In the aftermath of the 1944 Malmedy massacre , in which 80 American POWs were murdered by their German captors , a written order from the headquarters of the 328th U.S. Army Infantry Regiment , dated 21 December 1944 , stated : " No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but rather they will be shot on sight . " Major-General Raymond Hufft ( U.S. Army ) gave instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in 1945 . " After the war , when he reflected on the war crimes he authorized , he admitted , ' if the Germans had won , I would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of them . Stephen Ambrose related : " I 've interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans . Only one of them said he shot a prisoner ... Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans ... however , related incidents in which they saw other GIs shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up . " " Operation Teardrop " involved eight surviving captured crewmen from the sunken German submarine '' U-546 '' being tortured by U.S. military personnel . Historian Philip K. Lundeberg has written that the beating and torture of '' U-546 's '' survivors was a singular atrocity motivated by the interrogators ' need to quickly get information on what the U.S. believed were potential missile attacks on the continental U.S. by German submarines
Malmedy massacre
Malmedy massacre
United States war crimes