CHAPTER II

29 APRIL 1945: THE AMERICANS ARRIVE

By the spring of 1945, the German Western Front was collapsing. British and American forces drove eastward across the war-torn Reich, seeking to link up with the Soviet Red Army, which was advancing rapidly toward Berlin. Taking the Bavarian capital of Munich, the “birthplace of National Socialism,” was a secondary objective of the American advance. The SS staff at Dachau knew this, just as they knew that their installation’s position between Munich and United States Seventh Army put them directly in the path of the oncoming advance.

The reality of the deteriorating situation worried the SS authorities. If the camp were to be captured with its full complement of prisoners, the Americans surely would seek out those responsible. Whereas earlier in the life of the regime responsibility for some of the more atrocious actions taken on behalf of the Nazi state was a mark of distinction on one’s career record, with military defeat almost certain many leaders wanted to distance themselves from their terrible accomplishments.[1] The question now remaining was what to do with the prisoners.

Martin Weiss, who had been camp commandant in 1942-3 and began his second tenure at Dachau in March 1945, thought it best to surrender the camp and its prisoners to the Americans. His queries to Himmler on this matter were answered on 15 April. Himmler ordered that the camp be evacuated immediately and that no [END PAGE 15] prisoner should fall into American hands alive.[2] Because of the Allied bombings of German railways, evacuation by train was nearly impossible. Similarly, military convoys congested the roadways and prevented timely evacuation by forced march. SS authorities considered the mass murder of the entire prisoner population, by air bombardment, by machine gun, or by poisoning, but feared reprisal for these actions when the Americans did arrive.[3] Also, the continuing influx of evacuees from other camps further complicated the administration’s ability to plan its next step. For the prisoners, every moment of indecision on the part of their captors, while unnerving to say the least, meant a few more moments of survival.

During the impending denouement of Dachau, one group took advantage of the chaos thus created by the Allies’ approach and the Nazis’ indecisiveness as to what to do with the prisoners. The International Prisoners’ Committee, as it called itself, set as its primary goal protecting the prisoner population until liberation. The Committee had been created in September 1944, when reports of the Allied advance into Germany offered the very real possibility that the Allies would liberate the camp. Meeting secretly in the camp hospital, Ali Kuci of Albania, one Nazewski of Poland, Arthur Haulot of Belgium, and Pat O’Leary of Great Britain[4] sought and established contact with leaders of other national groups to prepare for the arrival of a liberating army.[5] [END PAGE 16]

By the last week of April 1945, the influence of the Committee, although it remained an underground organization, had grown to the point that, amid the confusion of the SS administration, it exercised de facto control of the prisoner population. The key to its functioning lay in its extensive communication network, which allowed instructions to be disseminated to the prisoners while information from the SS was gathered.[6] By coordinating the national groups (each with its own hierarchy and leaders), the Committee sabotaged preparations for evacuations, and it provided as much as possible in the way of food and blankets for evacuees arriving from eastern camps.[7] On the morning of 29 April, representatives of the Committee, their resolve strengthened by the white flags of surrender raised by the SS and flying from the flagpoles and watchtowers, actually negotiated for and received autonomy for the prisoners from the SS Obersturmführer in charge of the garrison that had replaced the regular guards (Weiss and the camp staff had fled the area during the previous night).[8]

From a purely military perspective, the taking of Dachau was of little real value. The United States Seventh Army was driving southeast toward Munich from Würzburg and Nürnberg, with the Forty-Fifth Infantry Division at the spearhead. Because of its position relative to the camp and to those of other units involved in the push toward Munich, the Forty-Fifth ("Thunderbird") was chosen by XV Corps [END PAGE 17] Headquarters to take the camp.^[9] At the same time that Lieutenant Colonel Felix Sparks' Third battalion of the 157^th Regiment approached the town of Dachau, advance elements of the Forty-Second ("Rainbow") Division, which was advancing on the Forty-Fifth's right flank, moved out of their zone of operations and headed toward the camp. Led by General Henning Linden, these command units moved to their Division's left flank in order to locate their 222^nd Regiment.

While driving through the town of Dachau, Linden's group encountered two American newspaper correspondents who asked the soldiers where the concentration camp was located. This meeting apparently inspired Gen. Linden to head directly for the camp, calling for the assistance of two companies from the 222^nd.^[10] Gen. Linden's staff, accompanied by the reporters, skirted the SS compound that made up the larger part of the Dachau installation and arrived at the prisoner compound's main gate while Col. Sparks' I Company fought its way through the SS barracks, facing little in the way of resistance.

