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A necessary step in both Hitler's consoidation of his hold on the German people and eventually and the Holocaust was the creation of concentration camps. Concentration camps were an integral part of the NAZI regime. The first camp, Dachau, near Munich was established within days of Hitler's appointments as Chancellor. Hitler had secured only a few ministerial post for his NAZI associates, but they included the Ministry of Interior giving him control over the police. The NAZIs began arresting Communists and other opponents and there just was not room for them in German jails and prisons. In addition, prisons when the NAZIs first seized power were much too open an enviroment for what Hitler and his close associates wanted to do. Dachau was only the first camp, but it became the blue print for subsequent camps of an enormous system that would eventually extend over much of Europe. Dachau was run by both the SA and SS, but the SS soon took over control of the camps. The camps at first were an instrument of political repression. Germany in 1933 had a wide range of political parties and a free and very vocal press. Within weeks the NAZIs effectively silenced both the political opposition and free press. Recalcitant critics were arrested and interned in the camps where there was no limits on what the SA and SS could do to the prisoners. The camps were also a conventient place to dispose of political enemies without fear of embarassing questions being asked. As the NAZI concentration camp system developed it came to serve other purposes as well. There were work camps which made valuable contributions to the war effort. The slave labor in these camps made everything from uniforms and pots and panrs to V-2 balistic missles--one of the most complex weapons system of the War. Other camps once the War began were constructed as death camps, opened almost entirely in occupied Poland.. The death camps were intended primarily for the Jews, but many other people besides Jews were killed there. It is likely that these camps would have been used for killing Slavs and others who the NAZIs considered undesirable, but when the War turned against the NAZIs, the retreating NAZIs tried to disdmantle the camps and destroy evidence of the killing. Some of the larger camps like Auschwitz had units with different purposes, both labor camps and death camps. There were also POW camps, but many of these camps were tin by the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe rather than the SS. There were even camps for Germans. Hitler ordered the Baltic Germans "Home to the Reich" in 1939. The NAZIs intended to use these ethnic Germans to colonize areas of Poland from which the Poles were being expelled. Many of the Baltic Germans spent long periods in rough camps with inadequate food and medical supplies. [Overy, p. 595.]
Heinrich Himmler referred to derisively by the British as a chicken farmer wasin fact an organization genius. The SS created by him began as Hitler's personal body guard and developed into the most sinister pseudo-military criminal gang in European history. Himmler helped Hitler establish total dominance in the "Night of the Long Knives" (1934). The supression of the political oppoition was made possible by extra-legal killing and brutalities in he concenbtations run by Himmler's SS. There were many in Germany that objected to the excessesses of the SA ad SS against the Jews. Those that spoke outto loudly might be killed. Others have over a brief incarceration in the camps knew better than to speal out. For many others rumors of the c0ncentration camps was enough to enduce silence and allow the NAZIs to do as they wished with the Jews. After World War II began, the SS provided the corps of individuals ready and willing to conduct the Holocaust. Himmler himself was anot among the most anti-semetic of the NAZIs. He was among those most willing to carry out Hitler's instructions and to create a New Order where Europe was ruled by a Greater Germany populated by a ethnically purified Aryan race.
The Gestapo was not created by Himmler, but was taken over by him in 1936 and incorporated into the SS. The arrests of NAZI opponents who were to be sent to concentration camps was made by the Gestapo. The arrests of Jews within the Reich and after World War II had begun their deportment East was organized by the Gestapo ided by the regular German police force.
The NAZIs opened the first concentration camps within a few days of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor. The occasion was the buring of the Reichstag. Hitler activated Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution into effect. This gave the Government (meaning the NAZIs) the authority to take away the civic rights of German citizens. The first victms were not the Jews, but the political opposition, especially the Socialists and Communists. The first concentration camp was established a Dachau for those arrested after the burning of the Reichstag and for commiting other serious crimes threatening the state, meaning aanyone who had irritated Hitler and other NAZIs or who posed a political threat. [Berenbaum, p. 18.] The only segment of Germany soiety at the time that was imune was the military.
