Chenogne massacre

The Chenogne massacre refers to a mass execution committed on New Year's Day, January 1, 1945, where at least 25 German prisoners of war were killed by American forces near the village of Chenogne (also spelled "Chegnogne"), Belgium, thought to be in retaliation for the Malmedy massacre.

Accounts of the massacre
On December 17, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, German Waffen-SS troops gunned down 80 American prisoners in the Malmedy massacre. Word of this spread rapidly among American forces, and aroused great anger. One American unit issued orders that, "No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoners but will be shot on sight." In this atmosphere American forces executed German prisoners as retribution.

Author Martin Sorge writes, "It was in the wake of the Malmedy incident at Chegnogne that on New Year's Day 1945 some 60 German POWs were shot in cold blood by their American guards. The guilty went unpunished. It was felt that the basis for their action was orders that no prisoners were to be taken." An eyewitness account by John Fague of B Company, 21st Armored Infantry Battalion (of the 11th Armored Division), near Chenogne describes the killing of German prisoners by American soldiers. "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."

Another witness, Burnett Miller, expressed doubt that the number killed reached 60. Miller writes: "I am not clear on the exact number of victims of this crime. It seems to me that twenty five seems reasonable and I do not recall as many as forty...On the day that the prisoners were shot, some were taken for interrogation as I remember several days later quite a few were turned over to intelligence who were desperate for information." Joseph Cummins also relates the account by Fague regarding the killing of roughly 60 prisoners, but also notes that before the execution of the POWs took place, several Germans including medics waving red-cross flags, were machine-gunned when trying to surrender. Cummins further connects the massacre with the entry made by General Patton in his diary for January 4, 1945: "The Eleventh Armored is very green and took unnecessary losses to no effect. There were also some unfortunate incidents in the shooting of prisoners. I hope we can conceal this."

On the other hand, an official history published by the United States government states that while "it is probable that Germans who attempted to surrender in the days immediately after the 17th ran a greater risk" of being killed than earlier in the year, even so, "there is no evidence... that American troops took advantage of orders, implicit or explicit, to kill their SS prisoners." However, according to George Henry Bennett and referring to the above statement; "The caveat is a little disingenuous", and he proceeds to note that it is likely that the orders to shoot prisoners (given to the 328th Infantry regiment) were carried out, and that other US regiments were likely also given similar orders.