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Dachau liberation reprisals

During the Dachau liberation reprisals, German SS troops were killed by U.S. soldiers and concentration camp prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945, during World War II. It is unclear how many SS guards were killed in the incident, but most estimates place the number killed at around 35–50. In the days before the camp's liberation, SS guards at the camp had forced 7,000 inmates on a death march that resulted in the death of many from exposure and shooting. When Allied soldiers liberated Dachau, they were variously shocked, horrified, disturbed, and angered at finding the massed corpses of prisoners, and by the combativeness of some of the remaining guards who allegedly fired on them.

Discoveries

On April 29, 1945, scouts of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion located a satellite camp next to the small Bavarian town of Lager Lechfeld, adjacent to Hurlach. Afterwards, soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Felix L. Sparks, approaching the sprawling Dachau complex from the southwest, found 39 railway boxcars containing some 2,000 skeletal corpses parked on rail tracks just outside the complex itself. Brain tissue was splattered on the ground from one victim found nearby with a crushed skull. The smell of decaying bodies and human excrement and the sight of naked, emaciated bodies induced vomiting, crying, disbelief, and rage in the advancing troops. Advancing soldiers from H Company, 22nd Regiment, used a loudspeaker to call on the SS to surrender, but they continued to fire in bursts.

Upon moving deeper into the complex, and the prisoner area itself, the soldiers found more bodies. Some had been dead for hours or days before the camp's capture and lay where they had died. Soldiers reported seeing a row of concrete structures that contained rooms full of hundreds of naked and barely clothed dead bodies piled floor to ceiling, a coal-fired crematorium, and a gas chamber. "The stench of death was overpowering," Sparks recalled.

Surrender
Two days prior to the liberation, Obersturmbannführer Eduard Weiter had already begun evacuating the camp, prioritizing Russian POWs and Jewish prisoners as they were considered the most dangerous in the event of a liberation by American soldiers. According to Harold Marcuse, American professor of German history, SS-Hauptsturmführer Martin Weiss, who had been left in command of the camp, together with the camp guards and the SS garrisons, had also fled before the arrival of U.S. troops. SS-Untersturmführer Heinrich Wicker (killed after the surrender) was left in charge and had roughly 560 personnel at his disposal; these came from conscripted inmates of the SS disciplinary prison inside the Dachau concentration camp and Hungarian Waffen-SS troops.

On April 29, Dachau was surrendered to Brigadier General Henning Linden of the 42nd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army by Untersturmführer Wicker. According to Linden, he arrived at the command post in Dachau at about 15:00 and proceeded to make his way across the Amper River to the site of the complex, approximately one-half kilometre south of the bridge he crossed. He proceeded to take control of the camp in some tumult; thereafter, he toured the camp with a group of reporters (including war correspondent Marguerite Higgins). A description of the surrender appears in Linden's memorandum to Maj. Gen. Harry J. Collins, entitled Report on Surrender of Dachau Concentration Camp:

"As we approached the southwest corner, three people came forward with a flag of truce. We met them about 75 yards north of the southwest corner. These three people were a Swiss Red Cross representative, Victor Maurer, and two SS troopers who said they were the camp commander and his assistant. They had come here on the night of the 28th to take over from the regular camp personnel for the purpose of surrendering the camp to the advancing Americans. The Swiss Red Cross representative said there were about 100 SS guards in the camp who had their arms stacked except for the people in the tower.... He had given instructions that there would be no shots fired and it would take about 50 men to relieve the guards, as there were 42,000 'half-crazed' inmates, many of them typhus infected... He asked if I were an officer. I replied, 'I am Assistant Division Commander of the 42nd Infantry Division and will accept the surrender of the camp in the name of the Rainbow Division for the United States Army....'"

Capture communiqué
Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower issued a communiqué regarding the capture of Dachau concentration camp: "Our forces liberated and mopped up the infamous concentration camp at Dachau. Approximately 32,000 prisoners were liberated; 300 SS camp guards were quickly neutralized."

