Did the US military ever torture prisoners during the war for information?

Well, the title says it all. Are there any reliable, repeat, RELIABLE, accurate, first-hand accounts of any US soldiers, marines, sailors, or airmen torturing any surrendered enemy in custody for information (or just for the hell of it for that matter)? I know about the "Dachau Massacre", and that isn't what I am talking about; I am talking about torture. Thank you.

 

Never came across any. I know of episodes of brutality and killing of prisoners by US troops but not for "interrogation". One element against it happening is that at small unit level, where those episodes happened, it's unlikely anyone could understand the enemy's language well enough to conduct an effective interrogation, and people educated enough to understand a foreign language are usually less prone to excesses.

 

The internet is full of accounts, it's more a matter of sorting out. About all armies in the world used torture, the U.S. was not an exception. Some sources are biased or exagaterated, but others are definitily accurate and comprise accounts from U.S. veterans (see video )




starvation of pows :


Mass Starvation of Germans, 1945-1950

German POW's Diary Reveals Post War US Camp Horrors


Eisenhower's Holocaust - His Slaughter Of 1.7 Million Germans

Eisenhower and the German Pows: Facts Against Falsehood (Eisenhower Center Studies on War and Peace): Gunter Bischof,Stephen E. Ambrose: 9780807117583: Amazon.com: Books



and torture :

HOW ALLIES TREATED GERMAN POWs by Michael Walsh


and execution :


US forces execute German Pows account from WW2 - YouTube

 

But none of this seems to directly answer the question asked.

This is well documented although it's also been blown out of porportion by some. The US (and Britain) were simplly not prepaired for the number of prisoners they captured around the end of the war nor were they prepared adequatly to feed the civilian populace of the territory they controled. Technically most were not POW's by the way. In any case this was hardly a case of torturing for information.

even the title here clearly illustrates the bias as the best estimates of deaths in the post war camps are well under 1,000,000.

A quick scan of this one doesn't seem to show that it address the question either although there are some possiblities. On the otherhand when a document contains lines like:

One questions both the motives and the voracity of the source.

On it's surface this would seem not to answer the questioneither.

Did it happen? I would think it quite likely but places to look for it would be OSS operations and possibly those of Rangers or Paratroops (particularly events around D-day). I.e. behind the lines and or high value high risk situations. I have read that in the Pacific when they got Japanese POWs it usually didn't take much effort to get them to talk.

 

While I really do appreciate the effort Kommodore, none of those accounts seem ironclad. I am looking for, I guess, examples of prosecution of US troops by US authorities for charges amounting to "torture" of prisoners -- NOT civilians. I realize just how difficult this is. Troops in active combat situations would be unwilling to turn in one of their own especially if that person gained information that led to saving lives. I also think it highly likely. If I were in that sort of situation and needed information to keep my company alive, do you REALLY think I would blink at "aggressively investigating" some enemy prisoners to learn where the enemy strongpoints were? I don't think so. I've heard/read accounts of NKVD agents hammering empty cartridge casings into the kneecaps of German soldiers to get information. That seems incredibly barbaric to me, but did it get them the information they wanted? I don't know.

 

The only "sanctioned" (not the idea of a 'rogue' officer or troops) case that I know of occured in late April 1945. American intelligence thought that several German U-boats were going to launch missiles at the US coast. They deployed a large ASW force in response, taking the threat very seriously. When U-546 was severly damaged by a hedgehog salvo, it surfaced and many of the crew were taken prisoner. American officials seperated several "specialists" from the crew (including her Captain, CptLt Just) and set them aside for intensive questioning about their mission. This "intensive questioning" amounted to torture (beatings, electroshock). CptLT Just eventually died while under "questioning".

I'm sure there were isolated actions by front line troops, but as I said, I think this was the only "sanctioned" action.

 

Double Post. Please Delete

 

you may want to look for Robert Lilly works. He published a book about rapes in 1944-45, but I'm not aware whether these were all civilians or if there were female pows among the victims.

 

In addition to the isolated incidents mentioned in previous posts, this might be closer to what you are looking for, but a very limited incident since it involved not "torture" for information about the "war", but three claims of torture for confessions about deaths of fellow POWs. I personally believe that what might well be identified as torture was administered to the Kriegsmarine POWS who had participated in the murder of their fellow sailor (Werner Drechsler) at a POW camp in Phoenix in March of 1944.

Seven men (Helmut Fischer, Fritz Franke, Gunther Kuelsen, Heinrich Ludwig, Bernard Ryak, Otto Stengel and Rolf Wizuy) were convicted of murdering Drechsler, and hanged after the German surrender.

During his own court martial, Otto Stengel and two others claimed they were tortured by being made to sit on hot steam radiators, and wear gas masks filled with chopped onions in order to get them to confess and name the others involved. Not exactly pulling finger and toe nails, or other sadistic methods, but far from ethical treatment to obtain confessions from the men, if true.

And, seven other POWs were convicted of murdering their fellows and hanged as well, I just don’t have their names recorded in my files (or cannot find them). I am certain that all fourteen are buried at Ft. Levenworth Kansas, so their names can probably be found. Don’t know if any of them claimed to have been tortured to obtain information or confessions.

 

Perhaps whether we like it or not both sides may have their serial killers amongst their population and a war may be their opportunity to engage in the acts they enjoy. What side can completely prevent that. Combine that with the situation where a soldier consistently loses his close friends to the enemy and this may occur so frequently as to build up such a pressure that he cannot cope. Certainly we must understand that this is the condition that man must face when he goes to war. It is not the first choice for us but it is the choice where all things cannot ever be controlled to eliminate this. As in peace we have lawbreakers..... in war we will experience the same perhaps magnified by the conditions.

