The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dan Snow's History Hit – The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen
Episode Release Date: April 15, 2025
Host: History Hit (Dan Snow)
Guest: Thomas Harding, Bestselling Author, Journalist, and Documentary Maker

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Introduction

In this poignant episode of Dan Snow's History Hit, historian Dan Snow delves into one of World War II's darkest moments: the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Joined by Thomas Harding, a respected author and documentary maker who has firsthand experience visiting Auschwitz, the conversation navigates the harrowing discovery of the camp, the immediate aftermath, and the enduring questions surrounding the British forces' response.

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Discovery and Initial Shock

[01:32 – 05:25]

Thomas Harding begins by recounting the British troops' arrival at Bergen-Belsen, highlighting the unpreparedness and the horrifying sights they encountered:

"Tens of thousands of prisoners. They were emaciated, they were in desperate need of medical attention. They were at the edge of death. Typhus, dysentery, starvation, snapping at their heels." ([01:32])

The troops were confronted with thousands of corpses, including victims as young as children, with some piles reaching up to five or six feet high. Harding emphasizes the brutality and neglect that defined the camp:

"The British army had just stumbled across the Bergen Belsen concentration camp." ([01:32])

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Conditions at Bergen-Belsen

[05:25 – 14:38]

The discussion shifts to the camp's history and the deplorable conditions that led to the massive death toll post-liberation. Originally established in 1940 for prisoners of war, Bergen-Belsen became a hub for persecuted Jews by 1943. The influx of survivors from other camps, exacerbated by the harsh winter of 1944-1945, expanded the population to an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 inmates.

Harding highlights the systemic neglect and resource shortages:

"Overcrowded. There's raw sewage running through the camp. It was impossible to keep them there." ([07:15])

He also touches upon Rudolf Höss’s (commandant of Auschwitz) observations in 1944, underscoring the camp's deteriorating infrastructure:

"Sanitation was far worse than in Auschwitz. I must describe the conditions here as terrible." ([18:04])

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Liberation and Aftermath

[14:38 – 21:22]

Upon liberation on April 15, 1945, the British forces were overwhelmed by the sheer scale of human suffering. Harding shares personal family accounts, including that of his great uncle, a war crimes investigator who witnessed the immediate aftermath:

"The typhus was so bad that they actually moved everyone out the camp... they burned all the barracks because the disease was just endemic." ([20:08])

The British struggled to provide adequate medical care and nourishment, inadvertently contributing to the deaths of approximately 14,000 inmates post-liberation. Harding discusses the complexities and challenges faced by the liberators:

"The British tried their best, but they just weren't prepared properly and they didn't have the resources, they didn't have the specialism, the expertise." ([27:17])

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War Crimes Trials

[21:22 – 25:58]

The episode details the subsequent war crimes trials held in Lüneburg, where 45 individuals, including camp commandant Josef Kramer, were prosecuted. Harding explains the trial's proceedings and outcomes:

"On the 17th of November, they were found guilty. On the 13th of December, they were hanged, including Josef Kramer." ([24:39])

Kramer’s defense, focusing on following orders and blaming superior officers, is scrutinized:

"He blamed other people... he never took responsibility for the shocking conditions in Belsen." ([26:00])

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Historical Perspectives and Controversies

[25:58 – 30:34]

Harding and Snow explore the polarized historical views regarding the British response to Bergen-Belsen. While some commend the British for their efforts to bring perpetrators to justice, others criticize the lack of preparedness and inadequate medical response that led to further deaths.

Harding reflects on broader implications and lingering questions:

"Why did so many people die after liberation? Why was there not more medical support?" ([07:00])

He acknowledges the complexity of the situation, considering factors like anti-Semitism, war fatigue, and prioritization of ongoing military efforts.

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Conclusion

[30:34 – End]

As the episode wraps up, Harding summarizes the enduring impact of Bergen-Belsen's liberation on collective memory and historical consciousness. The stark images and testimonies from the camp served as a catalyst for global recognition of the Holocaust's atrocities.

"The images from Belsen particularly were a total shock to people. They were a wake-up call that this was the moment." ([11:53])

Dan Snow and Thomas Harding underscore the importance of remembering and learning from these events to honor the victims and prevent future atrocities.

