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Nazi Atrocities:
The Truman Report 1945

Meggan Reep

History 1700
Professor Henri Miller
September 30, 2014

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There are many ways to fight a war and many auxiliary divisions needed. The United
States Army Signal Corps is one such division. They specialize in communication and
information system that support the command and control of the combined Armed Forces.
The following story is a primary source account from a Sergeant in the United States
Signal Corp, Pictorial Service. This Sergeant was tasked with documenting the happenings and
atrocities that happened in Europe during 1943 1945. For a time he was stationed at the
military art department in London where all the known combat pictures were sent and
catalogued.
Sergeant David W. Meyer was freshly graduated from Jordan High School in Sandy,
Utah and was completing his first semester at Weber College when he was drafted into the
United States Army in 1943. After basic training he was selected to become a Teletype operator
and a repairman because of his technical abilities. I happened to mention I had done some work
for the yearbook, the next thing I know, I was on the Overland Limited to Astoria, Long Island
City, the Signal Corps Photographic Center1.
Meyer explains that he and a few others were bounced around various Army posts while
the Signal Corp figured out the best fit for ten young men fresh from basic who were not infantry
men. They knew signals, and they knew radio, and wireless--but they never had anything
to do with photography before now2. They were sent to an old Paramount Studios filming lot
where they learned to make films, with stage and set work. They learned the basics of
photography including the ability to develop negatives in non-optimal conditions that might
occur in the field.
The team of photographer trainees graduated and Sergeant Meyer was stationed in
London. There he was put to work documenting war torn Europe in 1943. One of his initial
assignments was the collection of photographs and information for General Dwight D.
Eisenhower, Commander Supreme of the Allied Forces. It turned out to be four leather-bound
volumes of one hundred pictures per volume. Rather than try to use a printing press, we just

Meyer, David W. Interview by KEUD television. Interview series Utah World War II, Untold
Stories, aired March 21, 2010. Also located at
www.kued.org/sites/default/files/davidwmeyer.pdf, 2
2
Meyer 2010, 3

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glued a glossy photograph on each page with a caption underneath it3. Sergeant Meyer named it
The Eisenhower Collection.
In 1943 the planned mass genocide of the Jewish people lead by Nazi party leader Adolf
Hitler was in full swing. For reasons still debated, Hitler decided to concentrate, confine, and kill
the Jews. Nazis believed in their ultimate superiority as the Aryan race. Those deemed inferior
had to be eradicated. At the height of this genocide, the Nazis were killing thousands a day in
concentration and death camps. An estimated 5.7 million Jews were killed.4
Following the German surrender in May 1945, as the Allied Forces were securing
German occupied Europe, the horror of Hitlers genocide became evident. Allied troops moved
in so rapidly Nazis were caught while trying to cover up their barbarism. As each Nazi camp
was liberated a story of horror was discovered. Living prisoners were sleeping among the dead.
There were no designated latrines, people would be so weak and sleeping on cots stacked four
levels high they would just relieve themselves not caring who was down below. The disease and
filth was unimaginable! Men reduced to little more than skin stretched over bones. The prisoners
would weep as the Allied Forces came in knowing something good was happening and perhaps
there was hope of escape5.
General Eisenhower, along with Generals Patton and Bradley, personally visited some of
these concentration camps. The horror was indescribable. General Eisenhower gave a charge to
the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Pictorial Center to document everything. Gather eyewitness
testimonies, film and photograph every minute detail and put together a dossier of evidence to
convict the Nazis of horrendous war crimes.
General Eisenhower predicted there would be naysayers. Critics and nonbelievers that
would deny this evil occurred at all. Sergeant Meyer, along with his fellow combat
photographers, was charged with gathering and documenting the atrocities of The Holocaust,
the official name given this planned slaughter of the Jewish people. You right now get all the
pictures you can get. You get all the interviews you can get. You get all the photos you can get.

Meyer 2010,18
Truman, Harry. February 25, 1946. Statement by the President to a delegation from the United
Jewish Appeal, www.trumanlibrary.org/teacher/hcaust/2a.htm.
5
United States Army Signal Corps, Pictorial Center (SCPC). The Truman Report 1945.
4

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The people in this town around here, they should be made to walk through these ovens so they
knew what was going on6.
Sergeant Meyer recounts:
My job was just record it and see it was clear and understandable to those who
might come in later. It was gruesomeI have seen a lot of stuff, you know? And I
have been there and Ive shot it myself. So to me, it was appalling. The first
ones I saw were from Nordhausen. Here are these people laid out on the ground
all twisted and turned and part of them gone. It was a shock, but as a camera-man,
you are photographing these kinds of things all the time. So you are half way
geared for it. Nevertheless, this was something differentit was evidence of the
bestiality of man when turned loose. These poor people, and I look at them, and I
was curious because there were some of the things I saw, I wondered about, why
did they reveal only part of the body? One of the men had Pollock written
across him, and they were stacked in stacks in some places. There were piles of
bone in other places. One of the reasons why some of those pictures, you stacks of
bodies or wagon, and the fact that we were liberating them so face, we actually
caught some of the people still feeding the ovens or doing the dastardly deeds, if
you please, because we were just moving faster than they could get out of there
and close it up. People say it didnt happen, well, it did happen. Some of our
photographers were there to record. But no, they were laid all over the place,
stacked. You have to see them to understand.7

At this same time Vice-President Harry S. Truman took the office of President of the
United States and became Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces after President Franklin D.
Roosevelt had a stroke. President Truman was aware of the books Sergeant Meyer and the Signal
Corp. photographers had created for General Eisenhower. He tasked Sergeant Meyer with
creating another pictorial history of the horrors of war. General Rombow sent an order to me
through the channels that he wanted those hundred pictures put into a volume, into a story, he

6
7

Meyer 2010, 21
Meyer 2010, 31-32

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said, like Ikes8. This 100-page document, Meyer named it The Truman Report 1945, was
later published under the name Nazi Atrocities, and given to President Truman. This document
tells the story of what the Germans did to their prisoners of war, its slave laborers, it religious
and political minorities.9
These photographs were a wealth of evidence to the atrocities Nazi SS soldiers
committed against the human race. Here was the proof of Hitlers planned genocide. This
photographic evidence defies belief. The images that were gathered and catalogued by the SCPC
were used by Thomas Dobbs the prosecutor at the Nuemberg war crime trials.
During his term as President, Truman dealt with the prosecution of German war
criminals, a Jewish refugee crisis in Europe, reparation dilemmas for victims of Nazi war crimes,
and the creation of a separate Jewish state of Israel. The Holocaust would leave lasting
impressions on Trumans foreign policies.
Sergeant Meyer in an interview conducted by KUED television in May 2010 said his
book, the Truman Report 1945, gave the President 100 pictures bound into a volume that he felt
changed the fate of the Jewish nation.
Nobody had ever seen those in that kind of a context where page after page after
page was the [picture and] description[all these pictures] gave him the
ammunition he needed because he did what he could.
To go ahead and get a homeland for the Jews, to settle that problem in Jerusalem,
in that area. So that was the start of it, and the United Nations did go in finally
Now the Jews had a boundary to go into to call home.10

In a public announcement made February 25, 1946 President Truman said:

In the trial of war criminals at Nuremberg the fact has been established that
5,700,000 Jews perished under the murderous reign of Hitlerism. That crime will
be answered in justice. There are left in Europe 1,500,000 million Jews, men,
women, and children who the ordeal has left homeless, hungry, sick, and without
assistance. These, too, are victims of the crime for which retribution will be

Meyer 2010, 21
SCPC 1945
10
Meyer 2010, 23
9

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visited upon the guilty. But neither the dictates of justice nor that love of our
fellowman which we are bidden to practice will be satisfied until the needs of
these sufferers are met.11
Sergeant Meyers claim that the Truman Report 1945 spurred the President into action is
debatable, however, armed with this grisly photographic evidence President Truman set into
motion policies that would give a section of Palestine over to the Jews. Those Jews that survived
the Holocaust were left homeless, landless, and destitute. Thanks to President Truman these
refugees were to be given a modern day nation of their own, a homeland in Israel.

11

Truman, 1946.

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Bibliography
Meyer, David W. Interview by KEUD television. Interview series Utah World War II, Untold
Stories, aired March 21, 2010. Also located at
www.kued.org/sites/default/files/davidwmeyer.pdf.

United States Army Signal Corps, Pictorial Center. The Truman Report 1945. Presented to
President Harry Truman. Published by United States Army Pictorial Service. Reprinted
with permission from the National Archives and Records Administration for the family of
David W. Meyer.

Truman, Harry. February 25, 1946. Statement by the President to a delegation from the United
Jewish Appeal, www.trumanlibrary.org/teacher/hcaust/2a.htm.