The Jungholzhausen massacre was a war crime committed by the 63rd Infantry Division of the US Army on 15 April 1945 during the Western Allied invasion of Germany. Between 13 and 30 Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht prisoners of war were executed by the division's 254th Infantry Regiment after heavy fighting near the village of Jungholzhausen.^[1][2]

Massacre

In April 1945, the 254th Infantry Regiment suffered heavy casualties during the battle for the Hohenlohe district.^[1] Wehrmacht combat engineers and mostly 17-year old Waffen-SS soldiers from Leoben in Styria engaged the regiment in combat near the village of Jungholzhausen.^[1] After the battle, the villagers counted the bodies of 63 German soldiers, out of whom at least 13 and possibly up to 20 or 30 had been killed after surrendering.^[1][2] An eyewitness observed the US execution with submachine guns of four Waffen-SS troops during the night.^[1] U.S. massacres of German prisoners of war were commonplace in the district of Hohenlohe.^[1]

Legacy and 1996 US investigation

According to German historian Klaus-Dietmar Henke, the war crimes committed by the US in Germany in 1945 were largely shrouded in silence until the 1990s, when German local newspapers began reporting on them.^[1] In 1996, the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command investigated the massacre of 15 April 1945 in Braunsbach-Jungholzhausen but could not identify the perpetrators of the massacre.^[1]

Citations

References

• Henke, Klaus-Dietmar (1996). Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands (in German). Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag. ISBN 3-486-56175-8.
• Zigan, Harald (16 April 2015). "Kriegsende 1945 (Teil 10): US-Soldaten nehmen blutige Rache in Jungholzhausen und Ilshofen". swp.de (in German). Archived from the original on 2019-03-06. Retrieved 29 September 2022.