Hitler Concentration Camps

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Concentration camps or Konzentrationslager's were an important feature in the Third Reich's control and desecration of the Jewish peoples from 1933 through 1945. The term concentration camp signifies a structure or area in which people are confined and subjected to inhumane living conditions without the use of legal forms of detainment and imprisonment. The first concentration camps were created shortly after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in January of 1933, and were originally created to incarcerate political opponents of Hitler. The Sturmabteilung or storm troopers, the Schutzstaffel or SS, the German police, and local political figures established, organized, and ran the camps. The SS, Hitler's personal guard, eventually …show more content…

Himmler appointed SS Lieutenant General Theodor Ericke, who was formally in charge of Dachau, to the title of Inspector of Concentration camps. Ericke's policies and procedures were then implemented in every concentration camp under Nazi control. As the Nazi regime continued to take ruthlessly take control of Eastern Europe between 1938 and 1939, the number of people deemed enemies of the regime grew exponentially. By September of 1939, after the army invaded Poland, there were six major camps: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, and Ravensbrück, a women's camp. Starting in 1934, concentration camps had two main functions, they were used as extermination centers and forced labor camps. The labor camps were then split into two main categories: extractive industries where laborers mined stone and coal, and industrial sites where laborers manufactured armaments, weapons, and various other goods necessary for the War. Even though the Nazi Regime required forced labor, the prisoners were subjected to malnourishment and dangerous working conditions creating high mortality rates among laborers. Concentration camps were an integral part of Hitler's success as he was not only able to have complete control over a mass population, but he was also able to create an immense labor force in order to fight the western

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