KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps

by Nikolaus Wachsmann

  Eicke was after “bright-eyed” and “brawny” sentries. He welcomed even sixteen-year-olds into the fold, while he considered anyone much over twenty “only a burden.” The “boys,” as Himmler called them, were thought to be easily malleable into political soldiers. A more pragmatic motive, given the tight purse strings of the SS, was that single young men came cheap.204 Eicke’s obsession with youth changed the Camp SS, with the average age dropping to around twenty by 1938; many new recruits had enrolled straight out of the Hitler Youth.205 But Eicke did not welcome all applicants. They were supposed to show passion for their chosen path and be eager to devote their lives to the SS. Here, Eicke was drawing on the ideal of the volunteer soldier, a figure long associated in nationalist circles with dedication and self-sacrifice.206

  Although Eicke could not afford to be too selective, given the fast expansion of his troops, he achieved his primary aim. By the late 1930s, the Camp SS was made up almost entirely of volunteers, and mostly of teenagers.207 What had drawn many of them to the Death’s Head SS was its image as a crack military formation. SS recruitment material painted parallels to the army and alluded to special missions for the Führer, holding out the promise of playing at war while Germany was still at peace. By contrast, the camps and their prisoners were not mentioned at all. Most applicants must have known where they would be stationed, but recruiters did not consider the KL a selling point.208

  The training of Guard Troop recruits—with continuous parades, marches, obstacle courses, and weapons exercises—was hard. The newcomers were at the mercy of older SS officers, some of them First World War veterans, who harassed and humiliated their charges at every turn. “They drilled us,” one SS man later recalled, “till we howled with rage.” This brutal induction was designed to weed out “weak” men, and more than a few recruits collapsed or broke down in tears; they had signed up for four (later twelve) years of service, but did not even last the three months of probation. Others, by contrast, positively enjoyed the hazing—the harder, the better—as a showcase for their toughness.209

  Recruits who endured the initiation rituals were taken over into the Guard Troop. But their daily lives bore little resemblance to the adventures some had expected. By the late 1930s, Guard Troops worked on strict rotation. Most of the time was taken up with routine military exercises and training, interrupted by one week of sentry duty each month, which often proved tiring and tedious. Most men lived regimented communal lives and some grumbled that they were no more than “prisoners with rifles.” The sentries envied other SS formations bearing arms, like the Leibstandarte, which were better equipped and paid. These were the real elite units, while the Guard Troops were mocked as dull watchmen.210 “Morale among the comrades is not very good,” one guard admitted in 1935. There was a great gap between the heroic self-image of the Camp SS and their mundane lives, a gap that even Eicke’s bombastic oratory could not always bridge. “I am aware of your hardships and am striving every day to remove them,” he assured his men, “but this can only be done one step at a time.”211

  There were plenty of Guard Troop recruits who believed Eicke, despite the privations, and such men could reap rich rewards. The Camp SS offered rapid advancement toward better pay and other perks. Nowhere else in the SS could men with a modest education go further; it was not uncommon for recruits to ascend from private to officer in just a few years.212 Their rise often led them to the Commandant Staff. In the eyes of their superiors, they had proven themselves as political soldiers and were now allowed to rule the lives of prisoners inside the compounds.213

  One of these fast risers was Rudolf Höss. Born in 1900, he dreamed of becoming a soldier, and soon after the First World War broke out, he escaped from his stifling home into the army, just fifteen years of age. He threw himself into the war and was repeatedly wounded and decorated. Even the German defeat could not dim his devotion to a martial male lifestyle. He spent most of the hated Weimar years among far-right paramilitaries, fighting vicious battles in the Freikorps and then joining isolated rural communities of like-minded men. He never lost his taste for violence, either, and in 1924 Höss was convicted for his part in the slaughter of a supposed Communist traitor (he served four years in a penitentiary). The radical right-wing connections Höss forged during the Weimar years would later bring him to the SS concentration camps. He had joined the Nazi movement in the early 1920s, when he met Himmler for the first time. Their paths would cross again over the coming years, and in summer 1934, during an inspection of the regular SS in Stettin (Höss had joined up the previous year), Himmler advised him to enter the Camp SS. Höss accepted, tempted not least by the prospect of rapid promotion. He joined the Dachau SS as a sentry in December 1934. Just four months later, Eicke plucked him from the Guard Troop and transferred him to the Commandant Staff, the springboard for his later meteoric rise.214

