The Holocaust: A New History

by Laurence Rees

  Hans Beimler, a German Communist, published another early eyewitness account of the camp in 1933. He entitled his book Im Mörderlager Dachau (In the Murder Camp Dachau).53 But while Beimler was justified in calling Dachau a ‘murder’ camp, given that a small number of prisoners were killed there during this period, these concentration camps should not be confused with the later extermination camps – like Treblinka – whose only function was to kill. Appalling as the regime was at Dachau before the war, the majority of those who were sent to the camp at this time survived the experience.

  When Beimler was arrested on 11 April 1933 the Stormtroopers could scarcely contain their glee at capturing such a prominent Communist. In prison he was savagely beaten with rubber truncheons. After fourteen days he was transferred to Dachau where he was hit about the head and thrown into a cell in the bunker. Just as with Josef Felder, one of the guards visited Beimler in his cell, gave him a rope and demonstrated the best way he could use it to hang himself. Soon afterwards Beimler heard screams as other prisoners were tortured, before his own cell door swung open and half a dozen guards entered. They beat him so badly that he could scarcely touch anything for days without feeling pain, and it was impossible for him to sleep.

  Astonishingly, Beimler was able to escape from Dachau. He detached the wooden board over a small, high window in his cell, squeezed through the opening and, possibly with the collaboration of at least one guard, traversed the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the camp. An extensive manhunt was launched in an attempt to catch him, but he was able to cross the German border to freedom. He died in 1936 at the age of forty-one, fighting in the International Brigades in the Spanish civil war.

  The consequence of works like Im Mörderlager Dachau and Juda verrecke. Ein Rabbiner im Konzentrationslager, together with articles in the Manchester Guardian and other newspapers, was that the brutal nature of the Nazi regime was known to the world from the beginning. However, in parallel to these truthful accounts, misinformation was also published, especially in Germany, which sanitized life in the concentration camps. For example, the local paper for Dachau, the Amper-Bote, claimed in September 1933 that the prisoners spent their spare time ‘contentedly’ playing sport or games and had been observed ‘cheerfully working’.54 Many other German citizens took a similarly benign view of the camps. Erna Krantz, a Munich schoolgirl in the 1930s, says: ‘You just knew of the existence of Dachau, but it was just a prison camp, wasn’t it? We knew that there were Communists there, and criminals.’55 Karl Boehm-Tettelbach, a young air force officer at the time, believed that ‘In Dachau he [Hitler] collected all the professional criminals … and they had to work there … in addition, he got all the gigolos, especially the homosexuals, away from the streets. And they were there in Dachau in that working camp, and the people didn’t object too much at this.’56

  This idea that the inmates of camps like Dachau somehow deserved to be there – even though they had faced no criminal trial – was not uncommon. Walter Fernau, for instance, was a teenager when he first ‘heard the words concentration camp’ in 1935. He remembers that ‘a son of a friend of my father’s was flirting with a married woman in a café, and then her husband came in and he was an SS Hauptsturmführer. He took him to task. This son of my father’s friend, he was idle and just lived off his father’s fortune; his goal in life was just to mess around with women and hang around bars. He hit out and gave the SS man, who grabbed him, such a hook that he flew over two tables and slid down the wall. Then he took his girlfriend – that was the man’s wife – and went out. Of course, the police arrested him shortly afterwards. My father told my mother this story over lunch. We children, my sister and I, were listening. And then he said: “Imagine, Adelbert’s son, the big one, they’ve arrested him, he beat up an SS man and now he’s being sent to a concentration camp.” And then my mother said: “What’s that then?” And my father said: “He’ll finally learn the meaning of work there!” And so as a child of fifteen or sixteen I thought, “Oh, that wastrel who has done nothing all his life and just picks up strange women and drives around in fast cars, it’ll do him good to learn how to work for a change.” ’57

  Others were more realistic about the political situation. Manfred von Schröder, the suave son of a banker who joined the Nazi party in 1933, believed that the concentration camps were the understandable by-product of a ‘revolution’. ‘Have you seen in history’, he says, ‘any revolution without nasty aspects on one side or the other?’58 The Austrian-born Nazi Reinhard Spitzy echoes this view: ‘In all revolutions – and we thought we have a revolution, a Nationalist Socialist revolution – blood is running.’59

