What Patton Said to the SS Commander Who Refused to Release His Prisoners
By the last week of April 1945, General George S. Patton had begun to understand that there were forms of human ruin even war had not prepared him to see.
His army had driven through shattered towns, burned roads, and fields cratered so deeply by artillery that rainwater collected in the holes like dull gray mirrors. He had spent a lifetime learning how to look at destruction and keep moving. A commander who stopped for every broken thing would lose the war before noon.
Men died. Cities burned. Armies crushed each other and rolled on.
That was war, and war had its own brutal logic.
But the camps had no logic a soldier could respect.
The first one Patton saw with his own eyes was smaller than he expected. It sat behind wire at the edge of a town whose church still stood and whose bakery still had flour dust on the floor. Inside the enclosure, the survivors did not rush toward the Americans the way liberated civilians usually did.
They drifted.
They came forward slowly, as if even movement might still be punished.
Their clothes hung in strips. Their heads were shaved or half-shaved. Some were too weak to raise their hands. Others stared with an intensity so raw it made hardened soldiers look away. Gratitude was not what lived in those faces.
It was disbelief so deep it had become permanent.
Patton stood in the mud with his gloves in one hand and felt something cold settle into his chest.
The camp commandant had fled. The guards who remained were rounded up. A medical officer, soaked to the knees and sick with what he had seen, gave the report in clipped professional language.
Severe malnutrition.
Typhus risk.
Untreated injuries.
Evidence of beatings.
Evidence of executions.
A burial area behind the barracks.
Patton listened without interrupting. Then he walked inside one of the barracks.
The smell hit first.
Heat trapped under rotting boards. Human waste. Infection. Old blood. Wet wool. Sickness fermented into the straw. Men and women turned their faces toward the doorway. Some sat upright because lying down looked too much like dying. A boy no older than fifteen stood clutching a tin cup in both hands as if he were presenting it to a judge.
Patton stayed only a few minutes.
When he came out, he looked across the yard and said, “Get me the mayor.”
The mayor swore he had known nothing.
Patton had already heard that lie too many times.
Three days later, at a forward headquarters in Bavaria, intelligence officers brought him a report that changed the air in the room.
Another camp.
Forty miles east.
About two thousand prisoners still alive inside.
Jews from Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Political prisoners. French resisters. Polish civilians. Soviet POWs. Germans taken by their own government.
And the worst part—
Intercepted intelligence suggested the camp commander had been ordered not to let the prisoners fall into Allied hands.
The prisoners were not to be liberated.
They were to be “dealt with.”
Then the camp was to be destroyed.
Patton read the report once.
Then again.
“Has he acted on it yet?” he asked.
“No, sir,” intelligence answered. “Not yet.”
The room went very still.
“How fast can we reach it?”
“Normal movement, six hours.”
Patton never looked up from the map.
“I didn’t ask for normal.”
A relief column could make it in a little over three hours if they pushed hard enough.
“Move them,” he said.
Orders started flying before the sentence was finished.
Then Patton asked for a captured German officer.
When they brought the man in, muddy and pale, Patton studied him for a long second and said, “You know the SS frequencies?”
“Some.”
“That’ll do.”
He turned to his signal officer.
“I want a message transmitted on every channel they’re likely listening to. And I want this man carrying the same message in person.”
The officers around him went silent.
Patton sat down, pulled a chair to the table, and said one word.
“Write.”
He did not shout.
That was what stayed with the men in the room.
He spoke with terrifying calm, choosing each sentence as if he were tightening a noose.
To SS-Sturmbannführer Carl Dressel, he began. General George S. Patton, commanding the United States Third Army, is aware of your facility, aware of the number of prisoners presently held there, and aware of the orders you have received concerning them.
He stated that an American relief column was already moving.
He stated that every living prisoner found at that camp would count in Dressel’s favor when the accounting began.
Every dead prisoner would count against him.
And then Patton said the part no one in the room ever forgot.
If Dressel chose to murder those prisoners before the Americans arrived, he was not to expect the protections ordinarily extended between soldiers.
Following orders would not save him.
Surrender would not erase it.
Distance would not bury it.
Patton would see to that personally.
Outside, engines were already starting.
Somewhere east of them, two thousand people were still alive behind barbed wire, trapped inside a camp commanded by a man with orders to erase them before dawn.
And at the end of that narrowing road stood a set of gates that might open—
or burn.
