The Concentration Camps as Part of the National-Socialist
System of Domination
Falk Pingel
The concentration camps as a tool of political persecution had not existed in the
German Reich before the National Socialists came to power. As early as the second
month of the National-Socialist coalition government – when the first camps were
established – and until the final defeat in 1945, the concentration camps remained an
integral component of the Nazi system of domination. Their significance grew and
their functions expanded as the extent of National-Socialist suppression increased and
endured.
The history of the concentration camps shows that despite the growth in importance
of this institution, the SS remained bound by the general development of the regime
and was obliged to adjust its own objectives in accordance with demands of senior
authorities. The concentration camps were so much a part of the regime itself that
their history can be divided to correspond with the periods of development within the
history of National-Socialist rule as a whole. There were three such periods: 1
(1)
1933-1936: the period of consolidation and stabilization of the executive
within the National-Socialist state, to which the concentration camps and their
accompanying administrative organizations belonged. The creation of these camps
can be traced to the implementation of one of the predominant authoritarian aims of
National-Socialism, namely the elimination of the workers' organizations (the German
Communist Party, KPD; the Social-Democratic Party, SPD; and the trade unions).
The structure and character of the camps was greatly affected by this struggle against
these political-ideological opponents, and even the training given to the guards and
other camp personnel was directed toward this aim. The prisoners were considered
"harmful to the people" (Volksschädlinge), in need of political re-education – insofar
as they were considered "educable" at all – by means of harsh treatment. If the SS
considered prisoners "incorrigible", if they had occupied important posts in prohibited
1
I have developed this in further detail in my book: Häftlinge unter SS-Herrschaft. Widerstand,
Selbstbehauptung und Vernichtung im Konzentrationslager, Hamburg, 1978.
political organizations, or if they were Jews, they were slated for cruel and extreme
torture.
Objectives beyond the suppression of political opponents could be carried out only to
a limited extent. At Dachau, for example, Himmler tried to introduce concentrationcamp detainment also for persons who had been imprisoned in Arbeitshäuser (workhouses) for refusing to work and for criminals; they were to work at forced labor in
the camps. In this he was frustrated by the objections raised by the private sector of
the economy and by the Bavarian government. 2
The establishment of the concentration-camp administration must be viewed in the
context of the organization of the Security Police, whose sphere of activity was
separate from that of the rest of the police, and with the penetration of the entire
police apparatus by the SS. This process was completed by 1936. Himmler's
appointment as chief of the German police in 1936 marked the transition to a new
period. 3
(2)
1936/7-1941/2:
during
these
years,
the
concentration-camp
system
experienced the repercussions of war preparations and its conduct. The Four-Year
Plan led to the harnessing of the labor market to such an extent that for the first time
economic considerations played a decisive role in the recruitment of new prisoners.
The concentration of all police functions in his person was exploited by Himmler, as
chief of German Police, in order to further extend the concept of concentration-camp
internment to those "asocial" and "criminal" elements – an objective he had failed to
realize earlier. Concentration-camp internment was therefore possible in place of
penitentiary, work-house or prison sentences. The concentration camps also entered
into competition with the penal administration of the judiciary, which remained
outside the realm of political internment.
With the outbreak of war, stricter security was to be expected, and, in anticipation of
this development, the concentration camps were expanded. Even so, the new facilities
proved insufficient to accommodate the large numbers of new prisoners. The pogroms
of 1938 and the intake of foreign prisoners from the conquered territories, especially
from the East, led to catastrophic overcrowding of the camps and to disastrous
conditions of accommodation for the prisoners. This state of affairs favored measure
2
Ibid., p. 27.
Hans Buchheim, "The SS-Instrument of Domination", Helmut Krausnick, et al., Anatomy of the SS
State, London, 1968 (hereafter, Anatomy of the SS State), pp. 127-291.