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Notable Quotes

• "Tens of thousands of prisoners... Typhus, dysentery, starvation, snapping at their heels." – Thomas Harding ([01:32])

• "Sanitation was far worse than in Auschwitz. I must describe the conditions here as terrible." – Rudolf Höss ([18:04])

• "Sometimes you have to be careful about what food and how much you give them and when you give it." – Thomas Harding ([27:17])

• "The images from Belsen were a total shock to people. They transformed the public consciousness of a generation." – Thomas Harding ([11:53])

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Dan Snow's History Hit provides a comprehensive and emotionally charged exploration of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Through detailed accounts and expert analysis, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the catastrophic conditions within the camp, the immediate challenges faced by liberating forces, and the complex legacy of justice and remembrance that followed.

For those seeking to comprehend how such a profound human tragedy unfolded and its lasting implications, this episode serves as a crucial educational resource.

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Listen to The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen on History Hit for a deeper dive into this pivotal moment in history.

Transcript

[Holly Fry]

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[Dan]

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[Thomas Harding]

The British troops who arrived at the gate of the camp were totally unprepared for what they found. Tens of thousands of prisoners. They were emaciated, they were in desperate need of medical attention. They were at the edge of death. Typhus, dysentery, starvation, snapping at their heels. The barely living moved around among the corpses that lay on the ground. Something like 13,000 unburied corpses, one member of the British forces recalled. The bodies were a ghastly sight. Some were green, they like skeletons covered with skin. The flesh had all gone. There were bodies of small children among the grown ups in parts of the camp there were hundreds of bodies lying around in many cases piled five or six feet high. A medic present wrote that outside the huts were piles and piles of dead bodies and living ones. They didn't know which were which. The dead and the living were all together. The British army had just stumbled across the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. This is the next in our series of D Day to Berlin and it marks the 80th anniversary of that liberation on the 15th of April, 1945, I'm glad to say I'm joined again by Thomas Harding. He's a bestselling author, journalist and documentary maker. He came with me to Auschwitz earlier this year. And if you want to hear that episode and how the Nazi concentration camp system worked and indeed the death camp system, you can go back and listen to that episode, a history of Auschwitz from the late February of this year. But in the meantime, folks, we're going to talk all about Belsen and its liberation.

[Narrator]

T minus 10 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima.

[Holly Fry]

God save the King.

[Dan]

No black, white, unity till there is.

[Unnamed Speaker]

First some black unit never to go to war with one another again.

[Dan]

And liftoff.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

[Thomas Harding]

Thomas, good to see you again, buddy.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Great to see you as well, Dan. How are you doing so well?

[Thomas Harding]

I'm doing very well. Take me back, take me back. 80 years ago. It's spring now, what, late March, early April. I mean, what is the situation in Germany?

[Unnamed Speaker]

We're talking spring 1945. We're very close to the end of the war. Everyone pretty much knows it's over in Europe and the American and British and other Allied forces are moving east towards Berlin and they've arrived in Germany. They're in Germany and they just begin to come across some appalling atrocities as they make their way through the western part of Germany. And on the 15th of April, they come across what is for many the most appalling moment day of their lives when they arrive at this camp, which they really didn't know about.

[Thomas Harding]

So that's interesting. So they're just another unit pushing through, liberating Germany and suddenly thought they just.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Arrive at a place, we're talking about the Belsen camp in western Germany. And three days earlier there'd been a capitulation between the commandant who was running the camp and some British forces. There is some discussion about who was the first people to arrive in the camp. We can talk about that. Maybe a little bit of controversy there, but it wasn't until the 15th. It took three days. I'm not sure why it took three days, but it took three days for the first British soldiers to arrive at Belsen. And we should also talk about the name Belsen. Is it Belsen? Is it Bergen Belsen? That's also a different conversation.

[Thomas Harding]

But as part of this conversation, the British been made aware, had they, that there was something wrong in the camp.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So I don't think so. So again, a lot of people claim to be the first people into Belsen. I'm going to call it Belsen, if you don't mind. Some people call it Bergen Belsen. And there is some debate about how much the British knew. All the British accounts say they were shocked by what they discovered. I mean, all of them. There is some debate, though, especially amongst Jewish authors, historians of the Holocaust, that maybe the British knew more than they let on. And the reason why that is is because there is a story that came out, I'm going to say, about 10 years ago, and gradually more and more details have been revealed to the public that the first person to arrive was actually a member of the sas. And this person's job was to go and recover one of his comrades. His name was Jenkinson. This is the soldier who was actually in, supposedly in Belsen. So there have been a couple of newspaper articles, one in the Daily Mail, another one in the Express, which have kind of dwelled on this fact that the first people into the camp were sas, which makes you ask. The question is, how did they know? How did they know that there was a British prisoner of war there? How did they know to go in? Now, did they know about the conditions? I don't think so. And all the testimony, all the memoirs, all the interviews, indicate that none of the British soldiers, whether they were born in Britain or otherwise, had any expectation of the horrors that awaited them.

