The Institution Nate Voss ‘24

The Institution

20th Century World History

Nate Voss ‘24

In 1933, Hitler removed all constitutional protections for individuals and minorities. In 1934, his government allowed for imprisonment without trial or review from the courts. By 1935, concentration camps had already cropped up in Germany.1 Three years later, in 1938, Hitler won Time’s Person of the Year award for economic reforms. The year after, he invaded Poland. Hitler and the Nazis wanted as complete control over Poland as he did Germany, and concentration camps proved to be an important tool. Camps flourished across greater Germany, evolving from prison camps to death machines.2 Horrendous, indescriminate killings were not unique to Nazi Germany, and brutality and violence were not novel ideas to Authoritarian regimes. Even genocide had happened in the past.3 So what made the Nazis special? The structure of the concentration camp system in Nazi Germany enabled its scale and brutality. Early, locally-rooted concentartion camps provided inspiration for Nazi officials who created a national system, while these later camps continued to rely on localities’ participation. A national camp structure revolutionized the original system, creating a large-scale, efficient killing machine. At the same time, organization at the camp level facilitated suppression of prisoners and improved conditions for camp personnel which further enabled largescale, brutal executions. W h i l e concentration camps were part of a nationalized system for the last decade of the Nazi regime, before that point they were all local institutions.4 Most cropped up in 1933 as a response to the mass arrests of so-called “political enemies,” of the party, or anyone who showed a sign of resistance (estimates of their numbers range between 30,000 and 10,000 prisoners).5 At their peak, there were around one hundred localized camps in Germany. Local officials established camps on an as-need basis in ballrooms, unused industrial buildings, and, in one documented case, the deck of a barge.6

These concentration camps were founded and staffed locally, with guards hailing from a combination of the SS, SA, and local police. At this point, no national coalition was possible, as the Nazi party was still in the process of consolidation of power, and did not yet have complete control over the government.7 After just one year, in 1934, concentration camps started to lose support around the nation. Many camps had already closed, and even within the Nazi party, certain officials supported the shutdown of the system and the mass release of prisoners. These officials believed that Germany’s system of courts and prisons would be enough to control the population.8

However, Himmler, recently appointed head of the Gestapa in Prussia, Germany’s largest state, saw promise in these camps to suppress the population. By late 1933, most Prussian concentration camps were staffed by SS officers, although local directors still ran the camps.9 These local camps would serve as templates for later, nationalized camps, once complete Nazi control was established in Germany.10 In this way, local camps served as the inspiration and template for later camps, and without them, the concentration camp system would have never existed.

In addition to providing inspiration for later camps, early, localized camps, instilled terror into the population, allowing for a faster Nazi assention to power. After Adolf Hitler was brought to power in 1933, he banned the German Communist Party, and invoked a German policy called “protective custody,” which allowed arrest without trial (a law which was originally meant to detain people for their own protection), to authorize the internment of all communists and political enemies into concentration camps.11 The purpose of these early camps was to “reeducate” resisting civillians, which always involved imprisonment and often involved torture. The policy was successful at instilling terror into the nation and preventing resistance to Nazi rule.12

The final local facet of concentration camps was that of complacency. Early purges of political opponents, and the constant threat of the concentration camp prevented many from speaking up. In addition, the Nazis did an excellent job of making examples of highprofile dissidents, while not harming the average civilian, as long as that average civilian was a straight, non-Jewish, white, non-disabled person.13 In one case, they tortured Cologne’s leading Social Democrat (Social Democrats were one of the Nazi party’s main rivals) by forcing him to drink a mixture of castor oil and urine.14 Hitler also ameliorated conditions for many German citizens during the early years of his tenure, making it easy for the ordinary person to overlook the horrors taking place in concentration camps.15 An additional factor in the promotion of local complacency was Nazi Germany’s laws. “Malicious gossip,” was banned, which included talking negatively about Nazis or Hitler. “Hateful speech” against any Nazi leaders carried the death penalty. Actions that went against state policy such as sheltering Jews could also lead to execution. So did writing, speaking, or distributing leaflets advocating for the return of democracy, or the alteration of the constitution in any way.16 These laws meant that one could be sent to concentration camps without trial, using

Protective Custody laws, or one could be put on trial, resulting in possible execution, for any resistance to the Nazi regime. By making the consequences clear and not harming the average civilian, Nazi Germany prevented any local resistance against concentration camps. Overall, the early local concentration camps served to inspire later camps, helped

Hitler rise to power, and kept average citizens complacent all of which played an essential role in facilitaing the violence that took place in Nazi Germany.