3
for mass extermination, which were put into practice soon after the beginning of the
war, by means of starving Polish prisoners in Buchenwald, selections within the
framework of "euthanasia", "extermination through work" in Mauthausen, and the
mass shooting of Soviet prisoners of war at the end of this period. 4 These measures,
for the most part, did not start with the camp authorities, but were initiated outside the
camps and then continued within their confines.
(3)
1942-1944/5: the turn of the war led to the concentration and reorganization of
armament production and to an increase in the supply of forced labor, to which the
prisoners were now systematically conscripted. The continuous intake of new
prisoners was intended to expand the potential of the work force inside the camps.
This was not an independent decision of the SS leadership; responsibility was born
jointly by Hitler, the Armaments Ministry under Albert Speer, and the Army
Armament Office of the OKW under General Georg Thomas. 5 It was clear to these
institutions that the continuation of essential weapon production could only be
achieved if the flow of production and deployment of labor were more closely
regulated. With the implementation of forced-labor conditions in the last phase of the
National-Socialist regime, the concentration camps assumed an important role. The
provision of a forced-labor supply did not, however, become the sole function of the
camps. The original political and ideological objectives were retained even in view of
the external and internal danger to National-Socialist rule.
At the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union, the National Socialists instituted
the systematic extermination of entire population groups. The army, SS and SD had to
conduct this "battle of the ideologies", with variable emphases. The camps of
Auschwitz and Lublin-Majdanek, situated in occupied Polish territory, became the
focus of the mass extermination of the Jewish population. Here, in the most horrible
manner, the demands of the National Socialists were turned into reality. Even in the
face of defeat, and while forced to farness all their economic forces to enable the
continuation of the war, the National Socialists did not renounce one of their most
4
See in detail: Buchenwald-Mahnung und Verpflichtung, Berlin (GDR), 19613, pp. 110ff., 144 ff;
Friedrich K. Kaul, Die Psychiatrie im Strudel der "Euthanasie", Frankfurt a. M., 1979, pp. 102ff;
Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden – Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 19411945, Stuttgart, 1978. See chaps. VI, IX; Hans Marsalek, Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers
Mauthausen, Vienna, 1974.
5
Willi A. Boelcke, Deutschlands Rüstung im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Hitlers Konferenzen mit Albert Speer
1942-1945, Frankfurt a. M., 1969; Joseph Billig, Les camps de concentration dans l'economie du Reich
Hitlerien, Paris, 1973.
important objectives – the establishment of Rassenherrschaft (racial domination) in
Europe. Even when it became clear that the material objectives of the war – the
conquest of new territories – were unlikely to be realized, the National-Socialists
leadership continued to pursue their ideological aims. The concentration camps had to
serve these two objectives, for both – the ideological as well as the material objective
– presupposed an apparatus of violence by which they could be realized. The SS
maintained this double objective almost to the last moment; only with the beginning
of the dismantling of the concentration camps themselves did the gassing of Jews
cease.
After the consolidation of the concentration-camp system during the first three years
of National-Socialist rule, it was the Four-Year Plan, the onset of war, and the shift to
an armament-oriented economy as a consequence of the war against the Soviet Union
that characterized the most important developments in the history of the concentration
camps. The changes in the structure and character of the camps initiated at these
turning points become comprehensible when one considers several factors: the
number of prisoners and camps, the composition of their prisoner populations, the
reasons for their imprisonment, their work in the camp, and their mortality rates.
These factors did not remain constant, but from period to period demonstrate
characteristic differences, attributable to the changes in functions in each period. The
mortality rate, in particular, clearly indicates that the change in function was of
considerable significance also for the prisoners. The extent to which this influenced
the structure of the camps will now be discussed in greater detail.
The concentration camps came into being when the prisons became so overcrowded
following the Reichstag fire that separate place of confinement had to set up for
prisoners in so-called "protective custody" (Schultzhäftlinge). The agencies directly
involved in the arrests were in charge of theses places of detention.
In March 1933 we find the following:
(1)
Places of detention set up independently by the SS or the SA without the
permission or assistance of government bodies;
(2)
Sections within police prisons or those of the courts of law that admitted
prisoners in "protective custody".
