Dachau liberation reprisals The Dachau liberation reprisals were a series of killings of German camp guards and German prisoners of war from the Dachau concentration camp on April 29 , 1945 , during World War II . Following the prisoners ' liberation by American soldiers from 45th Infantry Division of the U . S . Seventh Army , American soldiers wounded and killed German camp guards and German prisoners of war . The reprisals occurred after the U . S . 45th Infantry Division entered the Dachau concentration camp complex . Capture overview . Surrender . According to Harold Marcuse , the camp commander SS - Hauptsturmführer Martin Weiss , together with the camp guards and the SS garrisons , had fled the camp 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 inmates of the SS disciplinary prison inside the Dachau concentration camp and from Hungarian Waffen - SS troops . On 29 April 1945 , Dachau was surrendered to Gen . Linden of the 42nd Infantry Division of the U . S . Army by Untersturmführer Wicker . According to Linden , he proceeded to take control of the camp under some tumult ; thereafter , he toured the camp with a group of reporters ( including Marguerite Higgins ) . A description of the surrender appears in Brig . Gen . Henning Linden ' s memorandum to Major Gen . Harry J . Collins , entitled " Report on Surrender of Dachau Concentration Camp " : Capture communiqué . 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 : Killings by the American soldiers . Just before the soldiers entered the complex , they found thirty - nine railway boxcar s containing some two - thousand skeletal corpses . 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 . Upon moving deeper into the complex , and the prisoner area itself , more bodies were found . Some had been dead for hours and days before the camp ' s capture and lay where they had died . Soldiers reported seeing a row of cement 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 account . Lt . Col . Felix L . Sparks , a battalion commander of the 157th Infantry Regiment , 45th Infantry Division , Seventh United States Army 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 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 guards who had not yet surrendered ; he had only gone a short distance when he heard machine gunfire coming from the area he had just left . He ran back and kicked a 19 - year - old soldier 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 : 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 Colonel in the United States Army and medical officer with the 3rd Battalion of the 157th Infantry ) , to Whitaker on 5 May 1945 did not contradict the Sparks account . He said 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 further told Whitaker that he did not know the soldier guarding the yard or which company he was from . 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 coalyard several hours after the first hospital shooting . Buechner did not witness the alleged incident , however , and there was no mention of a second shooting in the official investigation report . David L . Israel disputed this account in his book " The Day the Thunderbird Cried " : 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 coalyard ( one more killed by a camp inmate ) , 17 in Tower B , and perhaps a few more killed by U . S . soldiers in the incident . Anywhere from a few to 25 or 50 more were killed by furious 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 . Killings by the inmates . After the hospital shooting was stopped , some of the U . S . soldiers allegedly gave a number of handgun s to the now - liberated inmates . It has been claimed by eyewitnesses that the freed inmates tortured and killed a number of captured German soldiers , both SS guards and SS combat troops , in retaliation for their treatment in the camp . The same witnesses claim that many of the German soldiers killed by the inmates were beaten to death with shovels and other tools . A number of " Kapo " prisoner - guards were also killed , torn apart by the inmates . United States Army investigation . Lt . Col . Joseph Whitaker , the Seventh Army ' s Assistant Inspector General , was subsequently ordered to investigate after witnesses came forward testifying about the killings . He issued a report on 8 June 1945 , called the " Investigation of Alleged Mistreatment of German Guards at Dachau " and also known as " the I . G . Report " . In 1991 , an archived copy was found in the National Archives in Washington , D . C . and was 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 box car who had surrendered to him . Pvt . Albert C . Pruitt then climbed into the box car 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 were 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 the Battalion commander Lt . Col . Felix Sparks , while Col . Howard Buechner was cited in the report for dereliction of duty for not giving the wounded SS men in the coal yard medical aid . However , General George S . Patton , the recently appointed military governor of Bavaria , chose to dismiss the charges . Therefore , the witnesses to the killings were never cross - examined in court .