The presence of elements of the two Divisions at the liberation has caused considerable debate as to which unit actually liberated the camp, and this debate, which continues to this day, represents another example of the importance of memory and interpretation. Both the Forty-Second and the Forty-Fifth claim for themselves (and exclusive of each other) the title of "Liberator of Dachau."^[11] The claim of the [END PAGE 18] Forty-Second (“Rainbow”) Division appears to be based on Linden's group's accepting the surrender of the camp from an SS officer at the gate to the prisoners' compound. This assertion is strengthened by the later arrival of the Rainbow's 222^nd Rifle Regiment and its soldiers' recollections of overjoyed inmates wildly celebrating the arrival of the Americans.^[12] However, certain anomalies repeatedly appear in these accounts which, upon closer examination, undermine the validity of the Rainbow Division's claim.

Most of the reports and testimonies of soldiers of the Forty-Second Division mention hearing shots being fired from within the prisoners’ compound as they approached the camp. The soldiers typically account for these sounds as having come from their comrades taking the camp.^[13] The reality of the situation, though, was that I Company of the Forty-Fifth Division had already arrived in the camp, moving through the SS compound. Certain elements of the Forty-Fifth had even managed to climb the wall separating the two compounds and enter the prisoner area. These first soldiers of the Forty-Fifth to enter the prisoners’ compound recall an eerily empty camp, save for the SS guards who either surrendered or continued to defend the camp from the American takeover.^[14] Therefore, any account maintaining that the first arrival of American soldiers was accompanied by the instant explosions of overjoyed prisoners from their barracks does not take into account the fact that American soldiers had not only cleared the SS compound, but had, in fact, been inside the [END PAGE 19] prisoner compound for roughly half an hour before Linden and the reporters arrived at the main gate.

The idea that American liberators walked through the prisoner compound for any period of time without meeting the frenzy of appreciation and relief that occurred later seems to warrant some explanation. A major contributor to this matter is the fact that the prisoners, at the very brink of liberation, justifiably still feared for their lives. The last days of April 1945 saw a great explosion in the circulation of information, reliable or not, among the prisoners concerning their very near future. As the SS had forbidden newspapers in the camp and confiscated radio receivers from all areas in which prisoners might have access to them, this information consisted of gross rumors, derived from fears or from simple wishful thinking, as well as of some reputable facts. Along with suppositions about the Allied advance and the German retreat, this information included some possible scenarios, all too plausible, as to what the SS guards would do with the prisoners.[15] Many prisoners knew of the so-called “Himmler Order,” issued on 14 April 1945, which stated in part: “There is absolutely no question of surrendering. The camp must be evacuated immediately. No prisoner must fall into the hands of the enemy alive.”[16] In addition to this order, given by Himmler in accordance with Hitler’s direct wishes on the matter, the SS drew up at least two other plans for the wholesale slaughter of Dachau’s remaining camp [END PAGE 20] population.[17] With the knowledge of their tormentors’ intentions fairly common among the prisoners, they could take no chances. They remained in the barracks, expecting that the SS would kill all of them before the Americans arrived as a last act of their indoctrination of hatred, as well as to leave no witnesses to their atrocities alive. As they hid in their barracks, the prisoners could not be sure whether they, individually or as a whole, would survive to experience the liberation that seemed so desperately near.[18]

Even if they saw the American soldiers patrolling the prisoner compound, the prisoners could not be sure who these patrols were. It is unlikely that anything more than a minority of the prisoners would have been able to identify an American soldier from his battle dress uniform, especially since American soldiers wore no distinguishing insignia such as a unit badge or even an American flag. This question of identity is compounded by the fact that in the few days before 29 April, most of the SS concentration camp guards had fled the camp, their places now taken by a garrison made up of several different fighting units. In addition to the circa two hundred SS guards remaining, the camp was defended by a company of Waffen-SS as well as German and Hungarian soldiers who had been imprisoned for various reasons in the SS compound’s stockade but were released on the condition that they defend the camp against the Americans. This resulted in a confusion of uniforms and insignia consisting of the distinctive black uniforms of the SS, Waffen-SS camouflage, uniforms of the regular German and Hungarian Armies, as well as variations and [END PAGE 21] combinations of these.[19] The appearance of the American uniform was just one more in a growing array of uniforms to be found on men carrying arms in the concentration camp. Thus, it makes sense that the first spontaneous manifestations of joy, relief, and gratitude occurred as the party from the Forty-Second Division actually opened the main gate to the enclosure, the act most symbolic of ending SS control of the camp.