Military historian Earl Ziemke describes the event:

"The Americans came on April 29, a Sunday. Work had stopped in the camp on Wednesday, and an evacuation was being organized. One transport of 4,000 prisoners was able to get away, but the 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions covered the 40 miles from the Danube faster than the Germans expected. At noon on Sunday the camp was quiet, and the SS guards were at their posts in the towers when the cry 'Americans!' went up. A prisoner rushed toward the gate, and a guard shot him. Outside, a single American soldier stood looking casually at the towers while the guards eyed him and others who were two or three hundred yards away. When the Americans opened fire, the guards in the gate tower came down, hands in the air. One held a pistol behind his back, and the first American shot him. In the next few minutes a jeep drove up; in it were a blonde female war correspondent and a chaplain. The chaplain asked the prisoners, now crowding to the gate, to join him in the Lord's Prayer. ...Troops of the 42nd and 45th Divisions who liberated Dachau in the afternoon on 29 April were fighting in Munich the next morning and by nightfall had, along with XV Corps' other three divisions, captured the city that was the capital of Bavaria and the birthplace of Nazism."

Sparks account
Lt. Col. Sparks, a battalion commander of the 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division wrote about the incident. Sparks watched as about 50 German prisoners captured by the 157th Infantry Regiment were confined in an area that had been used for storing coal. The area was partially enclosed by an L-shaped masonry wall about 8 ft high and next to a hospital. The German POWs were watched over by a machine gun team from Company I. He left those men behind to head towards the center of the camp where there were SS who had not yet surrendered; he had only gone a short distance when he heard a soldier yell, "They're trying to get away!" and then machine-gun fire coming from the area he had just left. He ran back and kicked a 19-year-old soldier nicknamed "Birdeye" who was manning the machine gun and who had killed about 12 of the prisoners and wounded several more. The gunner, who was crying hysterically, said that the prisoners had tried to escape. Sparks said that he doubted the story; Sparks placed an NCO on the gun before resuming his journey towards the center of the camp. Sparks further stated:

"It was the foregoing incident which has given rise to wild claims in various publications that most or all of the German prisoners captured at Dachau were executed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The total number of German guards killed at Dachau during that day most certainly did not exceed fifty, with thirty probably being a more accurate figure. The regimental records for that date indicate that over a thousand German prisoners were brought to the regimental collecting point. Since my task force was leading the regimental attack, almost all the prisoners were taken by the task force, including several hundred from Dachau."

Buechner account
In the U.S. military Investigation of Alleged Mistreatment of German Guards at Dachau conducted by Lt. Col. Joseph Whitaker, the account given by Howard Buechner (then a first lieutenant in the United States Army and medical officer with the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry) to Whitaker on May 5, 1945, did not contradict the Sparks account. Buechner's sworn testimony was that around 16:00 he arrived in the yard where the German soldiers had been shot, and that he "saw 15 or 16 dead and wounded German soldiers lying along the wall". He noted that some of the wounded soldiers were still moving, but he did not examine any of them. He answered "Yes, sir" when asked if he was the surgeon of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry, at that time, and did not know if any medical attention was called for the wounded.

According to Buechner's 1986 book, Dachau: The Hour of the Avenger: An Eyewitness Account, U.S. forces killed 520 German soldiers, including 346 killed on the orders of 1st Lt. Jack Bushyhead, in an alleged mass execution in the coal yard several hours after the first hospital shooting. Buechner did not witness the alleged incident, and his sworn testimony was that he "saw 15 or 16 dead and wounded German soldiers lying along the wall." His sworn testimony in the official investigation report also did not include any mention of a second shooting. David L. Israel disputed this account in his book The Day the Thunderbird Cried:

"Buechner's inaccuracies and arbitrary use of figures in citing the untrue story about the total liquidation of all SS troops found in Dachau was eagerly accepted by Revisionist organizations and exploited to meet their own distorted stories of Dachau."