Concentration camps were an integral part of the NAZI regime. Too often the NAZI camp system is thought of as designed to kill Jews. This was not the main purpose. The NAZIs as soon as they seized power began to set up vamps. The first camp was Dachau. The camps were an integral part of how they governed Germany and planed to govern their empire. It proved to be a convenient plsce to kill Jews, but the Holocaust was not the main purpose for which the SS established their camp system. The NAZIS had several reasons for setting up concentration camps. Jails already existed in Germany. What the NAZIs needed were camps where larger numbers of people could be detained by NAZI Party para-militaries, at first the SA and then the SS. The camp were essential for the NAZIs. They were a minority party. There was wise-spread support for some issues expoused by the NAZIs such as criticism of the Versailles Treaty, government action to relieve unemployment, and other issues. There was not, however, agreement on key NAZI goals which was suppression of the Jews, a vast rearmament rogram, and an aggressive foreign policy. The camps were key to silensing the political opposition. Any vocal critic of the NAZIS, socialists, communists, Catholics, and other could be arrested without a warrant or an legal niceity. Some were killed. Others were brutalized so viciously that after release hey knew to keep quiet. Others who might have spokn out were terrified by the mere existence. The camps were soon also employed in the anti-Jewish campaigns. They not only served to cow the Jews into submission, but to extort the property of wealthy Jews. After the War began, the camps weee used to terrorize the occupied populaions just as they had initially terrorized the German people. They were expanded to provide to provide collect and control a work force of slave laborers for German agriculture and war industry. Unlike the Allies, Hitler objectd to using German women for the War. Also after the War began served as a location for the mass muder of millions of Jews and other people. [Berenbaum, p. 119.]
Jails and prisons already existed in Germany when the NAZIs seized power. What the NAZIs needed were camps where larger numbers of people could be detained by NAZI Party para-militaries, at first the SA and then the SS.
The camps at first were primarily an instrument of political repression. Germany in 1933 had a wide range of political parties and a free and very vocal press. Within weeks the NAZIs effectively silenced both the political opposition and free press. Recalcitant critics were arrested and interned in the camps where there was no limits on what the SA and SS could do to the prisoners. The camps were also a conventient place to dispose of political enemies without fear of embarassing questions being asked.
The first camp, Dachau, near Munich was established within days of Hitler's appointments as Chancellor. Hitler had secured only a few ministerial post for his NAZI associates, but they included the Ministry of Interior giving him control over the police. The NAZIs began arresting Communists and other opponents and there just was not room for them in German jails and prisons. In addition, prisons when the NAZIs first seized power were much too open an enviroment for what Hitler and his close associates wanted to do. Dachau was only the first camp, but it became the blue print for subsequent camps of an enormous system that would eventually extend over much of Europe.
The camp were essential for the NAZIs. They were a minority party. There was wise-spread support for some issues expoused by the NAZIs such as criticism of the Versailles Treaty, government action to relieve unemployment, and other issues. There was not, however, agreement on key NAZI goals which was suppression of the Jews, a vast rearmament rogram, and an aggressive foreign policy. The camps were key to silensing the political opposition. Any vocal critic of the NAZIS, socialists, communists, Catholics, and other could be arrested without a warrant or an legal niceity. Some were killed. Others were brutalized so viciously that after release hey knew to keep quiet. Others who might have spokn out were terrified by the mere existence. After the War began, the camps were used to terrorize the occupied populaions just as they had initially terrorized the German people.
The camps were soon also employed in the anti-Jewish campaigns. They not only served to cow the Jews into submission, but to extort the property of wealthy Jews.
