The American Colonel Who Executed the SS Guards At Dachau After Seeing Their Death Train
World War Archives
85,553 views
#Dachau #WW2 #MilitaryHistory
On the morning of April 29, 1945, the men of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment smelled it before they saw it. Lieutenant Colonel Felix Sparks was twenty-seven years old, a copper miner's son from Arizona who had been fighting since Sicily. He thought he knew what war smelled like. Then his soldiers reached the train. Thirty-nine railroad cars, doors ajar, snow dusting the corpses. Hours later, he would be firing his pistol into the sky to stop his own men from becoming the thing they had spent two years fighting.
This documentary reveals the true story of the liberation of Dachau and the man who walked into the coal yard with a sidearm raised toward the Bavarian sky. While the world remembers the gates of the camp and the wrought-iron motto Arbeit Macht Frei, the harder story is what happened to American combat veterans who had buried friends in five countries when they came around a bend in the rail line south of Munich and finally, in their bones, understood what they had been fighting.
Discover the journey of Felix Sparks from the breadlines of Depression-era Arizona to the destruction of his company at Anzio, the loss of his rebuilt battalion at Reipertswiller, and the morning he led the 45th Thunderbird Division into Dachau — the Buchenwald death train on the siding, the coal yard, the photograph, and the file that George Patton tore in half on his desk.
🔥 In this video:
The Death Train: The three-week journey from Buchenwald that ended on a Bavarian siding with 2,310 corpses in the boxcars.
Anzio and Reipertswiller: How Felix Sparks lost two battalions of Colorado men before he ever reached a German camp.
The Coal Yard Incident: What happened against the L-shaped wall behind the camp hospital, and what didn't.
The Pistol in the Sky: How a twenty-seven-year-old battalion commander stopped his own machine gunner.
Patton's Desk: The Inspector General report, the destroyed file, and the war crime that never went to trial.
The Long Silence: How the men of the 157th carried the smell of the train home for sixty years.
Sources of Where I get my facts:
Kershaw, A. (2012) The Liberator: One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau. Crown Publishers, New York.
Marcuse, H. (2001) Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933–2001. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Sparks, F.L. (1989) Dachau and Its Liberation. 157th Infantry Association, Pueblo.
Buechner, H.A. (1986) Dachau: The Hour of the Avenger. Thunderbird Press, Metairie.
Whitlock, F. (2010) The Rock of Anzio: From Sicily to Dachau, a History of the U.S. 45th Infantry Division. Westview Press, Boulder.
Disclaimer: This video is a historical documentary intended for educational purposes.
#Dachau #WW2 #MilitaryHistory #FelixSparks #Liberation #ConcentrationCamp #45thInfantryDivision #Thunderbirds #WorldWar2 #History
20 Comments
So I will defer to them. They were driven to the point of madness. Why? Because we are Americans who love our neighbors and God.
Who have a heart of true love for one another
These men were you & me, what happened to them most assuredly could have happened to any one of us. My God I could not even stand in judgement. The pure evil they found was mind destroying. May God bless them
Eso muestra que sabes muy poco de cuestiones militares, para usted todo lo vestido de verde y casco es un soldado y le da la jerarquía que le da su ignorancia.
Pulgar abajo por lo improvisado del video.
Qui, n'a pas été face à ce genre de fauve inhumain, ne peut pas juger de l'acte de ce soldat.
Face a des monstres, la peur et la haine envahit tout hommes, certains se maîtrisent pour que les monstres soient jugés.
D'autres perdent pieds.
Maintenant, parler de meurtre pour des S.S, qui n'étaient plus des hommes mais des monstres. Des psychopathes.
Et face à de tels ordures, si l'un d'eux a le moindre mouvement qui peut paraître dangereux, la réaction instinctive est de tirer.
Il n'y a pas de condamnation, ni de jugement à établir, simplement à constater.
Patton avait vu, sur le terrain, de quoi ces monstres nazis étaient capable.
Il a fait preuve de bon jugement, en regard de la situation.
The American Colonel Who Executed the SS Guards At Dachau After Seeing Their Death Train
World War Archives
85,553 views
#Dachau #WW2 #MilitaryHistory
On the morning of April 29, 1945, the men of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment smelled it before they saw it. Lieutenant Colonel Felix Sparks was twenty-seven years old, a copper miner's son from Arizona who had been fighting since Sicily. He thought he knew what war smelled like. Then his soldiers reached the train. Thirty-nine railroad cars, doors ajar, snow dusting the corpses. Hours later, he would be firing his pistol into the sky to stop his own men from becoming the thing they had spent two years fighting.
This documentary reveals the true story of the liberation of Dachau and the man who walked into the coal yard with a sidearm raised toward the Bavarian sky. While the world remembers the gates of the camp and the wrought-iron motto Arbeit Macht Frei, the harder story is what happened to American combat veterans who had buried friends in five countries when they came around a bend in the rail line south of Munich and finally, in their bones, understood what they had been fighting.
Discover the journey of Felix Sparks from the breadlines of Depression-era Arizona to the destruction of his company at Anzio, the loss of his rebuilt battalion at Reipertswiller, and the morning he led the 45th Thunderbird Division into Dachau — the Buchenwald death train on the siding, the coal yard, the photograph, and the file that George Patton tore in half on his desk.
🔥 In this video:
The Death Train: The three-week journey from Buchenwald that ended on a Bavarian siding with 2,310 corpses in the boxcars.
Anzio and Reipertswiller: How Felix Sparks lost two battalions of Colorado men before he ever reached a German camp.
The Coal Yard Incident: What happened against the L-shaped wall behind the camp hospital, and what didn't.
The Pistol in the Sky: How a twenty-seven-year-old battalion commander stopped his own machine gunner.
Patton's Desk: The Inspector General report, the destroyed file, and the war crime that never went to trial.
The Long Silence: How the men of the 157th carried the smell of the train home for sixty years.
Sources of Where I get my facts:
Kershaw, A. (2012) The Liberator: One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau. Crown Publishers, New York.
Marcuse, H. (2001) Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933–2001. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Sparks, F.L. (1989) Dachau and Its Liberation. 157th Infantry Association, Pueblo.
Buechner, H.A. (1986) Dachau: The Hour of the Avenger. Thunderbird Press, Metairie.
Whitlock, F. (2010) The Rock of Anzio: From Sicily to Dachau, a History of the U.S. 45th Infantry Division. Westview Press, Boulder.
Disclaimer: This video is a historical documentary intended for educational purposes.
#Dachau #WW2 #MilitaryHistory #FelixSparks #Liberation #ConcentrationCamp #45thInfantryDivision #Thunderbirds #WorldWar2 #History