Day 104: Dachau, Germany

The site of the former Dachau concentration camp (as opposed to a death camp like Auschwitz) is one of the most disturbing places that I have visited. Not because of the scale of murder here- the Rwandan genocide museum is dedicated to the 8000 people who died every day during that slaughter). What is so disturbing about Dachau is the cold, calculating way that every aspect of the camp was designed to kill, oppress and terrify. Nothing was left to chance, and the Nazi killing machine was constantly refined and enhanced by the methods developed at Dachau.

Dachau was the model used to export mass-murder around Europe during the 2nd world war. It was the proving ground for everything from the training of SS guards, to the use of propaganda, the most effective torture methods and the trial of gas chambers to introduce industrial-scale murder to the death camps.

When you learn about genocides such as those at Cambodia or Rwandan, it easy to pass these off as the deranged actions of uneducated thugs, urged forward by a small, misguided leadership. But here, mass-murder is a science.