  At first sight it might seem strange that so many people welcomed this revolution, even with these ‘nasty aspects’. But it is less surprising if we remember that Germany had just experienced an existential crisis. The whole fabric of the country appeared to be coming apart as a result of the economic crash. Everyone knew what had happened in Russia in 1917 and there was a real fear of just such a revolution breaking out in Germany. As a result, enormous numbers of violence-hating Germans thought that the best way of gaining peace and security was to support Hitler and his Stormtroopers. They believed that a Nazi revolution was preferable to a Communist one, and that as a result of the actions of the Stormtroopers law and order would return once again. Many Germans also felt comfortable because the groups that the Nazis targeted seemed to be clearly defined, not just the Jews but Communists and socialists as well. So if you were not Jewish, or Communist or socialist, if you didn’t cross the new regime in any other way, if instead you were a good, solid German who wanted a new start, then you were almost certainly not only safe from persecution but it was perfectly possible that you approved of what the Nazis were doing.

  Given that Hitler’s rhetoric had focused so much on fight, struggle and the crushing of enemies, it is also not surprising that controlling the guards who worked in the camps was a challenge for the regime. Himmler’s solution was not only to staff the camps he oversaw with members of his SS, but to replace the commandant of his showpiece camp, Dachau, just three months after it opened. The first commandant, Hilmar Wäckerle, had represented the old way of thinking. He was a veteran of the First World War and of service with the paramilitary Freikorps. He was the archetypal ‘old fighter’ who had been attracted by the revolutionary nature of the Nazi party and now that Hitler had gained power had been promoted beyond his abilities.

  Wäckerle’s chief problem, as far as Himmler was concerned, was that he was attracting too much of the wrong kind of attention to Dachau. Emblematic of his leadership of the camp was the death of four Jewish prisoners on 12 April 1933. They had been taken outside the camp to nearby woods and shot ‘while attempting to escape’ – a euphemism for murder. It is still a mystery why these particular prisoners were selected and killed, though one officer, Police Lieutenant Schuler, later said that he thought Wäckerle had been frightened of a ‘communist revolt’ in the camp.60 The Bavarian prosecutor’s office subsequently took an interest in the affair and the resulting inquiry was not helpful for Himmler, since the circumstances surrounding the death of the prisoners were at odds with his desire to portray Dachau as a disciplined institution with an emphasis on reform.

  It was in the midst of this controversy, on 9 May, that Hans Beimler escaped from the camp. Not only did there appear to be a policy of extra-judicial murder in operation at Dachau, but the guards now seemed to be incompetent as well. By the end of the next month Wäckerle was gone. The new commandant, Theodor Eicke, would make his mark on Dachau, and indeed on the whole concentration camp system, in a way that Wäckerle never did.

  The choice of Eicke to take over as commandant of Dachau revealed a great deal about the personal qualities Himmler thought important for a leading figure in the SS. Eicke was not an easy person to manage, and could scarcely have been more different in character from Himmler. Eicke was argumentative, passionate and dangerous, while Himmler was punctilious
, organized and calm – some thought he looked like a village schoolteacher. In 1932 Eicke had been arrested for planning a bombing campaign in support of the Nazis. Sentenced to prison, he fled Germany while on bail and returned only after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. Believing that Josef Bürckel, Nazi Gauleiter of the Palatinate, had double-crossed him at the time of his arrest, Eicke wanted revenge. He organized an armed raid and captured Gauleiter Bürckel. Eicke’s victory didn’t last long, however, as Bürckel had powerful friends and Eicke’s actions appeared almost unbalanced. Eicke was arrested and sent to a psychiatric hospital, though the doctors said he was sane. It was Himmler who rescued him from this morass.

