Dachau Concentration Camp opened on March 22, 1933 and initially housed inmates from the prisons in Landsberg am Lech and Stadelheim who had been taken into ‘protective custody’. At first, the camp was guarded by the ’Bayerische Volkspolizei’ (Bavarian People’s Police) under ‘Polizeihauptmann’ (Police Captain) Schlemmer, but was soon taken over by the SS under its first camp commandant, SS-‘Hauptsturmführer‘ (Main Storm Leader) Hilmar Wäckerle. It was the only SS-run concentration camp to operate without interruption from 1933 until 1945.
The Nazi concentration camps existed in a legal vacuum. Initial judicial inquiries into the murders of inmates in Dachau – 13 inmates were murdered between April 12, 1933 and the end of May 1933 alone – were quashed on flimsy grounds in 1933/34. The Bavarian Ministry of Justice, from March 1933 under the direction of Nazi official Hans Frank, forbade further investigations. Anyone admitted to the camp was at the mercy of the SS. The second camp commandant, SS Senior Leader Theodor Eicke, replaced Wäckerle on June 26, 1933 and set about the compilation of ‘Service Regulations for Camp and Inmate Guards’ and a ‘Disciplinary and Punishment Catalog’ for inmates, both of which cemented the abolition of prisoner rights. Inmates could be hanged as ‘agitators’ or shot as ‘insurgents’, and any attempt to escape was punishable by death. These regulations were subsequently adopted at all the concentration camps. The guards were ideologically indoctrinated to view the inmates as ‘subhuman’ and ‘criminals’, and treated them accordingly.
The camp was initially established in a disused munitions factory, which was able to house up to 5,000 inmates. The number of inmates usually fluctuated between 2,000 and 2,500. They were forced to work on construction projects (residential buildings for SS members, road construction, gravel and sand quarrying) and in workshops. The widening of the persecution to encompass more and more new groups (which along with the initially incarcerated political opponents now also included Jews, so-called ‘asocial elements’ and deportees from the annexed territories) led to the expansion of the camp and the construction of new barracks and outbuildings in 1937/38. The striped prison uniform was introduced by SS Senior Leader Hans Loritz, who was appointed camp commandant in 1936; the prisoners had previously worn their own clothing or discarded drill uniforms. Different-colored triangles were used to distinguish between different inmate categories. After the November pogrom, 11,911 Jews from Austria and the ‘Old Reich’ were imprisoned in Dachau; most of them were released at the beginning of 1939 on condition that they emigrated as quickly as possible and left all their possessions behind. Between the end of September 1939 and February 1940, Dachau was evacuated except for a contingent of 100 inmates; the others, numbering more than 4000, were transferred to Mauthausen, Flossenbürg, and Buchenwald. The site of Dachau Concentration Camp was then used to train members of the SS ‘Death’s Head Front Division’ (Totenkopf-Frontdivision).
From February 1940, the camp was again filled with inmates under its new commandant Alexander Piorkowski. SS access to almost unlimited inmate resources led to the increased deployment of prisoners for prestigious SS projects such as the construction of buildings designed to glorify Nazism. During the war, the prisoners were forced to work in the armaments industry. However, the SS also used inmates for medical experiments involving malaria parasites, negative pressure, and hypothermia. Soviet POWs in Dachau became victims of mass shootings, which began on August 27, 1941 and are believed to have claimed the lives of around 4,500 people. Moreover, ailing or mentally ill inmates were classified as ‘unfit for work’ and selected for the so-called inmate euthanasia program (Action 14f13), during which more than 2,500 inmates were transported from Dachau to the ‘euthanasia facility’ at Hartheim Castle. Inmates with tuberculosis were murdered by injection at the infirmary in Dachau itself.
The war and the occupation of more and more European countries caused a surge in the prisoner population; by 1940, German inmates were already in the minority. From 1942 on, an ever-growing number of inmates were deployed as forced laborers to compensate for the increasingly acute labor shortage. On the orders of camp commandant Martin Weiss, who had been appointed in September 1942, this ‘work duty’ went some way to mitigate the cruel treatment meted out to inmates: the hitherto commonplace sadistic, brutal punishments were banned, and lengthy appeals were limited. In November 1943, Eduard Weiter succeeded Weiss as camp commandant. Since the constant transportation of prisoners from the concentration camp to their place of work and back was becoming too costly, satellite camps and external work details of the Dachau Concentration Camp were set up near each workplace. These varied considerably in size, duration of occupancy, and geographic spread. In all, there were 140 camps, including women’s camps holding more than 7,000 female inmates; these housed inmates who worked not only for the armaments industry and SS-owned businesses but also in the private sector. The biggest satellite camp was Allach, where the inmates worked for BMW manufacturing aircraft engines; Kaufering, near Landsberg, was the largest satellite camp complex, consisting of eleven camps. Towards the end of the war, more inmates were imprisoned at the satellite camps than at the main camp.
The liquidation of the ghettos in Lithuania and Poland in 1944 and the evacuation of various concentration camps in mid-1944/early 1945 brought thousands of Jewish inmates to the Dachau Satellite Camps. Their work on the two armament construction projects in Kaufering/Landsberg and Mühldorf in particular claimed numerous lives. By the end of the war, the main camp at Dachau was hopelessly overcrowded. The people were crammed together cheek by jowl in the barracks, food rations and hygiene were inadequate, epidemics ravaged the camp, and the death rate increased exponentially.
In the middle of April 1945, Heinrich Himmler ordered the German, Soviet and Jewish inmates out of Dachau Concentration Camp and its satellite camps and sent them to Tirol. In the last days of April, armed SS members took approx. 25,000 inmates south on foot, in some cases on trains; up to 3,000 of them lost their lives during air raids or died of starvation, weakness, and disease. The last inmates on these death marches were liberated near Waakirchen on May 2, 1945, while American troops had liberated Dachau Concentration Camp on April 29, 1945. Around 2,500 inmates died of disease and exhaustion between May and July 1945 alone. In all, some 200,000 inmates were incarcerated in the Dachau camp system; 41,500 of them were murdered or died as a result of the prison conditions. In 1965, a memorial was erected on the site of the former camp on the initiative of its survivors.