Most of the soldiers involved recall that the experience of witnessing the condition of the camp and its prisoners gave them a renewed sense of why they were fighting, and many channeled the shock and outrage they felt into an intense hatred of their German enemy.^[20] The subsequent arrival of news correspondents from the Allied nations transmitted that renewed sense of mission to the home front, as well. After seeing for themselves the evidence of the atrocities committed at Dachau, soldiers felt “a total sense of commitment” to defeating Germany.[21] Their anger was not reserved for the German soldiers, though. There were instances when American soldiers abused German civilians in the region, accusing them of allowing the horrors of the camp to continue.[22]

From the moment that the American liberators entered the camp at Dachau, an astonishing array of difficulties confronted them, difficulties which would frustrate or hamper their efforts to rehabilitate and eventually repatriate the 32,000 people for [END PAGE 22] whom they would have to provide. The first obstacle hindering the American Army, one which is ubiquitous in published recollections of all engaged in operations within the camp, was the disturbing and surreal atmosphere of misery, disease, and death that emanated from the prisoners’ compound.

Nearly all of the American accounts attempt to describe the smell that permeated the concentration camp, and nearly all of them confess that the words do not exist that can give a hint of its sickening quality. The liberators were particularly affected by the physical appearance of the prisoners themselves. Months or years in Dachau or in other concentration camps had left these victims of the camp system horribly emaciated through starvation and overwork. 14,546 prisoners had arrived in transfers from other camps since 18 April, including over 6,600 on 27 April alone.[23] These transfers evacuated prisoners from those concentration camps nearer the two fronts of the war. As the Allied armies advanced into Germany, the SS administration frantically moved the masses of prisoners away from the fronts, sometimes by train, but frequently by the infamous “death marches.” The evacuations, as well as the attempted destruction of the camps themselves (most famously that of the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers), represented a last desperate, futile attempt to conceal what had happened there. In Dachau, the arrival of these transports increased the camp population by roughly fifty percent to nearly 32,000.[24] Owing to the Nazis’ well-known cruel treatment of prisoners in transit, these newly arrived inmates were in particularly poor condition. In addition, a typhus epidemic [END PAGE 23] had erupted in the camp during the past winter, and it, along with several other diseases and infections, affected thousands.[25] Over 8,000 prisoners lay bedridden either in the camp hospital or in the various barracks.[26] Often dirty, inadequately clothed, suffering from disease and excruciatingly malnourished, the survivors themselves added to the macabre aura that Dachau presented to its liberators.

Another crucial component of this disturbing atmosphere was the ever-present and tangible evidence of death: the bodies of the dead. Because the coke necessary for the crematoria to operate had been unavailable to the camp since early 1945, the camp had taken to burying its dead in nearby mass graves, but in the last days of April the SS, fearful of the Allied approach, forbade burial details to leave the camp.[27] The bodies of the dead therefore littered the camp grounds, often stacked in gruesome piles. Inside, the death rate had reached 200 per day, further contributing to this problem.[28]

Furthermore, as the first liberators entered the prisoners’ compound, they discovered the existence, in a small clearing of woods just off of the northeast corner of the prisoners’ compound, of Dachau’s gas chamber, adjacent to the crematoria. During the subsequent tours and inspections of the camp, prisoners gave the Americans conflicting testimonies regarding the extent of the gas chamber’s use. Some claimed that gassings were quite common, an everyday occurrence. Others spoke of only intermittent periods during which prisoners were executed in the [END PAGE 24] chamber. Still others claimed that it had never been put into use at all.[29] Here again, the functioning of memory becomes an important component of retelling the story of Dachau. It is a common occurrence that concentration camp survivors, when they have been incarcerated in a plurality of camps, mistake the conditions or practices of one camp with another. This has to do in at least some part with the physiological effects of starvation, as well as those of the typhoid fever that raged throughout the camp system, which include some impairment in the functioning of memory.[30] It is quite likely, therefore, that those who recalled the nearly continuous operation of the Dachau gas chamber had confused them with the gas chambers of other camps. This seems especially likely when one remembers that a great many of Dachau’s inhabitants had recently arrived by foot or by train from the death camps of the East.

Also, Barrack X, the building containing the gas chamber and crematoria, was the site of executions of Russian prisoners of war. Although these prisoners were in fact murdered behind the concealing tree line surrounding Barrack X, the cause of death was a bullet to the back of the neck, not gas. The survivors knew that these prisoners had been marched to the crematorium/gas chamber area and never returned, and they likely assumed that the victims had been killed in the gas chamber.

The consensus among historians is that the gas chamber at Dachau was only operated on a trial basis.[31] Today, in the Dachau Memorial Site, a sign in the gas [END PAGE 25] chamber informs visitors in five languages that the room, “disguised as a ‘shower room’,” was “never used as a gas chamber.”[32]

Despite this fact, the very presence of the facility was an unnerving reminder of the camp’s deathly atmosphere to its liberators.[33] Inside and outside of this building lay terrible heaps of emaciated bodies, sometimes stacked neatly, sometimes piled haphazardly. Many of the liberating soldiers recall becoming physically ill upon viewing these and other masses of corpses, including over 2,000 in a train transport standing outside the camp, which very often broke emotionally those whom they did not affect physically.

