Sunday, the 29th of April 1945, one week before the end of World War II in Europe. The U.S.
Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberates Dachau - the first regular concentration camp
built by the Nazi government. The soldiers smell not only human excrement but also decaying bodies
causing many of them to cry or vomit as they find piles of impossibly malnourished corpses,
more than 30 railroad cars filled with thousands of dead bodies, and 30 thousand survivors,
most of them severely emaciated, who look like walking skeletons. Thousands of them are sick
and would die from typhus epidemics and starvation during the months following the camp’s liberation.
The shocked and angered soldiers as well as prisoners who survived years of humiliation
and abuse by their Nazi tormentors, want revenge and the brutal response is to come.
After Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on the 30th of January 1933, the National
Socialists used an array of terror measures to establish a dictatorship in the German Reich.
The major purpose of the earliest concentration camps during the 1930s was to incarcerate and
intimidate the leaders of political, social, and cultural movements that the Nazis perceived to
be a threat to the survival of the regime. In the concentration camps the prisoners
lived in constant fear of the brutal treatment and terror exerted by the SS.
One such camp was Dachau, situated near Munich,
which was established in March 1933 and became the first Nazi concentration camp.
The first prisoner transports arrived in the camp on the 22nd of March 1933.
In October the same year, Dachau’s commandant, Theodor Eicke,
introduced a system of regulations which inflicted brutal punishments on prisoners
for the slightest offenses. Eicke ensured that the Dachau camp served as a model for
all later concentration camps. It also became a training center or “a school of
violence “for SS guards who were deployed throughout the concentration camp system.
During the first year, the camp had a capacity of
5,000 prisoners. Initially the internees were primarily German Communists, Social Democrats,
trade unionists, and other political opponents of the Nazi regime. However, over time,
other groups were also interned at Dachau, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma and Sinti people,
homosexuals, repeat criminal offenders as well as so called “asocials” whom
the regime incarcerated because they could not, or would not, find gainful employment.
During the early years relatively few Jews were interned in Dachau and then only usually because
they belonged to one of the above groups or had completed prison sentences after
being convicted for violating the 1935 Nuremberg Laws which put Nazi ideas about race into law.
In early 1937, the SS, using prisoner labor,
began construction of a large complex of buildings on the grounds of the original camp.
Prisoners were forced to do this work, starting with the destruction of the old munitions factory,
under terrible conditions. The construction was officially completed in mid-August 1938 and the
camp remained essentially unchanged until the end of the war in 1945.
The number of Jewish prisoners at Dachau rose with the increased persecution of Jews. On the
10–11 November 1938, in the aftermath of the Kristallnacht, when Jewish homes, businesses,
synagogues, hospitals and schools were ransacked by the Nazi SA and German civilians, almost 11,000
Jewish men were interned there. Most of the men in this group were released after incarceration of a
few weeks to a few months, many after proving they had made arrangements to emigrate from Germany.
The camp was divided into two sections—the camp area and the
crematoria area. The camp area consisted of 32 barracks, including one for clergy
imprisoned for opposing the Nazi regime and one reserved for medical experiments.
The camp administration was located in the gatehouse at the main entrance. The camp area
had a group of support buildings, containing the kitchen, laundry, showers, and workshops, as well
as a prison block called the Bunker. Detention in the bunker was a method that enabled the SS
to isolate rebellious and defiant prisoners as well as confine and expose them to harsher prison
conditions outside the reach of their fellow prisoners as well as to torture or murder them.
The courtyard between the prison and the central kitchen was used for the
summary execution of prisoners. An electrified barbed-wire fence,
a ditch, and a wall with seven guard towers surrounded the camp.
After the Second World War began on the 1st of September 1939, living conditions for the
prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp drastically worsened. The murderous working
conditions, the insufficient rations, and a lack of hygiene facilities in the camp
led to a soaring death rate. From 1940 more and more prisoners were transported to the
Dachau concentration camp from countries occupied by the German armed forces.
The crematorium area was constructed next to the main camp in 1942. It
included the old crematorium and the new crematorium with a gas chamber.
However, there is no credible evidence that this gas chamber was used to murder human
beings. Instead, prisoners underwent so called "selection" and those who were judged too sick or
weak to continue working were sent to the Hartheim "euthanasia" killing center near Linz in Austria.
More than 2,500 Dachau prisoners were murdered in the gas chambers at Hartheim. In addition,
mass executions by shooting took place, first in the bunker courtyard and later in a specially
designed SS shooting range. Thousands of Dachau prisoners were murdered there, including at least
4,000 Soviet prisoners of war following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.
Beginning in 1942, German physicians performed medical experiments on the prisoners in Dachau.
Physicians and scientists from the Luftwaffe - German Air Force - and the German Experimental
Institute for Aviation conducted high-altitude and hypothermia experiments, as well as experiments to
test methods of making seawater potable. These efforts aimed to aid German pilots who conducted
bombing raids or who were downed in icy waters. German scientists also carried out experiments to
test the efficacy of pharmaceuticals against diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.
Hundreds of prisoners died or were permanently disabled as a result of these experiments.
Dachau prisoners were also used as forced laborers. They were employed in the operation
of the camp, in various construction projects, and in small handicraft industries established in the
camp. They built roads, worked in gravel pits, and drained marshes. All under terrible conditions.
During the war, forced labor using concentration camp prisoners became increasingly important
to German armaments production. In the summer and fall of 1944,
to increase war production, satellite camps under the administration of
Dachau were established near armaments factories throughout southern Germany.
Dachau alone had some 140 subcamps, mainly in southern Bavaria where prisoners worked
almost exclusively in armaments works. Thousands of them were worked to death.
As Allied forces advanced toward Germany, the Germans began to move prisoners from
concentration camps near the front to prevent the capture of intact camps and their prisoners.
Transports from the evacuated camps in the east arrived continuously at Dachau, resulting in a
dramatic deterioration of conditions. With more than 30,000 prisoners the camp was dramatically
overcrowded. Barracks built to house 200 prisoners were jammed with more than 1,600.
After days of travel, with little or no food or water, the prisoners arrived weak and exhausted,
often near death. Due to overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, insufficient provisions,
and the weakened state of the prisoners, a typhus epidemic swept through Dachau,
killing 100-200 prisoners a day. Of some 41,500 persons who lost their
lives between 1933 and 1945, over one-third died during the final six months of the war.
At the end of April 1945, the SS also began evacuating prisoners from the Dachau concentration
camp to prevent their liberation by Allied troops. At least 25,000 prisoners from the Dachau camp
system were sent on exhausting foot marches in the direction of Tyrol or taken away in freight
trains. During these so-called death marches, the Germans shot anyone who could no longer continue.
Many also died of starvation, hypothermia, or exhaustion.
Several thousand prisoners died in the process.
On the 29th of April 1945, the Dachau main camp was liberated
by units of the 45th Infantry division. Before the US soldiers arrived in Dachau,
the camp’s commandant Martin Weiss had already fled. However, there were still SS guards left in
the camp and Nazi guards in the camp’s gate tower even foolishly fired upon the liberators. But
when the American soldiers opened fire in return, they came down with their hands held in the air.
After the SS guards surrendered, the US troops further expected the camp. However,
none of their prior combat experiences prepared them for what lay ahead.
The first clue that something was terribly wrong was the smell.
As they neared the camp, the American soldiers found more than 30 railroad
cars filled with bodies in various states of decomposition. It was a moment when they
understood the origin of the smell. It was the overpowering stench of death.
Inside the camp they found even more dead bodies, often naked,
lying where they had fallen in the last few hours or days before the camp’s liberation.
Sometimes the bodies were stacked on top of one another like firewood.
For many soldiers, seeing these atrocities gave the war a new meaning. They realized
that they were not just fighting an enemy, but they were fighting pure evil itself.
The Nazis had tried to cremate as many of these bodies as they
could before abandoning Dachau, but there were simply too many of them.
One soldier later remembered: “Everywhere you turn is just the horror of bodies,
and people near death or in a state of complete decrepitude that you cannot even process it.”.
While many of the American soldiers broke down in sobs,
others were filled with rage, anger and hatred.
When four German officers emerged from the woods holding up a white handkerchief,
one US lieutenant marched them into one of the box cars,
which were littered with corpses, and shot them with a pistol.
When the mortally wounded Germans cried out in agony, another American officer finished the job.
Later, it only got worse.
After the US soldiers ordered the SS guards to line up along the wall in the
coal yard by the guard tower, Lieutenant Walsh yelled “Let them have it” and the
US soldiers opened fire with rifles, pistols, and the 30 Caliber machine gun.
After a 30-second flurry of gunfire, the Nazi guards were killed on the spot.
However, even this was not the end.
The prisoners themselves, many of them tortured and treated as nothing but animals all these
years, also got their revenge. While all the prisoners had lost at least some family members,
some of them had to watch their wives being abused and raped. Others witnessed shooting
competitions in which SS members threw small children in the air while others
shot at them. Others saw their friends die of starvation or during the death marches
which occurred shortly before the liberation. Some inmates swore to all that was sacred to them,
that if they could ever kill their SS guards, they would not hesitate. And they kept their word.
When the prisoners caught the SS guards, one of them elbowed one or two prisoners
out of his way. The prisoners knocked the guards down and killed them all.
Several other SS men and kapos were beaten to death by the prisoners with their bare
fists as well as with sticks and shovels. Another soldier witnessed how an inmate was
stomping on an SS trooper's face until, as he later claimed, there was not much left.
There were some SS guards who had changed their uniforms for camp clothing. However,
they were recognized and lynched on the spot.
While all this was happening, fellow prisoners and American soldiers alike
often stood motionless, watching coldly and without sympathy, as revenge was exacted.
As one soldier later said "We stood aside and watched while these guards were beaten to death,
beaten so badly that their bodies were ripped open and innards protruded. We
watched with less feeling than if a dog were being beaten. In truth, it might be said that
we were completely without feeling. Deep anger and hate had temporality numbed our emotions.".
Upon finding a dog kennel with German Shepherds and Doberman Pinschers, the soldiers shot many of
the animals. Rumors circulated that the Germans had fed political prisoners to these dogs.
Later, American troops forced the German citizens of the town of Dachau to come
to the camp to see for themselves the conditions there and to help to bury
the dead bodies. Many local residents were shocked about the experience and claimed that
they had no knowledge of the atrocities that had been going on there for years.
To this day it is unclear how many SS guards were
killed but it is estimated that the number is between 30 and 50.
Because General Patton, then military governor of Bavaria,
dismissed all the charges, nobody has ever stood trial before the court for this reprisal.
Out of over 200 thousand people who were imprisoned in Dachau and in the
numerous subsidiary camps during its 12 years existence between 1933 and 1945,
nearly 42 000 people were murdered.
thanks for watching the World History Channel be sure to like And subscribe
and click the Bell notification icon so you don't miss our next
episodes we thank you and we'll see you next time on the channel
foreign