Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps: Americans and the Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps

by Robert H. Abzug

Forty years ago Allied soldiers liberated Buchenwald, Dachau, Belsen, and other concentration camps, and came face to face with the human ruins of the Nazi system of slave labor and genocide. What they saw transformed the definition of evil in the Western mind. Inside the Vicious Heart captures the shock of that discovery by telling the story of the camp liberations as experienced by American GIs and other eyewitnesses, including Eisenhower, Patton, Joseph Pulitzer, and Margaret Bourke-White. Through their diaries, letters, and photographs we see how those Americans finally made the world believe what until then had only been rumored.

210 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 8, 1987

Reviews

[Geicodave · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book describes the reactions of American soldiers who first encountered the extensive system of concentration camps created by the Germans. Many first-hand accounts are included and the book is well illustrated. The reaction of the American public and press to the soldiers' reports is also covered. The treatment of the camps' survivors following their liberation is described as well and not always to the credit of those who followed the soldiers into the camps. The attitude of some toward Jewish survivors is particularly disheartening and General Patton comes in for some severe but deserved criticism.