(3)
Separate camps under the authority of the political police of the respective
federal states. 6
Thus there was no uniform organizational structure. The different types of camps
were the results of the differing arrest operations. Apart from the overcrowding of the
existing prisons, an additional reason soon became evident and was to leave its mark
on the form that "protective custody" was to assume in the future. The NationalSocialist agencies were frequently of the opinion that political prisoners ought to be
accommodated separately from the prisoners jailed by a court order, as the character
of "protective custody" would demand special treatment in order to combat the
political opposition of the internees. This was to legitimize the ill-treatment suffered
by the prisoners in "protective custody", which was especially frequent and brutal
during the initial months of persecution.
At the end of July 1933, there were almost 30,000 prisoners in "protective custody"
inside the Reich, but an even larger total number had been arrested by that time. 7
This date concluded the arrests that were directly connected with the dissolution and
outlawing of the workers' organizations. From then on the intake of prisoners into the
protective-custody camps decreased and remained fairly constant until the end of the
first period (from 1934 until 1936 the number of concentration-camp prisoners was
between 5,000 and 7,000; in 1933, approximately 5,000 prisoners were sent to
Dachau; and in each of the following years about 2,000). With the average number of
prisoners remaining constant, the number of deaths decreased (in Dachau from
twenty-four mortalities in 1933 to ten in 1936). The terror, which was most severe at
the time of the camps' establishment, was reflected in the death rate: of the twentyfour mortalities in Dachau in the year 1933, twelve died a violent death in April and
May alone. 8
Yet the death of prisoners in the camps was not then the daily occurrence it was to be
in later years. Only specific prisoners whom the SS knew to be representatives of
prosecuted organizations were subject to murderous abuse. Jews were in particular
danger. But the concentrations camps were not yet a securely established part of the
National-Socialist government apparatus. They had first to prevail over such
6
Studien zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager, Stuttgart, 1970; Marting Broszat, "The
Concentration Camps 1933-1945", Anatomy of the SS State, pp. 402 ff.
7
Ibid., p. 406.
8
Pingel, op. Cit., pp. 50 ff.; Günther Kmmel, "Das Konzentrationslager Dachau – Eine Studie zu dem
nationalsozialistischen Gewaltverbrechen", Bayern in der NS-Zet, Martin Broszat, Elke Fröhlich, Falk
Wiesemann, eds., Vol. I, Munich, 1977, p. 359.
traditional institutions as the police and judiciary, and these did not readily surrender
their long-established spheres of influence to the SS. As long as this rivalry continued,
even Himmler had to take account of the institutions that the National Socialists had
inherited from the Weimar Republic. The concentration camps' task in the first period
was therefore essentially to carry out the government's central goal of eliminating
immediate political opposition. And as the institutions inherited from the Weimar
Republic came to be integrated into the National-Socialist state, the concentration
camps seemed to lose their importance as special instruments of prosecution. From
1934 on political prosecution increasingly fell to the judiciary, which established for
that purpose its own courts, staffed with National Socialists.
In the first period, the prisoners formed a relatively homogeneous group: over 90
percent were Communists, Social Democrats or Trade Unionists. About ten percent of
the prisoners were Jews, but most either belonged to the aforementioned organizations
or in some way identified with them.
Within one year the SS had become the dominant organization in the emerging
system of the concentration camps. As a first step, the SA and SS pushed the police
out of its supervisory role of the concentration camps and succeeded – partly with the
support of the police and the judiciary – in setting up detention camps separate from
prisons. In order to cut costs and to more easily control the many small and scattered
detention camps, prisoners in protective custody were concentrated in a few central
camps. The largest of these were Dachau in Bavaria and Esterwegen in Prussia. By
the summer of 1934, Himmler had succeeded in gaining control of these camps, for,
by this time, he had become chief of the Political Police in the German States. This
enabled him to establish a uniform system of admission and supervision of the camps
throughout the Reich – the same system that had applied to Dachau from the
beginning. Himmler appears to have been the only one among the heads of the police,
the party leaders and the politicians in the different states to have a definite plan for
the construction of a concentration-camp system embracing the entire Reich. Next, he
united the administration of the concentration camp under one central authority called
the "Supervision of the Concentration Camps" (Inspekion der Konzentrationslager),
which became an agency of the SS Central Office. Although the Supervision of the
Concentration Camps undertook national tasks for which it received funds also from
the national treasury, it nevertheless remained a party institution. Party and national
functions fused inseparably in this organization. The commandant of Dachau,
Theodor Eicke, became the first supervisor of the concentration camps and of the SS
guard organizations (SS Wachverbände).
