Hell before Their Very Eyes: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration Camps in Germany, April 1945 by John C. McManus (review)

Military historian John C. McManus's book focuses on American soldiers during World War II, examining accounts of eyewitnesses to the liberation of concentration camps in Germany. He chose this research topic with purpose, noting in the introduction his feelings towards and thoughts about Holocaust deniers and his wish to research and then write a book to serve as a repudiation of their outrageous and unfounded claims. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered his men to take as many pictures and videos as possible of the atrocities that occurred in the concentration camps to preserve the history of this genocide and to ensure that everyone around the world would be made aware of it—McManus sees himself as taking on General Eisenhower's mantle to counter the claims of contemporary Holocaust deniers. He does so in his compelling study, Hell before Their Very Eyes, by exploring the psychological and physical impact that the liberation of concentration camps had on American soldiers during World War II.

McManus looks at three specific concentration camps—Ohrdruf, Buchenwald, and Dachau—all of which are located in Germany, but he does not indicate why he chose these camps specifically. He uses oral testimonies, diaries, and memoirs throughout the study to explain the horror American soldiers experienced when they entered a camp and the trauma they suffered long after they returned home. The liberation of these camps defined the war experience for many American soldiers and, in their own minds, answered the question of why they were fighting the war in Europe.

The book starts out with the liberation of Ohrdruf on April 4, 1945, and continues in chronological order through the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau. Within each section, McManus provides a brief history of the concentration camp, including the prison population, the Nazi infrastructure of the camp, and the eventual liberation by the Allied forces. The next section goes into detail about how the Allied forces actually liberated each specific camp and the ways in which they modified it to care for its prisoners. In Buchenwald, for example, the American soldiers converted the camp to a hospital to treat the survivors who were close to starvation. McManus ends his study with an examination of how the US military dealt with each concentration camp in terms of its physical structure and its legacy during American occupancy and thereafter in the postwar world.

Throughout his text McManus uses imagery to portray the interactions between American soldiers and survivors once the soldiers entered a concentration camp. One particularly vivid account describes how the soldiers tried to help the survivors by offering them food rations and vitamin C packets. Unfortunately, many survivors could not handle so much food in their weakened state and some died shortly thereafter; the military personnel, then, had to figure out how best to treat and feed the survivors to rehabilitate them slowly but steadily. Limiting the rations provided to an already-starved population was not easy for American soldiers. Hell before Their Very Eyes is full of descriptions like this that humanize the experiences of the soldiers and provide compelling, disturbing detail of the inhumanity of the camps.

McManus makes use of multiple primary sources—for example, contemporary journalists' reports, in particular the reporting of Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch—to capture significant events. He discusses these and other sources in greater detail in the epilogue, where he also talks about all of the documentaries and exhibits used throughout the United States to educate the American public about the Holocaust. But the most powerful, compelling, and emotional aspect of McManus's work, which strengthens his research and his arguments tremendously, are the oral testimonies, diaries, and memoirs from the American soldiers that liberated the three concentration camps. These testimonies of soldiers' personal experiences, combined with McManus's traditional historical research, are woven together into a single...