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4.58 AVERAGE
4.58 AVERAGE
An extremely detailed and thorough look into the Nazi concentration camps.
dark
informative
medium-paced
COMPREHENSIVE overview. contextualizes KL in Nazi/WWII history very well
A very in depth look at the german concentration camps, from their beginnings in the early 1930s to their final collapse in 1945. A very worth while read.
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
When the references and bibliography of a book cover 200 pages alone it’s fair to say the work in question can be summed up with the overused word; epic. Nikolaus Wachsmann begins by informing us that there has never been a single volume history of the Nazi concentration camp system; the Konzentrationslager or KL for short. What follows is an incredibly detailed, incredibly harrowing narrative of the growth of the Nazi complex of coercion, control, torture and eventually mass murder. There is a caveat to this though; the KL were separate from the death camps such as Sobibor and Treblinka; while many were just as deadly and in the case of Auschwitz even moreso their supposed primary function were as prisons and slave labour camps for minorities and what the Nazi state labelled as both asozial (asocial) and arbeitsscheu (work-shy) elements of society; caught up in these descriptions were gypsies, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, socialists, communists, alcoholics, prostitutes pacifists, military deserters, spies, trade unionists and a plethora of religious groups.
The camps were part of the German state apparatus for as long as the Nazi’s were in power. Between 1933 and 1945 and an estimated 2.3million people were dragged into them; 1.7million of those would die behind the gates of the KL, just over one million of those would be Jews killed in Auschwitz; the only KL to play a central role in the “Final Solution”; the Holocaust. Many camp names are burned into the memory of even casual readers of history; Dachau and Sachsenhausen for instance, there are many others that people have never heard of such as Ellrich, Klooga or Kaufering but each and every one became a site of lawless terror. Germany of course was not the only country to have concentration camps, they grew throughout the 1920s in many countries, but nowhere would perfect them as weapons of fear and isolation in the way the Nazi’s did. As Hannah Arendt put it; Soviet concentration camps were purgatory, Nazi ones pure hell.
While the KL become intertwined with the Holocaust it wasn’t until the final years of the war where the majority of Jewish survivors were interred in them. Anti-Jewish terror largely existed outside of the KL system for around a decade, with the primary focus being political enemies and those asocial parts of the citizenry. During the prewar years, the SS used them as boot camps, deterrent threats, reformatories, forced labour reservoirs, and torture chambers, only to add further functions during the war, promoting them as centres for armaments production, executions, and human experiments. The camps were defined by their multifaceted nature, a crucial aspect absent from most popular memories.
There are so many stories that would be worth recounting covering how the KL developed, many of them would be considered too far-fetched for fiction, such as Himmler looking for someone to lead Dachau after a series of scandals; he headhunted a World War I veteran Theodor Eicke; Eicke was a domestic terrorist and at the time being held in a mental asylum in Würzburg. Eicke would go on to expand the KL system and played a large part in bringing about the horrors that were to come, and was continually promoted within the SS for his cruelty. Or Dr Friedrich Mennecke who took part in selections of disabled prisoners to be murdered, who wrote in detail to his wife about his work, when moving from one concentration camp to another he sent her a postcard containing the phrase “let the next happy hunt begin”; there was no hiding, and no shame about what Mennecke and his colleagues were doing.
An important element of the book is cultural memory and the way ordinary Germans behaved. Those that were aghast often ended up in the Camps themselves, many people supported the KL actively and all they stood for but the largest response was indifference. It reads uncomfortably how “normal” people can stay silent as atrocities are going on around them; even those communities located near the camps. During the middle of 1945 local areas were terrified they were going to be attacked by liberated prisoners and survivors; but that fear quickly turned to anger as people realised they had no reason to fear the emaciated, haunted faces that emerged and indeed complained that they were a burden on local resources and were taking too high a portion of rations. The road to viewing Jews, who at this stage were the majority in the KL, as human again would be a long one.
The book is dotted with individual tales where appropriate, stories of hope, stories of despair and stories of absolute horror that never fall into gratuitous. Every position, both official and unofficial within the KL is explored; from the commandants, to kapos to the sonderkommando; anyone wanting to know why the term kapo is still such an effective slur would do well to read this book. From torture, lethal injections, gassing, mass shootings and burning we see the true repugnance of the Nazi regime, even during the final months when defeat was inevitable the objective was to kill; the death marches are covered in great detail. While Hitler remained obsessed to the end about Jews, Himmler attempted to be more pragmatic and asked for remaining Jews to be kept alive as he saw them as hostages to be bargained away for his own immunity. As we know this was a complete failure and Himmler followed his Fuhrer to a self-inflicted death not long after.
There are worrying parallels in today’s world with the early years of the Nazi regime. Populist right wing leaders such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orban and Jair Bolsonaro to name just three are proving themselves perfectly capable of othering the non-majority in their countries and indeed systems very similar to concentration camps have been set up, notably on the US / Mexican border, the full terror of which will probably not be known for some time. This book was a decade long project that ended in 2015 before the world took a lurch to the right, but in reading it now the book can only be seen through the prism of our contemporary world and as we close it for the final time we utter the words, “dear God, not again”.
The camps were part of the German state apparatus for as long as the Nazi’s were in power. Between 1933 and 1945 and an estimated 2.3million people were dragged into them; 1.7million of those would die behind the gates of the KL, just over one million of those would be Jews killed in Auschwitz; the only KL to play a central role in the “Final Solution”; the Holocaust. Many camp names are burned into the memory of even casual readers of history; Dachau and Sachsenhausen for instance, there are many others that people have never heard of such as Ellrich, Klooga or Kaufering but each and every one became a site of lawless terror. Germany of course was not the only country to have concentration camps, they grew throughout the 1920s in many countries, but nowhere would perfect them as weapons of fear and isolation in the way the Nazi’s did. As Hannah Arendt put it; Soviet concentration camps were purgatory, Nazi ones pure hell.
While the KL become intertwined with the Holocaust it wasn’t until the final years of the war where the majority of Jewish survivors were interred in them. Anti-Jewish terror largely existed outside of the KL system for around a decade, with the primary focus being political enemies and those asocial parts of the citizenry. During the prewar years, the SS used them as boot camps, deterrent threats, reformatories, forced labour reservoirs, and torture chambers, only to add further functions during the war, promoting them as centres for armaments production, executions, and human experiments. The camps were defined by their multifaceted nature, a crucial aspect absent from most popular memories.
There are so many stories that would be worth recounting covering how the KL developed, many of them would be considered too far-fetched for fiction, such as Himmler looking for someone to lead Dachau after a series of scandals; he headhunted a World War I veteran Theodor Eicke; Eicke was a domestic terrorist and at the time being held in a mental asylum in Würzburg. Eicke would go on to expand the KL system and played a large part in bringing about the horrors that were to come, and was continually promoted within the SS for his cruelty. Or Dr Friedrich Mennecke who took part in selections of disabled prisoners to be murdered, who wrote in detail to his wife about his work, when moving from one concentration camp to another he sent her a postcard containing the phrase “let the next happy hunt begin”; there was no hiding, and no shame about what Mennecke and his colleagues were doing.
An important element of the book is cultural memory and the way ordinary Germans behaved. Those that were aghast often ended up in the Camps themselves, many people supported the KL actively and all they stood for but the largest response was indifference. It reads uncomfortably how “normal” people can stay silent as atrocities are going on around them; even those communities located near the camps. During the middle of 1945 local areas were terrified they were going to be attacked by liberated prisoners and survivors; but that fear quickly turned to anger as people realised they had no reason to fear the emaciated, haunted faces that emerged and indeed complained that they were a burden on local resources and were taking too high a portion of rations. The road to viewing Jews, who at this stage were the majority in the KL, as human again would be a long one.
The book is dotted with individual tales where appropriate, stories of hope, stories of despair and stories of absolute horror that never fall into gratuitous. Every position, both official and unofficial within the KL is explored; from the commandants, to kapos to the sonderkommando; anyone wanting to know why the term kapo is still such an effective slur would do well to read this book. From torture, lethal injections, gassing, mass shootings and burning we see the true repugnance of the Nazi regime, even during the final months when defeat was inevitable the objective was to kill; the death marches are covered in great detail. While Hitler remained obsessed to the end about Jews, Himmler attempted to be more pragmatic and asked for remaining Jews to be kept alive as he saw them as hostages to be bargained away for his own immunity. As we know this was a complete failure and Himmler followed his Fuhrer to a self-inflicted death not long after.
There are worrying parallels in today’s world with the early years of the Nazi regime. Populist right wing leaders such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orban and Jair Bolsonaro to name just three are proving themselves perfectly capable of othering the non-majority in their countries and indeed systems very similar to concentration camps have been set up, notably on the US / Mexican border, the full terror of which will probably not be known for some time. This book was a decade long project that ended in 2015 before the world took a lurch to the right, but in reading it now the book can only be seen through the prism of our contemporary world and as we close it for the final time we utter the words, “dear God, not again”.
This is a thorough, in-depth, deeply reseached history of the entire story of Nazi concentration camps, from the first improvised ones shortly after the Nazi takeover, to the establishment of Dachau, then its expansion, to other concentration camps, and Auschwitz as the first and main "death camp."
Waschmann details how SS camp guards became more coarsened through time, if they weren't at the start, by peer pressure. He discusses the complex situation of Kapos in general and with several specific examples. He ties the later camps to slave labor. And more, including intra-Nazi Party politics that drove issues at the camps.
