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Kira Zoeller

Professor Eckles

History 1304-2

17 April 2021

The Liberation of The Concentration Camps in Europe by U.S. Troops

On April 12th 1945, general Dwight D. Eisenhower stepped foot onto the soil of the

concentration camp in Dachau. What he emotionally experienced was impossible to put into

words. He saw the aftermath of Nazi brutality and the ruthless disregard of every shred of

decency. Up to this point in time he only heard about what was happening in those camps but

now he is seeing first hand, what the Nazis were capable of. In a speech he said: “ He has never

experienced an equal sense of shock when he saw the prisoners, mostly Jews, beaten down,

starved and tortured, just laying there crying for someone to help them” (Eisenhower, 2017). But

why did it even get to the point where concentration camps had to be established and how were

they liberated by U.S. troops?

The origin of Nazi brutality towards minorities and espcially Jews lies within the second

world war. World war II was a war fought between the Axis powers: Germany, Italy and Japan

and the Allies: France, Great Britain, United States of America and the Soviet Union. The war

started on September 1st 1939 when German leader, Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland. At that time

Poland had already made arrangements with the French and British military who sent troops and

declared war towards Germany on September 3rd. The Soviet Union became part of the war

when Germany broke the Treaty of Non-Aggression and invaded Russia on June 22, 1941
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(Royde-Smith, Graham, J. and Thomas, A., 2021). On December 7th, Japan went through with a

surprise attack at Pearl Harbor which resulted in a declaration of war by the United States

(Media, 2021). Only three days later Germany and Italy allied with Japan and therefore declared

war on the United States as well, which made it into World War II (The National WWII Museum

| New Orleans. 2021). In reaction to the war declaration with the Axis powers, the U.S. decided

to ally with Great Britain and the Soviet Union, therefore they needed to send troops to Europe to

fight against the Axis powers. Once they arrived on British Isles by January of 1942 they joined

together with the British to defeat the Germans in North Africa. The troops were so successful

that by 1944, they captured the Allies in Rome, invaded France to start operation “Overlord”,

which was won in January of 1945 and pushed the Germans out of France back into Germany,

where they crossed the Rhine River (World War II in Europe | PBS, 2021).

During the time the Nazi regime held power in Germany, they started building so called

“concentration camps”. The first one ever built was in Dachau, near Munich, to imprison and

intimidate leaders of political, social and cultural movements that the Nazis perceived to be a

threat to the survival of their regime. Later on it was expanded as a concentration camp system

managed by the Schutzstaffel (SS). Many perceived the concentration camps as a prison but

there is a major difference. The concentration camps function outside of a judicial system which

means, prisoners are not convicted of any crime by judicial process. Those camps were part of

the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 and were built all over Germany to handle the masses of

people arrested as alleged subversives. In late 1934, Adolf Hitler authorized SS leader Heinrich

Himmler to formalize concentration camps into a system in which the SS became the only

agency to establish and manage facilities that were formerly called concentration camps. Until
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1937 there were concentration camps built in Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Lichtenburg and

Oranienburg. They served three main purposes: to incarcerate people that the Nazi regime sees as

a threat; to eliminate individuals and small targeted groups of individuals by murder, away from

the pulic and judicial review and lastly to exploit forced labor of the prisoner population which

grew out of labor shortage. Because the number of political opponents and “asocials” arose, the

Nazi regime had to expand into Austria and Czechoslovakia between 1938 and 1939. Once

World war II started, concentration camps expanded rapidly due to larger groups of potential

prisoners in the new conquered territories which automatically permitted the SS to expand

functions of the camps. Sites were now used to deliberately undernourish and mistreat prisoners,

mostly Jews, which resulted in high mortality rates in every single camp (Concentration Camps,

1933-1939, 2021).

