Customer Reviews

Dachau Liberated: The Official Report

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I agree with the other reviews that the book isn't the best literary work in the world, but it does offer additional insight into the totalitarian Nazi state. Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp and held all sorts of political prisoners and outcastes prior to the war. Once the war got underway it started to incarcerate POW's. The four most interesting and sad parts to me were:

1. The number of Polish Catholic priests who were tortured by the medical experiments.
2. The medical assessment of the American doctor Charles Larson. I bought a book about him which elaborated about his forensic work at Dachau. This included the fact that most died from typhus and starvation.
3. The greatest number of prisoners were Poles, followed by Russians,French, Yugoslavs,Germans, Jews, and Czechs. The horrors of totalitarianism were not just limited to Jewry, although unfortunately, other groups are scarcely mentioned in school history books and often altogether forgotten. Prisoner Richard Titze's quote sums up the reason for the horrors well; "...[B]ut you see; That is what one must expect under a Fascist state." So sad that the world ignored the Soviet horrors and covered those up. Patton had it right.
4. The camp was self governed by the prisoners and had a hierarchy of control.

This booklet is a reprint of the various short reports that the American Army sent home on Dachau concentration camp when they liberated it in 1945. As a source, it is very interesting; how did the liberators react to the camp they found? What was their impression of the Germans who lived in the town of Dachau?
As can be expected from a report written early after the war, there are many mistakes in the reports. This would not have been a problem if the book had been properly edited. Unfortunately, someone who is not very knowledgeable on the subject edited the book. There are many mistakes in the German quotations. The camp is also wrongly referred to as a death camp. Death camps differed from concentration camps in that people did not work there, but were killed immediately after arrival. These camps only existed in Poland. The Dachau gas chamber is described but it is now widely accepted that this chamber was hardly (possibly never) used to kill people. That the editor fails to point this out is not just negligent, but it also gives ammunition to the so-called revisionists or holocaust deniers who claim that gas chambers were never in use. They often use Dachau as an illustration of the "false" impression that there were gas chambers.
There are other illustrations of the lack of insight of the editor. For instance, the report of the former mistress of Rudolf Hoess camp commandant of Auschwitz. Her name is only given abbreviated, while there are other reports on her, giving her name as Eleonore Hodys, for instance Hermann Langbeins book People in Auschwitz. This book also offers more information on the affair. Without a further introduction, Hodys' testimony makes little sense at it is on Auschwitz concentration camp.
For the professional historian it can be a valuable source of information, but general readers should avoid this book. It is a bad introduction on concentration camps for the non-professional. Many other books offer more accurate information on Dachau and other concentration camps.

In defense of whoever wrote this report in 1945 they probably were not professional writers nor did they expect their report to be offered to the public 50+ years later. For that reason I gave the book two stars instead of one. This is a very dry, unemotional, bland report that is rather disjointed.

Although I did not expect a professional effort I had expected something substantive -- maybe more along the lines of a description of the advance upon the town of Dachau, the capturing of the camp, the surrender of the German guards left behind, the actions taken against the Germans (including summary executions and reprisals by the inmates), and the liberation of the survivors. Instead it is a very dry attempt to explain the camp organization and what occurred there.

The report was written only days after the liberation and contributes nothing to an understanding about the camp, the inmates, the guards, and the activities surrounding the liberation of the camp. Its historical value is only in when it was written and from where. Otherwise there was no value to this book.

Disappointed and just a little bit mad, that sums up my feelings after reading this book. I had high hopes for the book given that I had read a similar book on another camp that was very good. This book, on the other hand just was very lacking in detail and organization. The book is the 7th Army's report on the camp issued shortly after the liberation. The book tried to cover the set up of the camp, what took place in the camp, the make up of the SS staff, and a few personnel accounts of time in camp. The authors just did none of these items very well. The book was poorly organized. The coverage of the camp set up and running of the camp was far too short and really lacked in detail. And the personnel accounts were mainly of people in somewhat privileged support roles quite unlike the average prisoner.

I wish this was the extent of my issues with the book, but on top of all this the writing just was not that good. The writing was rather jumpy and not very challenging. It was like reading a bad high school history report. Overall I would pass on this book. There are far too many quality books covering this topic to spend any time on this one. The only reason I am giving the book a two is I somehow feel guilty about giving a very low rating to book dealing with such a horrible event.

For serious students of the Holocaust, this report of the United States' Seventh Army staff should be required reading. The chilling diary that is paired with the report lends further evidence to the degradation and beasitality of the Nazi regime as played out in suburban Munich.