Full Story In Comment.What Patton Said to the SS Commander Who Refused to Release His Prisoners
By the last week of April 1945, General George S. Patton had begun to understand that there were forms of human ruin even war had not prepared him to see.
His army had driven through shattered towns, burned roads, and fields cratered so deeply by artillery that rainwater collected in the holes like dull gray mirrors. He had spent a lifetime learning how to look at destruction and keep moving. A commander who stopped for every broken thing would lose the war before noon.
Men died. Cities burned. Armies crushed each other and rolled on.
That was war, and war had its own brutal logic.
But the camps had no logic a soldier could respect.
The first one Patton saw with his own eyes was smaller than he expected. It sat behind wire at the edge of a town whose church still stood and whose bakery still had flour dust on the floor. Inside the enclosure, the survivors did not rush toward the Americans the way liberated civilians usually did.
They drifted.
They came forward slowly, as if even movement might still be punished.
Their clothes hung in strips. Their heads were shaved or half-shaved. Some were too weak to raise their hands. Others stared with an intensity so raw it made hardened soldiers look away. Gratitude was not what lived in those faces.
It was disbelief so deep it had become permanent.
Patton stood in the mud with his gloves in one hand and felt something cold settle into his chest.
The camp commandant had fled. The guards who remained were rounded up. A medical officer, soaked to the knees and sick with what he had seen, gave the report in clipped professional language.
Severe malnutrition.
Typhus risk.
Untreated injuries.
Evidence of beatings.
Evidence of executions.
A burial area behind the barracks.
Patton listened without interrupting. Then he walked inside one of the barracks.
The smell hit first.
Heat trapped under rotting boards. Human waste. Infection. Old blood. Wet wool. Sickness fermented into the straw. Men and women turned their faces toward the doorway. Some sat upright because lying down looked too much like dying. A boy no older than fifteen stood clutching a tin cup in both hands as if he were presenting it to a judge.
Patton stayed only a few minutes.
When he came out, he looked across the yard and said, “Get me the mayor.”
The mayor swore he had known nothing.
Patton had already heard that lie too many times.
Three days later, at a forward headquarters in Bavaria, intelligence officers brought him a report that changed the air in the room.
Another camp.
Forty miles east.
About two thousand prisoners still alive inside.
Jews from Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Political prisoners. French resisters. Polish civilians. Soviet POWs. Germans taken by their own government.
And the worst part—
Intercepted intelligence suggested the camp commander had been ordered not to let the prisoners fall into Allied hands.
The prisoners were not to be liberated.
They were to be “dealt with.”
Then the camp was to be destroyed.
Patton read the report once.
Then again.
“Has he acted on it yet?” he asked.
“No, sir,” intelligence answered. “Not yet.”
The room went very still.
“How fast can we reach it?”
“Normal movement, six hours.”
Patton never looked up from the map.
“I didn’t ask for normal.”
A relief column could make it in a little over three hours if they pushed hard enough.
“Move them,” he said.
Orders started flying before the sentence was finished.
Then Patton asked for a captured German officer.
When they brought the man in, muddy and pale, Patton studied him for a long second and said, “You know the SS frequencies?”
“Some.”
“That’ll do.”
He turned to his signal officer.
“I want a message transmitted on every channel they’re likely listening to. And I want this man carrying the same message in person.”
The officers around him went silent.
Patton sat down, pulled a chair to the table, and said one word.
“Write.”
He did not shout.
That was what stayed with the men in the room.
He spoke with terrifying calm, choosing each sentence as if he were tightening a noose.
To SS-Sturmbannführer Carl Dressel, he began. General George S. Patton, commanding the United States Third Army, is aware of your facility, aware of the number of prisoners presently held there, and aware of the orders you have received concerning them.
He stated that an American relief column was already moving.
He stated that every living prisoner found at that camp would count in Dressel’s favor when the accounting began.
Every dead prisoner would count against him.
And then Patton said the part no one in the room ever forgot.
If Dressel chose to murder those prisoners before the Americans arrived, he was not to expect the protections ordinarily extended between soldiers.
Following orders would not save him.
Surrender would not erase it.
Distance would not bury it.
Patton would see to that personally.
Outside, engines were already starting.
Somewhere east of them, two thousand people were still alive behind barbed wire, trapped inside a camp commanded by a man with orders to erase them before dawn.
And at the end of that narrowing road stood a set of gates that might open—
or burn.
