Dachau Concentration Camp

On March 22, 1933, a few weeks after Adolf Hitler had been appointed Reich Chancellor, a concentration camp for political prisoners was set up in Dachau, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (9.9 mi) northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, which is located in southern Germany. This camp served as a model for all later concentration camps and as a "school of violence" for the SS men under whose command it stood. In the twelve years of its existence over 200.000 persons from all over Europe were imprisoned here and in the numerous subsidary camps. 41.500 were murdered.

Dachau served as a model and prototype for those who followed it. In Dachau were concentrated particularly religious, aristocrats, intellectuals and politicians. The basic organization and construction plans were developed by Theodor Eicke and were applied to all fields later. Eicke later became chief inspector of all concentration camps, responsible for molding the other according to their model.

The first days, the prisioners were charged with improving the deficient instalationsof the camp, in wich only the main building and the fences were in use. The detainees were guarded by police, without wearing uniforms of prisioners, cut their hair or treated them bad.

The Dachau camp was a training center for SS concentration camp guards, and the camp's organization and routine became the model for all Nazi concentration camps. The camp was divided into two sections--the camp area and the crematoria area. The camp area consisted of 32 barracks, including one for clergy imprisoned for opposing the Nazi regime and one reserved for medical experiments. The camp administration was located in the gatehouse at the main entrance. The camp area had a group of support buildings, containing the kitchen, laundry, showers, and workshops, as well as a prison block (Bunker). The courtyard between the prison and the central kitchen was used for the summary execution of prisoners. An electrified barbed-wire fence, a ditch, and a wall with seven guard towers surrounded the camp.

In Dachau, as in other Nazi camps, German physicians performed medical experiments on prisoners, including high-altitude experiments using a decompression chamber, malaria and tuberculosis experiments, hypothermia experiments, and experiments testing new medications. Prisoners were also forced to test methods of making seawater potable and of halting excessive bleeding. Hundreds of prisoners died or were permanently disabled as a result of these experiments.

Dachau prisoners were used as forced laborers. At first, they were employed in the operation of the camp, in various construction projects, and in small handicraft industries established in the camp. Prisoners built roads, worked in gravel pits, and drained marshes. During the war, forced labor utilizing concentration camp prisoners became increasingly important to German armaments production.

As Allied forces advanced toward Germany, the Germans began to move prisoners from concentration camps near the front to prevent the liberation of large numbers of prisoners. Transports from the evacuated camps arrived continuously at Dachau, resulting in a dramatic deterioration of conditions. After days of travel, with little or no food or water, the prisoners arrived weak and exhausted, often near death. Typhus epidemics became a serious problem due to overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, insufficient provisions, and the weakened state of the prisoners.

"Mein Kampf"

"Mein Kampf" is a book wrote by Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology.

The book was originally entitles "Four Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice". Hitler's publisher reduced it to "My Struggle" (Mein Kampf). The book is a mixture of autobiography, political ideas and an explanation of the techniques of propaganda. The autobiographical details in Mein Kampf are often inaccurate, and the main purpose of this part of the book appears to be to provide a positive image of Hitler. For example, when Hitler was living a life of leisure in Vienna, he claims he was working hard as a laborer. 

In Mein Kampf, Hitler outlined his political philosophy. He argued that the German (he wrongly described them as the Aryan race) was superior to all others. "Every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science and technical skill, which we see before our eyes today, is almost exclusively the product of Aryan creative power."

Adolf Hitler warned that the Aryan's superiority was being threatened by intermarriage. If this happened world civilization would decline: "On this planet of ours human culture and civilization are indissolubly bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he should be exterminated or subjugated, then the dark shroud of a new barbarian era would enfold the earth."

According to Hitler, Jews were responsible for everything he did not like, including modern art, pornography and prostitution. Hitler also alleged that the Jews had been responsible for losing the First World War. He also claimed that Jews, who were only about 1% of the population, were slowly taking over the country. They were doing this by controlling the largest political party in Germany, the German Social Democrat Party, many of the leading companies and several of the country's newspapers. The fact that Jews had achieved prominent positions in a democratic society was, according to Hitler, an argument against democracy: "a hundred blockheads do not equal one man in wisdom".

Hitler believed that the Jews were involved with Communists in a joint conspiracy to take over the world. Like Henry Ford, he claimed that 75% of all Communists were Jews. He argued about that the combination of Jews and Marxists had already been successful in Russia and now threatened the rest of Europe. Also, he said the communist revolution was an act of revenge that attempted to disguise the inferiority of the Jews.

In Mein Kampf Hitler declared that: "The external security of a people in largely determined by the size of its territory." If he won power Hitler promised to occupy Russian land that would provide protection and living space for the German people. This action would help to destroy the Jewish/Marxist attempt to control the world: "The Russian Empire in the East is ripe for collapse; and the end of the Jewish domination of Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state."

Hitler in the Interwar

In 1920, Hitler seized control in the German Workers Party, changing its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party, called the Nazi Party for short. On November 9, 1923, Hitler and World War I hero General Ludendorf attempted a small revolution known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler had jumped onto a beer hall table and proclaimed the current Weimar government overthrown.

Released in 1925, Hitler worked for the advancement of the Nazi party. Such advancement was slow in coming through the years 1925 to 1929, a fairly stable period in Europe. However, as the world became mired in depression and unemployment rose, so did support for the Nazi Party, which promised employment and a return to glory for the nation. In 1932 the Nazis won 37.3 percent of the popular vote and occupied 230 seats in the German Reichstag. Hitler dissolved the Reichstag and persuaded Hindenburg to issue a decree granting Hitler authority to prohibit public meetings, the wearing of political uniforms, and publication of dissenting opinions.

On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building burned down and a retarded Dutch boy claiming he worked for the communists was arrested for arson. There is evidence to prove that the Nazis themselves had set the fire, but in any case, Hitler used the incident to persuade Hindenburg to restrict all individual rights and declare that the central government could oust any state government failing to maintain order. Hitler systematically took control of all of the state governments this way. The Nazis only won 43.9 percent of the vote in 1933. To gain a two-thirds majority Hitler formed an alliance with the Nationalist party, and declared the communist party illegal.

On March 23, 1933, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving Hitler the power to make decrees with the status of law, and ending elections.

Hitler's vague policy included a planned economy in which the unemployed were put to work on government projects, working hours were shortened to open up jobs, and labor was forbidden to organize.  All education and speech was controlled. Curricula and textbooks were rewritten to reflect Nazi ideology, and all movies, newspapers, radio, and art were regulated by the vigilant Ministry of Propaganda, under Joseph Goebbels. One of the Ministry's main tasks was to mobilize German anti- Semitism in support of Nazi persecution of German Jews, which would reach its climax in the Holocaust, begun in earnest in 1941. The persecution of the Jews was a major step in Hitler's plan to conquer all of Europe for the Aryan race, a plan that resulted in the outbreak of World War II.