  Höss would advance faster and further than almost any other new recruit, but his background was similar to many others in the KL Commandant Staffs. Like Höss, they were largely in their late twenties and thirties, far older than the youngsters from the Guard Troop. Most had gained their first military or paramilitary experiences prior to 1933, often showing early enthusiasm for the Nazi movement; in spring 1934, eight of the eleven officers in the Dachau Commandant Staff carried prestigiously low SS membership numbers of ten thousand or lower.215

  Among the most experienced Camp SS men were the commandants. Almost all prewar SS commandants had seen action during the First World War—around half of them as professional soldiers—and had later drifted to the Nazi movement, joining the SS before 1932 and reaching officer rank by early 1933.216 These commandants reported to Eicke’s IKL, but inside their camps they exercised the ultimate authority over prisoners and SS men; to do so, commandants relied on their staff office, above all on their adjutants, who often became powerful figures in their own right.217 Commandants had authority over the Guard Troops on sentry duty.218 And they controlled the Commandant Staff, passing on orders and directives during large assemblies, and supervising officers from the various KL departments.219

  From the mid-1930s, the Commandant Staff included five main departments, a basic division—based on the organizational structure of Dachau—which would remain largely unchanged until the end of the war.220 In addition to the commandant’s staff office (Department I), it included the so-called political office (Department II), which registered prisoner arrivals, transports, releases, and deaths, keeping files as well as photographs of inmates. In addition, it was in charge of the bunker and prisoner interrogations, using a range of torture methods. This was why a summons to the political office “was quite likely to induce a heart attack in a prisoner,” a former Buchenwald inmate wrote after the war. Crucially, the leaders of the political office reported not just to the commandant but to the police, as well. They were career policemen appointed by the police authorities, and as a sign of their special status frequently wore civilian dress.221

  The chief camp doctor, who headed the medical office (Department V), stood under dual subordination, too. In addition to the commandant, he answered to the chief medical officer in the IKL, Dr. Karl Genzken, a former navy doctor and old Nazi activist, who in turn reported to the SS Medical Authority (which posted the doctors to the camps) and the SS Reich physician. Camp doctors were in charge of all medical matters, supervising the provision for both SS troops and prisoners, for whom basic infirmaries existed.222 These doctors loomed large in the lives of inmates, in contrast to the bureaucrats from the administration office (Department IV), who operated largely hidden from view. In many ways, though, the administration office proved no less important. Not only were the officials overseeing the camp budget, they were in charge of food, clothing, and lodging (for prisoners and the SS), as well as maintenance in the camp, working closely with the SS Administration Office under Oswald Pohl.223

  The most powerful figure in the Commandant Staff, with the exception of the commandant, was the camp compound
leader, who headed the protective custody camp (Department III). A more visible presence than the commandant, for whom he deputized, he was a key figure for inmates and SS men alike. Rudolf Höss called him the “real ruler over the entire life of prisoners.” This was reflected in the location of his office, in the gatehouse directly overlooking the prisoner compound. The camp compound leader directed the largest department in the Commandant Staff. His personnel included one or more deputies at the top, a report leader (responsible for prisoner discipline and roll calls), a work service leader (supervising SS commando leaders in charge of prisoner labor details), and the block leaders (in charge of prisoner barracks). Dedicated SS men quickly moved up the ranks, sometimes all the way to the top.224

  Rudolf Höss was among the brightest stars of the Camp SS. In the Dachau Commandant Staff, he was soon fast-tracked from block leader to report leader, and after a visit in 1936, Heinrich Himmler himself promoted him to Untersturmführer; just three years after joining the SS, Höss was now an officer. He moved to Sachsenhausen in summer 1938, first as adjutant, then as camp compound leader. These two posts were the main gateways for striving SS men to become commandants, and sure enough, when his superiors searched for a dynamic officer to head one of their new KL in 1940, Höss was their choice. He packed his bags and traveled east to a place “way back in Poland,” as he wrote, as commandant of a camp called Auschwitz.225

  Camp SS Professionals

  Theodor Eicke never tired of conjuring up the SS Death’s Head “spirit”—the mortar, as he called it, which bonded his men.226 But Eicke’s rhetoric could not smooth over the cracks in the Camp SS. For all his bluster about breaking down barriers, for example, there were many formal and informal hierarchies separating leaders, NCOs, and ordinary men, both in the camp and off-duty; officers often lived in spacious and well-appointed houses in newly built SS settlements, while their men slept in large and shabby huts which sometimes faced the prisoner barracks, separated only by the barbed wire.227

  Instead of a unified community of SS comrades there were rival groups, an inevitable consequence of drafting so many ruthless and hard-nosed men.228 Conflicts also erupted over the daily duties, with plenty of men failing to live up to Eicke’s ideals. Camp SS leaders frequently reprimanded their men for slovenly dress and poor posture, for chatting with inmates, for stealing from SS stores, and for reading, or worse still, for falling asleep on duty.229 A few errant guards even ended up as prisoners themselves, after Himmler introduced a new sanction for disgraced SS men in summer 1938: on his personal orders, they would be placed into protective custody in Sachsenhausen. By September 1939, seventy-three ex–SS men—including former guards—were held here in the so-called Education Platoon, under comparatively lenient conditions. Their former SS comrades regularly set them upon fellow prisoners, who greatly feared these “bone men,” a nickname derived from the crossbones on their prisoner uniforms, a daily memento of how they had fallen.230

  Despite Eicke’s exaggerations, the SS Death’s Head spirit was not entirely imaginary. Like a true corporate leader, Eicke did impress a distinct organizational identity onto the Camp SS—with its own traditions, values, and vocabulary—and the hard core among his men fully embraced it. “We in the KL were a completely isolated clique,” one of them recalled proudly after the war. They signed up for Eicke’s ideal of the political soldier and pursued long-term careers as concentration camp professionals. There may not have been more than a few hundred of them in the prewar years, mostly inside the Commandant Staff, but it was these men who ultimately dominated the KL.231

  Life as a political soldier was a full-time commitment. The core members of the Camp SS spent much of their free time together on the grounds. They met up in SS canteens and celebrated festive occasions together. In Dachau, SS men mingled at their own private swimming pool, bowling alley, and tennis courts; there was even a nature reserve with wild animals. Senior officials socialized outside the camp grounds, too. Most of them were married with two or more children—another signifier of masculine SS identity—and their families often lived together in the nearby SS settlements. In this way, the private and professional lives of dedicated Camp SS men merged into one.232

  At the center of their lives stood violence. This was the real mortar binding together the Camp SS professionals, as their shared practice of abuse created close bonds of community and complicity.233 So strong was the violent energy at the core of the SS, it spread beyond the camps, leading to scuffles and brawls between guards and locals; the worst incident occurred in April 1938 in Dachau, when an SS man used his ceremonial dagger to stab two workers to death, apparently after an argument about his uniform and golden Nazi Party badge.234

  Violence was the essence of the Camp SS spirit, and it was soaked up by the SS professionals. In addition to official prisoner punishments, they practiced many other forms of violence, starting with slaps. For prisoners the first slap in the face was a humiliating reminder of their servitude—slaps were commonly used by German men to discipline minors and inferiors—but it was preferable to many other abuses.235 Punches and kicks, for example, caused real bodily harm, as did another violent SS ritual, the nighttime raid, when screaming guards would descend on sleeping prisoners, followed by carnage and torture.236

  By contrast, murder was still unusual in the mid-1930s. On average, between four and five prisoners died monthly in 1937 in each of the big SS camps for men (Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald), which held a daily average of around 2,300 prisoners each.237 In all, perhaps three hundred prisoners perished in the KL between 1934 and 1937, most of them driven to suicide by SS men or killed outright.238

  Violence came easy to the hard core of the Camp SS, justified (as in early camps) as the only way to hold down dangerous inmates. True, the fiction of the savage prisoner was more difficult to maintain, now that the Third Reich was fully entrenched. But Camp SS leaders worked hard to fan the flames of hatred. New recruits received ideological instruction, which continued throughout their service. In lectures, leaflets, and directives, SS leaders painted prisoners as dangerous enemies, never to be trusted, never to be left alone, never to be spared. These slogans often stuck, partly because the KL were staffed by self-selected National Socialist believers, partly because prisoners began to resemble the stereotypical image of convicts, with shaved heads and striped uniforms (see below). SS revulsion against prisoners became so intense, Rudolf Höss wrote, it was “unimaginable for outsiders.”239 Not every slap or kick was prompted by burning hatred, however. SS men found many practical reasons for assaults, to punish infractions or to maintain discipline. And sometimes, they simply assaulted prisoners out of sheer boredom, to liven up their dull days.240 Whatever the motive, however, all attacks grew out of a deep disdain for the victims.

  To make his men even harder, as Theodor Eicke put it, they were ordered to attend official prisoner floggings. The first time, Rudolf Höss recalled, he was shocked by the screams, but he got used to it, just like his comrades, some of whom appeared to enjoy the suffering of their “enemies.”241 Professional Camp SS men were more than passive observers, of course. A few of them received specialist training in torture methods.242 But most men learned on the job, copying the behavior of more experienced colleagues and superiors.243 They could deaden any remaining scruples with alcohol, which fueled violent excesses; some men got so drunk they hurt themselves as they stumbled around the camp.244

  Violence not only united Camp SS hard-liners, it propelled their careers. In a community based on the veneration of the political soldier, brutality brought valuable social capital. Ambitious SS men knew that a reputation for ruthlessness would impress superiors and boost their prospects. This was one reason why block leaders attacked prisoners and volunteered to carry out floggings. Senior officials, meanwhile, did not want to be outdone by their men. “I could not ask block leaders to do more than I was willing to do myself,” the former Sachsenhausen report leader testified after the war. “That is w
hy I personally punched and kicked.” To maintain their status, Camp SS men had to reaffirm their brutality, over and over again. Unlike prisoners, who were desperate to lie low—a common motto was “don’t be conspicuous”—committed SS men were eager to stand out, impressing their SS audience with theatrical displays of cruelty; the ensuing competition ratcheted up the spiral of terror.245 In sum, the SS perpetrators did not simply commit violence for its own sake.246 Rather, their actions were driven by an explosive mix of ideological and situational factors.

  Camp SS men who failed the test of violence were marginalized and mocked. Just as Eicke had demanded, they were shamed as weak and effeminate. This created significant group pressure on individual men to “toughen up.” Rudolf Höss, for one, was terrified of ridicule. “I wanted to become notorious for being hard,” he wrote, “so that I would not be considered soft.” Those written off as failures were sidelined into office jobs, punished, or dismissed—“for the Death’s Head strikes its wearer,” Eicke wrote in his inimitable style, “if ever he deviates from our prescribed course.” Eicke’s drive to remove “soft” men claimed several prominent casualties, none more so than the commandant of the largest SS concentration camp.247

  The Dachau School

  When Heinrich Himmler cast around for a permanent new Dachau commandant to replace Theodor Eicke, he turned to one of his oldest followers. Born in 1890, Heinrich Deubel had returned from Allied captivity in the First World War as a decorated lieutenant and settled into a steady job as a customs official. His real passion, however, was for far-right politics. He joined the fledgling SS in 1926 as member number 186, rising fast through its ranks. By 1934, Oberführer Deubel was commanding a regiment of Austrian SS men, stationed on the same grounds as the Dachau camp. As an army veteran and passionate SS officer, with a violent temper to boot, Deubel seemed as good a choice as any to succeed Eicke and took over as Dachau commandant in December 1934.248 His appointment was rather typical of the haphazard personnel policy in the early phase of the KL, when so-called old Nazi fighters, some of whom had fallen on hard times, were rewarded with posts for their early dedication to the movement, often on the spur of the moment.249