Full Story In Comment.What Patton Said to the SS Commander Who Refused to Release His Prisoners
By the last week of April 1945, General George S. Patton had begun to understand that there were forms of human ruin even war had not prepared him to see.
His army had driven through shattered towns, burned roads, and fields cratered so deeply by artillery that rainwater collected in the holes like dull gray mirrors. He had spent a lifetime learning how to look at destruction and keep moving. A commander who stopped for every broken thing would lose the war before noon.
Men died. Cities burned. Armies crushed each other and rolled on.
That was war, and war had its own brutal logic.
But the camps had no logic a soldier could respect.
The first one Patton saw with his own eyes was smaller than he expected. It sat behind wire at the edge of a town whose church still stood and whose bakery still had flour dust on the floor. Inside the enclosure, the survivors did not rush toward the Americans the way liberated civilians usually did.
They drifted.
They came forward slowly, as if even movement might still be punished.
Their clothes hung in strips. Their heads were shaved or half-shaved. Some were too weak to raise their hands. Others stared with an intensity so raw it made hardened soldiers look away. Gratitude was not what lived in those faces.
It was disbelief so deep it had become permanent.
Patton stood in the mud with his gloves in one hand and felt something cold settle into his chest.
The camp commandant had fled. The guards who remained were rounded up. A medical officer, soaked to the knees and sick with what he had seen, gave the report in clipped professional language.
Severe malnutrition.
Typhus risk.
Untreated injuries.
Evidence of beatings.
Evidence of executions.
A burial area behind the barracks.
Patton listened without interrupting. Then he walked inside one of the barracks.
The smell hit first.
Heat trapped under rotting boards. Human waste. Infection. Old blood. Wet wool. Sickness fermented into the straw. Men and women turned their faces toward the doorway. Some sat upright because lying down looked too much like dying. A boy no older than fifteen stood clutching a tin cup in both hands as if he were presenting it to a judge.
Patton stayed only a few minutes.
When he came out, he looked across the yard and said, “Get me the mayor.”
The mayor swore he had known nothing.
Patton had already heard that lie too many times.
Three days later, at a forward headquarters in Bavaria, intelligence officers brought him a report that changed the air in the room.
Another camp.
Forty miles east.
About two thousand prisoners still alive inside.
Jews from Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Political prisoners. French resisters. Polish civilians. Soviet POWs. Germans taken by their own government.
And the worst part—
Intercepted intelligence suggested the camp commander had been ordered not to let the prisoners fall into Allied hands.
The prisoners were not to be liberated.
They were to be “dealt with.”
Then the camp was to be destroyed.
Patton read the report once.
Then again.
“Has he acted on it yet?” he asked.
“No, sir,” intelligence answered. “Not yet.”
The room went very still.
“How fast can we reach it?”
“Normal movement, six hours.”
Patton never looked up from the map.
“I didn’t ask for normal.”
A relief column could make it in a little over three hours if they pushed hard enough.
“Move them,” he said.
Orders started flying before the sentence was finished.
Then Patton asked for a captured German officer.
When they brought the man in, muddy and pale, Patton studied him for a long second and said, “You know the SS frequencies?”
“Some.”
“That’ll do.”
He turned to his signal officer.
“I want a message transmitted on every channel they’re likely listening to. And I want this man carrying the same message in person.”
The officers around him went silent.
Patton sat down, pulled a chair to the table, and said one word.
“Write.”
He did not shout.
That was what stayed with the men in the room.
He spoke with terrifying calm, choosing each sentence as if he were tightening a noose.
To SS-Sturmbannführer Carl Dressel, he began. General George S. Patton, commanding the United States Third Army, is aware of your facility, aware of the number of prisoners presently held there, and aware of the orders you have received concerning them.
He stated that an American relief column was already moving.
He stated that every living prisoner found at that camp would count in Dressel’s favor when the accounting began.
Every dead prisoner would count against him.
And then Patton said the part no one in the room ever forgot.
If Dressel chose to murder those prisoners before the Americans arrived, he was not to expect the protections ordinarily extended between soldiers.
Following orders would not save him.
Surrender would not erase it.
Distance would not bury it.
Patton would see to that personally.
Outside, engines were already starting.
Somewhere east of them, two thousand people were still alive behind barbed wire, trapped inside a camp commanded by a man with orders to erase them before dawn.
And at the end of that narrowing road stood a set of gates that might open—
or burn.
Full Story In Comment.
By the last week of April 1945, General George S. Patton had begun to understand that there were forms of human ruin even war had not prepared him to see.
His army had driven through shattered towns, burned roads, and fields cratered so deeply by artillery that rainwater collected in the holes like dull gray mirrors. He had spent a lifetime learning how to look at destruction and keep moving. A commander who stopped for every broken thing would lose the war before noon.
Men died. Cities burned. Armies crushed each other and rolled on.
That was war, and war had its own brutal logic.
But the camps had no logic a soldier could respect.
The first one Patton saw with his own eyes was smaller than he expected. It sat behind wire at the edge of a town whose church still stood and whose bakery still had flour dust on the floor. Inside the enclosure, the survivors did not rush toward the Americans the way liberated civilians usually did.
They drifted.
They came forward slowly, as if even movement might still be punished.
Their clothes hung in strips. Their heads were shaved or half-shaved. Some were too weak to raise their hands. Others stared with an intensity so raw it made hardened soldiers look away. Gratitude was not what lived in those faces.
It was disbelief so deep it had become permanent.
Patton stood in the mud with his gloves in one hand and felt something cold settle into his chest.
The camp commandant had fled. The guards who remained were rounded up. A medical officer, soaked to the knees and sick with what he had seen, gave the report in clipped professional language.
Severe malnutrition.
Typhus risk.
Untreated injuries.
Evidence of beatings.
Evidence of executions.
A burial area behind the barracks.
Patton listened without interrupting. Then he walked inside one of the barracks.
The smell hit first.
Heat trapped under rotting boards. Human waste. Infection. Old blood. Wet wool. Sickness fermented into the straw. Men and women turned their faces toward the doorway. Some sat upright because lying down looked too much like dying. A boy no older than fifteen stood clutching a tin cup in both hands as if he were presenting it to a judge.
Patton stayed only a few minutes.
When he came out, he looked across the yard and said, “Get me the mayor.”
The mayor swore he had known nothing.
Patton had already heard that lie too many times.
Three days later, at a forward headquarters in Bavaria, intelligence officers brought him a report that changed the air in the room.
Another camp.
Forty miles east.
About two thousand prisoners still alive inside.
Jews from Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Political prisoners. French resisters. Polish civilians. Soviet POWs. Germans taken by their own government.
And the worst part—
Intercepted intelligence suggested the camp commander had been ordered not to let the prisoners fall into Allied hands.
The prisoners were not to be liberated.
They were to be “dealt with.”
Then the camp was to be destroyed.
Patton read the report once.
Then again.
“Has he acted on it yet?” he asked.
“No, sir,” intelligence answered. “Not yet.”
The room went very still.
“How fast can we reach it?”
“Normal movement, six hours.”
Patton never looked up from the map.
“I didn’t ask for normal.”
A relief column could make it in a little over three hours if they pushed hard enough.
“Move them,” he said.
Orders started flying before the sentence was finished.
Then Patton asked for a captured German officer.
When they brought the man in, muddy and pale, Patton studied him for a long second and said, “You know the SS frequencies?”
“Some.”
“That’ll do.”
He turned to his signal officer.
“I want a message transmitted on every channel they’re likely listening to. And I want this man carrying the same message in person.”
The officers around him went silent.
Patton sat down, pulled a chair to the table, and said one word.
“Write.”
He did not shout.
That was what stayed with the men in the room.
He spoke with terrifying calm, choosing each sentence as if he were tightening a noose.
To SS-Sturmbannführer Carl Dressel, he began. General George S. Patton, commanding the United States Third Army, is aware of your facility, aware of the number of prisoners presently held there, and aware of the orders you have received concerning them.
He stated that an American relief column was already moving.
He stated that every living prisoner found at that camp would count in Dressel’s favor when the accounting began.
Every dead prisoner would count against him.
And then Patton said the part no one in the room ever forgot.
If Dressel chose to murder those prisoners before the Americans arrived, he was not to expect the protections ordinarily extended between soldiers.
Following orders would not save him.
Surrender would not erase it.
Distance would not bury it.
Patton would see to that personally.
Outside, engines were already starting.
Somewhere east of them, two thousand people were still alive behind barbed wire, trapped inside a camp commanded by a man with orders to erase them before dawn.
And at the end of that narrowing road stood a set of gates that might open—
or burn.