Jürgen Zarusky also concluded that Buechner's claims were incorrect.

Other accounts
Abram Sachar reported, "Some of the Nazis were rounded up and summarily executed along with the guard dogs."

According to Jürgen Zarusky (originally published in a 1997 article in Dachauer Hefte), 16 SS men were shot in the coal yard (one more killed by a camp inmate), 17 at Tower B, and perhaps a few more killed by U.S. soldiers in the incident. Anywhere from as few as 25 or more than 50 were killed by inmates. Zarusky's research makes use of the detailed interrogation records contained in Whitaker's official May 1945 investigation report, which became accessible in 1992, as well as a collection of documents compiled by General Henning Linden's son.

The Dachau liberation reprisals were documented among others by U.S. Army photographers Paul Averitt, George Gaberlavage, Sidney Rachlin and Ed Royce, Sr.

Killings by the inmates
Walenty Lenarczyk, a prisoner at Dachau, stated that following the camp's liberation "prisoners swarmed over the wire and grabbed the Americans and lifted them to their shoulders... other prisoners caught the SS men... The first SS man elbowed one or two prisoners out of his way, but the courage of the prisoners mounted, they knocked them down and nobody could see whether they were stomped or what, but they were killed." Elsewhere in the camp SS men, Kapos and informers were beaten badly with fists, sticks and shovels. There was at least one incident where US soldiers looked away as two prisoners beat a German guard to death with a shovel, and Lt. Bill Walsh witnessed one such beating. Another soldier witnessed an inmate stomping on an SS trooper's face until "there wasn't much left." When the soldier said to him, "You've got a lot of hate in your heart," he simply nodded.

An American chaplain was told by three young Jewish men, who had left the camp during liberation, that they had beaten to death one of the more sadistic SS guards when they discovered him hiding in a barn, dressed as a peasant.

United States Army investigation
Lt. Col. Joseph Whitaker, the Seventh Army's Assistant Inspector General, was ordered to investigate after witnesses came forward testifying about the killings. He issued a report on June 8, 1945, called the Investigation of Alleged Mistreatment of German Guards at Dachau, also known as The I.G. Report. In 1991, an archived copy was found in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and made public.

Whitaker reported that close to the back entrance to the camp, Lt. William P. Walsh, commander of Company "I", 157th Infantry, shot four German soldiers in a boxcar who had surrendered to him. Pvt. Albert C. Pruitt then climbed into the boxcar and performed a coup de grâce on the wounded men.

After he had entered the camp, Walsh, along with Lt. Jack Bushyhead, the executive officer of Company "I", organized the segregation of POWs into those who were members of the Wehrmacht and those who were in the SS. The SS were marched into a separate enclosure and shot by members of "I" Company with several different types of weapons.

The investigation resulted in the U.S. military considering courts-martial against those involved, including battalion commander Lt. Col. Felix Sparks, while Lt. Howard Buechner was cited in the report for dereliction of duty for not giving medical aid to the wounded SS men in the coal yard. However, Gen. George S. Patton, recently appointed military governor of Bavaria, chose to dismiss the charges. Therefore, the witnesses to the killings were never cross-examined in court.

Col. Charles L. Decker, an acting deputy judge advocate, concluded in late 1945 that, while there had probably been a violation of international law, "in the light of the conditions which greeted the eyes of the first combat troops, it is not believed that justice or equity demand that the difficult and perhaps impossible task of fixing individual responsibility now be undertaken".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Dachau liberation reprisals


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Pont des Arts

The Pont des Arts or Passerelle des Arts is a pedestrian bridge in Paris which crosses the River Seine. It links the Institut de France and the central square (cour carrée) of the Palais du Louvre, (which had been termed the "Palais des Arts" under the First French Empire).

