Liberation of Dachau

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

A warning that this episode contains descriptions of genocide and terms for groups which were classified that way at the time.

In April 1945, the 42nd Rainbow division liberated Dachau Concentration Camp. Having opened it's doors in 1933, it was the first, and longest running, Nazi concentration camp. It's estimated that Dachau had over 188,000 inmates, of which 41,500 were killed - it saw death, suffering and tragedy on an unimaginable level. But despite widespread coverage, and rumours of it's existence, the 42nd Rainbow Division were shocked at what they stumbled across - so how come nobody was prepared for what they were about to find?

In this episode, James is joined by Professor Dan Stone, Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, to talk about this dark moment in human history. Looking at the creation of the camps, the role the allies played in the liberations, and the incredible make-shift hospitals set up to help the inmates - Dan takes us through this tragic moment of the Second World War, and discusses the legacy that Dachau left behind.

You can read more about the Liberation of the Camps in Dan's book.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It was the final days of the Second World War in Europe, and as Allied troops swept across
0:06.4	formerly Nazi occupied territory, they found tens of thousands of concentration camp survivors in deplorable conditions.
0:15.6	Malnutrition and disease were rampant and on top of this, thousands more corpses lay unburied.
0:22.4	One of the most well documented examples of this is when the soldiers of the US 42nd
0:26.6	infantry division rolled into the Bavarian town of Decau.
0:30.8	It was the final days of World War II and they were expecting to find an abandoned
0:34.7	training facility for elite ruthless SS forces or maybe a prisoner of war camp.
0:40.0	What they actually found has continued to shock shape and define the depths to which humans can stoop in their hate-filled acts.
0:48.0	I'm your host James Rogers. This is the Warfare Podcast, and needless to say this episode contains content that listeners may find upsetting,
0:56.0	but it's an important history.
0:58.0	One that Professor Dan Stone, the director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway University in London
1:04.0	helps us to understand in greater detail than ever before.
1:12.0	This April Dan marks 78 years since the liberation of Dachau by US forces.
1:18.0	But before we get into the details of this liberation,
1:21.0	I want you to take us back a little bit in the history of concentration camps during the Second World War.
1:27.0	What was their function and who came up with this heinously morbid idea to build such camps to facilitate the final solution?
1:36.4	That's a very big question encompasses a lot. A changing history I think it's very
1:41.0	important that we don't read this history backwards from the final solution
1:44.6	because when the concentration camps were first established in 1933, the final solution
1:50.4	of the Jewish question had not been devised yet, although the Nazis always, I think, had a fantasy of getting rid of the Jews one way or another.
1:58.0	There was no plan as such to get rid of them.
2:00.0	So concentration camps in their first incarnation from 1933 were primarily to do away with the political enemies of the Nazi regime.
	...

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