry, what we've done, dreadful as it is, is not easlily compared

to what the Nazis did.

[Joe Chi Minh]

34. Except they pioneered the "waterboarding". Or haven't you read about the

experiences of European resistance fighters during WWII?

[roguevalley]

51. waterboarding was used during the inquisition. we are just carrying

on the tradition, both there and here and onward unless we kill it now.

[Joe Chi Minh]

76. I'm not surprised.

[heliarc]

38. Tell that to the 5,000 people murdered at the hands of Pinochet...

with direct US military and intelligence support.

Or are you going to enforce some sort of economy of comparison where the willful extermination of 6 million people, Jewish, Homosexual, disabled and communist is some how different from the willful extermination of any other sum of Chileans, El Salvadorans, Armenians, Native Americans, Nicaraguans or Cambodians?

Good luck with that

[cali]

46. yes, of course the deaths of 5,000 people are tragic

but no, it's not equivalent to the Holocaust. I'm not going to give you an intro course as to why. If you can't figure it out or research it by yourself, that's your problem. All genocides have elements in common and differences. Educate yourself to find out what those similarities and differences are.

[heliarc]

49. Excuse me...

But measuring genocide by quantity is folly. Genocide is genocide... If you can't figure that out, than you need to stop measuring human suffering by bean counting. I don't play misery poker with anyone. The disregard and racism Nixon showed for the cambodian people resulted in the death of at least 2 million people. His similar disregard for the Chilean people and their democracy resulted in the death of 5000 and the torture of 80,000 more... I don't see any difference in the use of B 52 bombers, or trains to Dachau...

[Thothmes]

55. Not anymore than LBJ's disregard and racism

for the Vietnames people. He murdered over two million of them. Along with 36,000 Americans killed and about 200,000 Americans wounded. Who belongs on trial for war crimes?

[heliarc]

84. I wasn't making a distinction between LBJ and Nixon...

They are both culpable... except that I think you will find Nixon to be the one most responsible for extending the war by interfering with LBJ's negotiations with North and South Vietnam. The end result of that was a secret war with cambodia and indiscriminate bombing campaigns on civilian populations. There is genocide in both places surely... but Nixon proves to be the more conniving and offensive of two racist bastards in my opinion.

[Hannah Bell]

69. oh, there's many more than 5000.

[Arctic Dave]

45. Ask the Native Americans that question and see what kind of

response you get.

[cali]

47. A different historical reality

not saying it's not as horrific, but it's not as documented and of course, it took place in a period that encompassed approx 200 years, whereas the Holocaust took place in under 5.

[Arctic Dave]

53. Not documented? Are you sniffing something?

As for the time span, that is the lamest excuses you can come up with? The best technology was used to exterminate the American Indian Nations at the time just like the Germans did with the Jews. Also, there was no infrastructure in place to help expedite the extermination AIN. It had to be built and implemented as the colonies expanded. Now tell me, which one was more methodical? Which had more time to stop what was going on but chose to keep going?
Everyone wants to fall all over them self with grief about something that happened on another continent but has a case of selective memory when it comes to what happened under the feet of which they are standing.

[heliarc]

54. Utter nonsense...

For you anything is going to rank lower than the holocaust by technicality and nothing more. In my book the planned genocide of any people is counted as an equal tragedy. Your sort of crass favoritism is disappointing

[lies and propaganda]

66. I clarified the point and stated 'in this regard..'

because we are both tortures.. That was all. Im familiar with Godwins Law ;0

[fasttense]

79. Is a little bit of torture better than a whole lot more?

A little bit of torture is not as bad as a whole hell of a lot more? I don't know. Seems to me you have to start somewhere. You have start with just a little bit and move on to a whole lot.

Is attempted genocide worse than killing off a few dozen people of the same race? Is just some slavery better than slavery at the national level? I suppose, but to me it's all pretty awful.

[Psephos]

71. In this post your online name has become most ironic

Critical thinking requires a sense of proportionality.

[Raskolnik]

83. If you truly think "we aren't much better than [the Nazis] in this regard"

you either know very little about history or aren't being intellectually honest.

[ninety lives]

89. They probably do not read

It is sad that people do not take the time to read about the Nazis. If they would just read some documents on the internet,
they would never shift the subject away from their extreme sadism and brutality.

[ben_jenne]

5. Maybe FDRs' policies of bombing the civilian populations

of Berlin and the atrocities of fire bombing Dresden put our GIs in peril. What would we have done in retaliation? Oh yeah, we nuked Japan for a few killed at Pearl harbor.

Someone said that war is hell, and I think he was a General.

[AZ Criminal JD]

7. "For a few killed at Pearl Harbor"

How about the hundreds of thousands of Americans likely to die in a land invasion of Japan? Not to mention the one to two million Japanese likely to die. What a disgusting post.

[nichomachus]

21. Not true

those predictions are pure propaganda that have been sold to the American public for 60 years.

Japan was already defeated. It had no oil. Its air force was defunct. The emperor had written twice to Truman trying to surrender, but was rebuffed each time.

However, the reason for the nukes was not to punish Japan for Pearl Harbor. The nukes were meant to scare the crap out of the Soviet Union. It was a show of force.

Fear of the Soviet Union was also at the heart of the race to get to Berlin before the end of the Third Reich. We didn't want the Soviets to take all of Berlin or all of Germany. We barely made it.

[AZ Criminal JD]

23. How I wish for a time machine

So that I could send you back to be part of the American invasion force. I'm sure the Japanese would just lay down in front of you.

[nichomachus]

24. Enjoy the KoolAid n/t

[AZ Criminal JD]

28. Your mind is already dead.

How did it taste?

[fuggbush21]

81. No thanks, you an keep it for yourself.

Have you paid any attention at all to how Japan was fighting the war? It didn't matter if they where going to lose. Nearly every Island we took from them, they knew they could not hold yet they fought to the last man anyways.

Operation Ketsugo was the Japanese operation to repell US invasion forces from the Mainland. Because we where forced to put Operation Downfall (our invasion plan) on hold because of the length of the Battle of Okinawa, and then the typhoon season, they had several extra months to prepare for the invasion. They had years of defeats in defending islands to learn the best strategies to repel our forces, and they had prepared for those. 10,000 Kamikaze Aircraft where prepared. It took just one of those to sink a ship carrying 1000 American troops. Hundreds of suicide midget subs where prepared as well. Again, all it took was one well placed torpedo to kill thousands of Americans. Nearly every civilian of fighting age was conscripted and prepared to fight. And entire nation took up arms to defend it's land.

EVERY Japanese citizen was prepared to fight to the death to keep foreign invaders off of their land. They where resigned to the fact that they could not win the war, but they would not let their homeland be taken. It was that simple. They where going to fight as tenaciously as any American would fight to keep a foreign invasion force out of our country.

The only ones at all who doubt that the Atomic Bombs where not the most humane way to end that war, are the people who have no understanding at all of what Japanese culture was like then. The only thing that kept us from having to wipe out an entire race of people was the fact that we showed them we could do it without suffering a single casualty.

[Joe the Revelator]

85. You have no sense of history

Your grasp on the realities of Japan in the 40's is scary bad

[Zhade]

29. Thank you for the actual truth. So few seem to know it.

NT!

[Waiting For Everyman]

32. Oh yes it is true.

My father was among the thousands of G.I.s on their way to Japan when the bomb was dropped. And he didn't tell me that 45 years ago to rebut your point today.

I think the eyewitnesses know what was going on.

[nichomachus]

44. No, that's what he was told -- and he believed it

That's what all Americans were told. You don't think they could tell them the truth?

When you do something like drop an atom bomb, you need a really good story.

[Waiting For Everyman]

73. He wasn't told anything, he was on the damn ship... going there.

I don't like that the bomb had to be dropped, but I'll tell you "a really good story", as you put it - a true one... If it wasn't dropped when it was, my Dad wouldn't have lived through an invasion of Japan (they all knew it was a death mission), and I wouldn't be here, nor two generations of my family after me who are alive today. A whole lot of folks today can say the same (like Sequoia and bigscott below). It was the Japanese' lives, or our lives. Not so simple a decision as you think.

[Sequoia]

48. You know what, my dad told me the same thing.

He said after Germany surrendered his company was put on a ship to go to Japan and no one wanted to go over there. Back then I wasn't that interested but now that he's gone, I wish I had've had more interest.

