OSS Report on Dachau

Sometime after the liberation of Dachau, the Office of Strategic Services Section (the forerunner of the CIA) of the Seventh Army prepared a detailed report on the concentration camp. Here is an excerpt from the forward to the report written by Col. William Quinn:

DACHAU, 1933 - 1946, will stand for all time as one of history’s most gruesome symbols of inhumanity. There our troops found sights, sounds and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind. DACHAU and death were synonymous.

No words or pictures can carry the full impact of those unbelievable scenes; but this report presents some of the outstanding facts and photographs in order to emphasize the type of crime which elements of the SS committed thousands of times a day, to remind us of the ghastly capabilities of certain classes of men, to strengthen our determination that they and their works shall vanish from. the earth.

Click here to read the entire report. WARNING CONTAINS GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING IMAGES.

Source: World War II Participants and Contemporaries Papers, Hoffman Steve: Dachau, and Porter Harold: Dachau; NAID #12009126 Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library