Summary

On 29 April 1945, U.S.-American troops liberated the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, Germany. To mark the 70th anniversary of the event, former prisoners and U.S. soldiers speak about their experiences in the German HISTORY production "Die Befreier" (The Liberators – Why We Fought). The original order issued to the units on the ground was to destroy an assumed ammunition and fuel storage site and then move on from there. But what the U.S. soldiers discovered was beyond any imagination – a train full of corpses, and a camp with 32,000 prisoners inside, all of them on the verge of death. In the HISTORY documentary entitled "Die Befreier" (The Liberators – Why we fought), U.S. veterans and former inmates speak about the war-time experiences that changed, and continue to shape, their lives.