[Thomas Harding]

So it's on the 15th of April, 1945, that the main body of the Brits arrive at the camp. What was happening there at that time that was so particularly disturbing?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, I think we should probably talk about what their experience was and we have a lot of firsthand testimony of what it was like to arrive at the camp. These were typically young men, mostly men. There were some nurses who were there as well. There were some journalists, female journalists and others who arrived. They arrived at the camp. And from their testimony it appears that there was no real signage. There was no kind of gate like in Auschwitz or in Dachau or in some of these other. It was basically in the middle of the woods just outside of Cela, and you kind of went down this track and then you turned left and you went through the woods. And you had to kind of know where you were going to find this place. And then there was a security gate. There are some accounts of a metal gate. I don't know if that's true. I think there might be some confusion because there were actually two camps. There was the camp where the Jewish prisoners were held, and then nearby there was an old Panzer camp, a tank camp, which was Also being used for overflow. So I think there's some people described there being a metal gate. I wonder if that's what they're talking about. But in this main camp, there was just a security gate and then barbed wire fence, and the gates are open. They've already made this agreement to hand over the camp. The SS officers have to hand over to the British. They're waiting for the British. They arrive. And I was just reading about it this morning just to remind myself of some of the details. It is just so upsetting, even just 80 years later, reading about this stuff. I can't imagine what it was like being a young person arriving, because typically they were young arriving at the camp. Their first impressions would have been thousands. I'm not exaggerating. Thousands of corpses on the ground. I mean, just saying it is just appalling, isn't it? There would have been a few prisoners looking at them, dressed up in whatever clothes they could manage to keep. Some of it would be black and white striped pyjamas. But often it wouldn't be because by the time the British arrived, these people were in terrible, terrible condition. And so having clothes that resembled clothes would have been an achievement. There were some barracks. There would have been people watching from barracks. Barracks. And then further into the camp, as they pushed into the camp, there would have been these mass graves. I mean, it would have been appalling. The experience would have been. And they say, by all accounts, by all the testimony, they say was as overwhelming and deeply, deeply disturbing for the people who just arrived. Unimaginable.

[Thomas Harding]

It's unimaginable. And what was so distressing for the liberators, apart from anything else, is that they couldn't really halt this ongoing catastrophe as quickly as they would have wanted.

[Unnamed Speaker]

This is a controversy. And maybe now, 80 years later, we might be brave enough to talk about some of these things. So as you would begin to say, 14,000 people died, prisoners died, Jewish people died. After the British liberated the camp. That's an enormous number, 14,000 people. The estimates of how many people were in the camp, in the two camps, maybe between 50 and 60,000. The numbers vary. Maybe 15,000, what I was calling the Panzer camp. And maybe 45,000, if, you know, the split between the two and 14,000 people died, that's a large number of people to die. And what really has never been answered is why. I mean, why did so many people die? I mean, yeah, of course, they were in terrible condition. Typhus was endemic, starvation, dehydration. There was almost no water Medicines. Most of these people had been in other concentration camps and had horrendous experiences. They just endured a terrible winter. Some of the prisoners had somehow survived places like Auschwitz, come to Belsen and not been able to survive. It was an appalling hellhole of a place. But why did so many people die after the British arrived? Why was there not more medical support? Why did the British not know more about how to feed these people? Because lots of mistakes were made. Lots of mistakes were made and inevitably we can celebrate the fact, and we should celebrate the fact the British are liberated. Of course, it's an extraordinary achievement. What do you think? Do you think it's not appropriate to even ask those questions? To say, why did so many people die?

[Thomas Harding]

No, of course, of course we'll ask questions. Absolutely. And everyone who was there that I've ever talked to or interviewed has asked those questions as well. And tragically, many of them have blamed themselves. So the liberation of Belsun, unlike Auschwitz, doesn't feel like a celebration in our national story.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I mean, I think what's so remarkable about Belsen, unlike Auschwitz. So Auschwitz, which was liberated three months earlier, right? 27th of January, almost three months earlier, there was almost no news coverage. I mean, I was thinking about this today. Why do people not know about Auschwitz in London, Scotland, around the States, all around the world until much later? It appears that the Russians just didn't want to let people know. And there was barely no news coverage of the liberation of Auschwitz and the conditions within. And it was only actually just before VE Day, 8th of May, I think the day before that, the first kind of news reports came out and they got buried in the Armistice in the end of the war. So it was really later that the horrors of Auschwitz weren't really known. And so Belsen is, particularly for the British Commonwealth, was the wake up call that this was the moment. And I spoke to this man who I used to work with, he was a. He was a very well known screenwriter. His name was Ronnie Harwood. He wrote screenplays like the Pianist, if you remember that movie. And he says he remembers growing up in South Africa, being at the movies. And they'd have these newsreels before the main movie, these black and white newsreels. And he remembers being a very young boy watching the newsreels of the British, I think pathetic news, filming the conditions of the camp, the clearing up of the camp, these images of the bulldozers pushing the corpses into the mass graves. And these are awful pictures. And he remembers that transforming his life. He remembers that as a key moment in his life. And I think that was true for so many people. The images which came out of Belsen particularly were a total shock to people. There had been rumors in the newspapers about gassings and about people's bodies being turned into soap and so on, but there was never a real sense of truth. Belsen, this is the moment. The pictures from Belsen is what really transformed the public consciousness of a generation, because it was so appalling.

[Thomas Harding]

Let's go back to the start of the Belsen story. It was established in 1940, so not one of the earliest concentration camps. What was its job originally?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Originally, it was for prisoners of war, Belgium and French prisoners of war. So in 1941, it became a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, and it was called Star League. 311, 20,000 men. And that's really how it remained until about 1943, when it kind of evolved, it morphed, and it became a number of things. Its history is complicated. Like so many of these camps, it's very hard to say this happened, this happened, it morphed.

[Thomas Harding]

But just to interrupt, those Soviet prisoners of war, I mean, they were starved to death, effectively. I mean, there would have been vast, vast numbers that died there.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, absolutely. The conditions were absolutely appalling and were a forerunner of what was to come. There was almost no food, water was hard to find. Disease was rampant. And the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war is a scandal even to this day. And it really falls hard on the German guilt. One of the things that is very important in terms of the Germans response, even today with Putin and Russia, is their sense of responsibility for the atrocities they committed towards the Russian soldiers in the Second World War. And this is a prime example. And then in 1943, the camp was transformed into its next iteration, which was an exchange camp, a place where the Nazis were siphoning off Jews who they thought they could either swap for Germans who were being held in other countries, or they could sell for ransom, effectively. And there were Jews from the Netherlands, Jews from Hungary, other places around Europe. By 1944, about 15,000 were there. The conditions were bad. They were really bad. Nowhere near what would happen later on. And some of those Jews were swapped, they were exchanged, and many of them ended up in Palestine.

[Thomas Harding]

You listen to Dan to know history. We're talking about the liberation of Belsen. More coming up.

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[Dan]

Excludes restaurants Our Skin Tells a Story Join me, Holly Fry and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin, you'll find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on our skin. Listen to our skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Thomas Harding]

And would they have been treated reasonably well because the Nazis wanted to use them as bargaining chips?

[Unnamed Speaker]

So again, it's complicated. My understanding is there was multiple different camps. So for example, there was what they called a star camp where they had the kind of the most valuable, what they classed as the most valuable people, and they had these other camps which were deemed for the less valuable people. So I think it depended on where you were. I think if you're in the star camp, I think you're allowed to dress in your own clothes. You probably got better food and water. I think in the other camps your conditions were pretty appalling. The mortality rates were high. There was a low chance that you were going to survive. Now these weren't camps that there were gassings. This is not a place like Sobibor or Treblinka or Auschwitz. We're talking about neglect, intentional neglect. Where there's no water, there's no food, there's no medicine or very limited. And people are living in incredibly difficult conditions. Overcrowded. There's raw sewage running through the camp. I mean it's really appalling. And that takes you really through to the back end of 1944. There was a visitor who came. I thought I might read you something. I thought we'd have a witness. This is the commandant of Auschwitz who came to visit in 1944 and his name was Rudolf Huss. And by that stage he'd been reassigned to work in the inspectorate for concentration camps. And he came to see the place in 1944 and this is what he said and this is the man who ran Auschwitz, right? So he's got some perspective. The camp was in a wretched state. The huts for the inmates, the buildings for the staff and even the barracks for the guards were badly dilapidated. Sanitation was far worse than in Auschwitz for far worse than in Auschwitz. In spite of all that I had become accustomed to in Auschwitz and by that stage he had murdered over a million people. In spite of all that had become accustomed to in Auschwitz. Even I must describe the conditions here as terrible. That was the autumn of 1944 and things were only going to get worse.

