KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (119 page)
Read KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps Online
Authors: Nikolaus Wachsmann
In the same way, our search for deeper meaning in the KL will go on, even though efforts to extract a single essence are destined
to come up short. As we have seen, the concentration camps meant different things at different times of Nazi rule. Even Auschwitz cannot be reduced to its genocidal function alone, as the SS also used it to destroy the Polish resistance and to forge a closer collaboration with industry. Neither was its place as the most deadly site of the Nazi Final Solution preordained. It emerged only gradually
over several fateful months in 1942, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been killed elsewhere; the path of Auschwitz to the Holocaust was long and twisted.
145
And yet, the inadequacy of simple answers should not stop us from asking bigger questions about the nature of the concentration camps. The KL were patently products of modernity, for example, with their reliance on
bureaucracy, transport, mass communication, and technology, as well as industrially manufactured barracks, barbed wire, machine guns, and gas canisters. But does that make them paradigms of the modern age, as some scholars have suggested, any more than, say, mass vaccination or universal suffrage? As the historian Mark Mazower pointedly asks: “What makes one choice of historical symbol … better than
another?”
146
Then there is the question of the camps’ origins. Of course, the KL were products of German history; they emerged and developed under specific national political and cultural conditions, and drew inspiration from the violent practices of Weimar paramilitaries, as well as the disciplinary traditions of the German army and prison service. But does that make them “typically German,”
as some prisoners argued?
147
It seems doubtful. After all, the men behind the KL system were far more invested in radical Nazi ideology than most ordinary Germans, who felt more ambivalent about the camps. More generally, the KL shared some generic features with repressive camps established elsewhere during the twentieth century. That said, their development still diverged from other totalitarian
camps, raising perhaps the most important issue: How best to understand the course of the Nazi concentration camps?
As this integrated history has shown, there was nothing inevitable about the trajectory of the KL. Looking at the horrors of the wartime years, it is hard not to see them as the inevitable conclusion of the early camps. But there was no direct trail from Dachau in 1933 to Dachau
in 1945. The concentration camps could well have taken a different direction, and in the mid-1930s, it even looked as if they might disappear. They endured because Nazi leaders, above all Adolf Hitler himself, came to value them as flexible instruments of lawless repression, which could easily adapt to the changing requirements of the regime. The specific character of individual camps owed much to
the initiative of the local SS. But these officials operated within wider parameters set by their superiors, and in the end, the KL acted much like seismographs, closely attuned to the general aims and ambitions of the regime’s rulers. The reason they oscillated so much was that the priorities of Nazi leaders changed over time, and as the regime radicalized, so did its camps.
Despite some sharp
turns, however, the path of the concentration camps unfolded without sharp breaks. The successive stages of the camps might appear like different worlds, as we saw at the beginning of this book, but these worlds were connected nonetheless. The basic rules, organization, and ethos of the Camp SS were already in place by the mid-1930s, and remained largely unchanged thereafter. Similarly, pioneering
SS programs of mass extermination, which claimed tens of thousands of infirm prisoners and Soviet POWs in 1941, left an important legacy for the Holocaust, including the use of Zyklon B in Auschwitz. The continuities between the different stages of the camps are personified by core SS professionals like Rudolf Höss, a man who learned about prisoner abuse in Dachau at the start of the Third Reich,
graduated to systematic murder in Sachsenhausen early in the war, moved on to genocide in Auschwitz, and then oversaw the final slaughter in Ravensbrück. Throughout his career, new outrages broke new ground, and each transgression made the next one easier, inuring him, like other SS perpetrators, to acts that would have been unthinkable a little earlier. The KL system was a great transformer of
values. Its history is a history of these mutations, which normalized extreme violence, torture, and murder. And this history will continue to be written and it will keep on living, and so will the memory of those who were its witnesses, its perpetrators, and its victims.