History
Between 1802 and 1804, under the government of Napoleon Bonaparte, a nine-arch metallic bridge for pedestrians was constructed at the location of the present day Pont des Arts: this was the first metal bridge in Paris. The engineers Louis-Alexandre de Cessart and Jacques Dillon initially conceived of a bridge which would resemble a suspended garden, with trees, banks of flowers, and benches. Passage across the bridge at that time cost one sou.

On 17 March 1975, the French Ministry of Culture listed the Pont des Arts as a national historic monument.

In 1976, the Inspector of Bridges and Causeways (Ponts et Chaussées) reported several deficiencies on the bridge. More specifically, he noted the damage that had been caused by two aerial bombardments sustained during World War I and World War II and the harm done from the multiple collisions caused by boats. The bridge would be closed to circulation in 1977 and, in 1979, suffered a 60-metre collapse after a barge rammed into it.

The present bridge was built between 1981 and 1984 "identically" according to the plans of Louis Arretche, who had decided to reduce the number of arches from nine to seven, allowing the look of the old bridge to be preserved while realigning the new structure with the Pont Neuf. On 27 June 1984, the newly reconstructed bridge was inaugurated by Jacques Chirac, then the mayor of Paris.

The bridge has sometimes served as a place for art exhibitions, and is today a "studio en plein air" for painters, artists and photographers who are drawn to its unique point of view. The Pont des Arts is also frequently a spot for picnics during the summer.

The Argentine writer, Julio Cortázar, talks about this bridge in his 1963 book Rayuela. When Horacio Oliveira goes with the pythia and this tells him that the bridge for La Maga is the "Ponts des Arts".

In 1991, UNESCO listed the entire Parisian riverfront, from the Eiffel Tower to the end of the Ile Saint Louis, as a World Heritage Site. Therefore, the Pont des Arts is now a part of this UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Love locks

Since late 2008, tourists have taken to attaching love locks with their first names written or engraved on them to the railing or the grate on the side of the bridge, then throwing the key into the Seine river below, as a romantic gesture. This gesture is said to represent a couple's committed love. Although this is not a French tradition and has only been taking place in Paris since the end of 2008, with locks occasionally being cut off by city workers, since 2012 the number of locks covering the bridge has become overwhelming, with locks being attached upon other locks. In February 2014, Le Monde estimated that there were over 700,000 locks; with the 2014 summer tourist season, many thousands more have since been added, creating a serious safety concern for city authorities and an aesthetic issue for Parisians.

By 2014, concern was being expressed about the possible damage the weight of the locks was doing to the structure of the bridge. In May, the newly elected mayor, Anne Hidalgo, announced that she was tasking her First Deputy Mayor, Bruno Julliard, with finding alternatives to love locks in Paris. In June, part of the parapet on the bridge collapsed under the weight of all of the padlocks that had been attached to it.

In August 2014, the Paris Mayor's Office began to say publicly that they wanted to encourage tourists to take "selfies" instead of leaving love locks, when they launched the "Love Without Locks" campaign and social media hashtag. The web site states: "Our bridges can no longer withstand your gestures of love. Set them free by declaring your love with #lovewithoutlocks." With the high tourist season in full swing, more than 50% of the panels on the Pont des Arts had to be boarded over with plywood because the weight of the locks (estimated by the city to be 700 kg per panel) was creating the risk of more panels collapsing.

On 18 September 2014, the City Hall of Paris replaced three panels of this bridge with a special glass as an experiment as they search for alternative materials for the bridge where locks cannot be attached.

From 1 June 2015, city council workmen from Paris started to cut down all the locks after years of complaints from locals. Health and Safety officials said "the romantic gestures cause long term Heritage degradation and danger to visitors". As of 2015, over a million locks were placed, weighing approximately 45 tons. Street artists like Jace, El Seed, Brusk or Pantonio have been chosen to paint the new panels that replaces the old railings with locks.

Access

By foot from Quai François Mitterrand from the right bank of the Seine, and Quai Malaquais or Quai de Conti from the left bank.