[Thomas Harding]

Why were things getting worse? Were people arriving from camps that had been overrun by the Red army in the East?

[Unnamed Speaker]

That's exactly what it was. That's exactly what it was. So you had camps were being liberated by the Russians, I mean most famously Auschwitz, but other camps as well. And the prisoners, the people who had somehow survived those horrific years in Auschwitz, somehow they were now force marched through the brutal winter 1944 into 45 frozen conditions, sometimes put onto trains and many of them were taken to Belsen. So what had been the camp is designed for 7,000 people. What then became 15,000 people grew and grew and grew so that by the spring of 1945 there was 50 to 60,000 people. Among those were Anne Frank and her sister Margot who had been part of that death march and transportation from Auschwitz to Belsen. And so you can only imagine Rudolf Host described the conditions in the autumn of 44. Now imagine twice, three times, four times as many people and we're in the.

[Thomas Harding]

Spring of 1945 and then Germany is essentially defeated. And you can imagine, I mean the logistics, I mean who's sending any food shipments at all down there? I mean it would have been just hell.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, my great uncle arrived in early May. So I think what was that two weeks, three weeks after liberation? Within our family we've got this firsthand account. He was a war crimes investigator for the British army, and he was sent there to help with translations because he was born in Germany, he was a German Jew, and he was going to help with the investigations and the interrogations of the SS officers who had been put into custody in Belsen. Many of them had come from Auschwitz. And he describes what it was like in those first few days. And under Resourced is one thing. Horrifically, under Resourced, he actually had to help with the clearing up of the camp. He was there during the mass grave ceremonies. And then it was so bad, the typhus was so bad that they actually moved everyone out the camp and they moved them to what I was talking about before, about the Panzer camp. And then they torch. I don't know if you've seen them, these images of them having these flamethrowers and just burning everything. They burned all the barracks, they burned everything because the disease was just endemic. It was just impossible to keep them there.

[Thomas Harding]

How did your great uncle and his colleagues go about sort of trying to establish who was to blame for this and bring people to justice?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, you know, at first it was a bit chaotic. You know, there'd never been a war crimes trial in this kind of wartime situation. And the British and the Americans and the French and the Russians wanted to have justice, and they were working towards this major war crimes trial in Nuremberg, which would start later in the year. But the British wanted to have their own war trial for the people they captured in Belsen. And they focused on 45 people, including Josef Kramer. So actually, the trial was called Joseph Kramer and 44 people, including about half women, half men, because they had the female officers who were running the women's camp. And so the task for my great uncle and his colleagues from the Number one war crimes investigation team was to collect the testimony that was the first job from the SS officers. So you can imagine he's 26 years old, he's born and Berlin. He fled the Nazis, he's Jewish, he joined the British army. And now here he is listening firsthand to the people who were in Auschwitz. And we're talking about Josef Kramer, Irma Graser, who ran the women's camp in Auschwitz. You're talking about Elizabeth Wolkenroth. You're talking about Dr. Klein, who was the doctor. And they talked about the transports arriving in Auschwitz. They talked about the selections between the men and the women. And then who's going to go into the gas chamber? Who's not going to go in the gas chamber? They Talk about the gas chambers, the crematorium. I mean, can you imagine? He's hearing all this firsthand from the perpetrators who were there, who were right at the center of this, maybe the worst atrocity of human history, and he was hearing it from them. The Imperial War Museum actually has these testimonies, and you can see my great uncle's name at the bottom of it because, you know, he had to countersign because he was the interpreter. And when I first read these, Daniel, I started crying because I just couldn't imagine what it was like for him to hear this firsthand. I mean, he had this dual role. He was both this British soldier hearing it, and he had a job to do. But he's also a German Jew. These were his people.

[Thomas Harding]

Did anyone stand trial for the crimes of Belsen?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. So 45 people stood trial. Joseph Kramer and 44 others. Joseph Kramer was the commandant. The trial started on the 17th of September, 1945, and it was in Lunberg Court, which is nearby, and it was run by the British. Unlike Nuremberg, where they had multiple different countries involved, this was just a British show. And it was quite quick. They did have testimony from some of the victims and they also had film footage. They showed some film footage, I think, from Auschwitz, to show where people have come from, as well as footage from what had been witnessed of the corpses being cleared up in Belsen. And the prosecutor was pretty efficient with that many people. They had numbers around their necks. The different defendants, they sat in a dock. It was covered by the newsreel. So there's video footage of the trial. It wasn't covered nearly as extensively as the Nuremberg trial, but there is footage. And then on the 17th of November, they were found guilty. And then on the 13th of December, they were hungry. So of the 45, 15 were found not guilty, 19 were given in prison sentences, and 11 were hanged, including Josef Kramer, the commandant of Belsen.

