Dachau concentration camp on to KZ Dachau. During April 1945 as U.S. troops drove deeper into Bavaria, the commander of KZ Dachau suggested to Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler that the camp be turned over to the Allies. Himmler, in signed correspondence, prohibited such a move, adding that "No prisoners shall be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy alive." On 24 April 1945, just days before the U.S. troops arrived at the camp, the commandant and a strong guard forced between 6,000 and 7,000 surviving inmates — on a death march from Dachau south to Eurasburg, then eastwards towards the Tegernsee.
Dachau concentration camp factories, plus other facilities of around 20 acres. The entrance gate used by prisoners carries the phrase "Arbeit macht frei" (, or "Work makes [one] free"; contextual English translation: "Work shall set you free"). This phrase was also used in Theresienstadt, near Prague, and Auschwitz I. Dachau was the concentration camp that was in operation the longest from March 1933 to April 1945, nearly all twelve years of the Nazi regime. Dachau's close proximity to Munich, where Hitler came to power and where the Nazi Party had its official headquarters, made Dachau a convenient location. From 1933 to 1938, the