When US soldiers massacred German child soldiers and raped women

War crimes committed by US troops are a little-noticed chapter of the Second World War. However, some of these acts are well documented. One of them took place in the Württemberg village of Lippach, not far from Aalen. April 22, 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of this event.

The description is drastic: “All of them had smashed heads and no bullet wounds; the whole road was splattered with brains.” What is behind this horror, which contemporary witnesses have passed on in documents? In short, an American war crime a few days before the end of the Second World War. 80 years ago. The victims of the murder: German soldiers, mostly still half children, 16 and 17 years old. Another part of the crime is the rape of around 20 women.

The place where it all happened is called Lippach, a Württemberg village in the Ostalbkreis district, a 20-minute drive north-east of the district town of Aalen. If you go in search of clues there, your steps will lead you to the Lippach cemetery not far from the parish church of St. Katharina. Right behind the entrance by the small funeral hall is a war cemetery.

A misdirection on the gravestone

It is marked by three stone crosses shaded by towering bushes. A memorial plaque is fixed to the ground in front of them. 26 names are inscribed: one Karl-Heinz Vomberg, one Herbert Weber, one Johannes Kura and so on. This list is followed by a reference to ten other unknown German soldiers who found their final resting place here.

At the top of the plaque is the inscription “Fallen 22.4.1945”. Murdered would be correct - according to surviving reports, at least in most cases of the dead buried in this grave. It is no longer possible to determine how this misleading information came about.

The gravesite was designed by the German War Graves Commission. Perhaps its employees were unaware of the actual course of events in the post-war years. It is also possible that they did not want to go out on a limb. After all, war crimes committed by the Western Allies, i.e. the Americans, British or French, were largely a taboo subject in the old Federal Republic.

There were important reasons for this. For one thing, the former enemies were quickly turned into friends who kept the dreaded Soviets at bay. The Americans in particular also fueled the West German economic miracle in the 1950s and 1960s with reconstruction aid through the Marshall Plan.

Recent research on US war crimes

Furthermore, it seemed highly inappropriate to point the finger at others. After all, the US had committed countless crimes on its own side, including the genocide of millions of Jews. Any harping on the misdeeds of the war victors could have been interpreted as an attempt by Germany to make up for them.

However, history is only complete if nothing is ignored. This also applies to the Lippach massacre - especially as the killing of German prisoners of war by Americans was not an isolated local incident. It is a sensitive topic that has recently been taken up by one of the top historians for research into the Second World War: the Briton Anthony James Beevor, who is completely unsuspected of having any sympathies for historical revisionism.

For example, he and his no less renowned US colleague Stephen Edward Ambrose have proven that American soldiers were often ordered not to take prisoners. The two have documented massacres of German soldiers after the Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944. The historians also came across prisoner shootings by US troops during the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 and early 1945. Particularly well researched: the slaughter of around 60 captured German soldiers in Chenogne, Belgium, on New Year's Day 1945.

The well-known German historian Klaus-Dietmar Henke has in turn researched the American invasion of Reich territory. During his research, he found 92 locations where they either committed proven war crimes - or where there is at least evidence of them. According to Henke, such crimes were committed more frequently in places where the US army had suffered losses during the end of the war - “between the rivers Main, Neckar and Jagst”, as he describes it.

Lippach is one of these areas where a last German contingent still put up sporadic resistance. The still young Jagst flows through the village, a farming village like so many others. On April 18, 1945, however, the war approaches, three weeks before it ends with the general German surrender. Scattered Wehrmacht units withdraw here. For the next three days, Lippach became a staging post for their further retreat. Military vehicles rolled along the village street day and night, as described in memoirs. A common sight in many parts of the collapsing Reich.

Waffen-SS comes to Lippach

However, the later drama only begins to emerge on April 21, one day after Adolf Hitler's birthday, when he calls for unbridled resistance in the Führerbunker in Berlin, far removed from any reality. Now 200 to 300 men of the Waffen SS move into Lippach, members of that military force specially committed to the dictator. It is hardly surprising that they appear there. The barracks in nearby Ellwangen were occupied by the SS.

During the war, it mainly trained new soldiers and recruits there. Parts of the SS Panzer Grenadier Training and Replacement Battalion 3 were also supposed to set up a front near Lippach. Now one could speculate that perhaps fanatical Nazis wanted to fight a final battle. But in the case of Lippach there is a lot to contradict this.