[Thomas Harding]

What defense had he used?

[Unnamed Speaker]

He said, you know, I was following orders. I mean, at first, when my great uncle interviewed him, he denied what happened in Auschwitz because he was the head of the Birkenau camp, the really large Birkenau camp where the mass killing happened. Some people call it Auschwitz ii, as opposed to the kind of the old part of Auschwitz, Auschwitz I. He was in charge of Auschwitz ii, Birkenau. He denied knowing about the crematoria. And then when it came to Belsen, he said, look, it was the end of the war. We couldn't get resources, we couldn't get food, we couldn't get Medicine? I asked, he said, I asked Berlin. I kept pleading them for help and they wouldn't give it. So he blamed other people. He blamed the British and the Americans for bombing. He blamed the bureaucrats for not sending their supplies. He never took responsibility for the shocking conditions in Belsen. And by the way, they were all very well fed, thank you very much. There was plenty of food for the German soldiers, the SS officers. They weren't skeletally thin like the prisoners they were looking after on this anniversary.

[Thomas Harding]

Let me throw about the question that you just brought up at the start. What is the latest thinking on the British response to Belsen? Were they almost overwhelmed by the scale of what lay before them?

[Unnamed Speaker]

I think there's divided opinion on this. On the one hand, historians praise the British for their compassion for their success with dealing with the SS officers and bring them to justice for the way that they got a grip with an overwhelming situation, creating this new camp, a displaced person's camp. So that's kind of on the one side. On the other side, there are definitely families of survivors. There are historians who say the British really were ill prepared. There was plenty of research, academic papers, policy papers, on how to deal with a humanitarian crisis like this. There were other instances of mass famine which the British had to deal with in the Empire. And there just weren't enough doctors, there weren't enough medical orderlies. The food wasn't appropriate. I mean, even my great uncle said that he felt terrible because he was giving people food who couldn't handle it. They were giving them the wrong food. It was too rich, it was too much. That's one thing he felt really guilty about, actually. Look, it wasn't his job. But you know what it is? You see somebody who's starving, they're desperate for food, then you give them food. Sometimes that's not the best thing to give them, to give them any food. You have to be careful about what food and how much you give it to them and when you give it. And now, of course, we know much more about that. We've had decades now dealing with famines around the world and starvations and dealing with camps of one sort or another. So there are questions. Was it a cock up? Because clearly the death of 14,000 people after liberation is a large number. Was this a cock up? Was it just inexperience or was it. And this way it gets much more tricky. Lack of priorities. Was it that the policymakers, the decision makers, not the people on the ground, the decision makers didn't really care that much? I mean, It's a horrible thing to say, but there's a question. There was their priority on finishing the war. Don't forget, the war was still in its last few days. Was that what it was? Berlin wasn't going to be occupied for another couple of weeks, so the war was still being fought. Is this what went wrong? Was it a lack of priority? It's very hard to know. We do have some accounts where former soldiers, again, I hate to even mention these things, but there are some soldiers who are like, they didn't want to be there. It was appalling. They felt it was work that was uncomfortable dealing with these very malnourished, very traumatized people. And their view, their job was to fight a war. So there was a bit of that. I think maybe there was some anti Semitism because these prisoners were Jewish. Almost all of them were Jewish. Maybe there was some of that. Having said that, if you're asking me what do I think the consensus is, I would say most historians would say, look, the British tried, they tried their best, but they just weren't prepared properly and they didn't have the resources, they didn't have the specialism, the expertise. And their approach was wrong. It took them a while. Look, after a few weeks, they sorted it out. They brought in a whole bunch of nurses and medical students from London and elsewhere, and they started bringing in the skills that they needed. After about three or four weeks, the mortality rates really, really came down. So that I would say by the end of May, it was much more stable.

[Thomas Harding]

Well, thanks, Thomas. Thanks for coming on. Talking about this anniversary this next in our D Day to Berlin series. I'm sorry, only get you on for the catastrophically depressing episodes. But thank you very much indeed for coming on.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Thanks, Dan.

[Dan]

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