Chenogne massacre
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Near Chenogne, Luxembourg, Belgium
| Chenogne massacre | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Battle of the Bulge during World War II | |
| Location | 49°59′31″N 5°37′05″E / 49.992°N 5.618°E Near Chenogne, Luxembourg, Belgium |
| Date | January 1, 1945 |
| Target | Wehrmacht soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division and Führerbegleitbrigade |
Attack type | Massacre |
| Deaths | 80 |
| Perpetrators | 11th Armored Division (US Army) |
The Chenogne massacre was a war crime committed by members of the 11th Armored Division, an American combat unit, near Chenogne, Belgium, on January 1, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge.
According to eyewitness accounts, an estimated 80 German prisoners of war were massacred by their American captors; the prisoners were assembled in a field and shot with machine guns. It was one of several war crimes committed during the Battle of the Bulge by members of both Allied and Axis forces.[1]
The events were covered up at the time, and none of the perpetrators were ever punished. Postwar historians believe the killings were carried out on verbal orders by senior commanders that "no prisoners were to be taken".[2]
On December 17, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, soldiers from the Waffen-SS gunned down 84 American prisoners at the Baugnez crossroads near the town of Malmedy. When news of the killings spread among American forces, it aroused great anger among frontline troops. The 328th Infantry Regiment issued orders that "no SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but will be shot on sight."[3][4]
At Chenogne, the prisoners of war killed on January 1, 1945, were members of the Führerbegleitbrigade and 3rd Panzergrenadier Division.[5]
Eyewitness
S/Sgt. John W. Fague of B Company, 21st Armored Infantry Battalion (of the 11th Armored Division), in action near Chenogne, describes the killing of German prisoners by American troops:
Some of the boys had some prisoners line up. I knew they were going to shoot them, and I hated this business.... They marched the prisoners back up the hill to murder them with the rest of the prisoners we had secured that morning.... As we were going up the hill out of town, I know some of our boys were lining up German prisoners in the fields on both sides of the road. There must have been 25 or 30 German boys in each group. Machine guns were being set up. These boys were to be machine gunned and murdered. We were committing the same crimes we were now accusing the Japs and Germans of doing.... Going back down the road into town I looked into the fields where the German boys had been shot. Dark lifeless forms lay in the snow.[6]
Fague's footnotes in the same narrative point out that he had no knowledge of the Malmedy massacre at that time.[7]
