Soldiers of the U.S. 45th and 42nd Infantry Divisions liberated Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, established in 1933 near Munich. They found more than 30,000 starving survivors and boxcars packed with corpses. Some American soldiers, overwhelmed by what they witnessed, summarily executed captured German guards—an incident later investigated by the Army. Dachau became a defining symbol of the Holocaust's horror for the liberating Allied forces.
When American troops reached Dachau's gates on April 29, 1945, they encountered a scene that defied comprehension even for battle-hardened soldiers. Outside the camp sat a train of over 30 boxcars containing roughly 2,000 corpses, prisoners who had died of starvation and disease en route from other camps as the Nazi system collapsed inward. Inside, more than 32,000 survivors, many skeletal and afflicted with typhus, greeted their liberators with disbelief.
The camp, opened in 1933 as the first purpose-built Nazi concentration camp, had served as a model and training ground for the SS camp system, ultimately imprisoning political dissidents, Jews, Roma, clergy, and prisoners of war. Some 40,000 people are estimated to have died there over twelve years.
Enraged by what they found, some American soldiers shot surrendering SS guards without trial, actions that prompted an Army investigation, though no formal prosecutions followed given the circumstances. General Dwight Eisenhower had insisted that camps be documented thoroughly with photography and film, aware that future generations might doubt the atrocities without overwhelming evidence. Correspondents and photographers who entered Dachau that day produced images that shaped global understanding of the Holocaust for decades to come.