Dachau is a 72-page investigation report by the 7th US Army on Dachau, one of the concentration camps established by Nazi Germany. The report details the mass murder and mass atrocities committed at Dachau by the SS and other personnel. Following the liberation of the camp by the 7th US Army on 29 April 1945, the report was prepared during the following one or two weeks and published in May. In addition to a preface, the report contains three independent reports which partly overlap thematically. Although it contains some errors, the report is considered one of the first studies on the Nazi concentration camps.
Background
Built in 1933, Dachau was one of the first Nazi concentration camps. Though a large number of prisoners were executed, the camp was more of a large scale prison and internment camp and not part of the complex of the extermination camps such as the Auschwitz concentration camp. In the final phase of the Second World War, the living conditions of the prisoners in Dachau concentration camp drastically deteriorated, causing the death rate in the camp to rise rapidly. Many inmates of the overcrowded camp suffered from malnutrition and the untenable hygienic conditions. Evacuation transports from other concentration camps and a rampant typhus epidemic exacerbated the catastrophic camp conditions. From January to April 1945 alone, more than 13,000 prisoners died of disease or exhaustion in the Dachau concentration camp and the affiliated subcamps; many of the bodies remained unburied on the grounds. In addition, thousands of prisoners lost their lives on death marches to the south. Shortly before the arrival of the US Army, there were more than 32,000 emaciated prisoners in Dachau concentration camp; about 8,000 of whom were bedridden.
After the Dachau concentration camp was liberated on 29 April 1945 by units of the 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions of the Seventh United States Army, the liberators found 3,000 corpses and several thousand people vegetating. In addition, there was a strong smell of decay lying on the camp. Even before entering the camp grounds, the US soldiers had discovered hundreds of dead concentration camp prisoners in the death train from Buchenwald parked on a siding, most of whom had died of hunger, debilitation or disease during transport to Dachau concentration camp. Battalion commander Felix Sparks later reported:
Upset by these traumatic experiences, spontaneous shootings of captured SS men by US soldiers occurred.
30 April 1945 On 29 April 1945, Quinn, Acting Chief of Staff of the G-2, IV Army Corps received word that Dachau had been liberated and the camp was under the control of the "International Prisoners Committee", and early the next morning he entered Dachau, through the main gate, with his officers in the 7th Army, a representative from the Office of Strategic Services and a group from his counter-intelligence corps division which was operating under his jurisdiction as G-2 of the 7th Army. He then commissioned each of those three divisions to separately prepare reports: "one was to take the camp; the other was to take the townspeople; the other was to take the organization and what happened and then to interrogate the internees", published as the Dachau (US Army report).
"When I read the three reports, I decided it was too big and I didn't have the time to put it all together so I decided to let each one of them tell their own story in their own way and I would do an introduction...The composition was the work of Major Al House, who just died not too long ago. He designed the cover, his concept of the SS. He did the artwork in the "townspeople" area of the German with the pipe and those drawings. The artwork was also done by John Denny and the copy preparation by Charles Denny. The photographs were the 163rd Signal Photo Company and the printing done by the 649th Engineer Compo. Battalion. This was done in the 7th Army, with government funds, so it’s a free document and there is no copyright to it and anybody can reproduce it at their will...I published this in early June, or maybe late May...I issued this to the troops...the press got copies of it, because it was in the Press Room...I sent copies also to the other G-2's who had the same kind of thing in Auschwitz"Quinn, William Wilson (Interviewee) and Crawford, Fred Roberts (Interviewer). Lieutenant General William W. Quinn (transcript of a videotape recording) pdf - Witness to the Holocaust (the liberation of Dachau concentration camp) Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, Emory University, using Omeka. - William Wilson Quinn
"'the atrocities […] were just too horrible to describe." - William Wilson Quinn
Origins and authors
When Colonel William Wilson Quinn, Assistant Chief of Staff of the G2 Military Intelligence of the 7th US Army, learned of the shocking and indescribable impressions of his comrades after the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, he immediately went to the site to see the situation for himself. He remarked that the mass crimes found there were beyond his imagination, and that no one would have believed the atrocities committed in the camp at the time. As a result, he decided to immediately document what he had experienced, resulting in this investigative report. The preface, signed by Quinn, states:Dachau Report, unnumbered p. 3
Quinn formed several teams to gather information about what happened in the camp, including taking statements from former prisoners. In particular, he was also interested in finding out what the population of the nearby town of Dachau knew about the concentration camp and what they thought about it. Involved in the report were the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) and the Psychological Warfare Branch (PWB) of the 7th US Army. The report is based primarily on interviews with liberated detainees by US intelligence officers and on field investigations. Members of the unofficial international committee of the liberated camp, which had been formed shortly before the liberation, assisted in this.
Composition and publication The report was completed rather quickly, within the span of one to two weeks. The report is divided into four parts, listed in a table of contents on the third page of the document. Part I features the foreword by William Wilson Quinn while Part II was prepared by the Office of Strategic Services. Part III was prepared by the Psychological Warfare Branch and Part IV prepared by the Counter Intelligence Corps. Parts II to IV partly overlap thematically, since they were prepared as individual reports that were largely independent of each other. According to the preface, the reports were deliberately not combined into a common document with a uniform style, as doing so would have "seriously weaken[ed] [their] realism".Dachau Report, p. 2. In the summary preceding the second part of the report, it noted that the report does not intend to be a comprehensive or exhaustive account of Dachau Concentration Camp, and that work was already being done on further, more comprehensive reports.Dachau Report, p. 4. Thus, in preparation for the War Crimes Trial Program, American investigators conducted investigations from April 30, 1945 to August 7, 1945 to determine who was responsible for the crimes associated with the Dachau complex. This investigation report, completed on 31 August 1945, was the basis for the Dachau Camp Trial.
The 649th Engineer Topographic Battalion of the U.S. Army took over the printing and duplication of the report, which was published in typewritten form. By May 1945, 10,000 copies had already been circulated. The Dachau Report was, according to the memoirs of William W. Quinn initially intended only as an internal report for use in the US Army, but then got to journalists unplanned through display in a press room, making it known to the public. It soon circulated among US soldiers and members of the press.
The public was promptly informed about the conditions found in Dachau concentration camp. Several journalists accompanied the US soldiers during the liberation of Dachau concentration camp, including Marguerite Higgins, who was a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. She wrote the "first, though belatedly transmitted, report from Dachau." As early as 1 May 1945, many newspapers published articles to this effect. Film crews also arrived at the liberated camp. At the invitation of Dwight D. Eisenhower, delegations of American politicians as well as editors-in-chief and publishers went to the site on 2 and 3 May 1945 respectively to get a picture of the situation. According to Harold Marcuse, the aim was "to convince the American public of the extent and authenticity of the atrocities through their reporting".
Content
Summary
The report presents the Dachau concentration camp complex comprehensively and from different perspectives. Since the American investigators were in the camp as liberators, they were able to rely on a high level of cooperation and willingness to testifyDachau Report, pp. 18, 21, from the liberated prisoners; a part of the report consists of eyewitness accounts of the inmates, as well as occasional longer excerpts from diaries and personal accounts of the experiences of individual prisoners.Dachau Report, pp. 35-45, 46-60, 61-63. A large part of the report consists of factual analysis and summaries by the authors of the report.
The sociology and social psychology of the system of prisoners and prisoner groups, their interactions with each otherDachau Report, pp. 3, 14, 16. the commanding SS, and the so-called prisoner administration or labour administrationDachau Report, p. 3, 11 are detailed through an organizational chart.Dachau Report, p. 44. The report also contains statistical listings of prisoner numbers and the proportion of different nationalitiesDachau Report, pp. 5f., 15, 28, 65. and the crimes charged, as well as figures on deaths in the camp, which rose sharply from autumn 1944 onwards.Dachau Report, pp. 6, 66. Accounts of the social dynamics among the prisoners also make up a large part of the report, such as the interaction between prisoner groups of different nationalities, and how these differences were deliberately instrumentalised by the SS for purposes of control and oppression; for example, German inmates were placed in administrative positions in order to stir anti-German sentiment among non-German inmates.Dachau Report, pp. 3, 9, 11-12.
Another section deals with the pseudoscientific, inhumane human experiments. These included, for example, the deliberate infection of healthy inmates with serious, potentially deadly infectious diseases without subsequent treatment. In other "experiments", prisoners were forcefully immersed in tanks filled with icy water at about for long periods of time until they became unconscious.Dachau Report, pp. 31-33, 61.
Throughout the report there are descriptions of various aspects of the extremely harsh living conditions, both physical and psychological, which were forced upon the inmates and determined their struggle for survival.Dachau Report, p. 3, 7–10, 60. The OSS wrote in section I of the report:Dachau Report, p. 8