The early camps’ decline accelerated during 1934. Hermann Göring continued his campaign, both in public and in private, not least with Hitler. He was backed by the Reich minister of the interior, Wilhelm Frick, another Nazi faithful, who sharply criticized the excessive use of protective custody and indicated that the camps would fade away.47 As the regime consolidated, more prisoners were released (among them Wolfgang Langhoff in late March) and fewer were dragged inside; in Prussia, just 2,267 prisoners were held in protective custody on August 1, 1934, down from 14,906 one year earlier.48 The early camps were disappearing fast. More than a dozen shut down in Prussia and elsewhere in the first few months of 1934, including Brandenburg, Sonnenburg, and Bredow.49
Further camps closed later that year, following a direct intervention by Hitler. In early August 1934, shortly before a plebiscite endorsed him as Führer and Reich chancellor, Hitler made a play for the public gallery, announcing a major amnesty for political and other offenders. Crucially, Hitler extended his grand gesture to the camps. He ordered a speedy examination of all protective custody cases, demanding the release of prisoners held for minor transgressions and those thought to pose no more threat.50 Despite some resistance from the SS and Gestapo—who refused to free high-profile figures like Carl von Ossietzky and Hans Litten—most of the remaining protective custody prisoners were let go. In Prussia, there were just 437 inmates left after Hitler’s amnesty; Esterwegen—the last outpost of the Emsland concentration camp complex, originally built for five thousand prisoners—was down to an estimated 150 men by October 1934.51 The camps’ rapid decline was public knowledge. In late August 1934, Göring authorized a press release about the closure of Oranienburg, adding that protective custody would be “greatly curtailed” in the future, with lawbreakers “immediately transferred to the courts” instead.52
The judicial apparatus—with its hundreds of prisons—stood ready to take over the mantle of the camps. The German legal system had undergone a major transformation since early 1933. Although it was still largely run by national conservatives, such as the long-serving Reich minister of justice Franz Gürtner, it became a loyal servant of the Nazi regime. Critical officials were dismissed, fundamental legal principles abandoned, new courts set up and stricter laws applied. German jurists overwhelmingly backed this development. The upshot was a huge increase in the number of state prisoners, from a daily average of around 63,000 in 1932 to more than 107,000 in summer 1935, including at least 23,000 political prisoners. Gürtner and other jurists were sending a clear message to Nazi leaders: enemies of the regime would be punished hard by the law, making measures such as protective custody superfluous. With such a determined legal system, who needed concentration camps?53
To support their case, legal officials could point to their harsh prisons. In 1933, senior legal figures promised more deterrence and retribution—turning the prison into a “house of horror,” as one put it—and introduced harder sanctions and diminished rations.54 The showcase for the new prison regime was a network of camps in the Emsland. In a move that summed up their ambition to constrain lawless detention, the German legal officials had taken over the early camps Neusustrum and Börgermoor in April 1934; inside, the places of protective custody prisoners were taken by regular penitentiary inmates. By 1935, the Reich Ministry of Justice ran six camps in the Emsland, holding well over five thousand prisoners. Rules, conditions, and treatment were brutal, with thirteen confirmed prisoner deaths in 1935 alone. The high levels of violence were due, in large measure, to the employment of former SA camp guards as prison warders. They were led by another veteran of the early camps, none other than SA Sturmbannführer Werner Schäfer, who had been poached by the legal authorities in April 1934 from his post as commandant of Oranienburg. Appointed as a civil servant, Schäfer served in the Emsland prison camps until 1942, by which time several hundred inmates had died inside.55
While legal officials generally turned a blind eye to abuses in their own prisons, they began to take more concerted action against atrocities in SA and SS camps. True, there was some collusion; murders committed during the Röhm purge, for example, were out of bounds.56 Still, now that the early camps seemed to be fading, state prosecutors launched several criminal investigations, touching at least ten camps in the mid-1930s. The biggest case was brought against former SA guards from Hohnstein, following the camps’ closure. Flaunting their Nazi credentials, the legal authorities were willing to overlook crimes committed in revenge for Communist “wrongs” or for “political reasons.” But the judges drew a line when it came to arbitrary atrocities. In their view, there was no place in the Third Reich for the sadistic excesses that had blighted Hohnstein, and on May 15, 1935, the regional court of Dresden sent twenty-three SA men to prison, with sentences ranging from ten months to six years for the former commandant.57
