APRIL IS THE CRUELEST MONTH

EXPOSURE AND LIBERATION

It is as painful to forget as it is to remember that April 1945 was the month during which the allied forces took there initial steps across the borders and into the heartland of Germany to begin the encirclement of Berlin and Hitler's armies. As they made their painstaking and methodical way across a broad front, they encountered a number of installations that they were aware of, knew the existence of, but had no idea of the extent of the horror they would find. The Russian army had 'liberated' the camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland on the 27th January; however, the full story had not yet reached all of the troops still fighting on the western front.

That edifice of horror began to fall with each exposure. 

Private John M. Galione of the US 104^th Timberwolf Army Infantry Division discovered Mittelbau Dora on 10^th  April 1945, and broke into the camp with the help of two other soldiers before sunrise on 11^th  April. Galione then radioed the Third Armored Division and various 104th Division attachments, giving them directions to the camp. This included the medics of the 3rd Armored Division. That same day 11^th April the camp at Buchenwald was liberated, on the 12^th April, Nordhausen and later on the 29^th April, Dachau by the 42^nd Infantry Division of the US 7^th Army. On May 5, 1945 the camp at Mauthausen was approached by soldiers of the 41st Recon Squad of the US 11^th Armored Division, 3^rd US Army.. The reconnaissance squad was led by S/SGT Albert J. Kosiek. His troop disarmed the policemen and left the camp. By the time of its liberation, most of the SS-men of Mauthausen had already fled; however, some 30 who were left were killed by the prisoners; a similar number were killed in Gusen II.

John M. Galione

There is a web site dedicated to Private Galione, the 104^th and the victims of Mittlebau-Dora. There is also, within the text, this rather curious, in my view, paragraph:

On April 10, 1945, after walking over a hundred miles to search for the prisoners of labor camps, an exhausted Private Galione found a secret tunnel, a train car filled with corpses, a German guard shooting at him, and prisoners praying for rescue behind a locked gate.

In April of 1945, the military objective was not to search for camps, but to eliminate enemy opposition in order to get to Hitler. But, when Private Galione found Camp Dora and the Pentagon learned that the Germans were making the world's first ballistic missiles in a concentration camp, the military objective changed to a diligent search for camps and weapons and the American confiscation of the ballistic missile was ordered. Private Galione's discovery saved the prisoners of Dora, Nordhausen and related camps, and changed the future of the United States and the world.

So, I ask myself, was the liberation of a 'few' hundred thousand souls not really the object of the exercise. There were 55,000 inmates just about alive on the 15th April 1945 when the British and Canadian troops entered the camp at Bergen-Belsen. A good many (13,994) died after that. It is well documented. Some 20,000 were alive at Buchenwald on the 11th April.  But, according to the above, the military objective was not to search for camps. There was not a real need to search as it happens, there were so many, the forces couldn't help but find them (see map). The search for weapons however, was a different matter. Finding all those ballistic missiles was of paramount importance.


It is well worth having a look at this little ditty from You Tube:

Just what Private Galione did for the world is very open to question. Stepping inside that tunnel was, from a human point of view, the best thing that could have happened for those prisoners still alive in the camps. From a humanitarian point of view, the secondary discovery of the missiles may not have been so great; but then, perhaps the missiles were the primary discovery and the prisoners were viewed as a co-lateral benefit - good PR to cover the harvesting of Hitler's scientific wunderkind. Such cynical thinking is perhaps less then generous, but as I said (tee hee):

                      

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.