While local camps played an important role early in the Nazi era, by 1934, the majority had closed, and it looked like the concentration camp system would die off.17 It was Himmler creating the national concentration camp inspectorate (IKL) that allowed camps to survive and thrive under Nazi rule.18 Himmler’s IKL gave the camp system new life and allowed for the massive scale and efficiency of the developed system. In 1934, Himmler, currently in control of the SS of Prussia, granted the SS a monopoly over Protective Custody arrests, allowing them full control over imprisonment without trial. He also staffed Prussian concentration camps entirely with SS soldiers, creating a direct pipeline from Protective Custody arrests to concentration camps.19 Himmler also revamped the camps themselves. He created an entirely new camp at Dachau, a city in Prussia, which is often regarded as the first true concentration camp. Staffed by SS with an SS commandant, the camp murdered four Jewish civilians within a day. Dachau was also the first camp to use work as a method of torture, rather than an economic tool.20 At this point in 1934, camps were neither national, nor did they single out Jews as primary prisoners, although Jews were targeted for torture and murder when they were imprisoned at the camp.21

Between 1934 and 1936, Himmler tasked a subordinate with dissolving and combining camps to create a unified Prussian system, with all new camps based off of the Dachau system. Himmler created the IKL to oversee this process, and to be the umbrella organization centralizing the continued oversight and management of the entire system.22 With the centralization of the Prussian camp system, Himmler also ordered the standardization of conditions within all concentration camps which included labor for the purpose of torture. This standardization of conditions created terrible violence throughout Prussia camps. In addition to torturing the prisoners,

this forced labor was used to further expand concentration camps and enrich the Prussian SS.23 Crucially, in 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler as the chief of German police, which allowed Himmler to bring his Prussian model of concentration camps to a national scale, basing all further camps on Dachau. These new camps were primed for the mass arrests

of so-called “asocials,” in Germany during 1937 and 1938, which were mostly Jews. The arrests of asocials kicked off the routine imprisonment and killing of Jews that lasted through to the end of the war.24

The final expansion of the national camp system was kicked off through the 1939 invasion of Poland. Once conquered, Hitler desired the same overarching control over the new territory as he had in mainland Germany. To Himmler, the way to achieve this goal was concentration camps.25 In Poland, he continued with his policy of “Vernichtung durch Arbeit,” or extermination through labor. Using the same national standard conditions that had been present since Dachau, the life expectancy of a prisoner was somewhere around six to eight weeks.26 In addition, the labor crises of 1942 coincided with a famine, leading to prisoners working more for less food, as the national standards for concentration camps were altered to accommodate for the general population’s increased food needs.27 Also, in the captured Polish territory, Nazis began to build a new type of camp -

death camps. These camps served the sole purpose of exterminating prisoners through gas chambers. With the nationalization of the camp system came nation-wide railroads which were used to deliver loads of prisoners to camps with gas chambers, where they would be immediately killed, or forced into labor if they looked fit enough.28 All in all, the nationalization of the concentration camp system rescued it out of its slow death, led to enforced, terrible conditions, a tremendous increase in scale, and the evolution of death camps. These developments all increased the extreme brutality of the Holocaust.

Local compliance and national standardization of camps would do little, though, without the effective control of prisoners. This is where the

camp-level organization of the concentration camp system came in. The primary goals of camps were to kill prisoners and maintain order. Both of these tasks required the docility of prisoners and the sanity of guards. To lower the weight resting on each staff member, concentration camps were divided into different departments, with different branches within each department.29 This arrangement left each staff member to do a small, seemingly inconsequential job. For instance, the medical department of concentration camps were in charge of the Zyklon B gas that was used to exterminate prisoners. If a staff member were to simply pack Zyklon B cartridges, it is easy to feel removed from the killing. The rationalization is that it’s not your fault that those canisters would be dropped into the gas chambers. Camp leaders also utilized other techniques to lessen the detrimental effects of camp life on guards’ mental health. For instance, once canisters were dropped into the gas chambers, motorcycles were often revved outside to mask the noises of the screams coming from within the chambers.30

The same intent of maintaining the guards’ ability to cope with their jobs was seen with the separation of womens’ camps and mens’ camps, No men were to guard women. This led to the training of thousands of female guards, who were deployed to camps across the country and even held positions of responsibility.31

Staff accountability was further reduced via the use of Kapos - prisoners that were given extra rations, clothing, or the promise of freedom in order to lead groups of prisoners.32 These Kapos were often picked for their violent and selfish nature, and could be even more brutal than the guards themselves. Kapos would carry out many of the beatings and killings in concentration camps. If a prisoner offended a Kapo, it was the equivalent of a death sentence.33 In this way, Kapos also served to keep prisoners docile by ruling with an iron fist.34

