Correcting some revisionist History.

[formercia]

There's a little bit of controversial historical myth that needs to be cleared up. The article below describes the public face of the myth but the reality is much more complex.
In 1983, I happened to read a report about the killing of a number of Nazi SS by American troops during WWII. There were a couple of urban legends regarding this incident. One was that it was in retaliation for the Malmedy massacre of American GI's the SS during the Battle of the Bulge. Another was that the Germans had been killed for using bullets that went against the Geneva convention. The article went on to explain that the bullets in question were in fact blank ammunition for ceremonial purposes and that the SS troops had been shot in error. This report finally led to the controversial trip to Germany by Ronald Reagan as described below.

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/06/international/europe/06REAG.html

Reagan Joins Kohl in Brief Memorial at Bitburg Graves
By BERNARD WEINRAUB, Special to the New York Times

Published: May 6, 1985


BITBURG, West Germany, May 5 — President Reagan presided over a wreath-laying today at the base of a brick cemetery tower looming over the graves of nearly 2,000 German soldiers, including 49 SS troops.

Alluding to the controversy aroused by his visit to the cemetery, Mr. Reagan voiced regret in remarks at an American air base afterward that ''old wounds have been reopened.''

Accompanied by Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Mr. Reagan walked slowly through the narrow, hilltop cemetery, ablaze with tulips and marigolds. Mr. Reagan did not glance at the graves during his eight-minute visit. Mr. Kohl brushed tears from his eyes. Neither made a speech at the cemetery.

--snip--


The other day, I read an article regarding the memoir of an American medic who had been captured at the Battle of the Bulge, and because he 'looked Jewish', even though he was of Latin American extraction, he was sent to Auschwitz and forced to work digging tunnels.
In the article, it mentioned that the SS used wooden bullets to execute inmates and that he had been required to fill the entry woulds with wax to conceal it. This jogged a memory from long ago that finally put all of the bits of the puzzle together.
It was the mid 50's and I was just a boy, in the attic, going through some of my father's souvenirs from the War. I came across a stripper clip of 8x57 mm German ammunition that aroused my curiosity. I asked him about it and it led to him telling me the story of how he had participated in the execution of 175 SS prisoners. He explained to me that the SS had been captured in possession of this type of ammunition and that they were using it for situations where conventional ammunition might go through a wall and injure one of their own troops. The ammunition was unusual in that the bullets were made of wood.

My father had been a member of the OSS and had been in combat since North Africa, had parachuted into France a couple of weeks before D-Day to make contact with the French Resistance and lead them into attacking German units that would try to go to Normandie and repel the upcoming invasion. After June 6th, the OSS were integrated into regular Army units .
He was assigned to the 45th. (Thunderbird) Division where his OSS unit acted as forward recon.
He was one of the first US troops to reach Dachau. The SS guards were rounded up and subsequently shot on the spot.

This is where the connection to the wooden bullets lies. The SS were in fact using these so-called blanks to execute prisoners, so, it turns out that Reagan's trip was no more than revisionist and apologist propaganda.

[amdezurik]

1. Ronnie was an actor

and he acted like a horeses lying ass most of the time.

[santamargarita]

6. He wasn't good at that job either...

:kick:

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Ronny was a shill

Sean Penn is an actor.

[Recursion]

2. There's still some myth there: the Geneva Conventions don't cover ammunition

Back when I was in the military there were all kind of stories about how this or that weapon or ammo was "against the Geneva conventions", but the treaties only cover how armies must treat wounded enemies, prisoners of war, shipwreck survivors, and civilians. There's nothing about particular types of ammo or weapons.

[formercia]

3. Undue suffering

is the prohibition, if I remember correctly. I think a wooden bullet might prolong suffering.
Right or wrong, the US troops felt justified and I feel the SS guards probable deserved it, but they didn't exactly get fair and due process.

The point of my argument is that the 1983 article, which Reagan probably did read since it was included in his daily briefing at the time attempted to portray the ammunition as being solely for ceremonial purposes, but in fact was being used to execute prisoners.

[Octafish]

4. Prescott Bush and the Golden Age of War Profiteering

The NAZIs were war criminals, the SS as bad as they come.
Regarding Reagan, the GOP and Bitburg, things also get very complicated, especially for those new to the story.



Mr. Randy Reynolds does an excellent job of summing up the history:

PRESCOTT BUSH AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF WAR PROFITEERING

by Randy Reynolds
Friday, April 13, 2007

When the Remingtons, duPonts, Rockefellers, Mellons, J.P. Morgan, George Herbert Walker, Samuel Bush and Prescott Bush, as well as other representatives of America's corporate elite decided to overthrow the government of the United States in 1934, they recruited retired Marine General Smedley Butler to lead it.

Butler was a two-time winner of the Medal of Honor, a man with a first-rate mind. He intended from the outset to infiltrate the group and turn them in. He did so and Congress held hearings, (the McCormack-Dickstein Hearings) headed by future Speaker John McCormack.

The group had planned to replace President Franklin Roosevelt with someone who would at first be called an "Assistant to the President" to take over the day-to-day operations of government. Remington would supply the arms, Smedley would get the "bonus army"--a half million World War I veterans--to march on Washington and Roosevelt would be shunted aside as Chancellor Hitler (much admired by America's industrialists) had done to President Hindenburg in Germany.

The group intended to establish a Fascist regime that would send undesirables, including the unemployed, the Jews and political opponents to concentration and/or extermination camps.

Portions of the coup were carried out. The group paid to "own" the editorial policy of 25 major newspapers and sent fellow-plotters to help edit those papers.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce (co-founded by Samuel Bush) publicly proposed a plan to control "subversion" that would resemble the Patriot Act of Bush's great-grandson's Presidency in 2001.

After General Butler collected names and details, he went public. The story was a sensation for a couple of days, but was quickly pushed off the front pages by a "red scare"--stories of Communist infiltration of the IWW Union.

In the McCormack-Dickstein hearings, none of the powerful citizens involved in the plot was called to testify. They were above that sort of thing.

Although Prescott Bush was a lowly tire salesman when he married Dorothy Walker, his fortunes had quickly improved. His father-in-law George Herbert Walker elevated him to the vice-presidency of Brown Brothers Harriman, which financed exports of gold, steel, weapons and people to Nazi Germany.

Bush ran Hamburg-American passenger line on which American Nazi sympathizers emigrated to Germany under the tutelage of a Nazi "political director." Bush also helped organize and run UBC, a bank holding company that oversaw many of Hitler's worldwide investments.

From tire salesman to Hitler's chief banker and exporter in America, Prescott Bush had come a long way by the time Hamburg-American and UBC were confiscated by the U.S. government. Instead of being tried for treason, his name was kept out of the spotlight and he was given 1.5 million dollars for his one share of stock in UBC.

Five years after World War II, a Connecticut senator died. Prescott Bush who maintained residences in four different states ran for the vacant seat and lost. Two years later another Connecticut senator died, and this time, Bush won.

He personally recruited Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for president. He and his fellow war profiteers would be bitterly disappointed by Eisenhower's warnings against the military-industrial complex....but that was in the future.

Bush also pushed for Richard Nixon as Vice-President, and was a major donor to Nixon until well into the 1960's.

So there was a point in the 50's, when Prescott Bush must have felt like the king of the world:

• He had survived being implicated in a coup against a President of the United States.

• He had thrived even after the defeat of his major client, Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.

• He had avoided being tried for treason, though the Justice Department had considered it.

• Both the President and Vice-President of the United States were personally indebted to
him.

• His lawyer Allen Dulles was head of the CIA (and gave his boy George H.W. Bush a job.)

• His business partner John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State.

• His business partner Averell Harriman was Governor of New York, later Ambassador to
the Soviet Union.

• Best of all, wars were breaking out all over the globe.

It was the dawn of a golden age of war profiteering.

CONTINUED...

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2007/04/prescott-bush-and-golden-age-of-war.html

A bit on the connections between Old Money and the Reich:

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

Thank you for the important information, formercia. I owe your father my infinite thanks for my freedom and our country.

Way back in the day, I met a former infantryman who opened up and told me about his experience with prisoners in the closing weeks of the war.

"I was in line for breakfast and we had some POWs serving us. It was my turn and I asked for some butter for my bread. This guy serving me said, 'Kein busser fur Amerikanen.' I said, 'What?' and the guy replied 'Busser ist fur Deutscher.' So I pulled out my .45 and shot him in the head."

The guy was a very nice man. His wife was a beautiful, younger woman who was very kind to me. At the time, she was dying of cancer. Anyway, I was too shocked to stutter out much more than "What? Why?"

The veteran said: "We had just been fighting these bums a few hours earlier. This guy may've been the one responsible for killing a bunch of my friends. When he said that there was no butter for me, but there was butter for the German POWs, I got angry."

If he hadn't told me the story, I'd say he was a regular guy. In reality, he was an extraordinary guy in the most crazy of circumstances -- a world at war.

[formercia]

5. Update

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/SoldiersKilled.html

A good site as to what happened during the Dachau liberation.

[ihavenobias]

8. Thanks for sharing!

That's really interesting WRT the wooden bullets.