The major purpose of the earliest concentration camps during the 1930s was to incarcerate and intimidate the leaders of political, social, and cultural movements that the Nazis perceived to be a threat to the survival of the regime. In the concentration camps the prisoners lived in constant fear of the brutal treatment and terror exerted by the SS. <br /><br />One such camp was Dachau. The first prisoner transports arrived in the camp on the 22nd of March 1933. <br />In October the same year, Dachau’s commandant, Theodor Eicke, introduced a system of regulations which inflicted brutal punishments on prisoners for the slightest offenses. Eicke ensured that the Dachau camp served as a model for all later concentration camps. It also became a training center or “a school of violence “for SS guards who were deployed throughout the concentration camp system. <br />During the early years relatively few Jews were interned in Dachau and then only usually because they belonged to one of the above groups or had completed prison sentences after being convicted for violating the 1935 Nuremberg Laws which put Nazi ideas about race into law. <br />The number of Jewish prisoners at Dachau rose with the increased persecution of Jews. <br />The camp was divided into two sections—the camp area and the crematoria area. <br /><br />After the Second World War began on the 1st of September 1939, living conditions for the prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp drastically worsened. The murderous working conditions, the insufficient rations, and a lack of hygiene facilities in the camp led to a soaring death rate. <br /><br />The crematorium area was constructed next to the main camp in 1942. It included the old crematorium and the new crematorium with a gas chamber. Instead, prisoners underwent so called "selection" and those who were judged too sick or weak to continue working were sent to the Hartheim "euthanasia" killing center near Linz in Austria. More than 2,500 Dachau prisoners were murdered in the gas chambers at Hartheim. In addition, mass executions by shooting took place, first in the bunker courtyard and later in a specially designed SS shooting range. Thousands of Dachau prisoners were murdered there, including at least 4,000 Soviet prisoners of war following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. <br />On the 29th of April 1945, the Dachau main camp was liberated by units of the 45th Infantry division. <br />After the US soldiers ordered the SS guards to line up along the wall in the coal yard by the guard tower, Lieutenant Walsh yelled “Let them have it” and the US soldiers opened fire with rifles, pistols, and the 30 Caliber machine gun. After a 30-second flurry of gunfire, the Nazi guards were killed on the spot. <br />Because General Patton, then military governor of Bavaria, dismissed all the charges, nobody has ever stood trial before the court for this reprisal. <br />
