Why did Germany have concentration camps?

Answer

The concentration camps were originally established to terrorize opponents of the Nazi regime, especially Communists, socialists, liberals, labour leaders - and others.

When the Nazis embarked on the wholesale extermination of entire populations, it was simply more efficient to round them up and ship them to a camp where they could be controlled and murdered with industrial efficiency rather than to try to hunt them down and shoot them individually in every city and town in Europe

Answer

Hitler's plan was to exterminate Jews. The old the young the crippled were the first to go. The ones that were healthy he used as laborers. I guess slave would be the better word. His extermination, the 'Final Solution' took time. .

Answer

Hitler actually hid the extermination camps from the German people. The world had a tough time fathoming the news that leaked out that such things existed. When the German people heard the news they actually thought it was propaganda. The idea of such a terrible thing was hard for the world to believe.

Hitler created the concentration camps to basically hide his atrocities from the world. He had such a hatred for Jews he didn't mind one bit that they were used for medical experiments and that he gassed millions. It is said that 6 million Jews were exterminated, but many feel there were more. Gypsies were also included in this and anyone hiding a Jew was also shot or thrown into the extermination camp.

Often the Jews in the camps were moved from one to another.

After the war the Jews vowed to hunt down those who were responsible in those camps and they kept their word. They found many and by the law of War, these Germans were hung. Some got away, but many (I am happy to say) were hounded through their lives listening to the echos and screams of the Jews as they were so brutally treated.

[Edit. Only a few were caught. The rest 'lived happily ever after', in some cases without even changing their names].

If you want to see a good movie (true story) you should rent the DVD/VHS "Schindler's list." This will also make you see that even some German soldiers were disgusted with the way Hitler treated the Jews.

Reason for Nazi camps

There were concentration camps, forced labor camps, and extermination or death camps. Search for 'Auschwitz' (Krakow, Poland), and you'll get the largest camp ever established by the Nazi government. It was a combination of a forced labor camp, and a death camp. Basically all the residents worked until they were deemed unfit, then they were gassed, or murdered by a firing squad. They adopted an ideology that Aryan, (white, European, blond, blue eyes, etc.), people were superior, and all other races were inferior, with Jews as the most inferior. It was just a way of keeping them locked up, out of Nazi Germany. The Nazi party wanted all Nazi supporters to stay, work, and aid Germany to prosper. Hitler just wanted to be admired, and treated as a god. But basically they just hated non-Germans/anti-German allies.

There's only one good answer in here

The person who talks about the forced-labor camps is the only one who's even close to the answer.

Hitler wouldn't have needed concentration camps if his only intent was to murder all the Jews. Someone built a special transport truck to haul Jews from one place to another. It had a diverter in the exhaust system. You loaded it with Jews, started driving down the road and pulled a cable; the diverter sent engine exhaust into the load compartment and, by the time you reached your destination, everyone in there would be dead. With a little extra work you could do the same thing with rail cars. Wholesale murder isn't a huge problem once you're set up for it.

The camps were mostly for forced labor. If you look at aerial photos of Auschwitz, it's amazing to see how little of the camp was built for murdering people and how much of it was a chemical plant. The big camps were all this way; the smaller camps weren't used for murder (aside from killing the people they'd worked past the point of usability) but rather for work. [Incorrect. The chemical plant at Monowitz (Auschwitz III) was about 3 miles from Auschwitz I and II) and isn't in the well known aerial photo].

Comments

There were different kinds of camps, and the function of the older camps changed over time.

1. The first camps were set up in 1933. They were all punishment camps mainly for opponents of the Nazi regime. They soon became notorious for horrific brutality. In addition to genuine opponents, some other people were sent there - for example, people who had offended local party bosses and so on. Since the purpose of these camps was to terrorize would be opponents of the regime, information about what went on there was allowed to get out. Most of the camps established in the early months were temporary and were closed down within a few months. However, Dachau remained. Most of these camps were not secret, though the precise details of what went on were 'hush-hush'. In fact, Himmler launched Dachau at a press conference.
2. In the late 1930s a section of the SS set itself up as a kind of business entreprise. It was at this stage that the systematic use of prisoners as slave labour on loan to business began.
3. Following the 'Night of the Broken Glass' (9-10 November 1938) about 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. By Christmas 1938, two thousand of them were dead. The main purpose was to bully them into leaving Germany.
4. The Nazi invasion of Poland meant that the Nazis made what they called their 'Jewish problem' much bigger. They also had to deal with the Polish resistance. Initially, Jews were herded into ghettos, which were sealed off from the surrounding areas.
5. In 1940 the first big concentration camp in Poland - Auschwitz - was established, initially as an exceptionally harsh forced labour camp for uncooperative Poles and members of the Polish resistance.
6. From late 1941 onwards extermination camps were set up in Poland. These were intended mainly for the extermination of the Jews.

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First answer by ID1205938483. Last edit by Joncey. Contributor trust: 1571 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 75 [recommend question]