SS men found themselves in the dock, too. In spring 1934, the regional court of Stettin convicted seven SS men from the recently closed Bredow camp for grievous bodily harm and other offenses, with the former commandant sentenced to thirteen years in a penitentiary. The case was widely reported in the German press, as part of Göring’s effort to present himself as a guarantor of order. Not to be outdone, Hitler used a speech in the Reichstag on July 13, 1934, after his action against Röhm, to announce that three SS guards (of the Stettin camp) had been shot during the purge because of their “vile abuse of protective custody prisoners.”58 Even the KL now under Eicke came under scrutiny, resulting in the arrest and conviction of senior officers from Esterwegen and Lichtenburg.59
The SS was put on the back foot.60 Its reputation was already poor—“I know there are some people in Germany who feel sick at the sight of this black uniform,” Himmler conceded—and the legal investigations only dragged it further down, at the very time when the future of the KL system was in doubt.61 Eicke railed against “poisonous” attacks that “serve the sole purpose of systematically undermining and shaking the state leadership’s confidence” in the camps.62 Meanwhile, the legal authorities continued to chip away at the KL. In summer 1935, Reich minister of justice Gürtner, whom Eicke regarded as a personal enemy, suggested that all camp inmates should be granted legal representation, a proposal supported by many German lawyers and the leaders of the Protestant Church.63
By 1935, then, the SS concentration camp system—only just established—found itself under serious pressure. Greatly depleted, the KL faced a crisis of legitimacy; to many observers, their days seemed numbered. But Heinrich Himmler had different ideas. In December 1934, he warned Göring against “abolishing an institution that at present is the most effective means against all enemies of the state.”64 Himmler would fight tooth and nail for the survival of the KL, to secure and extend his own power, but also, as he saw it, to save the Third Reich.65
Himmler’s Vision
The mass releases from Nazi camps in 1934 were “one of the worst political mistakes the National Socialist state could have made,” Heinrich Himmler seethed in a confidential speech a few years later. It had been sheer “madness” to allow vicious opponents to resume their destructive work. After all, the fight to secure the Nazi regime was far from won. According to Himmler, the German nation was still in mortal danger from shadowy enemies who threatened everything from the foundations of state and society to the moral fiber and racial health of the people. The nation had to fight to the death against the “forces of organized subhumanity,” a catch-all term he would use over and over again, meaning Communists, Socialists, Freemasons, priests, asocials, criminals, and above all Jews, who “should not be viewed as humans of our species.”66
Himmler’s beliefs rested on an apocalyptic worldview. In his mind, the all-out battle against Germany’s enemies might last for centuries and could never be won with traditional weapons. To annihilate opponents hell-bent on Germany’s ruin, Himmler and his supporters argued, the nation had to be put on a war footing. Like soldiers on the battlefields, the troops fighting against the “inner en
emy” at home had to act beyond the law. Total victory could only come through total terror, led by Himmler’s elite warriors: the police would arrest all individuals harmful to the “body of the nation,” and the SS would isolate them in concentration camps.67
Himmler’s call for unfettered police and SS terror, based on a permanent state of emergency, set him on collision course with those Nazi leaders who merely wanted an authoritarian state.68 This clash came to a head in spring 1934, and the main battleground was Himmler’s home state of Bavaria. Elsewhere, he was still too weak and had to stand by while almost all camp inmates were released. Not so in Bavaria. Backed by his superior, the powerful minister of the interior Adolf Wagner, Police Commander Himmler felt bold enough to challenge calls to empty his model camp at Dachau: “Only I in Bavaria didn’t give in then and didn’t release my protective custody detainees,” Himmler claimed a few years later.69 But this was only half the truth, as Himmler had been forced to fight a rearguard battle in Bavaria.
In March 1934, the Bavarian Reich governor von Epp launched a full-blown attack on Himmler’s approach, alarmed by the news that Bavaria appeared to hold more protective custody prisoners than Prussia (the previous summer, Prussia still outstripped Bavaria by more than three to one). Epp called for a generous amnesty, to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Nazi capture of power in Bavaria. In a letter of March 20, he argued that the current Bavarian practice was disproportionate, arbitrary, and excessive, undermining “the trust in the law, which is the foundation of any state system.” It is worth noting that the sixty-five-year-old Epp was no closet liberal. He was a far-right icon, a former army general and early Nazi supporter, known as the “liberator of Munich” after his Freikorps helped to crush the left-wing uprising of 1919. But Governor von Epp saw the Third Reich as a normative state. Now that the Nazi revolution was over, emergency measures such as protective custody were becoming “dispensable,” all the more so since new laws and courts gave the legal authorities ample power to deal with criminal offenses.70
Himmler was stung. In a remarkably rude reply, which he drafted for his boss Wagner, he vigorously defended his record. The use of protective custody had driven down political crime and other offenses in Bavaria, he claimed, something that the legal system could not hope to emulate.71 But Himmler had to give some ground. Even though Governor von Epp was becoming little more than a figurehead of the Bavarian state, his word still carried weight in government circles, and Himmler’s Bavarian police grudgingly released almost two thousand inmates from Dachau and elsewhere in March and April 1934.72
When the conflict over Bavaria flared up again in autumn 1934, Himmler offered stauncher opposition, reflecting his growing stature in the Third Reich following the Röhm purge. This time it was Reich minister of the interior Frick who challenged him. In a letter to the Bavarian state chancellery in early October, Frick pointed out that Bavaria currently held some 1,613 protective custody prisoners—almost twice as many as all other German states combined. Given the excessive zeal of the Bavarian authorities, Frick asked for a review of individual cases, as a first step for further releases.73
Himmler’s response was disdainful. Following a “most thorough” review, he noted in mid-November 1934, Bavaria would release another 203 protective custody prisoners, a paltry figure. Any mass releases, Himmler added, were out of the question. He claimed that the recent releases of dangerous Communists from concentration camps had created a serious security threat in Germany—except in Bavaria, thanks to its more stringent approach. Elsewhere, “cheeky” Communists had been emboldened by the “general slackness” of the authorities. Such enemies of the regime saw mass releases as a sign of the “inner weakness of the National Socialist state,” and escalated their attacks against the regime. Himmler’s conclusion was clear: far from releasing additional inmates, he wanted to take more prisoners inside the camps, proposing to wage a preemptive war against Communism.74
In reality, the Communist “threat” was imaginary by autumn 1934, as the Gestapo was well on top of the underground resistance.75 And although Himmler’s fear of Communists—which also gripped many lower-ranking police and state officials—was genuine, he clearly exploited it to advance his policy of preventive policing.76 But not everyone shared his grim outlook, and Reich minister Frick continued to press for further prisoner releases from Dachau.77
Himmler stood his ground in late 1934, but his foothold was far from secure. His new SS concentration camp system, in particular, was still fragile. The camps remained controversial and their impact negligible, at least in terms of prisoner numbers; by autumn 1934, Himmler’s camps only held an estimated 2,400 inmates.78 The KL might well have vanished altogether, had it not been for several decisive interventions in 1935 by the most powerful man in the Third Reich.
Hitler and the KL
As a public figure, Adolf Hitler remained studiously detached from the concentration camps, keeping a careful distance throughout the Third Reich. He was never seen inside a KL and rarely referred to them in public.79 There was good reason for his reticence, as Nazi leaders knew that the camps’ reputation was not the best. “I know how mendaciously and foolishly this institution is being written about, spoken about and blasphemed,” Heinrich Himmler acknowledged in 1939.80 Hitler, acutely aware of his own image, did his best to avoid association with potentially unpopular matters.81 This, no doubt, is why he stayed clear of the concentration camps—at least in public. In private, it was a different matter. Hitler conferred about the camps with his closest associates from the start, and would become one of the greatest champions of the KL.82
Hitler’s support had not always been unconditional. As the regime steadied itself, he initially seemed to side with those who envisaged the early camps fading away. Thousands of prisoners had already been released, he said in the Völkischer Beobachter in February 1934, and he hoped that even more would follow.83 Hitler backed up his words six months later. His amnesty of August 1934—widely publicized in Germany and abroad—resulted in the release of some 2,700 protective custody prisoners.84 But did Hitler really want the camps to disappear? Or was he just biding his time?85
In 1935 Hitler revealed his true feelings about the camps, behind closed doors. On February 20, he received Himmler, who showed him a copy of the latest letter by Reich interior minister Frick, urging further releases. Himmler, who had only just returned from inspecting Lichtenburg and Sachsenburg, scribbled Hitler’s emphatic verdict on the margins of the letter: “The prisoners are staying.”86 Four months later, Hitler went even further. Meeting Himmler on June 20, he confirmed that the KL would be needed for years to come and, for good measure, approved Himmler’s request for more SS guards.87 In the Third Reich, destructive dreams could easily come true, if they were in line with Hitler’s wishes. And Hitler backed the extension of Himmler’s terror apparatus.
To cement the camps’ standing, Hitler agreed to place them on a firm financial footing. Funding had been a contentious issue since the start, with different state and party agencies trying to pass the buck.88 In autumn 1935, Hitler approved a proposal by Theodor Eicke: from spring 1936, the Reich would pay the SS Guard Troops, while all other KL costs were borne by individual German states.89 Eicke regarded this as a temporary arrangement only. Now that the camps were fixtures of the Nazi state, he fully expected the Reich to pick up the whole bill.90 He soon got his way. From spring 1938, the camps and their SS troops were allocated funds within the Reich Ministry of the Interior budget, with almost sixty-three million Reichsmark that fiscal year alone.91 Thanks to Hitler, the financial future of the KL was secure.
Hitler also confirmed that the SS concentration camps would largely operate outside the law. On November 1, 1935, he told Himmler that protective custody prisoners should not be granted legal representation. On the same day, he brushed away as irrelevant concerns by the legal authorities about suspicious prisoner deaths.92 Only a few weeks later, Hitler pardoned the convicted Hohnstein SA men
, sending a chilling message to the judiciary: even the most sadistic camp guards could count on his backing.93 On paper, the courts could still investigate unnatural prisoner deaths at the hands of the SS. But in practice, such cases were now generally dropped.94 Prosecutors knew that there was little chance a sentence would stand, even if they could overcome the usual SS obstruction.95
Before long, Hitler added the final piece still missing for Himmler’s autonomous terror apparatus: in October 1935, he agreed in principle to unify the entire German police under Himmler’s leadership, and after months of wrangling with Frick, Himmler was appointed on June 17, 1936, as chief of German police. The Gestapo—now a nationwide body—gained complete control over protective custody; all decisions about detention and release from the KL were made centrally inside the Berlin HQ.96 Heinrich Himmler had become the undisputed master over indefinite confinement in concentration camps.
Himmler’s rise seems irresistible, but he would have been nothing without Hitler’s backing. So why did Hitler offer such unwavering support? For a start, he took a rather dim view of Himmler’s competitors. The fortunes of Wilhelm Frick were already fading, while the star of Franz Gürtner (and his Ministry of Justice) never rose at all. Hitler was deeply distrustful of the legal authorities, dismissing jurists as timid bureaucrats who placed abstract laws above the vital interest of the state.97 Hermann Göring, meanwhile, had gradually withdrawn from his role as police leader, turning his attention instead to the German economy and rearmament.98
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