Note: Belzec, Sobibór, and Treblinka were NOT part of the official concentration camp system, unlike Auschwitz, started as a concentration camp and later becoming primarily a death camp. Thus, Wachsmann does not look much at them.
A must-read book.
Waschmann details how SS camp guards became more coarsened through time, if they weren't at the start, by peer pressure. He discusses the complex situation of Kapos in general and with several specific examples. He ties the later camps to slave labor. And more, including intra-Nazi Party politics that drove issues at the camps.
Note: Belzec, Sobibór, and Treblinka were NOT part of the official concentration camp system, unlike Auschwitz, started as a concentration camp and later becoming primarily a death camp. Thus, Wachsmann does not look much at them.
A must-read book.
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
A very thorough and well researched books.
The history of the KL system was long and contains many different stories. Nothing is missed along the way in the book - not personal prisoner testimonies (from all ranges of prisoners) to testimonies of the criminals who ran the camps, the effects of WW2 on the camps and the various stages in the system along the way.
The history of the KL system was long and contains many different stories. Nothing is missed along the way in the book - not personal prisoner testimonies (from all ranges of prisoners) to testimonies of the criminals who ran the camps, the effects of WW2 on the camps and the various stages in the system along the way.
KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps is a good piece of writing. It uses headings effectively, has chapters that are structured to flow logically on from each other, uses simple factual language; it deals with the evolution of the camps in largely chronological order and in doing so, makes this part of history easier to understand. I'm not saying that it is easy reading - it does not glorify survivors and does not diminish their experiences by glossing over what happened in the camps - so it can be graphic. It's disturbing to see, so plainly on the page, the numbers of dead, the names of those murdered, and the descriptions of how they died, in so many ways: starving, freezing, shot, tortured, gassed.
But in setting out and following the establishment and running of the camps, and weaving in the broader context of war and German sentiment at the time, it has more than achieved its objective: to tell the story of multiple camps, especially to shed light on satellite camps and the lesser known suffering of prisoners outside of Auschwitz; to link up the Nazis staffing the camps and the structures that led to the Holocaust; and finally to tell the stories of some of those who lived and died in the camps.
It is a very comprehensive history - it talks the administrative structures of the camps, the terrible burden of the Special Squads, the lives of the SS guards and Commandants, the corruption and theft and the differences between camps - where there were women only camps for example. I learnt a number of things about the concentration camps that I did not know before, including that:
- camps were set up as early as 1933 and attempts were made to destroy them as the Allies advanced in
- early on, camps were still considered places of rehabilitation, so prisoners were often released once they had learned their lessons
- Jewish prisoners were not the majority of those held in the concentration camps until much later
- prisoners included POWs, political enemies, those deemed mentally ill, disabled people, even a few instances of SS locked up, accused of corruption and mistreating prisoners!
- many prisoners kept records while in the camps, in buried diaries or papers thrown off trains, and could also write letters (although these were heavily censored)
- there were thousands of satellite camps, some holding very few prisoners, acting as holding camps, while others held thousands.
I learnt that conditions and treatment in camps were even worse than I could have imagined - or had known about before I read this history. The misery in the camps is compounded knowing that each individual experienced it differently - that some prisoners like Norwegian prisoners of war, had more food than others because of access to Red Cross food packages; that the SS guards exploited national and racial prejudices to create conflict; that prisoners elevated to Kapo positions were forced to act like their oppressors, and suffered for it, while some Kapos enjoyed it.
More importantly, in my opinion, the evolution of the camps as it is set out in the book reminds readers of how this kind of regime happens in the first place.
When we come across horrific people, and situations and when we proclaim that we don't know how such things can happen - we try to explain it away as un-explainable - almost supernatural, always unusual and unstoppable. But as this history details, genocide doesn't happen suddenly. This history draws us back to the very beginning and shows us the very root of things, the multitude of factors that lead to humans treating other beings as lesser.
We see it begins with a political party with racist and xenophobic ideologies, seeking to make over the republic. In 1933, camps start from the arrests of political opposition and the arrests of Communists, and members of the previous government. This persecution transitions just as quickly to protecting ordinary Germans from the 'other' - petty criminals, career criminals, 'asocials', even the unemployed - and shoring up the Nazi base by rooting out the 'enemy'. Diversity causes division. Concentration camps become economic, driven by industry profits and the demand from war. All this augmented by propaganda, conflict and unchecked intolerance, and in the background, very difficult life circumstances, with high unemployment and the break out of war in 1941.
KL highlights that the eventual reality of concentration camps was not inevitable - that many factors along the way led to the systematic killings of Jews, Poles and millions of other prisoners. It also highlights that many Germans were aware of the concentration camps, and what was happening there. This dispels the idea that concentration camps were built and killing occurred, without the support and consent of German citizens. While not all details were evident, the proximity of the camps to towns and villages and other persecution mean that much of this terror and oppression was happening right in front of citizens who were persuaded of its good. Other persecution being the changes to laws that prevented marriage with Jews, the deposit holding laws that stole and consolidated the resources of Jews and the steady expulsion of Jewish people from Germany, and then the crowding of Jewish people into ghettos, onto trains and into concentration camps.
When Wachsmann breaks this down for readers, it seems familiar rather than alien. The development of concentration camps becomes more understandable rather than an impossible radical, extreme idea. We can always draw the parallels from history, to some of what is happening right here, right now - economic upheaval, rising nationalism, systemic racism that goes on unaddressed and is supported by a vocal and visible cohort of far-right extremists. This history tells us what to watch out for.
But in setting out and following the establishment and running of the camps, and weaving in the broader context of war and German sentiment at the time, it has more than achieved its objective: to tell the story of multiple camps, especially to shed light on satellite camps and the lesser known suffering of prisoners outside of Auschwitz; to link up the Nazis staffing the camps and the structures that led to the Holocaust; and finally to tell the stories of some of those who lived and died in the camps.
It is a very comprehensive history - it talks the administrative structures of the camps, the terrible burden of the Special Squads, the lives of the SS guards and Commandants, the corruption and theft and the differences between camps - where there were women only camps for example. I learnt a number of things about the concentration camps that I did not know before, including that:
- camps were set up as early as 1933 and attempts were made to destroy them as the Allies advanced in
- early on, camps were still considered places of rehabilitation, so prisoners were often released once they had learned their lessons
- Jewish prisoners were not the majority of those held in the concentration camps until much later
- prisoners included POWs, political enemies, those deemed mentally ill, disabled people, even a few instances of SS locked up, accused of corruption and mistreating prisoners!
- many prisoners kept records while in the camps, in buried diaries or papers thrown off trains, and could also write letters (although these were heavily censored)
- there were thousands of satellite camps, some holding very few prisoners, acting as holding camps, while others held thousands.
I learnt that conditions and treatment in camps were even worse than I could have imagined - or had known about before I read this history. The misery in the camps is compounded knowing that each individual experienced it differently - that some prisoners like Norwegian prisoners of war, had more food than others because of access to Red Cross food packages; that the SS guards exploited national and racial prejudices to create conflict; that prisoners elevated to Kapo positions were forced to act like their oppressors, and suffered for it, while some Kapos enjoyed it.
More importantly, in my opinion, the evolution of the camps as it is set out in the book reminds readers of how this kind of regime happens in the first place.
When we come across horrific people, and situations and when we proclaim that we don't know how such things can happen - we try to explain it away as un-explainable - almost supernatural, always unusual and unstoppable. But as this history details, genocide doesn't happen suddenly. This history draws us back to the very beginning and shows us the very root of things, the multitude of factors that lead to humans treating other beings as lesser.
We see it begins with a political party with racist and xenophobic ideologies, seeking to make over the republic. In 1933, camps start from the arrests of political opposition and the arrests of Communists, and members of the previous government. This persecution transitions just as quickly to protecting ordinary Germans from the 'other' - petty criminals, career criminals, 'asocials', even the unemployed - and shoring up the Nazi base by rooting out the 'enemy'. Diversity causes division. Concentration camps become economic, driven by industry profits and the demand from war. All this augmented by propaganda, conflict and unchecked intolerance, and in the background, very difficult life circumstances, with high unemployment and the break out of war in 1941.
KL highlights that the eventual reality of concentration camps was not inevitable - that many factors along the way led to the systematic killings of Jews, Poles and millions of other prisoners. It also highlights that many Germans were aware of the concentration camps, and what was happening there. This dispels the idea that concentration camps were built and killing occurred, without the support and consent of German citizens. While not all details were evident, the proximity of the camps to towns and villages and other persecution mean that much of this terror and oppression was happening right in front of citizens who were persuaded of its good. Other persecution being the changes to laws that prevented marriage with Jews, the deposit holding laws that stole and consolidated the resources of Jews and the steady expulsion of Jewish people from Germany, and then the crowding of Jewish people into ghettos, onto trains and into concentration camps.
When Wachsmann breaks this down for readers, it seems familiar rather than alien. The development of concentration camps becomes more understandable rather than an impossible radical, extreme idea. We can always draw the parallels from history, to some of what is happening right here, right now - economic upheaval, rising nationalism, systemic racism that goes on unaddressed and is supported by a vocal and visible cohort of far-right extremists. This history tells us what to watch out for.
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced