What Patton Did When SS Officers Refused to Sleep with Their Own Men D

May 1945 Germany lies in ruins east of Stuttgart a barbed wire fence holds 5,000 defeated men dust settles on grey uniforms the war is over but the old arrogance remains inside a plywood office a typed paper sits on a desk 80 men signed it they are the elite they are the VFNSs they refuse to sleep on the same dirt as the regular soldiers they LED into the abyss they want walls they want distance they want the respect their rank no longer commands colonel Theodore Brennan reads the formal demand he sees the names of men who still believe they are masters he knows the rules he knows the Geneva Convention but he also knows a general who cares more for justice than comfort George S Patton is coming the SS asked for their own space Patten will give it to them this is the story of the 80 SS officers who demanded special treatment in a defeated nation and the blunt lesson in humility General Patten delivered in response before we continue make sure you subscribe to the channel

we tell the long form World War 2 stories that show what happened when old hierarchies met new realities join us as we explore the moments where arrogance finally met its match colonel Theodore Brennan was 45 years old he hailed from Buffalo New York he commanded the massive prisoner enclosure east of Stuttgart after years of hard fighting with the 100th Infantry Division Brennan had seen enough death to last 10 lifetimes he remembered the cold nights in the Vosges Mountains he remembered the faces of American boys who never made it out of the woods because the enemy refused to surrender now he spent his days managing 5,000 captured Germans he saw the regular Vermacht privates every morning they were hollowed out by years of war they were skinny dirty and exhausted they only wanted to go home to their wives and their shops but the air in the camp was thick with a new kind of resentment the enlisted men looked at the SS officers with pure poison in their eyes

they knew these men had forced the war to continue long after hope was gone Brennan felt that heat every time he walked the perimeter he held the typed paper in his hand and felt the arrogance radiating from the ink SS Sturm Banfuhrer Werner Strauss was 37 he was a son of Munich and a true believer in the fanatical core of the Reich even in a prisoner of war camp he kept his chin high and his eyes cold his boots were black mirrors his uniform was tailored and brushed clean of the camp’s pervasive dust Strauss wore his Iron Cross like it still had the power to command the world he did not see the regular German soldiers as his brothers in arms he saw them as peasants in field grey he saw them as failures who had let the leadership down to Strauss the SS rank was a Mark of permanent biological superiority he found it offensive to share a latrine or a sleeping floor with a common infantryman he spent his mornings drafting a formal letter to the American command he used precise legalistic German

he cited the Geneva Convention with the confidence of a man who still expected a servant to bring him tea he demanded a separate barracks he demanded the distance his ego required he believed his status was a permanent fact of nature Strauss was an officer of the elite and he refused to be treated like the common men he had LED into the abyss it was May 1945 The Third Reich was a hollowed out corpse Berlin had fallen to the Soviets and the unconditional surrender had been signed in a red brick schoolhouse across the European continent millions of displaced people and defeated soldiers were on the move the Allied armies were no longer a combat force they had become the custodians of a ruined civilization in the American zone of occupation the sheer volume of German prisoners choked the roads and filled every available cow pasture supply lines that had once carried tank shells and aviation fuel now carried sacks of flour and basic medicine there was never enough to go around

chaos was the only law in the first weeks of peace the German government had vanished into the ash the military structure had shattered into a thousand pieces but the deep seated habits of rank and social class remained in many of these sprawling enclosures American guards were spread dangerously thin to prevent riots they often relied on the existing German chain of command to keep the peace if a German colonel could keep 5,000 privates in line the Americans let him do it some Allied officers even looked the other way when German officers demanded better food or private rooms inside seized farmhouses it was easier to manage a rigid hierarchy than a starving mob but the atmosphere inside the wire was turning sour the regular Vermok soldiers felt a growing sense of betrayal they had fought on the front lines while the SS received the best equipment and the loudest praise now in the MUD and dust of the camps that resentment was boiling over the enlisted men saw the SS as the fanatical reason the war

had been prolonged through the brutal winter of 1944 they saw them as the reason their homes were rubble most American commanders ignored the glairs and the muttered curses hoping the paperwork would be finished before a riot started Colonel Brennan stared out at the sea of gray uniforms in the camp east of Stuttgart Brennan looked at the paper on his desk he looked at Strauss you sent this Brennan said it is a formal petition Strauss replied you want 80 separate rooms Brennan said or a separate wing Strauss said separation is the requirement there are 5,000 men in this camp Brennan said we are out of space that is an administrative problem Strauss said not a legal one I have regular infantrymen sleeping four to a tent Brennan said then move them to the field Strauss said give us the tents why should I do that Brennan asked because we are the s Strauss said the war is over Brennan said the uniform is just cloth the uniform represents the elite