The SS established a huge net work of camps across first Germany and then occupied Europe. There were many different camps, set up for a variety of purposes. Many were used for forced labor. Five camps were created for the sole purpse of killing--primarily killing Jews. The five death camps were: Belzec, Chelmo, Maly Trostenets, Sorbibor, and Treblinka. Thhe killing methods varied from camp to camp. The Polish camps were first used in Operation Heydrich, the destruction of Polish Jews. Large numbers of Jews and others were killed at the many other camps established throughout occupied Germany. Here the most notorious was Auschwitz. It was a huge camp originally created for slave labor, but a section of the camp at Birkenau was created to kill Jews. Some writers, including HBC, some times refer to these camps as the "Polish death camps". This is probably misleading. The camps other than the fact that the Germans built them in Poland (or in the Soviet Union in the case of Sorbibor), had nothing to do with Poland or the Polish people. A more correct desription, as Polish reader Jerzy Pankiewiczis points out, is German death camps in occupied Poland. Locating the camps in Poland was a conscious decission made by the NAZIs. The Germans were in total control in Poland and imposed harsh military rule. This it was easier to hide what they were doing than any where else in Europe. It also allowed them to keep the dirty details of the killing away from the German people. Many Germans did know about the killings and some did not want to know. Many Germans, however, did not know.
The camp system was expanded to provide, collect, and control a work force of slave laborers for German agriculture and war industry. Unlike the Allies, Hitler objectd to using German women for the War. The work camps made valuable contributions to the war effort. The slave labor in these camps made everything from uniforms and pots and panrs to V-2 balistic missles--one of the most complex weapons system of the War.
There were also POW camps, but these camps were operatefd by the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe rather than the SS. Here the Wegrmact for the most part dealt with the POWs from the Western Allies correctly. Here the lrgest numbers were from the FrenchArmy which was interned in the Reich after Germany occuoied the country (June 1940). A major priority of the Vichy Government was to get the POWs back, but Hitler never relented. There was an effort to identify the Jewish POWs to transfer them to the SS concentratin camps. The treatment of the POWEs taken in the East, however, was very different. The Polish and Soviet POWs were treated brutally and large numbers actually starbed to death or left exposed in winter conditions.
There were even camps for Germans. Hitler ordered the Baltic Germans "Home to the Reich" in 1939. The NAZIs intended to use these ethnic Germans to colonize areas of Poland from which the Poles were being expelled. Many of the Baltic Germans spent long periods in rough camps with inadequate food and medical supplies. [Overy, p. 595.]
Some of the larger camps like Auschwitz had units with different purposes, both labor camps and death camps. And some labor camps became essentially death camps because the food, sanitary facilities, medical supplies, clothing, asnd housing were inadequate to sustain individuals subjdcted to a strenous work regime over extended period.
The camp regime was affected in part by the type of camp, but there were many similarities. Incarceration in itself is a punishment in itself. Incarceration in a NAZI concentration camp meant that the individual without any legal protection was exposed to any cruelty that brutal NAZI guards could devise to break even the strongest individual. As early as October 1933 the NAZIS introduced a new discipline an punishment code at the their first KZ--Dachau. The goal was to create a regime where the orders of NAZI guards were to be absolute. The code read, "Agitators are to be hanged by virtue of the Law of the Revolution". Over 100,000 inmates were detaimed in NAZI KZs by the end of 1933, the first year of NAZI rule. [Gilbert, p. 15.] Life for KZ inmates was a living nightmare full of unimaginable horrors. The prisoners were forced poorly fed and housed, brutalized, and privately tortureed, extorted, denied medicl care, and forced to endure a harsh regime of slave labor. [Hoyt, p. 132].
Himmler on September 23, 1940 signed a decree made known to only a few close associates ordering that KZ camp inmates should have all dental gold removed. New prisioners upon arrival would be examined for dental gold, both teeth and bridgework. The results of the examination were tatooded on the upper left arm for easy refference in the morge. The teeth and bridgework this obtained were delivered to the Reichbank and credited to the SS account. [Gilbert, p. 344.]