Full Story In Comment.What Patton Said to the SS Commander Who Refused to Release His Prisoners
By the last week of April 1945, General George S. Patton had begun to understand that there were forms of human ruin even war had not prepared him to see.
His army had driven through shattered towns, burned roads, and fields cratered so deeply by artillery that rainwater collected in the holes like dull gray mirrors. He had spent a lifetime learning how to look at destruction and keep moving. A commander who stopped for every broken thing would lose the war before noon.
Men died. Cities burned. Armies crushed each other and rolled on.
That was war, and war had its own brutal logic.
But the camps had no logic a soldier could respect.
The first one Patton saw with his own eyes was smaller than he expected. It sat behind wire at the edge of a town whose church still stood and whose bakery still had flour dust on the floor. Inside the enclosure, the survivors did not rush toward the Americans the way liberated civilians usually did.
They drifted.
They came forward slowly, as if even movement might still be punished.
Their clothes hung in strips. Their heads were shaved or half-shaved. Some were too weak to raise their hands. Others stared with an intensity so raw it made hardened soldiers look away. Gratitude was not what lived in those faces.
It was disbelief so deep it had become permanent.
Patton stood in the mud with his gloves in one hand and felt something cold settle into his chest.
The camp commandant had fled. The guards who remained were rounded up. A medical officer, soaked to the knees and sick with what he had seen, gave the report in clipped professional language.
Severe malnutrition.
Typhus risk.
Untreated injuries.
Evidence of beatings.
Evidence of executions.
A burial area behind the barracks.
Patton listened without interrupting. Then he walked inside one of the barracks.
The smell hit first.
Heat trapped under rotting boards. Human waste. Infection. Old blood. Wet wool. Sickness fermented into the straw. Men and women turned their faces toward the doorway. Some sat upright because lying down looked too much like dying. A boy no older than fifteen stood clutching a tin cup in both hands as if he were presenting it to a judge.
Patton stayed only a few minutes.
When he came out, he looked across the yard and said, “Get me the mayor.”
The mayor swore he had known nothing.
Patton had already heard that lie too many times.
Three days later, at a forward headquarters in Bavaria, intelligence officers brought him a report that changed the air in the room.
Another camp.
Forty miles east.
About two thousand prisoners still alive inside.
Jews from Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Political prisoners. French resisters. Polish civilians. Soviet POWs. Germans taken by their own government.
And the worst part—
Intercepted intelligence suggested the camp commander had been ordered not to let the prisoners fall into Allied hands.
The prisoners were not to be liberated.
They were to be “dealt with.”
Then the camp was to be destroyed.
Patton read the report once.
Then again.
“Has he acted on it yet?” he asked.
“No, sir,” intelligence answered. “Not yet.”
The room went very still.
“How fast can we reach it?”
“Normal movement, six hours.”
Patton never looked up from the map.
“I didn’t ask for normal.”
A relief column could make it in a little over three hours if they pushed hard enough.
“Move them,” he said.
Orders started flying before the sentence was finished.
Then Patton asked for a captured German officer.
When they brought the man in, muddy and pale, Patton studied him for a long second and said, “You know the SS frequencies?”
“Some.”
“That’ll do.”
He turned to his signal officer.
“I want a message transmitted on every channel they’re likely listening to. And I want this man carrying the same message in person.”
The officers around him went silent.
Patton sat down, pulled a chair to the table, and said one word.
“Write.”
He did not shout.
That was what stayed with the men in the room.
He spoke with terrifying calm, choosing each sentence as if he were tightening a noose.
To SS-Sturmbannführer Carl Dressel, he began. General George S. Patton, commanding the United States Third Army, is aware of your facility, aware of the number of prisoners presently held there, and aware of the orders you have received concerning them.
He stated that an American relief column was already moving.
He stated that every living prisoner found at that camp would count in Dressel’s favor when the accounting began.
Every dead prisoner would count against him.
And then Patton said the part no one in the room ever forgot.
If Dressel chose to murder those prisoners before the Americans arrived, he was not to expect the protections ordinarily extended between soldiers.
Following orders would not save him.
Surrender would not erase it.
Distance would not bury it.
Patton would see to that personally.
Outside, engines were already starting.
Somewhere east of them, two thousand people were still alive behind barbed wire, trapped inside a camp commanded by a man with orders to erase them before dawn.
And at the end of that narrowing road stood a set of gates that might open—
or burn.
