April 29th, 1945 Dachau Bavaria the morning sun hits the electrified wire of the camp the air carries a heavy sweet rot from the rail cars outside the gate in a coal yard near the brick walls 50 SS guards lie in the MUD their black wool uniforms are stained dark with fresh blood they did not fall in the heat of a firefight they were lined up and executed by the American soldiers who found the skeletal survivors now the weight of the United States military law is descending General Eisenhower demands a trial the inspector general is hunting for the shooters
a formal court martial is drafted to strip these American liberators of their medals and their lives the paperwork is on its way to the one man who can sign it General George S Patton is about to give the high command an answer they never expected this is the story of the day General George S Patten chose to shield his own soldiers after they looked into the very heart of a concentration camp and opened fire before we continue make sure you hit the subscribe button we dedicate this channel to telling the World War 2
stories that show justice consequences and the moments that changed history Corporal Elias Thorne was 23 years old and came from the rocky hills of Blue Ridge Georgia he served with the 1 hundred and fifty seventh Infantry Regiment of the 45th Infantry Division the famous Thunderbirds before he donned the olive drab he worked his father’s small timber mill and spent his Sundays at a wooden church near the creek he had survived the muddy hell of the Anzio beachhead and the biting cold of the Vosges Mountains
carrying a piece of shrapnel in his thigh from a mortar blast in France Thorn had seen his squad decimated twice over yet he kept a photograph of his mother in his helmet liner to remind him of home the war had hollowed out his eyes and hardened his hands but it had not stripped him of his sense of raw human vengeance he was the first American to kick open the door of the coal yard and level his weapon at the men in the black collars colonel Herbert Vance was 51 years old and served as a high ranking officer in the Judge
Advocate General’s office born into a family of lawyers in Washington d C he believed that military discipline was a fragile glass structure that would shatter if a single transgression went unpunished Vance had spent the entirety of the European campaign behind a mahogany desk in comfortable London offices and secure French chateaus his tailored uniform was always immaculate and he wore a heavy gold signet ring that caught the light whenever he signed a recommendation for a court martial he viewed the summary execution of the SS guards
not as an act of justice but as a chaotic breakdown of the chain of command to Vance a soldier who fired without a direct order was just as dangerous to the army as the enemy across the wire he sat in his warm office and drafted the papers that would end the careers of the men who had just seen the worst of humanity by the end of April 1945 the German war machine was a shattered wreck Allied divisions were racing across Bavaria to finish the job the fighting was messy and fast The 45th Infantry Division had seen enough blood to fill a river
they had fought from the beaches of Sicily to the mountains of France they were not new to the sights of a battlefield but Dachau was not a battlefield it was a factory of death when the men of the one hundred and fifty Seventh walked through those gates they found more than 40,000 living ghosts they found railcars stacked with thousands of bodies the scent of the ovens was in their hair and on their skin the soldiers did not see prisoners of war when they looked at the SS guards they saw the architects of a nightmare
across the European theater small acts of vengeance were common many officers simply turned their heads when a guard was shot in a forest or a ditch usually these moments were buried in the chaos of the advance but the scale of the shooting at Dachau was too large to hide the news reached the upper levels of the Allied command almost instantly the inspector general and the legal experts in the rear saw a violation of the Geneva Convention they saw a stain on the American uniform they demanded that the soldiers
be stripped of their rank and sent to prison the bureaucratic machinery began to turn with cold mechanical precision it ignored the smell of the camp and focused on the rules of the book back at the coal yard the silence was broken by the sound of boots on gravel as the first investigators arrived lieutenant colonel Felix Sparks stood in the doorway of the requisitioned schoolhouse he was twenty seven years old he came from Miami Arizona he LED the hundred and fifty seventh Infantry Regiment of the 45th Division
his uniform was stained with the soot of the camp his hands still shook from the adrenaline of the morning across the room colonel Herbert Vance sat behind a mahogany desk he was 51 he was a high ranking JAG officer from Washington D C he was buffing his fingernails spark spoke first colonel Vance I am asking you to drop this investigation into the one hundred and fifty seventh I do not drop investigations because they are inconvenient lieutenant colonel my men are not criminals they are exhausted soldiers the 50 bodies in the coal yard
