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Nazi concentration camps | HearLore
Nazi concentration camps
On the 3rd of March 1933, a school in Nohra became the first Nazi concentration camp, established just three days after Adolf Hitler assumed the chancellorship of Germany. The Nazi regime had no pre-existing plan for a concentration camp system when they seized power; the camps emerged spontaneously from a desperate need to suppress tens of thousands of political opponents. Following the Reichstag fire in February 1933, the government issued the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended personal freedom and provided a legal pretext for detention without trial. In the chaotic months that followed, approximately 70 camps were established in whatever structures were available, including vacant factories, prisons, country estates, and castles. These early camps were heterogeneous and operated by local police, the SA, the SS, or state interior ministries without a unified national system. Historian Jane Caplan estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were arrested during this period, with 80 percent of them being members of the Communist Party of Germany and 10 percent from the Social Democratic Party. By late 1933, many prisoners were released, and after a Christmas amnesty, only a few dozen camps remained.
The SS Takes Control
Heinrich Himmler appointed Theodor Eicke as the second commandant of Dachau on the 26th of June 1933, initiating a transformation that would turn the camps into a model of terror. Eicke drafted the Disciplinary and Penal Code, a manual specifying draconian punishments ranging from 25 strikes with a cane to execution, and created a system of prisoner functionaries that evolved into the camp elders and kapos of later years. Following the purge of the SA on the 30th of June 1934, Himmler took over the remaining SA-run camps, and in December 1934, Eicke was appointed the first inspector of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate. By mid-1935, the system had shrunk to just five camps holding 4,000 prisoners, but Himmler, now Chief of German Police, believed the nation was imperiled by internal enemies and called for a war against the organized elements of sub-humanity. He won Hitler's backing to target communists, socialists, Jews, Freemasons, and criminals, leading to the opening of new purpose-built camps at Sachsenhausen in September 1936 and Buchenwald in July 1937. Unlike earlier camps, these new facilities were isolated from the population and the rule of law, allowing the SS to exert absolute power, and prisoners were forced to wear uniforms with Nazi concentration camp badges.
The Criminals and Asocials
By the end of June 1938, the prisoner population had expanded threefold in the previous six months to 24,000 prisoners, driven by arrests of those considered habitual criminals or asocials. According to SS chief Heinrich Himmler, these criminal prisoners needed to be isolated from society because they had committed offenses of a sexual or violent nature, yet in reality, most were working-class men who had resorted to petty theft to support their families. Nazi raids of perceived asocials, including the arrest of 10,000 people in June 1938, targeted homeless people, the mentally ill, and the unemployed, making political prisoners a minority within the camps. To house the new prisoners, three new camps were established: Flossenbürg near the Czechoslovak border in May 1938, Mauthausen in territory annexed from Austria in August 1938, and Ravensbrück in May 1939, the first purpose-built camp for female prisoners. The mass arrests were partly motivated by economic factors, as recovery from the Great Depression lowered unemployment rates, so work-shy elements were arrested to keep others working harder. At the same time, Himmler focused on exploiting prisoners' labor within the camp system, with the SS company German Earth and Stone Works set up to extract building materials from quarries adjacent to Flossenbürg and Mauthausen.
When was the first Nazi concentration camp established?
The first Nazi concentration camp was established on the 3rd of March 1933 in Nohra. This facility operated as a school before the Nazi regime seized power and was created just three days after Adolf Hitler assumed the chancellorship of Germany.
Who appointed Theodor Eicke as commandant of Dachau?
Heinrich Himmler appointed Theodor Eicke as the second commandant of Dachau on the 26th of June 1933. Eicke subsequently drafted the Disciplinary and Penal Code and became the first inspector of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate in December 1934.
Which Nazi concentration camps were opened between 1936 and 1939?
New purpose-built camps opened during this period included Sachsenhausen in September 1936, Buchenwald in July 1937, Flossenbürg in May 1938, Mauthausen in August 1938, and Ravensbrück in May 1939. Ravensbrück was the first purpose-built camp specifically for female prisoners.
When did the Nazi regime begin mass murder of prisoners in concentration camps?
The high command of the SS ordered the murder of ill and exhausted prisoners in April 1941, with at least 6,000 and potentially as many as 20,000 people killed by April 1942. Selected Soviet prisoners of war were also killed within the concentration camps beginning in August 1941.
What percentage of the camp population were Reich Germans by the end of the war?
By the end of the war, only 5 to 10 percent of the camp population were Reich Germans from Germany or Austria. The majority of prisoners were people from countries occupied by the Wehrmacht, including more than 100,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
When did major evacuations of Nazi concentration camps occur?
Major evacuations of the camps occurred in mid-1944 from the Baltics and eastern Poland, January 1945 from western Poland and Silesia, and in March 1945 from concentration camps in Germany. These death marches were deliberately ordered by Himmler to keep prisoners under Nazi control.
