On This Day in History: January 1

The Chenogne massacre of German POWs

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According to all those movies I watched, World War II featured the Nazis as the bad guys and Americans as the good guys. And the Nazis were way fucking bad, but sometimes the good guys do bad things too. In this case, the bad guys did a bad thing first, so the good guys doing bad things was totally justified, right? Right?

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: January 1, 1945--

There is WAY too much sympathy for fucking Nazis these days. Anything more than zero sympathy is too much sympathy. Because fuck Nazis in every hole. But a German soldier wasn’t necessarily a Nazi. They were soldiers, often conscripted, fighting for their country because a maniac forced them to. Don’t get me wrong. Plenty of regular German soldiers were murderous assholes too.

And they fucking started it.

And they started the prisoner murdering, too. On December 17, 1944, 84 American POWs were assembled in a field in Belgium near the city of Malmedy and machine-gunned to death by their German captors.  But it wasn’t regular German Army soldiers who murdered them; it was Waffen-SS. That’s the military branch of the Nazi party—AKA fucking Nazis who all deserved to fucking die. And American soldiers were damn reluctant to take Nazi prisoners. They had to be strictly ordered not to just up and waste them. This wasn’t commanded out of any great humanitarian desire, but because their superior officers wanted to question these murderous cockwaffles, and you can’t get answers out of a guy who has lots of high-velocity holes punched through him.

When the Americans learned of the Malmedy massacre, they were rightfully pissed, and one unit declared they would not be taking German prisoners in reprisal. This is referred to as “no quarter,” which the 1907 Hague Convention declared against the laws of war. But there is something worse than no quarter, and that’s what the Waffen-SS shitlickers did to the Americans: taking prisoners and then deciding “You know what? Let’s just waste these fuckers.” That’s a whole ‘nother level of assholery.

And so, the Americans did it right back.

On January 1, 1945, American troops that were part of the 11th Armored Division near the village of Chenogne in Belgium murdered approximately 80 German POWs. If they’d been SS, meaning fucking Nazis, then that was a different kettle of go fornicate yourself in Hell you Nazi pieces of shit. But these were regular German Army soldiers who had surrendered and been taken prisoner. It was definitely against the rules.

After the war, General Dwight Eisenhower, who was Supreme Allied Commander, ordered an investigation, but the 11th Armored was uncooperative, and no one was ever punished for the massacre.

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