Tables
TABLE 1
. Daily Inmate Numbers in the SS Concentration Camps, 1934–45
TABLE 2
. Prisoner Deaths in SS Concentration Camps
Most figures are (often rough) estimates; the precise number of victims will never be known.
Sources:
OdT
, vol. 2, 27–30, 98–99; vol. 3, 65; vol. 4, 57; vol. 5, 339; vol. 6, 43, 95, 520; vol. 7, 24, 22, 45, 87, 26; vol. 8, 04, 34–42, 276–80; Piper,
Zahl
, 67;
http://totenbuch.buchenwald.de
; Schilde and Tuchel,
Columbia-Haus
, 5–57, 68; KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau (ed.),
Gedenkbuch
, 9, 13;
http://totenbuch.dora.de
; Klausch,
Tätergeschichten
, 292–94; Association (ed.),
Mauthausen
, 10; Dieckmann,
Besatzungspolitik
, 1248–1327; Hördler and Jacobeit (eds.),
Lichtenburg
; idem (eds.),
Gedenkort
; Kranz, “Erfassung,” 243; Strebel,
Ravensbrück
, 510; Helm,
If
; R. B. Birn to the author, March 28, 2014; D. Drywa to the author, April 8, 2014; F. Jahn to the author, May 6, 2014.
TABLE 3
. SS Ranks, with Army Equivalents
Source:
Zentner and Bedürftig (eds.),
Encyclopedia
, 753; Snyder (ed.),
Encyclopedia
, 280.
Abbreviations
AdsD | Archiv der sozialen Demokratie |
AE | Allgemeine Erla |
AEKIR | Archiv der Evangelischen Kirche im Rheinland, Düsseldorf |
AEL | Arbeitserziehungslager (Work Education Camp[s]) |
AfS | Archiv für Sozialgeschichte |
AG | Amtsgericht |
AGFl | Archiv der KZ-Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg |
AGN | Archiv der KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme |
AHR | The American Historical Review |
AM | Archiv der KZ-Gedenkstätte Mauthausen |
APMO | Archiwum Pa |
AS | Archiv der Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen |
ASL | Archiv der Stadt Linz |
BArchB | Bundesarchiv Berlin |
BArchF | Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv |
BArchK | Bundesarchiv Koblenz |
BArchL | Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg |
BayHStA | Bayerisches |
BDC | Berlin Document Center |
BGVN | Beiträge zur Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung in Norddeutschland |
Bl. | Blatt (folio) |
BLA | Bayerisches Landesentschädigungsamt |
BLHA | Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv |
BoA | Boder Archive online |
BPP | Bayerische Politische Polizei |
BStU | Behörde des Bundesbeauftragten für die |
BwA | Archiv der Gedenkstätte Buchenwald |
CEH | Central European History |
CoEH | Contemporary European History |
CSDIC | Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre |
DaA | Archiv der Gedenkstätte Dachau |
DAP | Der Auschwitz-Proze |
DAW | Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke GmbH (German Equipment |
DESt | Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH (German Earth and Stone Works) |
DH | Dachauer Hefte |
DJAO | Deputy Judge Advocate’s Office |
DM | Deutsche Mark |
DöW | Stiftung Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes |
DP | Displaced Person |
DV | Dienstvorschrift |
EE | Eidesstattliche Erklärung |
EHQ | European History Quarterly |
ERH | European Review of History |
EV | Einstellungsverfügung |
FZH | Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte, Hamburg |
GDR | German Democratic Republic |
Gestapa | Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt (Secret State Police Office) |
Gestapo | Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police) |
GH | German History |
GHI | German Historical Institute |
GPD | German Police Decodes |
GStA | Generalstaatsanwalt |
GStA PK | Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preu |
HGS | Holocaust and Genocide Studies |
HHStAW | Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv |
HIA | Hoover Institution Archives |
HIS | Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung |
HLSL | Harvard Law School Library, Nuremberg Trials Project |
HSSPF | Höhere SS und Polizeiführer (Higher SS and police leader[s]) |
HStAD | Landesarchiv NRW, Abteilung Rheinland |
HvA | Hefte von Auschwitz |
ICRC | International Committee of the Red Cross |
IfZ | Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich |
IKL | Inspektion der Konzentrationslager (Inspectorate of Concentration Camps) |
IMT | Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal |
ITS | International Tracing Service |
JAO | Judge Advocate’s Office |
JCH | Journal of Contemporary History |
JfA | Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung |
JMH | The Journal of Modern History |
JNV | Justiz und NS-Verbrechen |
JVL | Jewish Virtual Library online |
KB | Kommandanturbefehl |
KE | Kleine Erwerbungen |
KL | Konzentrationslager (Concentration Camp[s]) |
KOK | Kriminaloberkommissar |
KPD | Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party) |
Kripo | Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police) |
KTI | Kriminaltechnisches Institut (Criminal Technical Institute) |
LaB | Landesarchiv Berlin |
LBIJMB | Leo Baeck Institute Archives, Berlin |
LBIYB | Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook |
LG | Landgericht |
LHASA | Landeshauptarchiv |
LK | Lagerkommandant(en) (Camp commandant[s]) |
LKA | Landeskriminalamt |
LSW | Landesgericht für Strafsachen, Wien |
LULVR | Lund University Library, Voices from Ravensbrück online |
MdI | Minister/Ministerium des Innern (Minister/Ministry of the Interior) |
MG | Manuscript Group |
MPr | Ministerpräsident (Minister president) |
MSchKrim | Monatsschrift |
NAL | National Archives, London |
NARA | National Archives, Washington, D.C. |
NCA | Nazi Conspiracy |
NCC | The Nazi Concentration Camps |
NCO | Noncommissioned Officer |
n.d. | no date |
ND | Nuremberg Document |
NGC | New German Critique |
NKVD | People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs |
NLA-StAO | Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Staatsarchiv Oldenburg |
NLHStA | Niedersächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv |
NMGB | Nationale Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Buchenwald |
NN | Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) |
NRW | Nordrhein-Westfalen |
NYPL | New York Public Library |
ODNB | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |
OdT | Ort des Terrors |
OKW | Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of the Wehrmacht) |
ORR | Oberregierungsrat |
OStA | Oberstaatsanwalt |
OT | Organisation Todt |
PAdAA | Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes |
PMI | Prussian Minister of the Interior |
POW | Prisoner of War |
Publ. | Published |
RaR | Review and Recommendations |
RdI | Reichsministerium des Innern (Reich Ministry of the Interior) |
RJM | Reichsministerium der Justiz (Reich Ministry of Justice) |
RKPA | Reichskriminalpolizeiamt (Reich Criminal Police Office) |
RM | Reichsmark |
RMi | Reichsminister |
RSHA | Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) |
SD | Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) |
SED | Sozialistische |
Sipo | Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) |
Sk | Staatskanzlei (State Chancellery) |
SlF | Schutzhaftlagerführer (Camp compound leader) |
SMAB | State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau |
SPD | Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Social Democratic Party) |
StA | Staatsanwaltschaft(en) |
StAAm | Staatsarchiv |
StAAu | Staatsarchiv Augsburg |
StAL | Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg |
StAMü | Staatsarchiv München |
StANü | Staatsarchiv Nürnberg |
StB | Standortbefehl |
StW | Stadtarchiv Weimar |
Texled | Gesellschaft für Textil- und Lederverwertung (Company for Textile and Leather Utilization) |
ThHStAW | Thüringisches Hauptsstaatsarchiv, |
TS | Totenkopfstandarten (Death’s Head regiments) |
TWC | Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals |
USHMM | United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |
VfZ | Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte |
VöB | Völkischer Beobachter |
VoMi | Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Ethnic German Liason Office) |
WG | Werkstatt Geschichte |
WL | Wiener |
WVHA | Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (SS Business and Administration Main Office) |
YIVO | YIVO Institute for Jewish Research |
YUL | Yale University Library, Archives |
YVA | Yad Vashem Archives |
ZfG | Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft |
