A Somber Day in Dachau...Then onto Munich for a Tour of the 3rd Reich...

We left the hotel by 8am (after mopping up a small flood...when I showered, it leaked all over the floor in the bathroom, out into the room, and out the door into the hallway!  They were annoyed when we asked for extra towels to mop it up! UGH!!) so we could make it to the Central Railway Station (park the car, etc.) to meet our tour by 9am.  We met up there and headed on the train to the Dachau Concentration Camp.  (Allison was funny! She asked if we should be worried that we were on a train to Dachau!)  It was the first camp to open and the last one to close, and it served as a model for all the other concentration camps.  It was not a traditional death camp, although murders were committed here and gas chambers were used... just not as many at Dachau.  It was considered a "work camp" or rather, a forced labor camp.  Our guide said to not let that fool us...it was still extremely brutal and awful!  The SS did whatever they wanted to the prisoners and were just as horrible here, as any other camp.  I felt very sad as we  walked around contemplating all that happened in this place.  I especially had a pit in my stomach as we entered the building with the gas chambers and large incinerators!  Such a horrible, awful thing!  The first picture below is one of the buildings where the SS lived.  "Arbeit macht frei", which here in the gate entering Dachau ironically means that work will set you free...definitely not the case for those that passed through this gate as prisoners!  There as a prison within the prison for those caught doing what they weren't supposed to do.  There was one room where the prisoners were made to stand in a very small space for days-- never being allowed to use the restroom.  They suffered from chemical burns on their bodies because of this!  The picture of the sculpture shows prisoners, toward the end of the war, marching toward Dachau, pretty much already dead, but the other concentration camps were closing and the SS were trying to move as many prisoners as possible to Dachau.  Many died before they even made it to Dachau.  The rest of the pictures depict the living spaces of the regular prisoners.  This has been rebuilt as the others were town down after the war.  I can't remember why they said they were torn down.  A large "mote"-- never filled with water, was meant to deter prisoners from fleeing, and if that wasn't enough the electric fence surrounding the perimeter of the camp was.  The guard towers kept a 24 hour watch and anyone that was caught in the green grass area was immediately shot and killed.  (It wasn't grass back then...)  The first picture of the incinerator building as the first one.  It wasn't big enough for all the bodies they needed to burn, so they constructed another larger one.  The picture in between was the gas chamber.  I could hardly stand to be in that room.  Our guide told us that Hitler never visited one of his camps.  I guess you sleep better (?) at night if you don't actually see what you're doing to thousands of innocent people!

 

 

 

 

After the tour of Dachau was over (thank goodness it was!), we went back to the train station and got a quick bite to eat and then did a walking tour of the 3rd Reich historical buildings and history in general of Hitler's plotting and schemes.  It all began here in Munich!  This is where Hitler first started talking to Germans and selling them his LOAD OF CRAP!  It was interesting, but again, very sobering...I just can't wrap my mind around the concept of hatred on this level-- of people he never even met-- to the point that he felt justified in killing them.  These things are still going on today!  The world seriously did not learn a thing from WW11 and Hilter!!  This first picture below is where Hitler first attended political meetings trying to get a foothold in Munich.  The picture below that one is where swastikas were painted by Hitler during the war, but after, were painted over with the Bavarian flag.  The next picture is where Hitler could be found talking in meetings-- our guide said that he never stood on the stage, but on the left-hand side (by those stairs) so as to be on the same level as the people.  Boy, he fooled them!  Imagine all of these other buildings-- important to the 3rd Reich, which giant flags with swastikas hung in the arches.  The last 2 pictures are the offices of the 3rd Reich.  They are exact matches.  The first building was where Hitler's office was located.  All of the building the Nazi's built were extremely ugly-- blocky with no architectural value.  They were built fast and today have problems, because they weren't built very well-- interesting...Hitler thought his regime would last for 1000 years-- you would think more effort would've been put into these buildings!  Weirdo!