How it all started
The weeks following the Nazi's rise to power marked the beginning. The SA, the SS, the police, and the local civilian authorities organized countless detention camps to incarcerate political opponents of the Nazi policy.
Authorities established camps all over Germany to handle the masses of people arrested as alleged subversives.
The SS established even bigger camps in Oranienburg, Esterwegen, Dachau, and Lichtenburg.
The SS established even bigger camps in Oranienburg, Esterwegen, Dachau, and Lichtenburg.
Organization
After the SS gained independence from the SA in July of 1934, Adolf Hitler authorized Heinrich Himmler to centralize the administration of the concentration camps and make them into a system.
Himmler appointed Theodor Eicke as Inspector of Concentration Camps, who was already a commandant of Dachau in 1933. Eicke developed procedures to administer and guard the concentration camps. There were regulations for both the duties of the perimeter guards, and for the treatment of the prisoners. Special "political units on alert" originally guarded the SS concentration camps. They were later renamed "SS Guard Units" in 1935, and, funny enough, renamed "SS Death's-Head Units" in 1936. One Death's-Head was assigned to each camp. After 1936, the camp administration was also a part of the SS Death's-Head Unit. Here's a fun fact: Although all SS units wore the skull and crossbones (the Death's-Head symbol) on their caps (see right), only the Death's-Head Units were authorized to wear the symbol on their collars. The SS Death's-Head Unit at each camp was divided into two sections. The first was the camp staff, which encompassed: 1.) the commandant and his personal staff 2.) a Security Police officer and an assistant to maintain and update prisoner records 3.) the commandant of the "protective detention camp", which housed the prisoners and his staff 4.) an administrative staff responsible for the fiscal and supply administration of the the camp 5.) an infirmary run by an SS physician, who constituted the guard detachment (which was at battalion strength prior to 1939) |
Things get out of hand
“My wish for you... is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the |
After 1938, authority to incarcerate persons in a concentration camp formally rested exclusively with the German Security Police, which held this exclusive authority since 1936. The "legal" instrument of incarceration was either the "protective detention" order and the "preventative detention" order, which the Criminal Police could issue after December 1937 for persons considered to be habitual and professional criminals, or to be engaging in what the regime defined as "asocial" behavior. Neither of the orders was subject to judicial review, or any review by any German agency outside of the German Security Police.
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