This is the story of General George S. Patton and one of the most powerful acts of confrontation in the final days of World War II.
On the sunny spring morning of April 16 1945 just outside the cultured city of Weimar Germany a strange procession unfolded. Hundreds of elegantly dressed civilians marched along the road. Men wore expensive suits and fedora hats. Women wore fur coats lipstick and high heels. They chatted smiled and some even laughed as though they were heading to a garden party or the opera. These were the elite of Weimar the wealthy the educated the cultural aristocracy of Germany.
They were not going to a celebration.
They marched under the threat of rifles flanked by grim-faced American soldiers with fingers on the triggers of their M1 Garands. The soldiers did not smile. The group was escorted up Ettersberg hill about five miles from the city toward a place the civilians insisted they knew nothing about Buchenwald concentration camp. As they walked the civilians complained. Why are we doing this? This is outrageous. My shoes are getting dusty. They believed it was a propaganda stunt an American exaggeration. They were convinced of their own innocence.
General Patton saw things differently. He had entered Buchenwald the previous day on April 15 1945. He had seen the cremation ovens. He had seen the private zoo the SS built for their amusement while prisoners starved to death. He decided that the innocence claimed by Weimar's citizens was a lie and he intended to shatter it. He wanted Germany's most sophisticated people to confront the raw horror of what had happened in their backyard. They said "We didn't know." Now they would know.
This became known as the forced tour of Buchenwald sometimes called the march of shame. It marked the moment when the cultural capital of Germany was forced to face its neighbor hell and the smiles disappeared forever from the faces of its elite. To understand the horror of Buchenwald one must first grasp the beauty of Weimar. Weimar was no ordinary German city. It was the soul of Germany home to Goethe and Schiller birthplace of the Bauhaus movement. It was filled with libraries theaters and parks. Its residents prided themselves on their cultivation. They listened to Beethoven read philosophy and regarded themselves as the pinnacle of European civilization. Yet only five miles away up a pleasant tree-lined road stood a factory of death.
Buchenwald had been established in July 1937. For eight years it operated directly under the noses of Weimar's elite. SS officers lived in comfortable homes in the suburbs. Their wives shopped in Weimar's boutiques. They attended the same concerts and plays. Smoke from the crematorium drifted over the city. Ash settled on windowsills. And still when American forces arrived the citizens of Weimar repeated the same three words: We knew nothing. They claimed the smoke came from a factory. They said the emaciated men working on the railway were volunteers. They lived inside a bubble of willful denial.
On April 11 1945 that bubble burst. Patton's Third Army approached. The SS fled. Surviving prisoners seized control of the camp. Patton arrived a few days later. He had already visited the subcamp at Ohrdruf and thought he was prepared. He was not.
Buchenwald was vast. More than twenty thousand prisoners remained walking skeletons men weighing as little as sixty pounds children who had forgotten how to smile. Patton walked through the gates and saw piles of corpses in the courtyard hundreds stacked like firewood naked skin yellow eyes open. Patton was a hard man but this broke him. He wrote in his diary that he had never felt so sick. This was not war it was madness. He looked at the German civilians in the nearby fields plowing land hanging laundry ignoring a stench of death so overpowering that American soldiers vomited.
Patton asked the camp commandant "Do the people in that town know about this?" The answer came They say no General. Patton's face flushed with anger. He slapped his riding crop against his boot. "They're lying" he said "and I'm going to prove it." He contacted headquarters and gave an order unique in the history of warfare. He did not want only the mayor. He wanted the best of Weimar the richest the professors the lawyers the businessmen the politicians' wives. Gather one thousand of them. Military police moved through the city knocking on villa doors entering shops. "You're going for a walk. Put on your coats. General Patton invites you to visit your neighbors." The Germans were confused some outraged. "I'm a doctor" one man shouted "you can't order me around." A soldier raised his rifle. "Start walking." It was a surreal scene a column of one thousand well-dressed civilians marching uphill with American jeeps driving alongside to prevent escapes. At first the mood remained light. People chatted. Women adjusted their hair. They treated it as a minor inconvenience a silly American game. Some smiled for the cameras. They had no idea what awaited them.
The march lasted about two hours. As they neared the summit of Ettersberg conversation died. The wind changed direction and the smell struck them not merely rotting flesh but death itself musty heavy oily clinging to the throat. Women stopped smiling. They pulled out perfumed handkerchiefs and scarves to cover their noses but the military police pushed them forward. No stopping. They reached the iron gate of Buchenwald and passed through into hell. The first sight was thousands of prisoners behind barbed wire silent staring. These were the people the civilians had claimed did not exist. The prisoners looked at the fur coats and tailored suits with dead eyes. They did not scream or attack. They simply stared and that stare terrified more than any weapon. American soldiers formed a cordon and led the group to the crematorium. In the courtyard stood a cart piled with naked emaciated corpses limbs tangled mouths frozen in silent screams.
The civilians froze. Color drained from their faces. One woman in a fur coat covered her mouth began to tremble screamed and collapsed into the mud. An American soldier helped her up. "Come on" he said "you haven't seen anything yet." That was the moment the great German lie collapsed. The tour continued. Soldiers forced the civilians to walk past the bodies making them look. Anyone who turned away had their chin seized and their head forced back. "Look! See what you did!"
Inside the pathology building the SS had kept meticulous records and grotesque souvenirs displayed on tables like merchandise shrunken prisoner heads preserved tattooed human skin pieces of flesh turned into objects. Ilse Koch the wife of a former commandant was notorious for her obsession with tattoos. Some prisoners with interesting tattoos were reportedly killed so their skin could be used for lampshades and other items. The civilians stared. Men in suits wept openly. Some vomited in corners.
Patton had ordered every detail of this display. He wanted them to understand that this was not merely war it was perversion it was evil. An American officer who spoke perfect German stood beside the table. "You said you didn't know? These things happened in your backyard while you went to the theater while you drank your coffee." There was no reply. Their denial had been stripped away. They stood exposed in their guilt. The tour moved on to the isolation barracks where typhus victims had been left to die. The stench was so vile that American soldiers wore masks but the civilians received none. They were forced to breathe it deeply. A former prisoner skeletal and trembling approached a well-dressed German banker. He pointed a shaking finger. "I remember you. I worked at the railway station. You saw me. You looked away." The banker dropped to his knees. "I didn't know. I didn't know." He sobbed. No one believed him.
When the tour finally ended the one thousand citizens of Weimar left through the gate in complete silence. No one spoke. No one smiled. Makeup ran down women's faces in black streaks. Men's suits were covered in dust. They walked slowly back down the hill to their beautiful city of poets forever altered by what they had seen.
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