In the final months of the Second World War, the Nazis evacuated concentration camps near the front. More than 700,000 prisoners were forced on death marches, often lasting weeks, as the Red Army advanced.
To this day, little is known about this incredibly bloody chapter in the history of the Third Reich. From summer 1944 to spring 1945, the Nazis forced hundreds of thousands of deportees on death marches through Germany and Austria, often lasting weeks. Many prisoners died of exhaustion or were murdered - either by guards or by civilians they had to march past. The unbelievable brutality of these death marches testifies to the general brutalization that had spread throughout the declining Third Reich.
In essence, the death marches were a continuation of the extermination strategy pursued by the Nazis in the concentration camps. In the face of the Soviet advance, the Germans dismantled the camps and attempted to remove traces of the extermination facilities. Having thus lost the means to execute their planned mass killings, the Germans resorted to other methods. They continued the murders, even as the regime collapsed and the Allies advanced.
The death marches are one of the least known chapters in the history of the Third Reich. That’s because for a long time, information about the identity of the perpetrators - and that of hundreds of thousands of prisoners from concentration camps, prisons and labor camps - was restricted.
Today, many previously unanswered questions can be answered thanks to historical research, as well as the testimonies of Jewish and other survivors that has been gathered over the decades.
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