 

The is considerable evidence that some German POW's were tortured to get confessions, expecially in cases of men accused of killing allied prisoners during the war. The Malmedy case is a well known example. In some cases, men convicted after giving forced confessions were sentenced to death. Freda Utley, a controversial author and political activist, published a book in 1949 in which she accused American military investigators of torturing prisoners. Her book, The High Cost of Vengence, seems to be based as much on opinion and heresay as on fact, but it offers insight into allied activities in Germany in the immediate post-war period.

Beatings and brutal kickings; knocking-out of teeth and breaking of jaws; mock trials; solitary confinement; torture with burning splinters; the use of investigators pretending to be priests; starvation; and promises of acquittal. Speaking to the Chester Pike Rotary Club on December 14, 1948, Judge van Roden said: “All but two of the Germans in the 139 cases we investigated had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair. This was standard operating procedure with our American investigators.”

http://www.fredautley.com/pdffiles/book01.pdf

Especially Chapter 7...

 

Something which is conveniently forgotten about the Malmady case, and the torture of the men to obtain convictions of Jochen Peiper and his men is that when the torture and mis-treatment came to the knowledge of the US justice system the convictions were overturned by both the US Supreme Court and the US Army Review Board. This is an example of the torture being counter productive, as most torture is.

​

 

True, if a prosecutor can't make his case based on the evidence and unforced testimony of witnesses, then he has no case.

In the Malmedy case, the U.S Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, ruling that it was outside of their jurisdiction. At the insistance of the Secretary of the Army, a military commission was appointed to review dozens of the mass trials that had been conducted. Their findings included a recommendation that the death sentences be commuted. I don't believe that any convictions were vacated, though, and the convicted men were eventually parolled.

 

I had to do that back in my college days.

 

Im just overwhelmed with this Informations. I never would have thought that beeing a POW of the Americans might have been such a terrible thing. I talked with my Grandpa who
was POW and he always said " its better to be in American Custody then in the Russian!" Maybe that is just because he knows what the Wehrmacht did on the Eastern Front.
But from what my Grandpa tells, it was not all that terrible..... I would like to know something specific and believable about that Time.

 

I-m not shooting the messenger! But Skippers links are either fascist and revisionist tainted or outright falsification of historical facts.
I cite from the following link

Inconvenient History | A Quarterly Journal for Free Historical Inquiry


Geographically Germany was radically reduced in size as Austria was made independent again, the Sudetenland was returned to a reconstituted Czechoslovakia, and whole provinces were torn away and handed to a newly emergent Poland - from the German entity of Prussia which was made to cease to exist entirely. France took the provinces of Lothringen-Elsass, Luxembourg was broken off, and the German South Tyrol went to Italy (again).



The author who wrote the previous lines is either a retard or a liar! Luxembourg had been independant for more then a hundred years, the population didn't want to have any doings with Germany and "historically" based german claims on Luxembourg are as valid as luxembourgish claims on Germany. If you suffer from pan-germanisitic dillusions you might get your kicks from this kind of mumbo-jumbo....but it's not what I would consider accurate historic work.



EDIT:

To prevent any misunderstandings! I do not imply that Skipper adheres to the ideas expressed in the links he posted! I am quite sure that it is to the contrary!!!

 

That Luxembourg has remained independent is some kind of miracle. It was annexed by Germany in 1940, though not with the consent of its citizens, and maintained a government-in-exile in the UK. Men of draft age were pressed into the army, and any Luxembourgers who resisted were executed or sent to concentration camps (I knew one who, as a young woman, was sent to Dachau and managed to escape). Many of the drafted men were sent to the eastern front and never returned.

But to say that "Luxembourg was broken off" isn't facist or revisionist, just a poor choice of words. Luxembourg was liberated.

 

Sorry for posting Off Topic but:
Are there any reliable Numbers about the Death´s of POW in American custody? I ask because the Links posted seems to contain some intent (pro/contra Germany). Are there some believable, trustworthy Numbers?

 

Exact numbers I don't know, but in the past I read something like close to 2% of Axis prisoners in US custody died for assorted reasons, for example sickness, fighting with other prisoners, being executed for capital offenses, severe wounds from combat, job site accidents and the sort. I don't think any "died while escaping", although escapes were few and far between as my memory allows.

I remember my father telling me when he was a kid (7 or 8 years old), he'd see truck loads of German POWs being transported from job site to job site. They'd be singing German songs, waving at civilians along the way as if they were going to the beach or something. People would bring them water and something to munch on to supplement their rations when they were working on their property. My dad told me that once he walked up to the guard on the detail who was armed with a Thompson, and tried to strike up a conversation. The guard waved him off and spoke in German. He walked by the truck as he was walking off and saw the American driver taking a nap in the truck.

So I think that the torture and rough treatment of Axis prisoners was few and far between as well.

 

Sky: I quoted a sample of links and did mention some sites were biased, others reliable, not all.

The dodgy ones certainly do not reflect my opinions and were just posted here for our critical analysis. I picked them out for the Pow information, not the territorial claims. I could have left them out , but I trust our members to seperate the good from the bad (as you did) because they also have some useful information for this thread.

This being said some of the links are reliable. The youtube video is the account of a Us Vet for example.