In April 1945, as Germany collapsed and Allied forces liberated camps across Europe, General George S. Patton toured a facility in Bavaria that had just surrendered. He was there to assess conditions and ensure American prisoners were being treated properly. What he found would lead him to deliver a lesson in basic justice.
The camp was Stalag 7A, near Moosburg, about 40 miles northeast of Munich. It had been liberated two days earlier. American forces had secured the perimeter, disarmed the guards, and started processing prisoners, but they had not yet reorganized everything. The German guards were still eating from their own supplies, and the American POWs were still waiting for proper food, medical care, and transport home.
Patton arrived to inspect the facility firsthand. He walked with Major Frank Collins, the officer in charge of the liberation, who explained the situation. About 1,500 American POWs were held there, most in bad shape, malnourished, and some sick. Some had been prisoners for as long as two years, captured in North Africa, Italy, and France, and brought to the camp as Germany lost ground.
As Patton walked past the German guard barracks, the windows were open. He smelled food cooking — rich, heavy, meat. He stopped and looked inside. Eight German guards sat at a long table, plates piled with steak, fried potatoes, fresh bread with butter, and steaming coffee. They were laughing and relaxed. The war was over for them.
Patton turned and looked across the compound, about 50 feet away. Behind barbed wire, American POWs sat in the dirt, skeletal and starving, watching the guards eat. They had been eating like this for months — the guards enjoying full meals while American soldiers received watery soup once a day, maybe.
Patton asked Collins what the men were eating. Collins explained they were on regular POW rations and that better food was being arranged, but it would take time. When Patton pressed, Collins said the regular rations were soup, mostly water with some vegetables, and bread when available. He estimated the Americans were getting maybe 600 calories a day, sometimes less.
Patton walked to the barracks door, opened it, and stepped inside. The guards looked up, saw the four stars on his helmet, and scrambled to their feet. Patton walked to the table and looked at the food — fresh steak, good quality meat. He asked if any of them spoke English. One nodded.
Patton asked how long they had been eating like this. The guard translated for the others and replied that they ate from German army supply, which was normal for them. Patton asked what the American prisoners ate. After another translation, the guard said they ate prisoner rations, which were different but were what was provided.
Patton told the guard to show him the prisoner rations. The English-speaking guard led him to a small, poorly equipped kitchen in a separate building. A large pot sat on a stove. Patton looked inside. It was soup — mostly water, some potato peels, a few bits of turnip. Thin, watery, with no meat, no fat, nothing of substance.
Patton asked how much each man got. One ladle, once per day, the guard said. Patton did the math in his head — maybe 200 calories, if that. Bread came when available, perhaps twice a week in small portions. Patton turned to the guard and said, "And you've been eating steak every day while they got this." The guard shifted uncomfortably and said they were not prisoners; they were guards and had different rations.
Patton walked back outside and called for Collins. He ordered every German guard in the camp assembled in front of the American POW section. Within 10 minutes, 23 former German guards stood in a line facing the barbed wire fence and the American prisoners. Some Americans stood up; others watched from where they lay.
Patton spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. He said the American soldiers had been captured in combat and, under the Geneva Convention, were entitled to the same rations and treatment as the soldiers guarding them. He told the guards they had been feeding the Americans garbage — watery soup, scraps, 600 calories a day — while they ate steak and lived in comfort. "That ends today," he said.
Patton turned to Collins and ordered that from that moment, the guards would eat exactly what the American prisoners had been eating — the same soup, the same portions, nothing more, nothing less. The American prisoners, in turn, would eat what the guards had been eating: the steak, the potatoes, the real food, and every bit of supply the guards had been hoarding.
One guard spoke up in German. The English speaker translated: it was not enough food for all the Americans, since there were many more prisoners than guards. Patton looked at the guard and said, "Then I guess the Americans will have to share." He pointed at the guards and told them they would get what the prisoners had been getting for as long as it took to get proper supplies — maybe a week, maybe two.
He stepped closer. "You want to know what it feels like to be hungry, to watch someone else eat while you starve? You're about to find out."
The German guards were marched to the kitchen and made to watch as the thin, watery soup was ladled into bowls — the same soup they had been feeding the Americans. One ladle each, nothing more. Meanwhile, the American POWs were brought to the guard barracks, to the storeroom where the guards had kept their food. There were crates of potatoes, sacks of flour, tinned meat, real coffee, sugar, and salt.
Among the Americans was Sergeant Mike O'Brien, who had been captured in Tunisia and had spent two years in camps. He later described the moment in an interview. He weighed 110 pounds when Patton's forces arrived; he had been 170 when captured. "I was dying. We all were," he said. "When they marched us past those guard barracks, past that food, I wanted to kill someone. We could smell it every day, steak, real food, while we got nothing. And then Patton showed up, and within an hour, everything changed."
O'Brien said they were brought to the storeroom and told it was theirs. Some of the men could not eat at first, too weak and too sick, but they tried. The guards got what the prisoners had been getting: one ladle of water soup. "I watched them eat it," O'Brien said. "I watched their faces, and I felt, I don't know, not happy, not satisfied, just seen, like someone finally saw what they'd done to us."
The meal that night was the first real food many of the POWs had eaten in months, some in years. The cooks worked carefully, and medics warned that too much rich food too fast could make the men sick, or even kill them. They started slow — small portions of real meat, mashed potatoes, and bread. Some could not keep it down, but they tried.
Across the compound, the German guards sat with their bowls of thin soup, staring at them, realizing what they had been doing.
Patton stayed for three days, overseeing the transition, making sure his men were cared for and that the guards learned their lesson. On the second day, one guard approached Major Collins and asked for more food, saying the soup was not enough. Collins brought the request to Patton. Patton's response was brief: tell him he is getting exactly what American soldiers got for months. If it is not enough, maybe he should have thought of that earlier. The guard got no extra food.
By the third day, the American POWs were starting to recover. Color was returning to some faces, and strength was slowly building. The guards were hungry, weak, and complaining. One asked how long this would continue. Patton answered personally: "Until proper supplies arrive, or until you understand what you did, whichever takes longer."
Supplies arrived on day five — American Red Cross shipments, proper rations, and medical supplies. The American POWs were fed, cared for, and prepared for transport home. The German guards were transferred to Allied POW camps, where they would be treated according to the Geneva Convention, fed properly and housed properly. But they never forgot those five days when they finally understood what hunger felt like.
Years later, one of the guards, Klaus Burger, was interviewed. He had been 23 when the camp was liberated. "I was just following orders," he said. "That's what I told myself. The Americans got prisoner rations, we got soldier rations, that was the system." He paused. "But when General Patton made us eat what they'd been eating, when I felt that hunger, when I went to bed with my stomach empty, I understood. We weren't just following orders, we were starving men on purpose, and we were eating well while we did it. I deserved those five days, we all did."
Sergeant O'Brien survived the war. He went home to Chicago, got married, had kids, and lived to see his grandchildren. Before he died in 1998, he gave one final interview about his POW experience. "People ask me if I hated the Germans, if I wanted revenge. I didn't. I just wanted to be seen. I wanted someone to acknowledge what had happened. Patton did that. He saw us, he saw them, and he made it right. Not with violence, not with cruelty, just with justice, basic simple justice. He made them understand, and that mattered."
The camp at Moosburg was eventually closed and the buildings torn down. Today a simple stone marker stands as a memorial. It lists the names of POWs who died there — Americans, British, French, and Russians. It does not mention the five days when the guards ate what the prisoners had been eating, but the survivors remembered. They told their children and their grandchildren about the day General Patton walked past a window, smelled steak cooking, and decided enough was enough.