No Less Than Victory (World War II: 1939-1945, #3)

by Jeff Shaara

Ohrdruf had not been the first concentration camp the Allied troops had discovered. That was in Alsace, the camp at Natzweiler, which had been liberated five months prior. But those gates had been opened as well, the Germans relocating their prisoners before the Allied troops could actually witness what the prisoners had become, how they had been treated by their German captors. That discovery was made first at Ohrdruf. Though many of the GIs who wandered through the camp were helpless to give the kind of aid the survivors required, they provided a different kind of assistance that few of them could yet understand. They became witnesses.

Patton had ordered every soldier in the general vicinity to march through the camp, unit after unit, had insisted that every commander and every subordinate be made aware what had been found, what kind of enemy they were fighting. As he moved farther inside the wire, past the first rows of buildings, Eisenhower saw dozens of men, some older officers, MPs and medics, office aides and rifle-toting GIs. He was recognized again, but again, there were no cheers. He could feel it immediately, an odd sense that this place required silence. The survivors of the camp were mostly gone, moved to hospitals or other makeshift facilities, vastly overworked doctors and medics trying to find the most humane way to restore the health of the most brutalized prisoners. But in every barracks, and across the open ground, the dead still lay, the victims of the last massacre still spread out close to the wire. He saw the open doors of the one barracks he had heard about, where the stacks of corpses had been coated with lime. He moved that way, fought through the obscene odors, stared at the sickening sight, then forced himself to keep going. No matter the sickness or the nightmarish sights, Eisenhower had already told himself he would make absolutely certain he saw it all.