From the beginning, German concentration camps were administered by the SS. The first concentration camps set up in Germany were followed after the start of World War II by a myriad of camps throughout Western Euope run by the SS as a state within a state. The SS eventually opened over 9,000 camps across the NAZI-occupied Europe. [Berenbaum, p. 9.] They were filled with unfortunate people from every occupied country. The number of people in the camps rose steadily from 100,000 in 1942, to 524,000 in 1944, and 724,000 by January 1945 [Berenbaum, p. 122.] The camps were established for a variety of purposes and thus the regime, organization, and conditions varied from camp to camp. Not all the camps were even administered by the NAZIs. There were camps set up an run by NAZI allies such as Vichy France, Italain Fascists as well as the regimes in Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. The NAZIs also took camps over in France, the Netherlands, and other countries that had been set up for refugees. The initial purpose of the camps in Germany was the political repression of the anti-NAZI elements. The NAZIs also use them in the process of stripping Jews of their property. After World War II began, the camps became increasingly important to hold workers from occupied countries forced to labor for Germany. Unlike the Allies, the NAZIs were reluctant to use women in the economy, even to support the war. While many camps were work camps, there were also punishment and death camps. The camps of course played a major role in the Holocaust. There wre also numerous prisonor of war (POW) camps, but these were administered by the military and not the SS and we have not included them in this list.
There were many German men and women of conscious who resisted the NAZIs. All were persecuted in some way. A Protestant pastor after hearing about deplorable conditions at internnment camps in the French Pyrenees, tried to get to one of the camps--Gurs. He never got there. He was arrested and sent as a prisoner to Sachdenhausen and then Dachau. [Gilbert, p. 347.] Many were brutalized and then killed in the concentration camps. One such man was Erich Knauf, a journalist. He had served Germany in World War I. He referred to Goebbels as "this little rat". He outspokingly said that a NAZI victory in World War II would be the "greatest misfortune". He charged that Himmler only retained power by "ordering between 80 and a 100 executions a day. He was executed in 1943. His money was taken from him as a fee for the execution and "prison maintenance". [Gilbert, pp. 561-62.]
SS concentration camp guards were never under any serious constraunts in dealing with individuals considered an enemy, for what ever reason, political, national, or racial. Many of these murders had been in fact violationsof German law, althouh the guardswere of course never procecuted. Hitler on December 5 issued the Nacht and Nebel (Night and Fog) degree. This in effect authorized the arrest without aarrant or any explanation of any individual "endangering German security". These individuals might not be executed immeduately, but they would disappear into the night and fog of the concentration camp system without any trace. Surviving camp registers have notations "NN" by prisoners names, meaning that they wee taken from their barracks and shot. [Gilbert, p. 287.]
The Holocaust was a crime without presidence in modern history. The NAZIs targeted the Jews for death camps. Many were killed by SS Einsatzgruppen in large-scale actions at first in Poland and than on a larger scale in the Soviet Union. Others Jews were concentrated
in Ghettos for slave labor and eventual dispatch to the death camps, camps established for the specific purpose of killing Jews and others. Tragically it was not just the Germans involved, but in many countries the local population led by Fascist groups were all to willing to participate in the robbery and killing. Jewish children were among the first to be killed by the NAZIs because they had no economic value which could be exploited. One can not forget the images of the starving Jewish children on the Warsaw Ghetto whose parents had been killed. A great body of litterature exists on the Holocaust including the experiences of the children.
NAZI Germany of course was not the only country operatoing a huge system of concentration camps. The Soviet Union had even a larger system. One of the tragedies of the liberation of the NAZI camps was that many of the Russian POWs and slave laborers who managed to survive the horific conditions in the camps were arrested and intererned in the Soviet Gulag.
Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know (Ed. Arnold Kramer. Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1993).
Gilbert, Martin. A History of the Twentieth Century Vol. 2 1933-54 (William Morrow and Company, Inc.: New York, 1998), 1050p.
Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf.
Hoyt, Carolyn. "Stolen Childhood. How One Woman Survived the Holocaust." McCallÌs August 1994. pp. 100-101. 132, 134.
Overy, Richard. The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia (W.W. Norton: Newy York, 2004), 849p.
Padfield, Peter. Himmler: Reichsführer-SS (Henry Holt: New York, 1991), 656p.
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