  What Himmler now counted on, as well as the ability he saw in Eicke, was that Eicke would show immense personal loyalty to him. Without Himmler’s intervention his career at the age of forty was not just on a downward trajectory but in a vertical dive. Himmler offered him a second chance. He gave a similar opportunity to others, most notably Reinhard Heydrich, who would later have a close personal involvement with the extermination of the Jews. Himmler saved Heydrich in 1931, after he had been thrown out of the navy.

  Under Eicke the guards at Dachau changed from the original band of street fighters to a professional corps within the newly formed SS Death’s Head Division. Eicke introduced a whole series of new regulations, not in order to eliminate the violence directed against inmates, but to clarify when it could be used. For instance, Eicke’s regulations stated that any prisoner could be executed ‘who attacks a guard or SS man, refuses to obey an order, refuses to obey an instruction in the workplace, incites or calls upon others to do so for reasons of rebellion, leaves a marching column or workplace or incites others to do so, or shouts, cries out, agitates or makes a speech while marching or during working hours’.61

  Eicke emphasized that he wanted his men to be tough and uncompromising, especially in the presence of prisoners. ‘Anyone who shows even the slightest vestige of sympathy towards them’, he said, ‘will immediately vanish from our ranks. I need only hard, totally committed SS men. There is no place amongst us for soft people.’62 By such comments, Eicke not only articulated the qualities he demanded of the men under his command, he also sought to build an awareness that to be a member of the SS at Dachau was not just to be a jailer, but to be an elite soldier, fighting against ruthless enemies of the state. Eicke wanted the SS at Dachau to be a brotherhood, to be men who looked out for each other and fought in a noble, common cause. Eicke preached that the job of the officer was not just to lead the men under his command, but to care for them. As a consequence, Eicke’s men came, in the words of one of his soldiers, to ‘adore’ him.63 ‘The name “Papa Eicke” was coined even then,’ said Max von Dall-Armi, one of the SS men at Dachau. ‘He [Eicke] hates his enemies behind the barbed wire … He speaks of their destruction and annihilation. He instils this hatred into the SS through speeches and conversations. Eicke is a fanatical SS officer and ardent National Socialist for whom there is no compromise … “SS men must hate … the heart in their breasts must be turned to stone.” ’64

  Eicke also employed a number of carefully chosen inmates – known as Kapos – in a supervisory role at the camp. The idea of employing selected prisoners to oversee other inmates was not new – prisoners had been appointed ‘trusties’ in ordinary jails and even concentration camps before – but Eicke embraced the idea as if it was his own. There were many advantages for the SS in such a system. Not only could the supervision of prisoners now extend to times when SS guards were not present, but the potential arbitrariness of the treatment meted out by the Kapos to their fellow inmates added a note of uncertainty and tension that would intimidate the prisoners still further. As for the Kapos, their lives in the camp were altered in a double-edged way by their promotion to the status of overseers. While they could exercise power over those in their charge, they still remained vulnerable. As Himmler said, speaking during the war, ‘His [the Kapo’s] job is to see that the work gets done … thus he has to push his men. As soon as we are no longer satisfied with him, he is no longer a Kapo and returns to the other inmates. He knows that they will beat him to death his first night back.’65

  There was also one longer-term benefit for the SS in embracing the system of Kapos. Over time, the existence of Kapos allowed the SS more distance from the prisoners. It meant that instead of physically attacking inmates themselves, they could instruct the Kapos to do the beating for them. The guards could thus choose not to become covered in the sweat and blood of the prisoners as they were lashed. There were, of course, SS who remained directly involved in the physical abuse of prisoners, but the Kapo system allowed an alternative way of structuring supervision and punishment. It was a system that was to find its apotheosis at Auschwitz, where prisoners were at risk of the most appalling abuse – even murder – from the Kapos who were in charge of their individual barracks or work details.

