Note: there were MANY questions today, so I wasn’t able to follow my lecture outline closely
Collect journals, return Q2
Concentration camp system: summary of phases (review; graph of numbers)
civil war: neutralization of opposition (real and imagined)
race war: enslavement, extermination
race war by other means (during "total war"): extermination through work
chaos: panic and desperation among personnel
Early Concentration Camps (phases 1a, 1b)
Functions of early camps: direct and indirect silencing of opposition, "pacification"
of broader populace, by:
Physical absence
psychological destruction
isolation and mistrust
1a. March-April 1933: 25,000 potential
opponents taken into "protective custody"
50 "camps" to alleviate overcrowding
in prisons
run by local police and SA,
except in Munich-Dachau (Himmler=SS
& Mu. police)
July 1933: Theodore Eicke named
commander, implements "new regime"
1b. 1935: Himmler persuades Hitler not
to dissolve camps; SS camp network set up:
1936 Sachsenhausen; 1937
Buchenwald and Dachau; [1937: 8,000 total in camps] 1938 Flossenbürg and Mauthausen, Neuengamme
[Dec. 38: 33,000 incl. 25,000 Jews];
1939 Ravensbrück [Sept. 39: 29,000 in all camps]
Wartime phases (phases 2a, 2ab, 2b)
War and racist war: labor, extermination, extermination through labor
camps in occupied countries: Poland (Stutthof, Maidanek, Auschwitz), Breendonk,
Herzogenbosch
"Stalag" (Stammlager=core camp): prisoner of war camps run by the Wehrmacht
system of branch or subcamps (Aussenlager): outsourcing of labor
August 1944: 20 main camps with 165 subcamps, 524,286 inmates
December 44: 500 subcamps, 714,000 inmates; 40,000 guards