Popular culture
Due to its recognizable nature, the bridge has been featured in numerous films and television shows. Le Pont des Arts directed by Eugène Green is the story is of a young man who falls in love with and finds the whole meaning of his life contained in a young woman who sings a baroque lament on record. He discovers she committed suicide from the Pont des Arts, so that is the only way he can be with her too. The action unrolls in Paris between 1979 and 1980, in other words it occurs during the collapsing of the bridge. The film was presented in 2004 at the 57th Locarno International Film Festival.

The bridge was used in the last scene of the 1995 film Sabrina, and appeared on the 2004 finale of Sex and the City.

The bridge has also been featured in the 2013 Hollywood heist adventure film Now You See Me, directed by Louis Leterrier, where Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent) is met by Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo). Alma takes a lock and a key that Dylan produces, putting the lock on a chain fence and throwing the key into the Seine.

Art historian Kenneth Clark wrote about the Pont des Arts in his book Civilisation:

"I am standing on the Pont des Arts in Paris. On the one side of the Seine is the harmonious, reasonable façade of the Institute of France, built as a college in about 1670. On the other bank is the Louvre, built continuously from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century: classical architecture at its most splendid and assured. Just visible upstream is the Cathedral of Notre Dame --not perhaps the most lovable of cathedrals, but the most rigorously intellectual façade in the whole of Gothic art. [...]

What is civilisation? I do not know. I can't define it in abstract terms --yet. But I think I can recognise it when I see it: and I am looking at it now."

- Kenneth Clark, Civilisation (1969)

St. Germain released a song called "Pont Des Arts" on his 2000 album Tourist. Garden City Movement released a song by the same name in 2014.

The bridge was the site of love lock-unlocking tasks on Amazing Race and HaMerotz LaMillion 3. The bridge also served as the Pit Stop for the fifth leg of The Amazing Race 32.

Honoré de Balzac described the bridge in Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes as follows:

"[...] the Pont des Arts, the most favorable place in Paris to say a few words that must not be overheard."

- Honoré de Balzac, Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (1838-1847).

title: Pont des Arts


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Greatest Hits (Sublime album)

Greatest Hits is the first of Sublime's compilation albums released after frontman Bradley Nowell's death. It was released in 1999.

The enhanced CD contained two music videos: "What I Got" and "Wrong Way".

title: Greatest Hits (Sublime album)


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Talk:Greatest Hits (Sublime album)

I once heard Eric and Bud talking on Loveline about how they had no say in what went on this album, or in what order, or the style of the album. The record company apparently did everything.

Probably true. A v. crap "hits" album. Title does not reflect content! Don't buy it.

Yeah there is so many good tracks left off this cd, all it has is their most recognizable songs. So many great tracks were just left out.

Article discussion pages are for discussing the article. They are not meant to be used as a forum for discussing the subject matter of the article itself. --JohnnyLurg (talk) 02:11, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Sublime Greatest Hits.jpg
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If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 05:05, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

title: Talk:Greatest Hits (Sublime album)


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User talk:Eds01

Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! --Flockmeal 03:38, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
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title: User talk:Eds01


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Talk:North Georgia mountains

Untitled
Not much here, I only posted what I could find really quickly. I don't live in the region, so please someone who does live there add to this. I just did this to satisfy the need for such a page to at least exist as an explanation of the region. --Gadriel 03:39, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

Oldest mountains in the United States?
The Porcupine Mountains in Michigan are far older at 2 billion years old. Source: http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-30301_31154_31260-54024--,00.html Phizzy (talk) 16:46, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Graphic skewed
Good article, but the colored indicator is too far to the east. Look up Mitchell County, NC, and place the Plateau bar across it. To be exact, the Plateau rises between the towns of Marion and Spruce Pine, both in NC. Thank you. SolteraSoltera (talk) 15:42, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

are they really the oldest mountains in the u.s?
they are only the second oldest mountains in the united states

Blue Ridge
I'm not sure this article should be separate from the article on the Blue Ridge Mtns. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.142.206.188 (talk) 03:18, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:North Georgia mountains