Anaya 1

Adrian Anaya
Mr. Hawkins
Modern World History-P Period 4
10 April 2016
Expansion of the Concentration Camp System
Throughout the Second World War the idea of the concentration camp was brought to
attention. Hitler used these to contain many Jews and other religious groups or people that Hitler
believed to be impure. He had gas chambers and other forms of execution built into the camps
in case of overpopulation. Many other camps were built and those were also filled up very
quickly.

During the time that Hitler had power he made a new way to keep all of the Jews in
captivity using the concentration camp system. The outbreak and expansion of war radically
altered the makeup and composition of the concentration camp system. The camp
population expanded dramatically with the arrival of foreign forced laborers, foreign
political opponents and resistance fighters, and prisoners of war (Evidence 1). Camps
grew in size a lot during this time of war. Many Jews were taken into captivity and also other
foreign people causing the camps to spread like wildfire. Most prisoners in the early
concentration camps represented real or perceived political opponents of the regime.
However, as time went on, the prisoner population expanded to include ideological and
religious dissenters, such as Jehovahs Witnesses and dissident members of the clergy.
(Evidence 1). Hitler didnt just take Jewish people into the concentration camps. He took

Anaya 2

foreign people, the disabled, and just about anyone that wasnt Aryan or higher up in his eyes.
Recognizing the increasing numbers of these small-scale killing operations and because
they needed an efficient way to kill prisoners who had become too weak to work, the SS
authorities equipped several concentration camps with gas chambers during 1941-1942
(Evidence 1). Hitler saw that the amount of people in the camps was rising quickly and there
wasnt an efficient way to kill the people that werent useful anymore so he began to use gas
chambers. The Nazis would pack many people into big rooms and then they would begin to
spray gas inside and this would allow them to wipeout bigger populations of people inside the
camp faster.

Soon Nazi authorities and the police began to consign members of other groups to
the new camps: homosexual men arrested as criminal offenders; Jehovah's Witnesses who
refused to obey demands to cease their activities; women accused of prostitution; people
labeled "asocial" because they were homeless, begged, or for some other reason did not fit
into Nazi society (Evidence 2). Due to this, the concentration camps rapidly grew and they
spread all over. Hitler did everything in his power to make the most powerful society causing
more death and concentration camps. Mass attacks on Nazi targets that included widely
respected members of German society did not start until 1938, five years after Hitler was
named chancellor. By then Nazis had firm control of all the instruments of state power
the police, courts, laws, civil service, military and pressso they could afford to be less
cautious (Evidence 2). This now meant that Hitler had most of the power and he did as he
wanted. The Nazis carried out his orders as he said and Hitler was on the path to creating what
he believed was the perfect society. At the same time, police arrested approximately 30,000
Jewish men and locked them in concentration camps, where they were held in "protective

Anaya 3

custody." This was the first time Jews were sent to concentration camps for no other reason
than that they were Jews (Evidence 2). Hitler mainly focused on the prosecution of the Jews
more than the other groups. He did everything in his power to ensure that the Jews were being
sent away to concentration camps.
The first camp in Germany, Dachau, was founded in March 1933. The press
announcement said that the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an
accommodation for 5,000 persons (Evidence 3). The concentration camps were first being
built at this time and many Jews were being brought to it as soon as it opened. The first people
brought into this camp were executed immediately. Dachau served as a prototype and model
for the other Nazi concentration camps. Almost every community in Germany had
members taken there. The newspapers continuously reported of the removal of the enemies
of the Reich to concentration camps making the general population more aware of their
presence (Evidence 3). Many people were being shipped away to these concentration camps.
Many people were finding out about these camps and awareness was being spread. After
September 1939, with the beginning of the Second World War, concentration camps
became places where millions of ordinary people were enslaved as part of the war effort,
often starved, tortured and killed (Evidence 3) These camps were terrible and many people
did whatever they could to stay away from them. The people held in captivity did whatever they
could to stay alive.
The concentration camp system was used by Hitler to create what he believed to be the
perfect society and he lived up to what he said until death. This system was used as a form of

Anaya 4

captivity and in most cases a death camp. Many of the people that went into the camp never
came back out and many families spent years in hiding during this time.