By issuing special camp regulations and directives to the guards in Dachau as early as
the end of 1933, the SS tried to create special legal regulations for the concentration
camps and to make the commandants and supervisors the supreme legal authority for
punishments, including the death penalty. Even though the Office of the Munich State
Attorney did not recognize these regulations, all legal proceedings that had been
brought against the guards in cases of violent death were ultimately dropped.9 In 1934
and 1935, Himmler also managed to resist the intervention of the law in the
concentration camps in the other Länder. The concentration camps actually became a
legal vacuum long before they were removed from normal jurisdiction through the
introduction of separate SS and police jurisdiction in 1939. The organizational
structure of the concentration camps retained this form until the beginning of the third
period.
During the second period, new economic objectives and the new categories of
prisoners led to a considerable rise in the number of prisoners: from approximately
7,000 at the beginning of 1939 to almost 25,000 at the beginning of the war. At the
end of the second period, the number was close to 75,000. Prison conditions
deteriorated rapidly, especially in the recently established camps, where the new
categories of prisoners predominated and where the prisoners worked at forced labor
mainly in quarries and camp construction work. Already in 1938, 10 percent of the
average population of inmates at Buchenwald had died. As a result of the influx of
Polish prisoners, who were treated with particular harshness, and because of
temporary shortages of food and accommodations since the beginning of the war, the
mortality rate rose to 20-30 percent and even higher. At this time Mauthausen had the
highest mortality rate of all the camps. More than 8,000 prisoners died there during
1941. The mobilization of labor in prospect of a speedy victory and the perpetual
overcrowding of the camps led to the complete exhaustion of the prisoners' strength,
and even to their physical destruction. This applied in particular to severely
persecuted
political
groups,
such
as
the
International
Spanish
Brigade,
Spanienkämpfer, or to prisoners considered "racially inferior", like Jews and Poles.
9
Lothar Gruchmann, "Die bayerische Justiz im politischen Machtkampf 1933/34 – Ihr Scheitern bei
der Strafverfolgung von Mordfällen in Dachau", Bayern in der NS-Zeit, op. cit., Vol. II, 1979, pp. 415428; Pingel, op. cit., p. 244, note 75.
The composition of the camp population reflected the crucial points of the
persecution. Large groups of Jewish prisoners were first brought to the camps in
1938. For the Jews persecution had reached a new, threatening intensity. Until then
they had suffered mostly social and economic discrimination. Now they were pursued
by the police of the National-Socialist state with a ferocity unequalled even by that
shown toward political opponents at the time that the government was making its bid
for power. After the mass arrests that followed the attempt on the life of the German
diplomat vom Rath in Paris, Jews were sent to the camps en masse in order to
confiscate their fortunes and to force them to agree to emigrate.
From the beginning of the war, the largest influx was from Poland. In 1940, some
8,000 Polish prisoners were sent to Mauthausen alone. This was a result of the policy
of resettlement (Aussiedlung), or racial ideology and of the battle against a relatively
fast-developing resistance. As a rule, the only prisoners taken from the occupied
countries of the West, including Czechoslovakia, were those who had been arrested
during operations against acts of resistance. Here it was not a question of
undifferentiated mass intake, as it had been in Poland. Once the preventive arrests of
possible political opponents within the old Reich were completed at the end of 1939,
the number of German prisoners, in comparison with foreign ones, rose only
moderately. As a sufficiently large working forced existed in the camps, most of the
"asocial" and "criminal" prisoners were released for military service or were
transferred to a place of work outside the camps.
The shift from "asocial" and "criminal" prisoners to Jews and prisoners from the
occupied territories emphasized the fact that, in the second period, the camps acquired
new functions. State intervention in the labor market in order to fulfill the Four-Year
Plan, intensified ideological persecution, and the conduct of the war significantly
increased the number of prisoners in the camps and caused living conditions to
deteriorate.
The year 1940 and 1941 – when National Socialism spread across Europe by means
of brute force and set out to put into practice its concepts of racial domination –
constituted, at lease for the non-Jewish prisoners, the most terrible years in the history
of the concentration camps. The composition was subhuman, and any possibility of
resistance, without the prospect of a speedy military defeat of the Nazi system, was
slight.
Even though during this period the SS founded a number of its own enterprises in
which
the
prisoners
were
put
to
work, 10
the
extermination
action
(Vernichtungseinsatz) prevented economic considerations from predominating within
the SS. Preference was given to the political and ideological principles according to
which the camps had been founded. As more and more prisoners considered
"congenitally inferior" were interned in the camps, these principles resulted in even
more devastating consequences than during the first period.
The fact that four year of National-Socialist rule had led to an expansion of the
apparatus of persecution rather than to the establishment of a "Nation" could not be
explained by the contradictions that characterized National-Socialist rule; it had to be
attributed to the unchangeable hereditary traits of the prisoners.
The supervisory authorities and commandants of the concentration camps merely
reacted to the conditions created by the mass absorption of prisoners rather than
developing an independent concept of concentration-camp detention. They retained
the concept that still had guided the arrest operations of criminal and asocial elements
in 1937-1938 and had led to the consolidation of the economic basis of the SS.
A change in orientation occurred only in the third period, when economic
consideration slowly began to prevail and the concentration camp, with its labor
potential, became increasingly integrated into the private sector of the economy. In
the spring of 1942, the future adjustment of arrest operations in line with the
requirements of the labor supply was prepared in discussions by the Nazi leadership.
The reorganization of arms production also involved the SS. The two separate central
offices, Finance and Buildings (Finanzen und Bauten) and Administration and
Economy (Verwaltung und Wirtschaft), became the Economic and Administrative
Main Office of the SS (Wirtschafts-Verwaltungs-Hauptamt – SS-WVHA).
Supervision of the concentration camps was removed from the former SS
Administration Main Office (SS-Führungshauptamt) and incorporated into the
WVHA. The command and management of the WVHA now worked together with the
Armaments Ministry, as well as with private and national concerns, in order to
regulate the mobilization of prison labor. Thus, private institutions also gained insight
into the living conditions of the prisoners, which they were actually in a position to
10
Enno Georg, Die wirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen des SS, Stuttgart, 1963; Lotte Zumpe, "Die
Textilbetriebe der SS im Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück", Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Vol.
I, 1969, pp. 11-40.
influence through the mobilization of prison labor in their factories. Some factories
took over the feeding and housing of prisoners (for which they were reimbursed by
the SS) and therefore had a large share in the responsibility for their fate. I.G. Farben
concluded an agreement of cooperation with the SS for the extension of the
Auschwitz camp, and I.G. Farben factories were built in Monowitz. 11
An increasing number of prisoners were now engaged at skilled labor in a central
production sector. As the labor force had now gained in importance, in 1942-1943 the
supervisory authorities in the camps tried to reduce the high morality rate that had
been the rule in preceding years. The measure they took for the improved
maintenance of the prisoners indeed resulted in a distinct reduction of the mortality
rate from the spring of 1943 until the autumn of 1944. Similar tendencies can also be
observed in the treatments of prisoners of war and civilian forced laborers outside the
camps.
The concentration camps, including the numerous smaller branches, were spread over
the entire area of the Reich and also over some of the occupied territories. In the years
1943 and 1944, the number of inmates rose to more than 600,000 and included
numerous nationalities. Soviet prisoners formed the largest group. The increased
significance of the concentration camps as an economic factor did not, however,
transform the SS even now into an independent arms manufacturer. Himmler's failure
to accomplish this was due to the objections raised by private industry, which
jeopardized the indispensable cooperation on which Speer had base the central
planning of the war economy. As a rule the concentration camps "loaned" the
prisoners to industrial concerns, but were themselves unable to found new enterprises.
In 1944, at Speer's insistence, the WVHA was forced to transfer part of its authority to
the Armaments Ministry. The allocation to individual firms was no longer carried out
independently by the WVHA, but only after the prior agreement of Speer's ministry.
With the introduction of the new organizational structure, Himmler effected a number
of personnel changes in the administration of the camps. Evidently, commandants
who in the past had treated the prisoners particularly harshly and had enriched
themselves through the work of the prisoners were discharged. However, the new
commandants had had no training in business, but hailed from the traditional camp
11
For further elaboration of the subject see Pingel, op, cit., pp. 291 ff.; see also Franciszek Piper, "Die
Sklavenarbeit der Häftlinge", Ausgewählte Probleme aus der Geschichte des KL Auschwitz, Auschwitz,
1978, pp. 59-80; Auschwitz – Nazi Extermination Camp, Warsaw, 1978.
hierarchy. Therefore, the economic calculations with regard to the mobilization of
prison labor were made mostly by the industrial concerns themselves. On the whole,
the camp commandants confined themselves to making certain that there were always
sufficient prisoners at the disposal of these concerns.
Jewish prisoners already in the camps were included in the expulsion of Jews from the
territory of the old Reich to the ghettos and camps of the Eastern occupied territories,
especially the Generalgouvernment. Most of them were transferred to Auschwitz and
Lublin-Majdanek.
During this phase there was another factor that had to be taken into consideration, for
the camps also had obligations that were contrary to the economic objectives. The
direct connection between extermination and industrial work continued to produce an
enormous consumption of the human labor force in Auschwitz – which was, however,
easily replaced with the constant influx of new extermination transports. However,
even if the extermination transports ensure that in Auschwitz there was always an
adequate work force, extermination and the supply of labor were incompatible goals.
Himmler had made it clear to the Wehrmacht and to factories in the private sector,
which had been trying to hold on to their Jewish workers that the policy of
exterminating Jews had priority over the supply of manpower for munitions
production. Munitions were a means to carry on the war, but the extermination of
Jews was one of the goals of the war. 12 Even before the war, Hitler had publicly
stated this correlation between the war and the extermination of the Jews. The war
was not only to significantly extend the territory of the German Reich, but also to
establish the internal make-up of the future Reich. The path to a National-Socialist,
racially superior society was to be paved with the murder of the mentally ill, the
shooting of Soviet prisoners of war, and the gassing of Jews and Gypsies. The
fulfillment of this particular requirement of National-Socialist ideology during the war
almost entirely handed over to the SS, which was at once a military and an ideological
institution. And the SS used the concentration camps, which were under its exclusive
control. Where it could the SS appointed personnel who were trained to carry out the
12
Klaus Drobisch et al., Juden unterm Hakenkreuz – Verfolgung und Ausrottung der deutschen Juden
1933-1945, Frankfurt, a.M., 1973; Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka, Massemord und Profit, Die
faschistische Ausrottungspolitik und ihre ökonomischen HIntergründe, Berlin (GDR), 1963; Erich
Goldhagen, "Weltanschauung und Endlösung", Vierteljahrsshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Vol. XXIV, No.
4, 1976, pp. 379-405.
murder, and who were for the most part in a position to do so, without involving other
institutions of the National-Socialist state.
But mass murder did not start in the concentration camps. The murder of the mentally
ill, of Soviet prisoner of war, and of the Jewish population began outside the
concentration camps. The concentration camps were turned into instruments of mass
extermination only when the murder had reached such proportions that earlier
methods were no longer adequate.
From the summer of 1944, there were severe supply shortages in the concentration
camps; the sleeping quarters and clothing for the prisoners became particularly
insufficient. As the WVHA was no longer able to obtain sufficient raw materials, in
the autumn of 1944 it finally prohibited the camp commandants from ordering any
more supplies, although they neglected to advise then how they were to provide for
the prisoners. As the war fronts grew closer, most of the camps were evacuated. The
prisoners were plunged into the chaos of evacuation marches, which, once again, was
a period of shocking losses.
Yet, even at this time, when a few camps were already in a state of dissolution, the SS
set up another concentration camp; on November 1, 1944, Dora, formerly a branch
camp of Buchenwald, was turned into an independent concentration camp. Here, in
the very last stages of the war, private enterprise, in cooperation with the government
armament planning commission and the SS sought to attain production of the Vrockets by utilizing prison labor in enormous underground tunnels under the
command of SS Officer Hans Kammler (chief of the Office for Construction in the
WVHA). In this enclosed area, through the mobilization of concentration-camp
prisoners, the WVHA presumably developed its greatest power, even though at this
point, the might of National Socialism was already broken and the final military
defeat was unavoidable. 13 However, the coalition in the production of arms between
state planning and privately organized arm production, which was carried out by
using prisoners, determined their fate during this last period and up until the last
moment.
In conclusion, the concentration camps played an important role in the NationalSocialist system of government from the very beginning. The camps were initially
13
Laurenz Demps, Zum weiteren Ausbau des staatsmonopolistischen Apparats der faschistischen
Kriegswirtschaft in den Jahren 1943-1945 und zur Rolle der SS und der Konzentrationslager im
Rahmen der Rüstungsproduktion, Dissertation, Berlin (GDR), 1970.
used to suppress political opposition, and at this point their organization does not
seem to have been planned. It seems they were instituted for the persecution of
Communists after the burning of the Reichstag. Moreover, the number of prisoners
did not increase for a time after the persecution reached a peak in 1933. In 1935 some
of the leaders of the National Socialist movement even suggested that the camps
might be dissolved or returned to police jurisdiction. But these suggestions were
based on a false analysis of the National-Socialist system. The Marxists were
considered the National Socialists' most important enemies, but not their only ones.
As National Socialist rule was extended, more and more opponents emerged, and
persecution had to be intensified, especially after the war had begun.
National Socialism had to resort to force and oppression not only to "seize political
power", but also to achieve its economic goals. The leaders believed that forced labor
was needed for the production of munitions. They feared that the German population
would otherwise refuse to fill the higher work quotas. This is why the beginning of
systematic preparations for war in 1936 was also the stage of the expansion of the
concentration-camp system. In the following years, the more production was planned
and required, the more forced labor was used, and the more important the
concentration camps became to the economy of the Third Reich. In 1944, almost onequarter of all workers were forced laborers, almost 5 percent of them concentrationcamp prisoners.
When Germany declared war on the Soviet Union and the mass extermination of
Soviet prisoners of war and of the Jewish population just began, plans had already
been completed to expand Auschwitz into a prisoner of war camp for about 100,000
prisoners. Because the Soviet army had thwarted Hitler's Blitzkrieg, the Birkenau
section of the camp, which had been set aside for Soviet prisoners, was filled with
Jewish prisoners. These were selected for forced labor from the extermination
transports and set to work mostly in the chemical and energy industries in the area of
the camp.
The history of the concentration camps graphically demonstrates that political
persecution, economic coercion and ideologically based extermination were firmly
linked in the National-Socialist system.
Falk Pingel, “The Concentration Camps as a part of the National-Socialist System of
Domination”, Yisrael Gutman, Avital Saf (Eds.), The Nazi Concentration Camps,
Structure and Aims, The Image of the Prisoner, The Jews in the Camps, Yad Vashem,
Jerusalem, 1980, pp. 3-17.
With the help of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc.