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only four concentration camps were left: Dachau, near Munich; Sachsenhausen near
Berlin; Buchenwald near Weimar; and Lichtenburg near Merseburg in Saxony for female
prisoners.
The second group constituted the guard detachment (SS-Wachbataillion), which prior to 1939
was at battalion strength.
The model established by Eicke in the mid-1930s characterized the concentration camp system
until the collapse of the Nazi regime in the spring of 1945. The daily routine at Dachau, the
methods of punishment, and the duties of the SS staff and guards became the norm, with some
variation, at all German concentration camps.
AUTHORITY TO IMPRISON PEOPLE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS
After 1938, authority to incarcerate persons in a concentration camp formally rested exclusively
with the German Security Police (made up of the Gestapo and the Criminal Police).
The Security Police had held this exclusive authority de facto since 1936. The legal instrument
of incarceration was either the protective detention (Schutzhaft) order or the preventative
detention (Vorbeugungshaft) order. The Gestapo could issue a protective detention order for
persons considered a political danger after 1933. The Criminal Police could issue a preventative
detention order 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 order was
subject to judicial review, or any review by any German agency outside of the German Security
Police.
FORCED LABOR
From as early as early as 1934, concentration camp commandants used prisoners as forced
laborers for SS construction projects such as the construction or expansion of the camps
themselves. By 1938, SS leaders envisioned using the supply of forced laborers incarcerated in
the camps for a variety of SS-commissioned construction projects. To mobilize and finance such
projects, Himmler revamped and expanded the administrative offices of the SS and created a new
SS office for business operations. Both agencies were led by SS Major General Oswald Pohl,
who would take over the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps in 1942.
Beginning a pattern that became typical after the war began, economic considerations had an
increasing impact on the selection of sites for concentration camps after 1937. For instance,
Mauthausen and Flossenbrg were located near large stone quarries. Likewise, concentration
camp authorities increasingly diverted prisoners from meaningless, backbreaking labor to still
backbreaking and dangerous labor in extractive industries, such as stone quarries and coal mines,
and construction labor.
CONCENTRATION CAMPS AFTER THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR II
After Nazi Germany unleashed World War II in September 1939, vast new territorial conquests
and larger groups of potential prisoners led to the rapid expansion of the concentration camp
system to the east. The war did not change the original function of the concentration camps as
detention sites for the incarceration of political enemies. The climate of national emergency that
the conflict granted to the Nazi leaders, however, permitted the SS to expand the functions of the
camps.
The concentration camps increasingly became sites where the SS authorities could kill targeted
groups of real or perceived enemies of Nazi Germany. They also came to serve as holding
centers for a rapidly growing pool of forced laborers used for SS construction projects, SScommissioned extractive industrial sites, and, by 1942, the production of armaments, weapons,
and related goods for the German war effort.
Despite the need for forced labor, the SS authorities continued to deliberately undernourish and
mistreat prisoners incarcerated in the concentration camps. Prisoners were used ruthlessly and
without regard to safety at forced labor, resulting in high mortality rates.