Visiting Dachau

Getting from the Hbf to Dachau Memorial is incredibly easy to do on your own.

The S-Bahn station is under the street on the north side of the Hauptbahnhof. Get to it from stairs next to track (Gleis) 26 in the main shed. Take the S2 S-Bahn (direction Petershausen) 21 minutes to Dachau Bahnhof. Get off at Dachau Bahnhof and walk down to the front of the station where the bus stops are. The bus to the KZ Dachau Memorial is #726; it's clearly marked for the Memorial. Take the bus 7 minutes to the Memorial.

If you buy an M-1 day ticket (Tageskarte), for 17€, it will include both of you for both the S-Bahn and bus, round trip.

Admission to the Memorial is free. 2½ hr guided tours led by guides trained by the Memorial are 4,00€/P. Here is the Memorial website.

If you want a guided tour - we loved bighattours.com- check out his website - you’ll learn so much more- plus, he’ll take you there

In Nuremberg- we love Nuremberg Tours in English- so many great options too. His website is also easy to navigate- has a great WW2 and history tour

While you are in Munich , do not miss the NS Dokumentation Center , and allow adequate time for the myriad displays - https://www.ns-dokuzentrum-muenchen.de/en/documentation-center/about-us/ In Nürnberg , The Palace of Justice , the site of the trials ( Prozesse ) is also worth a fair amount of time , Saturday is a good time to visit as the courtroom is used for official business at times during the week , as I understand

Nuremberg Trial Courtroom website if you don't already have it,

https://museums.nuernberg.de/memorium-nuremberg-trials/

Check out https://www.tracesofevil.com . The owner is a British history teacher who lives in Munich. There might be some interesting tips.

As to your original question, it looks like someone already covered it. Train to Dachau (regional train or S-Bahn) to the bus.

hmmm I had mixed feelings at Dachau.

(and this is entirely my opinion)
But I felt it was overrun with school children who were forced to go there (so it seemed disrespectful).
I also think they did a poor job of communicating what happened there and glossed bits of it over. I've seen better museums in Los Angeles that told more in detail. Is it sad? Of course. I expected more artifacts from the time ( there were very few) - they did have the ovens open to view, and the gas chambers....but.. given our current technology they could make this place really impactful - which is what is needed. I did miss the movie, so maybe that would make it better? Most of the museum is a large barrack that you can walk through that discusses how the prisoners were kept, the history and whatnot of the site, etc...stuff that I think most of us would probably know at least if you have interest in the topic.

That all being said, get there when they open and maybe get a private tour guide. I think that would make the visit more interesting than reading gobs and gobs of posters.

Dachau is worth a visit, however, it is nothing like Auschwitz (which was an extermination camp).

I need to add this to the easy instructions for getting to Dachau Bahnhof.

It used to be that the train tracks branched at Dachau Bahnhof with one line, S2, going to Petershausen. The other line, I think it was called 'A', started at Dachau Bahnhof and went to Altomünster. I see that A has now been incorporated into the S2 line. S2 splits at Dachau Bahnhof, with different S2s going to Altomünster and Petershausen. Both lines originate somewhere east of town (Erding) and go through the underground S-Bahn station at the Hbf.

So, if you are waiting for the S-Bahn in at the Munich Hbf, you can take any S2 to either Altomünster or Petershausen, as the both go to Dachau Bhf before splitting.

As our guide explained, all the students are required to take a tour like this once when they're in school. Because of COVID, there were no such tours the last two years, so this summer all of the sites you are interested in will have a lot more school children than usual.