Strauss said we are not common infantry you fought in the same MUD Brennan said we were the steel Strauss said the vermouth was the wood they seemed to think they did their part Brennan said they are failures Strauss said they are the scrapings of the barrel they are your own people Brennan said they are beneath us Strauss said mixing the ranks is an insult to German tradition I’m an American Brennan said I don’t care about your traditions The Geneva Convention cares Strauss said it protects the dignity of the officer you’re talking about dignity while your country is a graveyard Brennan said the graveyard was built by the incompetent Strauss said the SS remains pure you won’t sleep in the same barracks as them Brennen asked it is impossible Strauss said the smell of the peasant is not for the leader you really believe that Brennen said it is a fact of biology Strauss said the sheep do not sleep with the wolves even if the wolves are in a cage Brennan asked the cage

does not change the nature of the animal Strauss said I see Brennan said I expect you to act today Strauss said the men are restless I’ll pass this up the chain Brennan said I expect a swift resolution Strauss said I imagine you’ll get one Brennan said Strauss clicked his heels he walked out of the office Brennan called his clerk he told him to get the Third Army on the line the message was brief it detailed the demand for separation it detailed the contempt for the regular soldiers the report reached Patton within the hour the dust had barely settled when the roar of a high compression engine cut through the camp noise a Jeep skidded to a halt in front of the command post general George S Patton stepped out his helmet was a mirror of polished steel four silver stars caught the sun the ivory handled revolvers rested on his hips like sleeping predators every soldier in the vicinity American and German froze Patten did not look at the sky he looked at the men he walked into the office with a slow

deliberate stride that made the floorboards groan he was a man made of iron and certainty Patten ignored Brennan he fixed his gaze on Straus who was brought in within minutes you wrote this letter Patton asked his voice was a low rasp I did General Straus said standing stiff you find the company of your own soldiers offensive Patton asked they are not my kind Strauss said military tradition requires the separation of the elite from the masses you think your rank makes you a different species Patton asked in the German army it is a biological fact Strauss replied and you want a private space where you do not have to look at the men you LED Patten asked that is our formal request Strauss said for the dignity of the SS Patten took a step closer he did not blink you talk about tradition like it is a shield Patten said you talk about the dignity of the officer as if you had not LED these men into a butcher shop you sent them into the snow with no boots and no hope while you sat in French chateaux drinking stolen wine

you think you are too good to breathe the same air as the men who did the dying for you that is not the reality Strauss muttered the reality is in the MUD outside Patton said the reality is the thousands of German boys who are dead because you did not know when to quit you think a silver sigil on your collar makes you a god but the Reich is a pile of hot bricks the only thing left of your elite status is the arrogance you are currently choking on I have rights Strauss said you have the right to be exactly what I tell you to be Patton said you want separate quarters because you are afraid to look those men in the eye you are afraid they will see you for what you are you are a loser who has not realized the game is over I am going to give you exactly what you asked for I am going to give you separation we require proper space Strauss said you have a choice Patton said you can move into the special quarters I have designed today or you can join the labor details in the rock quarry you have 10 seconds to decide

Strauss looked at Patton’s eyes he saw no mercy he saw only a cold hard mirror I will take the quarters Strauss said Patton turned to Brennan put them in the center of the camp Patton said Strauss stood tall believing he had won he did not yet know what the general meant by separation the execution began within the hour American GIS hauled a single massive canvas tent into the dead center of the enlisted section they did not build a barracks they did not partition rooms they hammered wooden stakes into the sun baked earth while 5,000 vermoched soldiers watched in silence inside the tent 80 cots were shoved together frame to frame there was no room to walk there were no walls for privacy the canvas trapped the may heat until the interior turned into a stifling oven Colonel Brennan’s men marched the 80 SS officers through the heart of the camp they forced them to walk a gauntlet of the very men they had called peasants the American guards did not hide the truth

they told the enlisted Germans exactly what Strauss had written in his letter they told them their officers thought they were biologically inferior the silence in the camp broke into a low jagged roar of mocking laughter Strauss stepped into the suffocating gloom of the tent he smelled the sweat of 80 men packed like sardines he saw the angry faces of the soldiers he had betrayed pressing against the canvas from the outside this arrangement held for six weeks Strauss had his isolation but he was now a prisoner of his own elite vanity trapped in a hot box in the middle of a sea of hate Theodore Brennan went home to Buffalo in the autumn of 1945 he left the army behind but carried the memory of that tent in his mind he opened a small hardware store on the edge of the city he spent his days among regular people the kind of men Strauss would have called peasants Brennan never asked for special treatment and never gave it he lived a quiet decent life until he died in 1978

he told his grandsons that the war ended for him the moment he saw those 80 officers forced to face the men they had abandoned Werner Strauss remained in American custody until late 1946 he faced a denazification tribunal and served three years in a civilian prison for his role in the occupation of France he returned to Munich and worked as a low level clerk in a shipping firm the world he imagined was gone replaced by a rebuilding nation that wanted to forget his name he never apologized for the letter he lived in a small apartment surrounded by old medals he was no longer allowed to wear he died in 1982 a bitter man who still believed he was better than the neighbors who checked on him General Patton mentioned the incident only once in a letter to his wife Beatrice he described the tent as a cage for peacocks who had lost their feathers he wrote that some men are born to lead and some are born to pose and the war had a way of sorting the two his report on the camp was filed away

and forgotten in the rush of the occupation he never spoke of Strauss again he only said a man who won’t sleep with his soldiers doesn’t deserve to command them some historians argue that Patton’s decision was a violation of the spirit of the Geneva Convention which dictates that officer dignity should be maintained even in defeat they suggest that such public humiliation served little military purpose and only deepened post war animosity others argue that the SS had forfeited any claim to traditional military respect through their conduct and ideology they see Patton’s mirrored punishment as a necessary psychological tool to break the fanatical hierarchy that had sustained the Reich what is certain is that the separation of the SS from the regular military became a standard Allied policy during the occupation this physical distance was essential for the legal processing and eventual disarmament of the defeated German state if you had been in Patton’s position would you have forced those officers

into that crowded tent or would you have granted them their separate quarters to keep the peace let us know in the comments and if you want more stories about what happened when old hierarchies met new realities make sure to subscribe