Last updated: October 17, 2024
Article
Documenting History: Eisenhower and the Holocaust
Eisenhower Presidential Library
How do we document the past? How do we know what truly happened in history?
The story of Dwight Eisenhower and the documentation of the Holocaust can provide answers for us on the importance of truth in history, and how historical events are documented.
“The things I saw beggar description.... I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, orchestrated the defeat of Germany’s Third Reich during World War II. While his role as a military leader was important, Eisenhower was equally crucial in the documentation of Nazi brutality and the truth of the Holocaust. Eisenhower’s efforts to document the reality of concentration camps was driven by a profound sense of duty, both to history and humanity. Eisenhower knew that history was bound to repeat itself if not properly addressed, and felt it was his responsibility to ensure that the horrors of the Holocaust was witnessed throughout the world.
Following the end of World War I, German military leaders blamed the “disloyal” German citizens for undermining war efforts from the homefront that led to German defeat in the war. Additionally, these citizens were seen as responsible for the economic and political struggles that the country was facing. This claim implied that revolutionary forces had sabotaged the German military and caused its collapse through the notion of the “stab-in-the-back” myth.The German people could not accept that they were defeated on the war front, and this conspiracy allowed for blame to be placed elsewhere. As the Nazi Party rose to power, they began to utilize the “stab-in-the-back” myth to target the Jewish people, socialists, and communists.
Having the Jewish population to blame for the problems that the German people were facing was a critical part of the Nazi Party, and allowed for Antisemitism to persist and become common within Nazi Germany. The Nazis were able to develop their plans for the “Final Solution” to their “Jewish problem” based on the hatred of Jews within their country. The Final Solution was the idea that the Nazi Regime would eliminate European Jews through mass extermination, in what is now known as the Holocaust.
Before the beginning of World War II, the Nazi regime began to institute policies that would persecute and segregate the German Jews from the remainder of civilian society. During this time, the mass killings of the Jews was not yet an idea, and the Nazis believed that they could systematically isolate the Jews, pushing them out of Germany. When that plan failed, the Nazi authorities began to establish Ghettos. Next, the Schutzstaffel and police units began to act as mobile killing units. Through this, they were individually shooting entire Jewish communities in mass executions, as well as introducing mobile gas vans. Committing these acts were perceived as destructive to the mental well-being of German soldiers. Heinrich Himmler, a leading Nazi figure, authorized a new plan to systematically murder the European Jews, through forced labor camps, extermination camps, concentration camps, and transit camps.
With this plan in mind, camps were set up across the Third Reich and its occupied territories. Millions were persecuted, tormented, and killed in these places. While Allied forces worked to erode away German held territories, the Nazis implemented their "final solution".
On April 4, 1945, the United States 602nd Tank Destroyers’ Battalion, the 4th Armored Division, and the 89th Infantry of the Third United States Army liberated Ohrdruf. The Ohrdruf camp was an extension of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and supplied forced labor. On the day of liberation, the SS members of Ohrdruf evacuated many of the prisoners on death marches. As U.S. troops arrived, they found scenes of mass murder, while also coming into contact with the camp’s surviving prisoners. The living prisoners were starving, emaciated, and desperately needed medical attention.
The horror that American troops were faced with was seared into their memories and gave many new reasons to fight. Seeing the crimes against humanity within the Concentration Camps allowed soldiers to see that they were not only fighting the enemy, but fighting for humanity. Upon arrival at Ohrdruf, the American soldiers were faced with piles of naked corpses, dozens of train cars that were filled with decomposing human remains, and “walking skeletons.” In numerous interviews, liberating soldiers described the dead as being “stacked like cordwood,” an impactful metaphor that not only dehumanized the victims but demonstrated how liberators tried to maintain their sanity. Recognizing each of those bodies as fully human would be mentally debilitating for the soldiers, and for some, too much to bear. Surrounding the American soldiers was the horror of mass graves, bodies, and people near death and in need of help. The discovery of the Ohrdruf camp opened the eyes of many US soldiers to the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Liberation did not end at Ohrdruf, and American troops would move on to discover and liberate multiple camps, including Dora-Mittelbau, Dachau, Mauthausen, and Buchenwald.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General George Patton, and General Omar Bradley visited the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 12, 1945. While driving towards the camp, the surrounding atmosphere was overwhelming, with the smell of decaying flesh, and dead bodies littering the streets. Eisenhower had “never been so angry in his life” stating that the “English language didn’t even have words that could describe what he saw.” Eisenhower wrote to Winston Churchill following his time at Ohrdruf, stating that “everything you read in the paper does not adequately describe what has really happened here.” He was profoundly impacted by the horrors that he witnessed and demanded that newspaper editors, representative groups, German civilians, and Allied soldiers bear witness.
Upon Eisenhower's orders, American troops came in and photographed the camp to document its horrors. Additionally, U.S. troops in the surrounding areas were brought to Ohrdruf to bear witness. Eisenhower was forever changed by the horrors that he witnessed at Ohrdruf, so much so that he kept the images that he had taken in the den of his Gettysburg home.
Liberating Ohrdruf and other Concentration Camps was not the stated objective of American military campaigns in Europe. However, Eisenhower saw the importance of chronicling and collecting evidence of the Nazi atrocities. On paper, this was not the job of Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, but he prioritized the documentation of the Holocaust and ensured that it would not be forgotten. His commitment did not end in Ohrdruf, as he continued this necessary work of evidence collection and documentation.
Dwight D. Eisenhower emphasized and understood the importance of bearing witness to the Holocaust. In doing so, he not only called upon the United States troops and media, but also felt it important for Germans to bear witness. He emphasized that ordinary Germans needed to view these camps and see the horrors that they had ignored. Additionally, Nazi party leaders and officeholders were required and forced to visit and view concentration camps, in order to see with their own eyes and be unable to deny the existence of the camps. Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower, has emphasized that there were many people at the end of the war that said they didn’t know, but that Ike had very little patience for that. He believed that if German citizens didn’t know what was taking place, they were closing their eyes to the world they had helped to create.
On April 19, one week after his visit to Ohrdruf, Eisenhower wrote to General George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, insisting that more reporters, dignitaries, and members of Congress bear witness to the same scenes he had experienced. "Conditions of indescribable horror prevail," Eisenhower wrote. "I have visited one of these myself and I assure you that whatever has been printed on them to date has been an understatement." Eisenhower's message to Marshall was powerful, and it spurred action. That same day, Marshall met with Congressional leaders and began organizing trips for leaders of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate to witness these sites of terror.
Departing on April 23, the Congressional delegation spent several weeks in Europe. In their report on the trip, the delegation claimed that the Nazi regime had committed "no less than organized crime against civilization and humanity." The delegation advocated for public release of Concentration Camp images to ensure that the American people, and the world, witnessed what had taken place.
At Eisenhower's insistence, in addition to the Congressional delegation, members of British Parliament toured Concentration Camp sites. So did the American press. Marshall helped organize a trip for eighteen American newspaper editors to see these same sites. By early May, the requests and coordination of other documentation trips became overwhelming.
In June, when Eisenhower returned to the United States following the German surrender, he was asked by reporters about whether publishing stories and photographs of Concentration Camps had been a wise idea. Eisenhower responded, "I think people ought to know about such things."
Jewish communities today are still honoring Eisenhower’s memory and legacy. He is viewed as a prominent figure that made the historic contribution of liberation and documentation. The work that Eisenhower did in order to ensure that there was lasting memory of the Holocaust has been recognized by Jewish communities across the world.