would disagree with your assessment they saw 39 rail cars filled with dead women and children the law does not have eyes for rail cars it only has eyes for the Geneva Convention the men who were shot were the ones who ran the gas chambers an officer is expected to control his unit regardless of the provocation they are human beings colonel not machines they are soldiers of the United States they have disgraced the uniform disgraced it they stopped the killing they replaced one execution with another cyber justice is the tool of the savage
I personally stopped the firing Vance I put myself in the line of fire and yet the damage is done the Inspector General is livid the men of the 45th have fought for 500 days they deserve a rest not a trial they deserve the rope for what they did today if you prosecute these men you will lose the heart of this entire division then I will find a new heart one that follows the manual you haven’t even stepped foot inside the wire I do not need to smell the dead to know that a murder has occurred you are making a massive mistake
my family has practiced law in the capital for three generations we do not make mistakes in matters of the court you’re going to destroy good Americans for the sake of dead SS guards I am going to preserve the dignity of the officer corps these boys from the sticks don’t understand the nuance of international law they need to be reminded who holds the power I won’t let you do it you have no choice Eisenhower wants this handled he wants the record clean I’m taking this higher colonel go ahead the general expects blood
the report reached Patton within the hour Patton’s Jeep screeched to a halt outside the schoolhouse the Siren died in a low moan he stepped out before his driver could move four silver stars flashed on his helmet two ivory handled revolvers hung at his hips he walked past the sentries without a glance the room went dead silent Patton stood there cold unmoving Vance stood up at his desk he straightened his immaculate tie he tried to speak Patton cut him off Colonel Vance you want to hang my men Vance hesitated I want to uphold the law general
the law says we prosecute soldiers who kill guards at a slaughterhouse it is clear sir murder is murder and you have the names you have the witnesses for every single shot the inspector general has a list we are ready to proceed you think these boys should go to Leavenworth for cleaning out a nest of rats the manual says yes General Patton stepped closer he did not raise his voice you sit here in a clean shirt you use a silver pen you talk about the manual like it was written by God but you did not see the rail cars
you did not see the children stacked like cordwood you did not smell the death you do not know what a man is when he looks at hella the soldiers you want to hang have been in the MUD for 500 days they have watched their brothers die in the snow they have seen the worst things man has ever done they did not commit a crime this morning they administered a cure you want to talk about the Geneva Convention those SS guards did not know the word they killed 40,000 people in that camp they fed them into ovens my boys saw that
they did what any man with a soul would do they ended the monsters I have a choice for you Colonel I have the power to bury this report I have the folder in my hand right now I will not have my soldiers dragged through the MUD because a lawyer in Washington wants to feel important you will walk out of this room you will tell the inspector general that the evidence is inconclusive you will tell him the situation was chaotic you will tell him there is no case to be made this is over if you do not I will send you to the front
I will strip you of that desk I will put a rifle in your hands and send you into a tree line full of German guns I will let you see what my boys have seen then we will see how much you care about legal nuances Vance looked at the floor his hands shook as he pushed the remaining files across the mahogany Patton took them he did not say thank you Patton did not call for an orderly he reached out and seized the brass wastebasket from the corner of the room he placed it in the center of the floor like an altar he gathered the court martial files
the signed statements and the list of names Vance had spent weeks compiling he began to tear the documents the sound of heavy bond paper ripping echoed through the silent schoolhouse he struck a single match on the sole of his boot and dropped it into the bin the fire caught instantly the flames consumed the legal jargon and the cold demands for prosecution Patton stood over the bin his face lit by the orange glow he watched the ink of the JAG office curl and vanish into grey smoke he did not look away until the papers were nothing but a pile of light