  Many of those who were later to obtain high positions within the concentration camp system trained under Eicke at Dachau – most notably Rudolf Höss, who became the first commandant of Auschwitz in 1940. He started work as an ordinary SS soldier at Dachau in 1934 and in many ways was the exemplar of the new hard man that Eicke sought to cultivate. He described how Eicke tried to convince his SS men that they were dealing with ‘dangerous enemies of the state’ and so had to treat the prisoners harshly as a consequence.66 But it would be wrong to take Höss’s words, written in the memoirs he composed after the war, entirely at face value. While no doubt Eicke’s methods did have an effect on him, they are not the whole reason why Höss could later oversee the largest site of mass murder in the history of the world. Like many of those who joined the SS and came to Dachau, he had a past that predisposed him to embrace the values that Eicke sought to impart.

  Höss was thirty-three years old when he joined the SS, and he carried with him a bloody personal history. Born in 1900, he fought in the First World War – having joined up when he was under-age. He won several decorations for bravery, including the Iron Cross first class, and at the age of seventeen became the youngest NCO in the army. In the wake of Germany’s defeat he joined a paramilitary Freikorps and fought to suppress a left-wing uprising in the Ruhr in 1920. In November 1922 he became a member of the Nazi party and the following year participated in the murder of a fellow member of the Freikorps who was thought to be a traitor. He was caught shortly afterwards and sentenced to ten years in prison. Released as part of an amnesty in 1928 he joined the Artamans, a völkisch group that preached the importance of remaining close to the soil. Here, working as a farmer, Höss met his future wife Hedwig. He also came to the attention of Heinrich Himmler, who supported the ideals of the Artaman movement.

  Thus, long before Höss came within the orbit of Theodor Eicke, he had not only made a number of life choices that demonstrated his commitment to the values espoused by Hitler and the Nazi party, but he had also participated in acts of extreme violence and experienced five years of imprisonment. If anyone was primed to develop ‘hatred and antipathy’ for the inmates of Dachau, it was Rudolf Höss. That is not to say, however, that Höss’s memoirs are entirely unreliable. His description of his feelings at first witnessing the flogging of prisoners in Dachau certainly rings true. He wrote how two prisoners were bound to the ‘whipping block’ in the camp and received twenty-five lashes each, because they had been convicted of stealing cigarettes. Höss recounts how ‘the first prisoner, a small impenitent malingerer, was made to lie across the block. Two soldiers held his head and hands and two block leaders carried out the punishment, delivering alternate strokes. The prisoner uttered no sound. The other prisoner, a professional politician of strong physique, behaved quite otherwise. He cried out at the very first stroke and tried to break free. He went on screaming to the end, although the commandant yelled at him to keep quiet. I was stationed in the front rank and was thus compelled to watch the whole procedure. I say compelled, because if I had been in the rear of the com
pany I would not have looked. When the man began to scream I went hot and cold all over. In fact the whole thing, even the beating of the first prisoner, made me shudder. Later on, at the beginning of the war, I attended my first execution, but it did not affect me nearly so much as witnessing that first corporal punishment.’67

  While Eicke attempted to mould the SS guards at Dachau into a professional yet heartless force, a parallel structure of concentration camps operated in the north of Germany. Hermann Göring as Minister President of Prussia oversaw this system – or rather tried to, since he had difficulty restraining the Stormtroopers and SS in his domain. In Prussia there was no Eicke to prevent the brutality of the guards turning to anarchy.

  There were particular problems at the complex of camps in Emsland in north-west Germany. The SS were not cooperating with the Stormtroopers and both groups were causing unrest in the local area. In the nearby town of Papenburg the SS and the SA brawled in the open,68 and the SS were accused of invading ‘the area like a swarm of locusts. They were in hock to the small businesses, in the pubs they smashed the furniture, the girls were impregnated, and everywhere they went they met with animosity. Petitions for the withdrawal of the SS were addressed to the ministry from among the population.’69 In the camp itself there were disagreements among the guards over the appropriate amount of sadism that should be directed towards the inmates. ‘The prisoners had to jump off their beds in the middle of the night,’ wrote one political prisoner in the camp,70 ‘and were not allowed to get dressed. They had to line up naked’ and ‘were beaten without pity … It was abominable – so abominable that it was even too much for some of the SS. A group of the SS men involved in this “punitive action” became openly mutinous. They threatened their comrades with their guns, saying: “Enough already! Stop it, or we will shoot you down!” ’71