45th Infantry Division Shoulder PatchDachau Liberation 45th Infantry Division Shoulder Patch

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Many family members of 45th Infantry Division Veterans have questions about the Division's liberation of the main Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps.

Here, FYI, are answers to some of the most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

1. My relative said he liberated Dachau. Was he there?

Only a few soldiers are visible in the photos of the liberation Dachau on April 29, 1945.

That suggest no more than a few hundred soldiers of the 45th Infantry Division of the following units were at Dachau on April 29, 1945.

Component units of the 45th Infantry Division that we have identified as taking part in the liberation of Dachau on April 29 and 30, 1945, include:

Task Force Sparks  (First into Dachau):

Elements of "I" and "L" Companies, 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, supported by elements of the 191st Tank Battalion


Later joined by:


C Company


158th Field Artillery Battalion relieved the 3rd Battalion. 


Unknown time and date:


45th's MP Platoon arrived at the boxcars with the dead inmates in the SS training compound.


2. My relative says he was at Dachau but was not in one of the units listed at the main Dachau concentration camp on the days of liberation. Was he at Dachau?

Most likely a large percentage of 45th Infantry Division personnel entered Dachau, at some point:

GI's not in the units present on April 29 and 30, 1945 were able to be at Dachau between May 1 and July 15, 1945:
 
- while on occupation duty.  On April 30, 1945, the 45th Infantry Division stopped at Munich and began occupation duty which included Dachau until July 15, 1945.

- while assisting in the care of liberated inmates.  Members of the 45th organized convoys of the 45th's trucks to return liberated main and subcamp inmates to their homes.

- while on leave touring war sites including the main Dachau concentration camp.
 
3. My relative says he cut the lock (or otherwise opened) the main gate of the Dachau concentration camp.

None of the official reports of the three co-liberating divisions record cutting a lock to open the main gate of the main Dachau concentration camp.

All reports we've seen, thus far, indicate Dachau concentration camp's main gate was opened without force, likely by soldiers of the 42nd Infantry Division, with accompanying war correspondents and in the presence of SS guards, SS officers, and members of the International Red Cross.

Soldiers of the 45th Infantry Division entered the main camp from the adjacent SS training facility and were approaching or had reached the main gate at about the time of its opening.

4. My relative reports that he exchanged fire with one or more guards in a Dachau guard tower.

None of the official reports we've seen, thus far, record firefights between any of the troops and SS guards in the Dachau guard towers.

Such mention could reference the unauthorized killing of SS guards from the guard towers by soldiers of the 45th ID after the SS guards left the guard tower.

5. Were Nazi soldiers encountered by my relatives at Dachau members of the SS?

The three historians of the liberation of Dachau most frequently consulted by our group, Alex Kershaw, Flint Whitlock, and Jurgen Zarusky all state that approximately 400 (source/citation) the Nazi soldiers at the Dachau concentration camp were members of the SS.

They were probably the SS members of the Dachau garrison that had not fled as American troops approached and members of the SS from the adjacent SS training facility.

The members of the International Red Cross identified the Nazi commanders with whom they were in touch just prior to the surrender of Dachau as SS officer.

42nd General Linden identified the Nazis who surrendered Dachau to him as SS officers.

Most of the members of Task Force Sparks report that the Nazis they encountered at Dachau were members of the SS.

Combat soldiers of the 42nd identified the Nazi combatants they engaged around Dachau as SS.

Liberated inmates identified the Nazi soldiers in Dachau as SS.

One member of Task Force Sparks reported that he did not see SS insignia on the uniforms of the Nazi soldiers they encountered.
That is consistent with the liberated inmates reporting members of the SS garrison changing their uniforms for civilian clothes.

Reasons for the absence of SS insignia on the uniforms of the SS soldiers at Dachau:

Combat infantrymen were not primarily responsible for enemy unit identification nor was that a significant part of their training.

The responsibility of
combat infantrymen was to report to the Army units responsible for enemy unit identification information such as the suspected identity of the units they encountered, that they observed the absence of unit identifications of the uniforms of POWs, and that they had caught enemy soldiers who had changed otu of their uniforms into civilian clothes.

Military Police units, among the next to process POWs after infantrymen, would continue to gather enemy unit information from the POWs.

POWs would be interrogated by Interrogation of POW Teams and Military Intelligence Interrogator Teams for unit identification.

Additional information on the identity of the Dachau SS units may be in the reports of the Army units that interrogated the POWs. Those reports may be in the National Archives.

6. Was my relative involved in the killing of SS guards at Dachau?


Very few soldiers were involved in the killing of SS guards at Dachau.

Please read: Jurgen Zarusky  "That is not the American Way of Fighting": The Shooting of Captured SS-Men During the Liberation of Dachau"

This may be the most scholarly, complete, and accurate account of these murders.  

Professor Zarusky identified the units and several individuals in the 157th who took part in the killings.  

Please contact us with questions or for further assistance.


7. What did the 42nd Infantry Division do during the liberation of Dachau?

The 42nd Infantry Division received the surrender of the SS commander of the commander of Dachau.

For more information go to: Questions about the 42nd Infantry Division at Dachau

8. What did the 20th Armored Division do during the liberation of Dachau?

On April 29, 1945, some soldiers of the 20th Armored Division briefly entered Dachau. They participated in liberation by witnessing the boxcars with thousands of dead Buchenwald inmates, the stacks of dead bodies, the crematorium, the gas chamber, the gallows, the bodies of dead SS guards, and the thousands of emaciated inmates. Some shared rations until medics stopped them as the high calories were harmful to the starving inmates. Some took photographs.

Following their brief visits to the concentration camp (generally reported as 2 hours or less), soldiers of the 20th resumed movement toward their assigned objectives in the next day’s Battle of Munich, or toward the Austrian border in pursuit of retreating German forces and a feared National Redoubt in the Alps.


9.
What if my relative’s oral history or letters do not correlate with these FAQs?
 
Oral histories are to be handled with the utmost respect.  

They are a valuable part of your family's history.  

They need to be preserved and shared.  

Historians consider them the raw material of history.


We strongly suggest that where oral histories are not collaborated by official or scholarly histories, you include a statement acknowledging this fact with the oral history.

Our job is to correlate official documents with oral histories, letters, diaries, and other documents recording soldiers' experiences.    

That an individual soldier's documents or anecdotal history do not exactly match official reporting, does not by definition, diminish said individual accounts.


When writing the most complete and accurate history of events, historians draw on such oral and personal histories, official documents prepared at the time, and other documents to, best they can, reconstruct and present the most complete and accurate accounting they can.

The fog of war, external influences, and shifting memories can skew personal perspectives.

Just as individual soldiers and units cannot see and internalize the entire picture of a broad and sweeping military operation and fluid situation across a wide geography, neither can official reporting capture all possible movements, events, and scenarios.  

While we can't put ourselves in the place of our young family members as they stumbled on and witnessed the horrors of Dachau, we can afford these heroes the pride – and, sorrow -- they share through their oral histories and letters.

The most accurate oral histories are those recorded closest to the events.  

For a range of reasons, oral histories may become less accurate the further from the events they are recorded.  

Over the years, veterans may added to their personal histories details they have acquired from other veterans, histories they have read, movies, general knowledge, and popular culture.  


It is the responsibility of all professional, amateur, and family historians, to correlate oral histories with official and scholarly histories.    

This is what our group tries to do.


Sources:

The Rock Of Anzio: From Sicily To Dachau, A History Of The U.S. 45th Infantry Division by Flint Whitlock

Frank Byrchata, son of a veteran of the 158th Field Artillery Battalion.

Jurgen Zarusky  "That is not the American Way of Fighting": The Shooting of Captured SS-Men During the Liberation of Dachau"

U.S. Army Center for Military History documentation designating the 20th Armored Division a co-liberating division of Dachau, pages 15 (Company D) and pages 18, 20 (Assault Gun Platoon).
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Administrators: Leonard H. Cizewski & Judy Erwin Branham

The 45th Infantry Division in World War II: An Unofficial Guide to Resources

Minor Revision or Correction: June 26, 2021
Last Major Update:December 19, 2021
Last Reviewed:
Posted: April 18, 2021



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