white ash he turned to the officers and the guards watching from the hallway he told them that the records of the shooting at Dachau were gone the evidence was inconclusive the investigation was dead he looked at Vance whose face was as pale as the ash in the bucket the general had not just saved his men he had incinerated the bureaucracy that sought to destroy them the case was closed Elias Thorne went home to Blue Ridge Georgia in the autumn of 1945 he returned to the timber mill by the creek and married the girl
who had written him letters every week he was in the MUD he never spoke of the coal yard or the smell of the ovens to his neighbors when his grandchildren asked about the Bronze Star on his shelf he told them he was just a lucky man who did his job he worked the saws until his hands grew too stiff to hold the wood Elias passed away in his sleep in 1998 a quiet man who carried the secret of the Thunderbirds to his grave colonel Herbert Vance did not go to the front but his career never reached the heights he had envisioned in his mahogany offices
he returned to Washington D C after the surrender and practiced law in a quiet sterile firm he remained bitter about the day the manual was burned in a wastebasket he often told his colleagues that the army had lost its soul the moment it allowed the general to ignore the law he never understood that the law had no answer for what was found behind the wire Vance lived in a house filled with leather bound books and silence until his death in 1974 Patton never mentioned the fire in the schoolhouse in his official reports
he kept the incident buried in classified paperwork that stayed locked away for decades years later a private entry was found that summarized his choice he wrote that he might have fired the first shot himself if he had been there some historians argue that Patton’s decision was a failure of military law they believe he allowed the rule of law to collapse and protected men who had committed a clear war crime to them justice was sacrificed for the sake of moral and personal loyalty others argue that the soldiers
were pushed past the limit of human endurance they believed that no court could ever understand the horror found behind the wire and that Patton acted with a rare necessary mercy what is certain is that the investigation into the Dachau shooting was officially closed not a single American soldier ever stood trial for what happened in the coal yard if you had been in Patton’s position would you have burned the files to protect your men or would you have followed the book and let the court martial proceed let us know in the comments
and if you want more stories about justice consequences and the moments that changed history make sure to subscribe
What Patton Said When Asked to Court Martial Soldiers Who Killed SS Guards
April 29th, 1945 Dachau Bavaria the morning sun hits the electrified wire of the camp the air carries a heavy sweet rot from the rail cars outside the gate in a coal yard near the brick walls 50 SS guards lie in the MUD their black wool uniforms are stained dark with fresh blood they did not fall in the heat of a firefight they were lined up and executed by the American soldiers who found the skeletal survivors now the weight of the United States military law is descending General Eisenhower demands a trial the inspector general is hunting for the shooters
a formal court martial is drafted to strip these American liberators of their medals and their lives the paperwork is on its way to the one man who can sign it General George S Patton is about to give the high command an answer they never expected this is the story of the day General George S Patten chose to shield his own soldiers after they looked into the very heart of a concentration camp and opened fire before we continue make sure you hit the subscribe button we dedicate this channel to telling the World War 2
stories that show justice consequences and the moments that changed history Corporal Elias Thorne was 23 years old and came from the rocky hills of Blue Ridge Georgia he served with the 1 hundred and fifty seventh Infantry Regiment of the 45th Infantry Division the famous Thunderbirds before he donned the olive drab he worked his father’s small timber mill and spent his Sundays at a wooden church near the creek he had survived the muddy hell of the Anzio beachhead and the biting cold of the Vosges Mountains
carrying a piece of shrapnel in his thigh from a mortar blast in France Thorn had seen his squad decimated twice over yet he kept a photograph of his mother in his helmet liner to remind him of home the war had hollowed out his eyes and hardened his hands but it had not stripped him of his sense of raw human vengeance he was the first American to kick open the door of the coal yard and level his weapon at the men in the black collars colonel Herbert Vance was 51 years old and served as a high ranking officer in the Judge
Advocate General’s office born into a family of lawyers in Washington d C he believed that military discipline was a fragile glass structure that would shatter if a single transgression went unpunished Vance had spent the entirety of the European campaign behind a mahogany desk in comfortable London offices and secure French chateaus his tailored uniform was always immaculate and he wore a heavy gold signet ring that caught the light whenever he signed a recommendation for a court martial he viewed the summary execution of the SS guards