Full Story In Comment.What Patton Said to the SS Commander Who Refused to Release His Prisoners
By the last week of April 1945, General George S. Patton had begun to understand that there were forms of human ruin even war had not prepared him to see.
His army had driven through shattered towns, burned roads, and fields cratered so deeply by artillery that rainwater collected in the holes like dull gray mirrors. He had spent a lifetime learning how to look at destruction and keep moving. A commander who stopped for every broken thing would lose the war before noon.
Men died. Cities burned. Armies crushed each other and rolled on.
That was war, and war had its own brutal logic.
But the camps had no logic a soldier could respect.
The first one Patton saw with his own eyes was smaller than he expected. It sat behind wire at the edge of a town whose church still stood and whose bakery still had flour dust on the floor. Inside the enclosure, the survivors did not rush toward the Americans the way liberated civilians usually did.
They drifted.
They came forward slowly, as if even movement might still be punished.
Their clothes hung in strips. Their heads were shaved or half-shaved. Some were too weak to raise their hands. Others stared with an intensity so raw it made hardened soldiers look away. Gratitude was not what lived in those faces.
It was disbelief so deep it had become permanent.
Patton stood in the mud with his gloves in one hand and felt something cold settle into his chest.
The camp commandant had fled. The guards who remained were rounded up. A medical officer, soaked to the knees and sick with what he had seen, gave the report in clipped professional language.
Severe malnutrition.
Typhus risk.
Untreated injuries.
Evidence of beatings.
Evidence of executions.
A burial area behind the barracks.
Patton listened without interrupting. Then he walked inside one of the barracks.
The smell hit first.
Heat trapped under rotting boards. Human waste. Infection. Old blood. Wet wool. Sickness fermented into the straw. Men and women turned their faces toward the doorway. Some sat upright because lying down looked too much like dying. A boy no older than fifteen stood clutching a tin cup in both hands as if he were presenting it to a judge.
Patton stayed only a few minutes.
When he came out, he looked across the yard and said, “Get me the mayor.”
The mayor swore he had known nothing.
Patton had already heard that lie too many times.
Three days later, at a forward headquarters in Bavaria, intelligence officers brought him a report that changed the air in the room.
Another camp.
Forty miles east.
About two thousand prisoners still alive inside.
Jews from Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Political prisoners. French resisters. Polish civilians. Soviet POWs. Germans taken by their own government.
And the worst part—
Intercepted intelligence suggested the camp commander had been ordered not to let the prisoners fall into Allied hands.
The prisoners were not to be liberated.
They were to be “dealt with.”
Then the camp was to be destroyed.
Patton read the report once.
Then again.
“Has he acted on it yet?” he asked.
“No, sir,” intelligence answered. “Not yet.”
The room went very still.
“How fast can we reach it?”
“Normal movement, six hours.”
Patton never looked up from the map.
“I didn’t ask for normal.”
A relief column could make it in a little over three hours if they pushed hard enough.
“Move them,” he said.
Orders started flying before the sentence was finished.
Then Patton asked for a captured German officer.
When they brought the man in, muddy and pale, Patton studied him for a long second and said, “You know the SS frequencies?”
“Some.”
“That’ll do.”
He turned to his signal officer.
“I want a message transmitted on every channel they’re likely listening to. And I want this man carrying the same message in person.”
The officers around him went silent.
Patton sat down, pulled a chair to the table, and said one word.
“Write.”
He did not shout.
That was what stayed with the men in the room.
He spoke with terrifying calm, choosing each sentence as if he were tightening a noose.
To SS-Sturmbannführer Carl Dressel, he began. General George S. Patton, commanding the United States Third Army, is aware of your facility, aware of the number of prisoners presently held there, and aware of the orders you have received concerning them.
He stated that an American relief column was already moving.
He stated that every living prisoner found at that camp would count in Dressel’s favor when the accounting began.
Every dead prisoner would count against him.
And then Patton said the part no one in the room ever forgot.
If Dressel chose to murder those prisoners before the Americans arrived, he was not to expect the protections ordinarily extended between soldiers.
Following orders would not save him.
Surrender would not erase it.
Distance would not bury it.
Patton would see to that personally.
Outside, engines were already starting.
Somewhere east of them, two thousand people were still alive behind barbed wire, trapped inside a camp commanded by a man with orders to erase them before dawn.
And at the end of that narrowing road stood a set of gates that might open—
or burn.
Full Story In Comment.