Military service passports of the massacred victims found later indicate that they were primarily underage recruits, some of whom had only been drafted a few weeks earlier. At the time, the Waffen SS was no longer the volunteer force it had once been propagandized to be alongside the actual German army, i.e. the Wehrmacht. Hitler's supposed elite guard recruited anyone they could get hold of under duress.

As far as Ellwangen is concerned, there are rumors that even scattered young Luftwaffe soldiers were forced into the ranks of the SS there. In fact, some bodies are said to have been found later in Lippach, suggesting this. The dead were wearing bluish Luftwaffe uniforms.

Children's troop inexperienced in war

In any case, according to contemporary witnesses and military documents, most of the children who were supposed to hold Lippach were completely inexperienced in warfare. On the morning of April 22, a cool and rainy Sunday, the time had come. American Sherman tanks are advancing from the north. According to estimates, there are around 80 of them. They fire on German positions and the village. Houses and stables are hit and burn. The defenders fight back with what little they have: primarily small arms, according to various sources, but also with bazookas and some artillery.

No American casualties are recorded in the sources. The Germans soon gave up and tried to withdraw. However, some remain behind. Perhaps they were unaware of the retreat in their foxholes and were disoriented. Perhaps the soldiers are cowering in some hiding place out of sheer fear - or they simply want to give up. In any case, their doom begins when the Americans enter Lippach in the afternoon.

Theodor Zanek, a now deceased monument preservationist and local historian from Schwäbisch Gmünd, a town around 40 kilometers west of Lippach, produced a key documentary about the events that followed. He interviewed contemporary witnesses. Information on the course of the drama was also compiled by the US historian Stephen G. Fritz. Further descriptions can be found in newspaper articles from the post-war period and the local chronicle.

The Americans come across an alcohol camp

All in all, the records seem somewhat disorganized. However, it can be inferred that the attacking American 23rd tank battalion advanced beyond Lippach after the collapse of the German resistance. The 3rd Provisional Company, a temporary unit of black soldiers, arrived in the village. At the time, the US military still segregated soldiers according to skin color. The men come across an alcohol camp in the village. A bender begins.

Eyewitnesses describe the horror that follows. According to them, around 4 pm, around 20 to 25 drunken American soldiers herd six prisoners of war along the village street, jeering. The young Germans were only wearing boots, trousers and undershirts. They have to hold their hands up. Again and again, one of them is beaten into the ditch. At the cemetery, the Americans smash the skulls of their prisoners.

Elsewhere in Lippach, an SS non-commissioned officer is first beaten half to death after being captured. Then his tormentors smashed his skull with a rifle butt and finally drove a bayonet through his chest. According to stories from the village, the Americans tried to saw two prisoners alive on a circular saw on the Ladenburger farm. This failed because there was no electricity for the machine. Both boys were then shot and killed. One of them survives seriously injured and is later bandaged by locals.

On the outskirts of the village, Lippacher finds disarmed German soldiers who have been shot in the head. Other apparently unarmed prisoners have been shot in the back. On a country road east of Lippach, US tanks apparently run over two Germans. Four victims are discovered burned to death.

After the murders come the rapes

The aforementioned US historian Stephen G. Fritz estimates that around two thirds of the 36 German soldiers buried in Lippach lost their lives after the initial battle. It is possible that, in addition to alcohol, something particularly diabolical played a role in this massacre for the black American soldiers: in earlier battles far to the west of Europe, Waffen SS units usually took no prisoners when it came to people of color. And now Afro-Americans in Lippach have fallen into the hands of Germans wearing the appropriate uniforms. Revenge could be an obvious choice, even if these young people in particular had never fought anywhere before.

However, the enraged Americans did not stop at the murder of the prisoners of war. They then turn their attention to the women of Lippach. According to reports, there were around 20 rapes. The victims were between 17 and 40 years old, some of them pregnant. According to the chronicles, there could have been even more abused women had it not been for the priest at the time, Josef Boi. He hid the majority of the female inhabitants in the cellar of the rectory.

Most of the Americans move on the same day. None of them are brought to justice. In August 1986, however, the American General Raymond Haddock initiated a memorial service. It came about. The later commander of the US sector in Berlin confirmed the incidents. According to contemporary newspaper reports, he spoke to contemporary witnesses and asked for friendship “across graves”.