Further measures to keep prisoners quiet centered on the manipulation of their hope. Enough hope of survival was provided to the prisoners that they would not risk their lives to revolt, but not enough was given that they might be unruly.35 Various methods were used to manipulate hope. For instance, all death camp gas chambers were fitted with shower heads, and towels were handed out upon entry. Eliezer Gruenbaum, a Jewish Kapo at Birkenau, recounts hearing the hope that these amenities provided. He explained that most going into the gas chambers knew what lay ahead, “But the sight of the undressing room with its mirrors and the distribution of towels and soap kindled hope in them. This hope caused them to undress without resisting, to enter the gas chamber without resisting. Each one thought: ‘Perhaps?’”36

A similar type of hope was used to calm down camps that were close to revolt. Guards would tell the prisoners fake stories about how Germany was losing the war, causing prisoners to hope that they might live until the end of the war, which stopped them from revolting.37 While hope was used to manipulate prisoners, camp conditions were simultaneously kept bad in part to prevent an insurrection. Emaciated prisoners would stand no chance against the guards, even in large numbers.38 Reducing

food also served to ferment prisoner-prisoner violence. Starving prisoners would steal bread from other prisoners, creating conflict that prevented prisoners from rising up against their oppressors.39 Overall, the camp-level organization of the concentration camp system galvanized the effective elimination of prisoners, by keeping guard accountability low and creating a more docile prison through the departmentalization of camps, manipulating the hope of prisoners, and maintaining terrible prison conditions.

The Holocaust is one of the worst things to ever happen to humanity. The Nazi’s concentration camps evolved systematically to be an institution of violent ethnic cleansing, the scale and brutality of which had never yet been been seen in our world. However, it was not bred by an inherent evilness of Germans, nor by the cunning of a single malicious leader. An entire nation was manipulated to stay complacent during a genocide, by supression of the general population, a brutally efficient national structure, and the careful manipulation of hope and conditions within camps. By studying the structure of concentration camps, we can isolate the first steps that enable such violence, namely the abolition of peoples’ rights, and the prohibition of dissent. Frighteningly, these enabling factors have been developing throughout our modern world. Recently, Russia passed a law that bans negative speech against the military and criminalizes “fake news,” a piece of legislature eerily similar to the Nazis’ “malicious gossip” law. China, too, has been suppressing personal rights for years, and even has its own concentration camps which promote the Nazi ideals of “reeducation.” By recognizing these developments as possible paths towards genocide rather than isolated incidents, we can begin to take action, and maybe even prevent our worst hour of history from repeating itself.

Endnotes

1Henry J. Gwiazda II. “The Nazi Racial War: Concentration Camps in the New Order.” The Polish Review 61, no. 3 (2016): 59-84. 2Ibid 3Theodore Abel. “The Sociology of Concentration Camps.” Social Forces 30, no. 2 (December 1951): 15055. 4Birkbeck University of London. “Camp System.” The Nazi Concentration Camps. Accessed May 12, 2022. http://www.camps.bbk.ac.uk/themes/camp-system. html. 5Geoffrey P. Megargee, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. 6Ibid 7Ibid 8Birkbeck University of London, Camp System 9Megargee, Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 10Ibid 11Ibid 12Gwiazda, Nazi Racial War, 59-84 13Richard J. Evans, “Coercion and Consent in Nazi Germany.” The British Academy, 2007, 53-81. Accessed May 23, 2022. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/ documents/2036/pba151p053.pdf. 14Ibid 15Ibid 16Ibid 17Megargee, Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 18Birkbeck University of London, Camp System 19Megargee, Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 20Ibid 21Ibid 23Ibid 24Ibid 25Gwiazda, Nazi Racial War, 59-84 26Ibid 27Ibid 28Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. 29Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. “The Organizational Structure of Auschwitz Concentration Camp.” Auschwitz.org. Accessed May 23, 2022. https:// www.auschwitz.org/en/history/the-ss-garrison/theorganizational-structure-of-auschwitz-concentrationcamp/. 30“The Gas Chambers.” Education Institute of Scotland. Last modified February 3, 2012. Accessed May 23, 2022. https://www.eis.org.uk/Auschwitz/ Holocaustpart12. 31Wieviorka, Annette, and Jeanne Armstrong. “Women and the post-war Nazi trials.” Clio, no. 39 (2014): 14651. Accessed May 23, 2022. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/26238723?seq=1. 32Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. 33Galia Glasner-Heled, and Dan Bar-On. “Displaced: The Memoir of Eliezer Gruenbaum, Kapo at Birkenau— Translation and Commentary.” Shofar 27, no. 2 (Winter 2009): 1-23. 34Ibid 35Ibid 36Ibid 37Ibid 38Ibid 39Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning