How were concentration and extermination camp guards recruited?
score:56
Short answer – it was less "hiring" and more "drafting". No pre-screening happened that I could find evidence of (well, except for the general "has to be a good Nazi" principle, which might count towards that), but being soft on incarcerated was strongly discouraged, which led to a predictable result of "refining" the most harsh guard possible.
The camps were primarily guarded by the SS-Totenkopfverbände – a special division of the SS. One didn't join the camp guards – one joined the SS. At that point, it didn't really matter what one wanted – members of the SS were expected to follow orders as much as soldiers were. If you were assigned to SS-Totenkopfverbände, you went to guard the camp.
While technically there were no "screening for sadism", SS were comprised of people who either truly accepted Nazi ideology or successfully faked it. Thus, they indeed were "pre-screened" for being 1) obedient (because of patriotism), 2) dismissive towards certain groups of people. As concentration camps held people who a Nazi would consider subhuman, the treatment of inmates would be... not good. In fact, Theodor Eicke, commandant of Dachau (the first concentration camp and the model for subsequent camps), encouraged his people to treat inmates with "inflexible harshness": they were the enemies of the state, after all! And that attitude was replicated in other camps – the Dachau camp was a training facility for the SS guards. As such, anyone who completed that training would appropriate the behavior of his SS teachers.
In the last days of WW2, SS formed so-called "SS-Mannschaft" (Auxiliary SS) – a ragtag bunch of personnel drafted from Volkssturm, Army and basically any other source SS could get people from to try and keep camps running to the last moment while personnel of the SS proper could escape. These troops did not go through the usual SS selection process and did not get the same training as SS-TV personnel, so their behaviour could be very varied. But due to the chaos caused by quickly progressing Allied offensives, almost no documentation exist on what happened in camps in those days.
P.S. While searching for sources for this answer, I kept finding stories about dismissal of guards deemed "too kind" to prisoners. I couldn't track down any of these to a reliable source, but there might be some truth to them. If true, it would serve to further reinforce the Eicke principles.
P.P.S. Regarding your "parole to criminals" question – they weren't drafted to be camp guards, but you might want to read up on Strafbatallions (Army version, pretty tame and generally drafted from minor offenders) and Dirlewanger Brigade (SS version. It was initially supposed to be drafted from poachers. That idea was quickly lost, and the unit was drafted from murderers, burglars, criminally insane and so on. It had its debut during the occupation of Poland, and quickly earned itself the reputation of being a congregation of slaughterers, looters and rapists. Believe or not, but things went downhill from there.).
Sources:
Комендант Освенцима. Автобиографические записки Рудольфа Гесса. (unofficial translation of "Commandant of Auschwitz : The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess", Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Gmbh., Stuttgart, 1958)
Koehl, Robert, "The SS: A History 1919–45", Stroud: Tempus, 2000
Upvote:0
Actually, the horrific tasks of herding gassing victims into shower rooms, gassing them, and moving bodies into cremation ovens, was performed by "Kapos" in the camps, who were themselves inmates, Jewish inmates too. The SS organized prisoners into a hierarchical structure of tyranny in which they played inmates against each other, and had inmates perform the detailed tasks of the gassings. Kapos who were reliable evidently lived longer, but they too could be murdered at any time... delaying inmates' executions was an extortion tactic that the SS used to recruit those Kapos.
This is a link to one of many excerpts from the book Liebe Mutti: One Man's Struggle to Survive in KZ Sachsenhausen, 1939-1945, describing the kapo system: https://books.google.com/books?id=8EsND0dtSOcC&pg=PA113&dq=%22administering+the+camp%22+Sachsenhausen&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false
Most primary sources are in German, as they are the recounting of events and memoirs of concentration camp inmates. The Wollheim Memorial web site is a reasonably trustworthy secondary source. This page includes a translated quote from a primary source:
"When a commission of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) from Berlin toured the Buna works, the senior SS leaders complained to Schöttl, the camp leader, that they saw many Jews who were working as foremen. Schöttl pointed out that he had too few Aryans in the camp and thus had to use Jews as foremen."
...
(Fritz Kleinmann: “Überleben im KZ.” In: Reinhold Gärtner / Fritz Kleinmann, eds.: Doch der Hund will nicht krepieren… Tagebuchnotizen aus Auschwitz (Thaur: Kulturverlag, 1995), pp. 34–114, here pp. 71–72. (Transl. KL))
Of course Wikipedia has a list of primary and secondary sources at the bottom of its page on kapos.
Information about the Sonderkommandos, Jews forced to work in and around the gas chambers and crematoria, is detailed here: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/sonderkommandos
Upvote:5
This question is almost a mirror of the more usual one about the defense that supposedly "decent" people were committing atrocities only under duress. The answer to that question is that
- usually people could avoid participation in atrocities,
- doing so might limit their promotion chances, or put them to the frontlines where armed enemies would shoot at them,
- they may or may not have been aware that it was relatively easy to avoid participation.
Regarding your question, after the chaotic early years the Nazis were trying to organize the genocide in a way that would slow the mental deterioration of their troops, which was a concern and prompted the switch from mass shootings to the gas chambers. Read Himmler's speech in Posen and perhaps Goldhagen's book about the police battalion 101 (also read the criticism of Goldhagen's views). The Nazis were looking for people to operate an "industrial" killing operation, not undisciplined people who slow the lines with personal atrocities.
More post
- 📝 Which parts of the Townshend Act were repealed in 1770?
- 📝 How profitable was India for the British Empire in the 1800s?
- 📝 Was the Empire style of fashion adopted in Russia?
- 📝 What is so unique about ushabti that makes them valued and popular?
- 📝 When, where, why did clean shaving for men become the norm?
- 📝 Does Winckler's explanation of Semitic migrations have any merit?
- 📝 Does the forearm grip/handshake have a historical basis?
- 📝 Was the Hebrew Bible modified and rewritten from Aramaic to Hebrew after the death of Jesus?
- 📝 How different would the current situation of South Korea be if Seoul wasn’t 30 miles from the DMZ
- 📝 Why was Prince Philip given these specific titles before marrying Princess Elizabeth?
- 📝 Why is Jackson's valley campaign considered a Confederate victory?
- 📝 Which American Civil War admiral said he would not punish people for getting their ship close to the enemy?
- 📝 Did the Russian Empire have a claim to Sweden? Was there ever a time where they could have pursued it?
- 📝 Did any of the 50 Destroyers swapped for bases with Great Britain in 1940 sink any Axis military vessels?
- 📝 Were US Navy WWII-era submarine crewmen allowed on deck?
- 📝 What is the line of descent from from emperor Louis III to Henry VII?
- 📝 Is there any evidence that the Catholic Church slowed innovation during the Middle Ages?
- 📝 Which person is portrayed in this statue?
- 📝 How would Eastern European emigres have traveled across Eastern Europe to Warsaw in the early 20thC?
- 📝 How significant was the Fall of Constantinople as an event leading to the Age of Exploration?
- 📝 Was Alexander the Great Greek or Macedonian?
- 📝 How would Chess have been played in England in 1450-1600?
- 📝 Is this a French uniform, and what is the time period?
- 📝 Could British India have realistically allied with both Afghanistan and the Punjab?
- 📝 What was the original cause of the Camel War in Islamic history?
- 📝 What is the name of a particular architectural structure from a Gothic Church?
- 📝 What was the nature of the Japanese presence in China in the later stages of World War II?
- 📝 What was the contemporary reaction to Dante's Divine Comedy?
- 📝 When did it become common for optical brighteners to be added to commercial laundry detergent?
- 📝 How did William the Conqueror consolidate his military victory?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How were concentration and extermination camp guards recruited?
- 📝 Were concentration camp guards allowed to talk about their work at home?
- 📝 How did the news of the reality Nazi concentration camps reach the United State's mainstream? What were the waves of awareness and when?
- 📝 How were drawbridges and portcullises used tactically?
- 📝 How were the cities of Milan and Bruges spared by the Black Death?
- 📝 How many lives were estimated to have been saved by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs?
- 📝 How were diplomats and their staffs treated when World War II was declared?
- 📝 How expensive were castles? And how were the costs distributed?
- 📝 Were bookshops 'common' in the late 19th century, and how did they differ from modern ones?
- 📝 How accurate and detailed were geographical maps created and updated by the Romans?
- 📝 How were servants to the Kaiser of Imperial Germany treated and where may I find more information on them?
- 📝 How were the British and French armies invited into Belgium in 1914?
- 📝 How did people say “I have to go to the bathroom” before the bathroom and pipes were common?
- 📝 Why and how were east Brandenburg, Pomerania and Silesia taken away from Germany after WW2?
- 📝 How many pens were used by MacArthur to end the final chapter of World War II and where are they now?
- 📝 How successful were Einsatzkommando Tunis and how much was Rommel complicit?
- 📝 How many firearms were owned by civilian population between 1836 and 1912 in USA?
- 📝 How were interracial relationships between African-Americans and Latinos treated in Southern states before the Loving decision?
- 📝 How alcoholic were ancient Greek and Roman wines, before and after dilution?
- 📝 How were the Morisco refugees from Europe received in North Africa, given that they were foreigners and Christian?
- 📝 How different were Labour and Conservative party lines on race immigration and empire in around 1962?
- 📝 How important were Einstein and Szilard and other scientists to the creation and ultimate success of the Manhattan Project?
- 📝 How were the British and French Mandates in the Levantine area involved in WWII?
- 📝 What universities existed in Dutch East Indies, and how available were they to the native population?
- 📝 What were the limitations on possession of wealth in Soviet Russia and how were they enforced?
- 📝 How were maps drawn and printed in the late 19th-early 20th centuries?
- 📝 How many British prisoners of war were taken by the Wehrmacht and how many died?
- 📝 Where and how were the catapults/trebuchets operators trained?
- 📝 Were new forms of communication and media usually condemned similar to how television/video games are now?
- 📝 How many tons of bombs were dropped on Britain between 1940 July 10 and September 7?