At the end of August 1939, prisoners from Flossenbürg, Sachsenhausen, and other concentration camps were murdered as part of false flag attacks staged by Germany to justify the invasion of Poland. During the war, the camps became increasingly brutal and lethal, with most victims dying in the second half of the war. Five new camps were opened between the start of the war and the end of 1941: Neuengamme outside of Hamburg in early 1940, Auschwitz in June 1940, Gross-Rosen in Silesia in May 1941, and Natzweiler in territory annexed from France in May 1941. In April 1941, the high command of the SS ordered the murder of ill and exhausted prisoners who could no longer work, especially those deemed racially inferior, with at least 6,000 and potentially as many as 20,000 people killed by April 1942. Beginning in August 1941, selected Soviet prisoners of war were killed within the concentration camps, usually within a few days of their arrival, and by mid-1942, at least 34,000 Soviet prisoners had been murdered. In 1942, the emphasis of the camps shifted to the war effort, and by 1943, two-thirds of prisoners were employed by war industries, particularly armaments factories.
The Death Machine
In 1943 and early 1944, additional concentration camps including Riga in Latvia, Kovno in Lithuania, Vaivara in Estonia, and Kraków-Plaszów in Poland were converted from ghettos or labor camps, and these camps were populated almost entirely by Jewish prisoners. Along with the new main camps, many satellite camps were set up to more effectively leverage prisoner labor for the war effort, and Auschwitz swelled in size to become the center of the camp system. It was the deadliest concentration camp, and Jews sent there faced a virtual death sentence even if they were not immediately killed, as most were. In August 1943, 74,000 of the 224,000 registered prisoners in all SS concentration camps were in Auschwitz. The death rate skyrocketed with an estimated half of the 180,000 prisoners admitted between July and November 1942 dying by the end of that interval, and although the death rate was reduced in relative terms after 1942 to preserve labor, deaths continued to increase in absolute numbers as the prisoner population swelled. The camps were organized according to a structure including commandant, adjutant, political department, protective custody camp, camp doctor, and guard command, with the IKL remaining directly responsible to Himmler.
The Prisoners and Guards
Before World War II, most prisoners in the concentration camps were Germans, but after the expansion of Nazi Germany, people from countries occupied by the Wehrmacht were targeted and detained in concentration camps. In Western Europe, arrests focused on resistance fighters and saboteurs, but in Eastern Europe, arrests included mass roundups aimed at the forced recruitment of workers, and by the end of the war, only 5 to 10 percent of the camp population was Reich Germans from Germany or Austria. More than 100,000 Soviet prisoners of war and smaller groups from other nationalities were transferred to the concentration camps in violation of the Geneva Convention. The camps were guarded by members of the SS Death's Head Units, who were officially forbidden from entering the camps, although this rule was not followed, and older general SS personnel, and those wounded or disabled, replaced those assigned to combat duties. As the war progressed, a more diverse group was recruited to guard the expanding camp system, including female guards who were not part of the SS, and by January 1945, army and air force personnel made up as many as 52 percent of guards. Most of the camp SS leadership was middle-class and hard-hit by the Great Depression, and their involvement in Nazi violence was based on tight social bonds, a perceived common sense that the aims of the system were good, as well as the opportunity for material gain.
The Public and the Dead
Arrests of Germans in 1933 were often accompanied by public humiliation or beatings, and if released, prisoners might return home with visible marks of abuse or psychological breakdown. Using what historian Karola Fings terms a dual strategy of publicity and secrecy, the regime directed terror both at the direct victim as well as the entire society in order to eliminate its opponents and deter resistance. Beginning in March 1933, detailed reports on camp conditions were published in the press, and Nazi propaganda demonized the prisoners as race traitors, sexual degenerates, and criminals. The visibility of the camps heightened during the war due to increasing prisoner numbers, the establishment of many subcamps in proximity to German civilians, and the use of labor deployments outside the camps. Historian Robert Gellately argues that the Germans generally turned out to be proud and pleased that Hitler and his henchmen were putting away certain kinds of people who did not fit in, or who were regarded as outsiders, asocials, useless eaters, or criminals. In Cologne, some construction brigade prisoners were shot in broad daylight, and the murders at concentration camps were exploited in Allied war propaganda.
The Final Marches
Major evacuations of the camps occurred in mid-1944 from the Baltics and eastern Poland, January 1945 from western Poland and Silesia, and in March 1945 from concentration camps in Germany, and both Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners died in large numbers as a consequence of these death marches. Although held during the disintegration of the Nazi regime in the final weeks of the war, the marches required central coordination and elaborate logistics, and were deliberately ordered by Himmler in order to keep the prisoners under Nazi control to use as a bargaining chip. Local German politicians had an incentive to keep the deportees moving and make them someone else's problem, due to the lack of supplies at the time, which affected the German civilian population. When the columns were halted, local guards and politicians saw prisoners as a liability and a threat and they were often executed, and the executions were carried out by SS guards, but also many groups that had previously been uninvolved in Nazi murders, such as Volkssturm, police, local Nazi officials, Hitler Youth members, and German civilians. The liberation of the camps as documented by the Western Allies went viral in world newspapers, and the conditions encountered at liberation have played a prominent part in perception of the camp system as a whole.