When Germany started to lose the war and was forced back into its own territory, the

Allies started to explore Germany and came upon those camps of horror. Units of America's

Fourth Armored Division of the Third Army were the first ones to discover a camp with

prisoners and corpses on April 5th 1945. The camp in Ohrdruf was a subcamp of Buchenwald

and was not originally planned to be liberated. The U.S. troops found it by accident and of the

originally 10,000 inmates, the majority was sent on death marches or shot in pits and burned in

the woods. 6 days later, on April 11th, American Timberwolf Division liberated Mittelbau-Dora,

a camp near Nordhausen that used prisoners to build V2 rockets. They found 3,000 corpses and

over 700 starved survivors (U.S. Army & the Holocaust, 2021). Russians led American Combat

Team 9 of the 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, Sixth Armored Division to Buchenwald, one of

the larger camps. In the camp itself, there were over 30,000 prisoners who were divided into a
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pyramid of power. The German communists lived in the main barracks and Jews and Gypsies

were living in the Little Camp at the bottom which was meant for only 450, yet more than 1,200

prisoners were living there. Based on the circumstances, prisoners were reasonably healthy. An

eyewitness reported: “Legs and arms were sticks with huge bulging joints and their loins were

fouled by their own excrements. Their eyes were sunk so deep that they looked blind. If they

moved at all, it was with a crawling slowness that made them look like huge, lethargic spiders.

Many just layed in their bunks as if dead.” (U.S. Army & the Holocaust, 2021) The troops

liberated over 20,000 prisoners. A day later, George Patton, Omar Bradley and Dwight

Eisenhower arrived in Ohrdruf on April 12th, 1945. They came upon 3,200 naked, emaciated

bodies in shallow graves. Eisenhower made the press statement, publishing their cruel findings

which resulted in congressional delegations coming to visit the camp and bringing journalists

and photographers with them. After those findings, Allies continued to look for more camps but

at the same time, the Germans moved prisoners in concentration camps close to the front away in

other camps to prevent their liberation. On April 26th 1945, U.S. troops approached Dachau but

before they were able to liberate it, 7,000 of the prisoners, the majority of them Jews, were sent

on a death march to Tegernsee. 3 days after this event, Americans were able to liberate the main

camp and found 28 train wagons filled with decomposing bodies and thousands of starving and

dying prisoners. Then in early May, troops were able to liberate prisoners that were sent on the

death march to Tegernsee. With liberating the campus and rescuing thousands of people, Allies

were faced with repatriating 7,000,000 displaced ex-prisoners in Germany and Austria. More

than 1,000,000 of them were not able to go back to their homes, such as Baltics, Poles,

Ukranians and Yugoslavs (Gutman, I., 1990). The troops were originally only trained for war but
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now have to juggle various assignments such as the occupation of Germany, the now ongoing

Cold War and the struggles of Holocaust survivors who were very distrustful and needed medical

and psychological attention. The army had neither a short-term nor a short-term solution and the

problems were acute since survivors had nowhere to go (Grobman, A., 2004). Great Britain did

not permit Jewish immigrants and America was not ready to receive refugees yet. Because of

that, conflicts started to arise and in June 1945, President Truman sent Earl G. Harrison on a fact

finding mission. In his conclusion he stated: “U.S. troops appear to be treating the Jews as the

Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in

large numbers under our military guard instead of SS troops.” He recommends: “Jews must be

recognized as Jews. They should be evacuated from Germany quickly. One hundred thousand

Jews should be admitted to Palestine. President Truman endorsed the report, rebuked the army,

and intensified pressure on Britain. He opened the United States for limited immigration.” (U.S.

Army & the Holocaust, 2021)

The U.S. troops had a major impact on not only the war but furthermore on the liberation

of the concentration camps. Together with the Allied powers they save millions of lives of people

from over 50 nationalities. Even though World War II was the most devastating war of all time,

the liberation gave millions of people that have been held captive a second chance.
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Works cited

Encyclopedia.ushmm.org. 2021. Concentration Camps, 1933–1939.

Eisenhower, D., 2017. CRUSADE IN EUROPE. [S.l.]: Ishi Press, pp.408-409.

Grobman, A., 2004. Battling for Souls, The Vaad Hatzalah Rescue Committee in Post-War Europe.

Gutman, I., 1990. Macmillan Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.

Media, S., 2021. Why Did Japan Attack Pearl Harbor?.

Miller, M., 1987. Ike the Soldier. New York: G.P. Putnam and Sons, pp.774-775.

Royde-Smith, Graham, J. and Thomas, A., 2021. World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, &

Causes. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica.

The National WWII Museum | New Orleans. 2021. Take A Closer Look: America Goes to War | The National

WWII Museum | New Orleans.

Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. 2021. U.S. Army & the Holocaust.

Pbs.org. 2021. World War II in Europe | American Experience | PBS.