These American soldiers, whose initial reactions often included vomiting or breaking into tears, were not untried recruits. They were with rare exception battle-hardened veterans for whom the sight of death was nothing new. Yet, in Dachau the horrible evidence of the atrocities committed there created a “combination of confusion and anger … [that] encouraged the unleashing of revenge on the remaining SS as they were captured.”[34] On the day of liberation, the deceased prisoners would be joined by the bodies of 550 German defenders. Only thirty of these were killed in the actual American assault; the remainder had been executed later, either by American soldiers (480) or the prisoners (40).[35] Most of these were gunned down en masse in an incident which most likely began as an escalation of nervousness, combat alertness, and misunderstanding, which then converged into the spontaneous [END PAGE 26] execution of nearly 350 prisoners of war about two hours after Americans had first entered the camp.

What appears to have happened was that the liberators had herded these prisoners into a walled courtyard adjacent to some hospital buildings in the SS compound. The detail assigned to guard them consisted only of some dozen GIs armed with one Browning automatic rifle and two tripod-mounted .30 caliber machine guns. As American soldiers began a head count of the Germans, who had been ordered to keep their hands above their heads, some Germans lowered their hands and began moving about. At least one American soldier interpreted this motion as a potential attack or escape attempt. He fired on the Germans and was quickly joined by the machine gunners. When the shooting ended, most of the Germans were dead, and three or four former concentration camp prisoners assisting the guard detail delivered the coup de grace, with American-supplied pistols, to those who had survived.[36] In early June 1945, a court-martial investigation (apparently instigated by Gen. Linden) into the executions was halted by no less a personage than General George S. Patton, who actually burned the relevant evidence in the wastebasket of his office.[37]

As 29 April came to a close, elements of both the Forty-Fifth and Forty-Second Divisions established and maintained the security of the camp. On the next morning, only a small guard detail remained while the bulk of the Seventh Army raced for the Bavarian capital of Munich. 1 May 1945 saw the Parade of Nations [END PAGE 27] cross the roll call square. In celebration of May Day and of their liberation, those inmates who were able marched with their countrymen under the makeshift flags of their homelands and listened to speeches of thanksgiving and fraternity delivered in fifteen languages.[38] Sadly, though, the feelings of brotherhood manifest on that day were not enough to bring to a halt the effects of the suffering caused by the previous years of concentration camp life. While the inmates celebrated, the Americans prepared for the monumental task of administering to their needs. XV Corps had by now assumed official control of Dachau, placing Displaced Persons Team 115 in charge of rehabilitating the former prisoners. [END PAGE 28]

[4] Pat O’Leary was an assumed identity. In reality, this was Albert Guérisse of Belgium.

[5] U.S. Seventh Army, Dachau Liberated: The Official Report, ed. Michael W. Perry (Seattle: Inkling Books, 2000), 25.

[6] Wolfgang Benz, “Between Liberation and the Return Home: The Dachau International Prisoners’ Committee and the Administration of the Camp in May and June 1945,” Dachau Review 1 (1988): 34.

^[9] Flint Whitlock, The Rock of Anzio: From Sicily to Dachau: A History of the U.S. 45^th Infantry Division (Boulder: Westview, 1998), 354.

^[10] Sam Dann, ed., Dachau 29 April 1945: The Rainbow Liberation Memoirs (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1998), 18.

^[11] Michael Selzer, Deliverance Day: The Last Hours at Dachau (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1978), 239.

^[14] Howard A. Buechner, Dachau: The Hour of the Avenger (Metairie, La.: Thunderbird Press, 1986), 70.

[16] John G. Gaskill Papers, Ida Pearle and Joseph Cuba Community Archives, William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum. MS67

[17] Barbara Distel, “29 April 1945: The Liberation of the Concentration Camp at Dachau,” Dachau Review 1 (1988): 8.

^[20] Robert H. Abzug, Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 92-4; Buechner, xxviii, 86-7; Whitlock, 359-61.

[21] Holocaust Testimony of Arthur Stern, Holocaust Oral History Archive of Gratz College.

[22] Holocaust Testimony of Walter Cahn, Holocaust Oral History Archive of Gratz College.

[24] The estimate of increase is based on partial records presented in Berben, 220.

[27] Nico Rost, Concentration Camp Dachau, 6^th ed., trans. Bernard R. Hanauer (Brussels: Comité International de Dachau, n.d.), 28.