Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense #7: German Soldiers Bayoneting Babies

[Karl Radl]

Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense #7: German Soldiers Bayoneting Babies

In yet another instance of absurd claims made about the Germans in the Second World War. I quote an assertion of Soviet origin about the soldiers of the Third Reich bayoneting babies at Lvov in 1941.

This is reproduced from the wildly popular history of 'Nazi atrocities' named 'The Scourge of the Swastika' authored by Edward Russell (aka Lord Russell of Liverpool) who was a key figure in the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crime Trials.

I quote:

'The piece de resistance of this macabre show was the corpse of a woman whose baby was pinned to her breast with a German bayonet.' (1)

This is obviously a repeat of despicable claims made by Allied anti-German black propaganda in the First World War. When French and British propagandists falsely accused the 'evil Hun' of bayoneting Belgian mothers while they cradled their babes in their arms.

However even if we ignore this we note that as usual Russell produces no actual evidence of this claim, which renders it an anecdote and not a fact.

It also pointed ignores the serious problems with making the assumption that because a German bayonet was used to pin the baby to the mother. That therefore this alleged crime was carried out by German soldiers (since German bayonets aren't exclusively used by German soldiers), it was performed before death (rather than post-mortem) and that it was deliberate (again we don't know enough detail about the incident to judge whether it was intentional or not).

Therefore the likelihood is that this is just another recycled piece of anti-German atrocity propaganda from the First World War and no more occurred than Auschwitz had homicidal vacuum chambers.

References

(1) Edward Russell, 1972, [1956], 'The Scourge of the Swastika', 14th Edition, Corgi: London, pp. 118-119

--------------------------------------------

This was originally published at the following address: Semitic Controversies: Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense #7: German Soldiers Bayoneting Babies