The discovery of the massacre seems to have been by chance. The consensus account is that American
Lieutenant Emerson Hunt, a liaison officer between 102nd Infantry Division headquarters and the 701st Tank Battalion, was captured by German forces on April 14, 1945, and bluffed the German forces defending the town of Gardelegen into believing that American tanks were approaching the city. This induced the German commander to surrender to the American forces. On April 14, the 102nd entered Gardelegen and, the following day, discovered the atrocity. The Americans arrived at the site before the Germans had time to bury all of the bodies. The 102nd found 1,016 corpses in the still-smoldering barn and in nearby trenches where the SS had the charred remains dumped. The Americans also interviewed several of the prisoners who had managed to escape the fire and the shootings.
U.S. Army Signal Corps photographers soon arrived to document the Nazi crime and by April 19, 1945, the story of the Gardelegen massacre began appearing in the Western press. On that day, both the
New York Times and
The Washington Post ran stories on the massacre, quoting one American soldier who stated: I never was so sure before of exactly what I was fighting for. Before this you would have said those stories were
propaganda, but now you know they weren't. There are the bodies and all those guys are dead. Eleven prisoners survived the burning of the barn and were found alive by U.S. soldiers – seven Poles, three Russians and one severely wounded Frenchman. According to eyewitnesses, 20 men were summarily executed by U.S. soldiers after survivors identified them as participants in the massacre. On April 21, 1945, the local commander from the 102nd ordered between 200 and 300 men from the town of Gardelegen to give the murdered prisoners a proper burial. Over the next few days, the German civilians exhumed 586 bodies from the trenches and recovered 430 bodies from the barn, placing each in an individual grave. On April 25, the 102nd carried out a ceremony to honor the dead and erected a memorial tablet to the victims, which stated that the townspeople of Gardelegen are charged with the responsibility that the "graves are forever kept as green as the memory of these unfortunates will be kept in the hearts of freedom-loving men everywhere." Also on April 25, Colonel George Lynch addressed German civilians at Gardelegen with the following statement: "The German people have been told that stories of German atrocities were Allied propaganda. Here, you can see for yourself. Some will say that the Nazis were responsible for this crime. Others will point to the Gestapo. The responsibility rests with neither — it is the responsibility of the German people....Your so-called
Master Race has demonstrated that it is master only of crime, cruelty and sadism. You have lost the respect of the civilized world." ==Investigation==