Eighty miles northeast of Frankfurt on the morning of April 12, the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, General Dwight Eisenhower, stepped through the gates of the Ohrdruf death camp, witnessing for the first time the horrors of the Nazi Final Solution. Flanked by Generals George Patton and Omar Bradley, with dozens of military police, army officers, and infantrymen trailing behind, Eisenhower took it all in—the visions and odors of death and torture assaulting his senses.
