Lippach massacre
The Lippach massacre was a war crime committed by the US Army on April 22, 1945 in Lippach (now part of the Westhausen community ) near Aalen (Württemberg) and killed 36 of the Waffen-SS , who carried out an Ellwang training and replacement battalion.
Course of events
On April 22, 1945 there were minor fighting between German and American units (the 12th Armored Division "Hellcats") in Lippach , which ended after a short time with the withdrawal of most of the German troops. A group of German soldiers, described as a young substitute with no combat experience, went into American captivity and after disarming were partly shot, partly driven through the village and successively killed with the butt of a rifle (“Man by man their skulls were knocked in or their necks shot through "). Ten dead could not be identified; the other 26 are known by name because a local resident was able to recover the ID cards and identification tags. The dead were buried in a mass grave; the list of graves can be viewed in the state archive. With the exception of one adult soldier, the average age of the victims known by name was 16 years (see grave list) . In addition to the massacre, there were several rapes of villagers. The local pastor was able to prevent some rape by hiding women. The events of that time have been presented in a local chronicle, some regional newspaper articles and in a book by Veeh. A description by an American author with reference to other American sources can be found in Fritz.
Commemoration
In August 1986, on the initiative of the American General Raymond Haddock (later commander of the American sector in Berlin ), a memorial service was held, at which he confirmed the incidents, spoke with contemporary witnesses and asked "for friendship across graves".
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hellcat News , Vol. 44, No. April 8, 1991
- ↑ a b Peter Henkel: A German-American tragedy . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . August 16, 1986, p. 4 .
- ↑ landesarchiv-bw.de
- ↑ Winfried Kießling: 850 years of Lippach . Friends of 850 Years Lippach, 2003.
- ↑ Schwäbische Post , August 8, 1977
- ↑ Schwäbische Post , August 23, 1977
- ↑ Schwäbische Post , April 20, 1985
- ↑ Schwäbische Post , April 27, 1985
- ↑ Helmut Veeh: The war fury over Franconia in 1945 and the end in the Alps. 3. Edition. Self-published, Bad Windsheim 1998, ISBN 3-00-003624-5
- ↑ Stephen G. Fritz: Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 2004, ISBN 0-8131-2325-9
- ↑ Stuttgarter Zeitung , August 16, 1986