not as an act of justice but as a chaotic breakdown of the chain of command to Vance a soldier who fired without a direct order was just as dangerous to the army as the enemy across the wire he sat in his warm office and drafted the papers that would end the careers of the men who had just seen the worst of humanity by the end of April 1945 the German war machine was a shattered wreck Allied divisions were racing across Bavaria to finish the job the fighting was messy and fast The 45th Infantry Division had seen enough blood to fill a river
they had fought from the beaches of Sicily to the mountains of France they were not new to the sights of a battlefield but Dachau was not a battlefield it was a factory of death when the men of the one hundred and fifty Seventh walked through those gates they found more than 40,000 living ghosts they found railcars stacked with thousands of bodies the scent of the ovens was in their hair and on their skin the soldiers did not see prisoners of war when they looked at the SS guards they saw the architects of a nightmare
across the European theater small acts of vengeance were common many officers simply turned their heads when a guard was shot in a forest or a ditch usually these moments were buried in the chaos of the advance but the scale of the shooting at Dachau was too large to hide the news reached the upper levels of the Allied command almost instantly the inspector general and the legal experts in the rear saw a violation of the Geneva Convention they saw a stain on the American uniform they demanded that the soldiers
be stripped of their rank and sent to prison the bureaucratic machinery began to turn with cold mechanical precision it ignored the smell of the camp and focused on the rules of the book back at the coal yard the silence was broken by the sound of boots on gravel as the first investigators arrived lieutenant colonel Felix Sparks stood in the doorway of the requisitioned schoolhouse he was twenty seven years old he came from Miami Arizona he LED the hundred and fifty seventh Infantry Regiment of the 45th Division
his uniform was stained with the soot of the camp his hands still shook from the adrenaline of the morning across the room colonel Herbert Vance sat behind a mahogany desk he was 51 he was a high ranking JAG officer from Washington D C he was buffing his fingernails spark spoke first colonel Vance I am asking you to drop this investigation into the one hundred and fifty seventh I do not drop investigations because they are inconvenient lieutenant colonel my men are not criminals they are exhausted soldiers the 50 bodies in the coal yard
would disagree with your assessment they saw 39 rail cars filled with dead women and children the law does not have eyes for rail cars it only has eyes for the Geneva Convention the men who were shot were the ones who ran the gas chambers an officer is expected to control his unit regardless of the provocation they are human beings colonel not machines they are soldiers of the United States they have disgraced the uniform disgraced it they stopped the killing they replaced one execution with another cyber justice is the tool of the savage
I personally stopped the firing Vance I put myself in the line of fire and yet the damage is done the Inspector General is livid the men of the 45th have fought for 500 days they deserve a rest not a trial they deserve the rope for what they did today if you prosecute these men you will lose the heart of this entire division then I will find a new heart one that follows the manual you haven’t even stepped foot inside the wire I do not need to smell the dead to know that a murder has occurred you are making a massive mistake
my family has practiced law in the capital for three generations we do not make mistakes in matters of the court you’re going to destroy good Americans for the sake of dead SS guards I am going to preserve the dignity of the officer corps these boys from the sticks don’t understand the nuance of international law they need to be reminded who holds the power I won’t let you do it you have no choice Eisenhower wants this handled he wants the record clean I’m taking this higher colonel go ahead the general expects blood
the report reached Patton within the hour Patton’s Jeep screeched to a halt outside the schoolhouse the Siren died in a low moan he stepped out before his driver could move four silver stars flashed on his helmet two ivory handled revolvers hung at his hips he walked past the sentries without a glance the room went dead silent Patton stood there cold unmoving Vance stood up at his desk he straightened his immaculate tie he tried to speak Patton cut him off Colonel Vance you want to hang my men Vance hesitated I want to uphold the law general
the law says we prosecute soldiers who kill guards at a slaughterhouse it is clear sir murder is murder and you have the names you have the witnesses for every single shot the inspector general has a list we are ready to proceed you think these boys should go to Leavenworth for cleaning out a nest of rats the manual says yes General Patton stepped closer he did not raise his voice you sit here in a clean shirt you use a silver pen you talk about the manual like it was written by God but you did not see the rail cars
you did not see the children stacked like cordwood you did not smell the death you do not know what a man is when he looks at hella the soldiers you want to hang have been in the MUD for 500 days they have watched their brothers die in the snow they have seen the worst things man has ever done they did not commit a crime this morning they administered a cure you want to talk about the Geneva Convention those SS guards did not know the word they killed 40,000 people in that camp they fed them into ovens my boys saw that
they did what any man with a soul would do they ended the monsters I have a choice for you Colonel I have the power to bury this report I have the folder in my hand right now I will not have my soldiers dragged through the MUD because a lawyer in Washington wants to feel important you will walk out of this room you will tell the inspector general that the evidence is inconclusive you will tell him the situation was chaotic you will tell him there is no case to be made this is over if you do not I will send you to the front
I will strip you of that desk I will put a rifle in your hands and send you into a tree line full of German guns I will let you see what my boys have seen then we will see how much you care about legal nuances Vance looked at the floor his hands shook as he pushed the remaining files across the mahogany Patton took them he did not say thank you Patton did not call for an orderly he reached out and seized the brass wastebasket from the corner of the room he placed it in the center of the floor like an altar he gathered the court martial files
the signed statements and the list of names Vance had spent weeks compiling he began to tear the documents the sound of heavy bond paper ripping echoed through the silent schoolhouse he struck a single match on the sole of his boot and dropped it into the bin the fire caught instantly the flames consumed the legal jargon and the cold demands for prosecution Patton stood over the bin his face lit by the orange glow he watched the ink of the JAG office curl and vanish into grey smoke he did not look away until the papers were nothing but a pile of light
white ash he turned to the officers and the guards watching from the hallway he told them that the records of the shooting at Dachau were gone the evidence was inconclusive the investigation was dead he looked at Vance whose face was as pale as the ash in the bucket the general had not just saved his men he had incinerated the bureaucracy that sought to destroy them the case was closed Elias Thorne went home to Blue Ridge Georgia in the autumn of 1945 he returned to the timber mill by the creek and married the girl
who had written him letters every week he was in the MUD he never spoke of the coal yard or the smell of the ovens to his neighbors when his grandchildren asked about the Bronze Star on his shelf he told them he was just a lucky man who did his job he worked the saws until his hands grew too stiff to hold the wood Elias passed away in his sleep in 1998 a quiet man who carried the secret of the Thunderbirds to his grave colonel Herbert Vance did not go to the front but his career never reached the heights he had envisioned in his mahogany offices
he returned to Washington D C after the surrender and practiced law in a quiet sterile firm he remained bitter about the day the manual was burned in a wastebasket he often told his colleagues that the army had lost its soul the moment it allowed the general to ignore the law he never understood that the law had no answer for what was found behind the wire Vance lived in a house filled with leather bound books and silence until his death in 1974 Patton never mentioned the fire in the schoolhouse in his official reports
he kept the incident buried in classified paperwork that stayed locked away for decades years later a private entry was found that summarized his choice he wrote that he might have fired the first shot himself if he had been there some historians argue that Patton’s decision was a failure of military law they believe he allowed the rule of law to collapse and protected men who had committed a clear war crime to them justice was sacrificed for the sake of moral and personal loyalty others argue that the soldiers
were pushed past the limit of human endurance they believed that no court could ever understand the horror found behind the wire and that Patton acted with a rare necessary mercy what is certain is that the investigation into the Dachau shooting was officially closed not a single American soldier ever stood trial for what happened in the coal yard if you had been in Patton’s position would you have burned the files to protect your men or would you have followed the book and let the court martial proceed let us know in the comments
and if you want more stories about justice consequences and the moments that changed history make sure to subscribe
