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Concentration camps (Konzentrationslager; abbreviated as KL or KZ) were an integral feature
of the regime in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945.
The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined,
usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and
imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.
THE FIRST CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN GERMANY
The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment
as chancellor in January 1933. In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, The SA
(Sturmabteilungen; commonly known as Storm Troopers), the SS(Schutzstaffel; Protection
Squadronsthe elite guard of the Nazi party), the police, and local civilian authorities
organized numerous detention camps to incarcerate real and perceived political opponents
of Nazi policy.
German authorities established camps all over Germany on an ad hoc basis to handle the
masses of people arrested as alleged subversives. The SS established larger camps in
Oranienburg, north of Berlin; Esterwegen, near Hamburg; Dachau, northwest of Munich;
and Lichtenburg, in Saxony. In Berlin itself, the Columbia Haus facility held prisoners under
investigation by the Gestapo (the German secret state police) until 1936.
CENTRALIZATION OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMP SYSTEM
The SS gained its independence from the SA in July 1934, in the wake of the Rhm purge.
Hitler then authorized SS chief leader Heinrich Himmler to centralize the administration of
the concentration camps and formalize them into a system. Himmler chose SS Lieutenant
General Theodor Eicke for this task. Eicke had been the commandant of the SS concentration
camp at Dachau since June 1933. Himmler appointed him Inspector of Concentration Camps,
a new section of the SS subordinate to the SS Main Office.
After December 1934, the SS became the only agency authorized to establish and manage
facilities that were formally called concentration camps. Local civilian authorities did
continue to establish and manage forced-labor camps and detention camps throughout
Germany. In 1937, only four concentration camps were left: Dachau, near
Munich; Sachsenhausen near Berlin; Buchenwaldnear Weimar; and Lichtenburg near
Merseburg in Saxony for female prisoners.

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.
EXPANSION OF THE CAMP SYSTEM
Nazi Germany expanded by bloodless conquest between 1938 and 1939. The numbers of
those labeled as political opponents and social deviants increased, requiring the
establishment of new concentration camps.
By the time the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, unleashing World War II, there
were six concentration camps in the so-called Greater German Reich: Dachau (founded
1933),Sachsenhausen (1936), Buchenwald (1937), Flossenbrg in northeastern Bavaria near
the 1937 Czech border (1938),Mauthausen, near Linz, Austria (1938), and Ravensbrck, the
women's camp, established in Brandenburg Province, southeast of Berlin (1939), after the
dissolution of Lichtenburg.
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, SS-commissioned 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.