KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (18 page)

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 enemy” 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In reality, the Communist “threat” was imaginary by autumn 1934, as the Gestapo was well on top of the underground resistance.
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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.
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But not everyone shared his grim outlook, and Reich minister
Frick continued to press for further prisoner releases from Dachau.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hitler, acutely aware of his own image, did his best to avoid association with potentially unpopular matters.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But did Hitler really want the camps to disappear? Or was he just biding his
time?
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Prosecutors knew that there was little chance a sentence would stand, even if they could overcome the usual SS obstruction.
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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.
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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.
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Hermann Göring, meanwhile, had gradually withdrawn from his role as police leader, turning his attention instead
to the German economy and rearmament.
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The stage was clear for Himmler, who had already demonstrated his worth during the Röhm purge in summer 1934. His uncompromising attitude elevated him into Hitler’s innermost circle, and once he had Hitler’s ear, he never stopped extolling the camps’ virtues.
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His subordinates tried to do the same. Theodor Eicke pinned particularly high hopes on the Nazi
Party rally in September 1935, when his KL troops filed past Hitler for the first time. Eicke saw this as an important audition. His men rehearsed for weeks—arriving from different camps for special drills in Dachau—before setting off for Nuremberg in pristine uniforms and freshly painted steel helmets. “We passed our test there,” Eicke wrote proudly afterward.
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Hitler thought so, too. He was
impressed by all he saw and heard about the KL and praised their exemplary management during a meeting with Himmler in November 1935.
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Hitler came to regard the KL as indispensable, as they allowed him to swiftly settle scores with personal enemies.
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Most important, Hitler valued the camps as powerful weapons in the all-out assault on “community aliens.” The safe detention of dangerous prisoners
was essential, Hitler told Himmler on June 20, 1935, and he approved special machine gun units at concentration camps. In case of domestic unrest or war, Hitler added, SS guards could even serve as shock troops outside camps.
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Emboldened by Hitler’s support, Himmler launched the first of many “preemptive” nationwide strikes. On his orders, issued on July 12, 1935, the police arrested well over
a thousand former KPD functionaries; the mere suspicion of a “subversive attitude” was enough to warrant arrest.
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But Himmler’s sights were set higher, as we have seen, targeting all alleged enemies. Once more, he could count on Hitler’s support. When the two men met on October 18, 1935, they discussed not only the attack on Communists, but abortionists and “asocial elements,” too.
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Before
long, raids on social outsiders by the criminal police intensified, sending ever more prisoners to the KL.
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