The SS by Robert Lewis Koehl

Author:Robert Lewis Koehl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The SS A History 1919 - 45
ISBN: 9780752486895
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2012-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

Concentration Camps

Next to the SD, the SS institution which earlier obtained its autonomy from party and state, and indeed in part from other branches of the SS, was the concentration camp system. Like the SA concentration camps, those of the SS had begun as ‘wild camps’ outside the authority of the state, sometimes in close co-operation with party leaders and sometimes not. The SS camp at Papenburg, which gave so much trouble to Diels and Göring in 1933, was such a local camp with purely SS connections – while the Stettin camp had been operated by the SS in collaboration with the local Gauleiter. Dachau, near Munich, and Columbia-Haus in Berlin-Tempelhof were early SS concentration camps affiliated with the SS-Gruppen (later Oberabschnitte) South and East. Theoretically, during 1933 and early 1934 each SS region (and SA region) had a camp at its disposal, staffed by regional personnel on detached service. Such personnel was often of poor quality by SS standards, and there are indications that even at this early date assignment to this service was regarded as a chance to prove oneself after failure of one kind or another. On the other hand, at first the camps were also used to carry out service punishments, and extensive numbers of uniformed SS and SA personnel turned up in camps in the spring of 1934. Right-wing Nazi efforts to regularise the punitive measures of the new regime in the winter of 1933–34 gradually led to the closure of many small camps, the transfer of others to state authority, and after the Röhm purge replacement of SA by SS guards, as well as subordination of all camps to Gestapa control, specifically Gestapa section II-D. SS concentration camp personnel played an important part in the SA purge (notably from Dachau and Columbia-Haus); and the newly acquired concentration camp at Lichtenburg, near Torgau, served the SS as a sorting centre for arrested SA personnel. Air Force General Erhard Milch was shown SA personnel in Dachau from the purge in the spring of 1935.

Even before the purge, but definitely after it, SS troops guarding concentration camps were enlisted for terms of one, four, and later, twelve years as state officials or employees. With the transfer of a camp to state authority, the pay for the SS guards came from the interior or police budget of the state in which the camp was located, but Gestapa regulation effectively removed the control from local Gauleiter. Moreover, Dachau remained a purely SS installation of several interlocking parts: the concentration camp, the General SS Übungslager (training camp), the Ausrüstungslager (supply camp), the headquarters of the Political Emergency unit for the Munich area and lastly an ‘assembly point’ (Sammelstelle) for male Austrian refugees (Austrian Legion). The battalion-strength guard unit at Dachau was separately distinguished from other detached personnel of the Main Sector as early as March 1934, as was the Sonderkommando Sachsen (Saxon unit). The generic term ‘Wachverbände’ first appears in November 1934, a month before Eicke was named as Inspector

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