[twitomy]

33. Wow what historical revisionism going on here...

Yeah Japan was already "defeated" during Okinawa, and we learned how ferocious this supposedly "defeated" enemy was...

We nuked Japan to shock them into surrender. It worked. If we impressed the Soviets all the better.

"We didn't want the Soviets to take all of Berlin or all of Germany. We barely made it."

Flat out false. We held back and let the Russians take it all; we never "made it"..Why? Because Stalin insisted on taking the city himself and we werent interested in the bloodbath it became. We occupied over our part of Berlin after the fall.

[Name removed]

43. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Psephos]

72. If that was true, then why didn't Japan surrender after the first bomb?

"That does not compute."

[TankLV]

74. BULLSHIT!!! Germany and Japan were only WEEKS if not DAYS away from developing THE BOMB FIRST!!!

What the US did in dropping the bomb was SAVE MILLIONS of LIVES!!!

Japan REFUSED to surrender after we TOLD them what would happen. Japan REFUSED to surrender after we then droped the FIRST bomb, and REFUSED to surrender after the SECOND bomb until Hirohito stepped in...!!!

[psychopomp]

87. I am no expert on the German program, but you are wrong about Japan

I studied under one of the scientists who worked on Japan's nuke program. Their conclusion was that it is not possible to use the new understanding of atomic physics to build a bomb.

[Nevernose]

75. The Japanese did, indeed, discuss surender

But it was conditional upon the Emperor being left in charge and their military left intact. To blame the victor because Japan started a war it couldn't win is not only ignorant but quite possibly insane. Propaganda comes on both sides, too, you know, and not every bit of American history is BS.

[happyslug]

78. Actually we failed to get to Berlin, the Soviets took it alone

As part of the post War occupation US and Allied Troops entered Berlin, about a month AFTER it fell to the Red Army.

As to Japan, Japan refused to give in to American demands until AFTER the Russians invaded Manchuria. In fact Japan did NOT accept the US Terms (Except as to the Status of the Emperor) for a Week after Nagasaki. The reason for this was that Japan was willing to accept being Bombed (The Fire Bomb Raid on Tokyo in March 1945 Clearly killed more people then the Nagasaki A-Bomb and equaled or exceeded the number of people killed at Hiroshima). What Scared the Japanese was the rapid Russian Advance through Manchuria. By September 1, Manchuria would have been all Russian, with Korea Russian by the middle of September (The US actually had to rush troops into Seoul at the end of the War to take Seoul before it fell to the Russians). If the Japanese had waited longer then August 15th, ALL of Korea would have been Russian. The Rulers of Japan feared that more then anything else and surrendered hoping the US would take over South Korea and thus have a buffer between Japan and Soviet Russia.

AS to the losses, Japan is a mountainous region and Japan had studied US Invasions in both Europe and the Pacific. Where the US could have landed troops was limited and most such beaches had been not only picked out by the US, but also by the Japanese High Command. Furthermore Japan was pulling their best units out of Manchuria even before the Russian invasion, thus you had good troops on favorable terrain, the losses would have been huge. Japan would still have lost, even by the Japanese estimates, but the US losses would have been huge. Not Surprising the huge losses of Japanese seems NOT to have been a problem for the Japanese Leadership, but the prospect of the only non=right wing Japanese Leader ruling Japan was. He had been living in Moscow since the 1930s to do fears that the Japanese Right Wing would kill him (as their had done to other opposition leaders).

[Raskolnik]

82. "The emperor had written twice to Truman trying to surrender"

Could you point out your source for this claim, please?

[bigscott]

22. like my dad

thanks for your post - my father was one of those stationed in the Pacific for an invasion of Japan.

peace

[bluestateguy]

8. Now DUers are making excuses for Hitler

Lovely.

[Posteritatis]

12. Isn't it great?

I remember seeing folks a few years ago saying everything in the Pacific after the Battle of Midway was a war crime, because we'd obviously won the war so winning the war was just excessive! etc.

It's not just here either. In one of my history (history! History!! Argh!) seminars last year one of the students was trying to say, explicitly and sincerely, that the western Allies were morally identical to the Waffen-SS. People really need to get some fucking perspective on this sort of thing.

[WriteDown]

10. Taking the side of the Nazi's?

Surely you will win the Iron Cross for that cogent point.

[ben_jenne]

14. Isn't that why we don't commit war crimes

It's unethical and it endangers our troops. Our enemies might do the same to us for cripes sakes.

[melm00se]

13. based upon the casualty levels experienced on Okinawa

the projected casualties (military and civilian) on both sides of an invasion of the Japanese home islands were in the 10-14 million range.

War is hell and something to go to great lengths to avoid, but if you gotta fight (and WWII certainly falls into that category), you fight to absolutely, positively win and secure unconditional surrender.

Look at the wars fought in the latter half of the 20th century that were not fought that way and the continuing repercussions from them.

[ben_jenne]

15. Really? Weren't all those wars of choice

and we were wrong to be involved in the 1st place? We didn't finish in Korea, S.E. Asia or anywhere else that we have stuck our noses in. We probably should have stayed out of Europe and we certainly goaded Japan into attacking us.

[Rebubula]

19. Sigh...

...your command of history is rather weak.

FWIW...Japan was busy raping and pillaging all along the China coast cities. They needed to be stopped by someone. If you truly understand the war crimes (what the US did in Iraq and Gitmo PALES in comparison) that were committed by Japan between 1930 and 1945, it would be hard to pull up any sympathy for them at that time.

It sucks that so many civilians had to die in the atomic blasts...but I do not regret that action. If he were still alive, you could ask my great-Uncle about the Bataan Death Marches and the POW camps in Japan. I am sure there are books that will give you a good idea of what was going on.

Goaded into attacking...jebus....

[RetroLounge]

63. Bataan Death Marches and the POW camps in Japan

My great-uncle was also in both...

:hug:

RL

[Theobald]

80. If ignorance is bliss....

...than you are one happy camper.

[myrna minx]

16. Oh for crying out loud. n/t

:eyes:

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. They were enslaved for 'looking Jewish'

Get real, this was not retaliation for bombing. It was part of the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis.

[Jim Sagle]

25. Is Stormfront down? Is that why your posting this Nazi garbage here?

[cali]

27. my, that's a stupid and ignorant post.

[Terran]

30. "...we nuked Japan for a few killed at Pearl Harbor."

That has to be the stupidest, most mis-informed (or most deliberately obtuse) post I have EVER seen at DU in the past 8 years.

[Fire1]

40. Yep. That one is hard to beat! lol!

[Sequoia]

41. That was General Sherman.

One of my fave.

[roguevalley]

52. if you are parsing the deaths of Germans and finding it wanting, how

can you mention the dead murdered at Pearl Harbor as 'just a few killed'? You destroyed your position with your word choice.

One death that is unjust is too many. Some murders are so horrendous, so indifferent and mechanical that they stand out among all the other injustices because of it. ALL the dead were innocent.

[rasputin1952]

57. Dresden was pushed by Churchill, not FDR...

The Atomic bombing of Japan was not for a "few killed at pearl Harbor". In the context of the time, the Japanese were not about to give up, and hundreds of thousands had died on both sides. The fighting, especially near the ned of the war was horrific. There is no reason to believe that Japanese would not have dragged the war on on their soil, to far more horrendous cost of life if the bombings of Hiroshima ans Nagasaki had not occurred.

War is horrid, the Germans systematically murdered 10 million people, not in war, but out right murder. The Russians under Stalin were not much better. The Japanese occupation of China showed the world how cruel an occupying power can be.

[Codeine]

58. Take your Nazi bullshit elsewhere. nt

[tabasco]

61. Any more talking points from draft dodger Limbaugh today?

Your understanding of history is as lacking as your sense of honor or decency.

Is this your twisted way to rationalize torture? You seem truly demented.

The US did not torture prisoners in WWII.

You are a coward like your draft-dodging hero.

[CreekDog]

65. that caused the Nazi's to single out soldiers they thought looked "Jewish"?

.

[Canuckistanian]

68. You have an amazing capacity for oversimplification

How do you do it?

[Joe Chi Minh]

77. It seems difficult to credit, but Japan has still made no apology for the

hideous atrocities routinely carried out by its troops in WWII.

"Someone said that war is hell, and I think he was a General." Precisely. In a total war, where national survival or slavery is at stake attitudes are bound to harden beyond recall.

Good people in Germany, Japan, the US, the UK, everywhere, acknowledge that because of the wickedness of some of their leaders, whatever punishment their country faces because of its wanton aggression, would be well deserved. With soldiers, it's them or us, though there may be no pesonal animosity towards the enemy, indeed, a sense of kinship. But with civilian populations who, to an extent, have to wait passively, personal animosity will understandably be fanned beyond measure by very reasonable fears.

Incidentally, a correspondent to a Letters column to a newspaper here, probably the Daily Mail, who sounded as if she knew what she was talking about, wrote that a German ship carrying details of their research, then at an advanced stage, into the construction of an atomic bomb, was well on its way to Japan, at the time when Hirsohima and Nagasaki were bombed.

[geek tragedy]

88. Will this guy make it to 100 posts?

Signs point to "nein."

[K Gardner]

6. Highly recommended.

[SpiralHawk]

9. "Big deal - Yawn" - Prescott Bush* (R)

"So the Americans suffered, and probably were tortured - whatever -- as long as it didn't interfere with War Profits - Smirk"

- Prescott Bush (R)*

* Channeled from the Vast Republicon Occult Netherworld

[No More Bushbots]

17. Photoshopped!

But true.
Would be awesome to find an actual picture of old Prescott and Dolf together. It would go good with the Rumsfeld/Saddam lovefest.

[SpiralHawk]

18. Oh yeah, MoPaul is a well-known master photoshopper, just as Grandpoppy Bush

Was a Republicon Money Grubber and a Master Traitor to the United States of America by ensuring that MONEY flowed to Hitler and the Nazis so they could gin up their War Machine to bring so much war, torture, suffering, and hate to the world

[Throd]

31. That is a piss-poor Photoshop job

I'm not denying the elder Bush's ties to the Nazis, but I could do a more convincing photo with Elvis standing next to Adolf.

[SpiralHawk]

62. Ah, I believe MoPaul never intended it to look real...

But just to make the obvious point that the Bush-Republicon Empire has a long, extensively documented exeedingly corrupt & occult past with Hitler and the Nazis.

An evil ugly fact the corporate media has conveniently overlooked for lo these many years....

[Thothmes]

56. same type of cheap propaganda tricks that the Nazi's

did.

[Posteritatis]

59. +1 (nt)

[Hannah Bell]

70. not just bush. gm, ge, ford, standard oil, various pharmacorps, dupont - the list is long.

[Turbineguy]

35. It just seems

a bit odd that these photos surface now, with all the talk of torture going on. Yes, we are definitely nicer to our prisoners than those nasty Nazis were.

[Posteritatis]

37. Stuff like this has been dribbling out since the war itself

As archives open, or stuff is found in someone's attic, etc, it's going to keep happening.

Not everything is some grand conspiracy.

[Turbineguy]

42. Thanks for that

that tin foil hat looked a bit silly anyway.

[sabra]

39. I believe it was also correlated to the Holocaust Remembrance Day

[Ms. Toad]

86. They were sworn to silence by the US Government.

Read the article (and the related links) - that is the most shocking thing I found in the article.

>>U.S. soldiers who survived captivity were interviewed by the U.S. Military Intelligence Service in Europe after they were liberated. Before they were sent home, they signed a document that instructed them to never speak about their captivity.<< http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/02/slave.camp.folo/index.html#cnnSTCText

Also watch this video: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/02/slave.camp.folo/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

I don't know about the timing of sharing the information - but one man finally decided to speak publicly about his experiences last November, so this is the first anniversary of his liberation after he finally violated the gag order placed on him by his own country.

[DFW]

36. A similar thing happened right here in my German town

At the end of the war, American forces had taken the town where I hang my hat, and
the local Nazis, who had presided over the killings of local Jews, were forced to
go out to where everyone knew the burial site was, dig up the remains, and carry them
into town to the local cemetery for proper burial.

That wasn't the only thing that changed. The local building that housed the Gestapo
during the Nazi era was made into an elementary school. It was (and still is) named
the Anne Frank Elementary School. Both of my daughters went there. The life of Anne
Frank is part of the regular curriculum for all kids that do there.

Never forget, indeed.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

50. Never forget :(

:cry:

[Solly Mack]

60. K&R

[Optical.Catalyst]

64. Hope descendants of Prescott Bush see the photos and are reminded of the evil that their family is

[mr11]

67. Hmmm, I wonder what they would think

:yoiks: