Commandant of Auschwitz

APPENDIX 8 Eicke

He can be regarded as the actual founder of all the concentration camps, with the exception of Dachau. It was he, too, who gave them their form and shape.

Eicke came from the Rhineland and during the First World War fought on every front and was many times wounded and decorated. When the Rhineland was occupied he took a leading part in the resistance movement against the French. He was sentenced to death in his absence by a French military tribunal and remained in Italy until 1928. When he returned home he went to the NSDAP and became an SS man.

In 1933 the Reichsführer SS took him out of the general SS and made him Colonel and commandant of Dachau, from which post two of his predecessors had already been dismissed for incompetence. He at once set about reorganizing the camp in accordance with his own ideas.

Eicke was an inflexible Nazi of the old type. All his actions sprang from the knowledge that National Socialism had made many sacrifices and had fought a long battle before coming to power, and that this power had now to be used against every enemy of the new state. He regarded the concentration camps in this light.

In his view, the prisoners were sworn enemies of the state, who were to be treated with great severity and destroyed if they showed resistance. He instilled the same attitude of mind into his officers and men. At the beginning of Eicke’s period of service as commandant, the majority of the guards came from the Bavarian country constabulary and they also occupied most of the important posts. To Eicke the police were like a red rag to a bull, especially the country constabulary, who had made life so difficult for the Nazis during their early struggles. In a very short time he replaced all the police (except two, whom he brought into the SS) with SS men and chased the “laponesten,” as they were called in camp slang, out of the camp.

The prisoners were treated harshly and were flogged for the slightest misdemeanor. Floggings were carried out in the presence of the assembled guards (at least two companies of them had to be present) with the intention, as he saw it, of toughening up the men. In particular, the recruits were regularly forced to witness these proceedings.

At that time, the inmates consisted almost exclusively of political prisoners from the Bavarian Communist and Social Democratic parties, and from the Bavarian People’s Party.

Eicke’s instructions from first to last were: behind the wire lurks the enemy, watching everything you do so that he can use your weaknesses for his own advantage. Do not let yourselves be taken in, but show the enemy your teeth. Anyone who displays the slightest sympathy with these enemies of the state must vanish from our ranks. My SS men must be tough and ready for all eventualities and there is no room among us for weaklings.

Eicke did not, however, tolerate independent action by his men against the prisoners. They were to be treated harshly but fairly and they were to be punished only on his orders. He organized the supervision of the protective custody camp and so had it under his control.

Little by little he built up the whole camp and gave it the form which was later used as a model for all the other concentration camps.

He made the guards into a tough body of men, who were correct in the performance of their duties, but who were also quick with their weapons, if an “enemy of the state” should escape.

He punished any lapse on the part of the guard with great severity. Yet his men loved “papa Eicke,” as they called him. In the evenings he sat with them in the canteen or in their barracks. He spoke with them in their own language, and went into all their troubles and worries, and taught them how to become what he wanted, hard, tough fellows, who would shrink at nothing that he ordered them to do.

“Every order is to be carried out, however harsh it may be!” That is what he required and what he preached in all his instructions to his men. And these instructions stayed fast and became part of their flesh and blood. The men who were guards at the time when Eicke was commandant of Dachau were the future commanders of protective custody camps, Rapportführers, and other senior camp officials. They never forgot the instructions that Eicke had given them. The prisoners were enemies of the state, so far as they were concerned, and would always remain so.

Eicke knew his men and he knew how to go to work on them, and the training he gave them was farsighted.

In 1934 he became the first Inspector of Concentration Camps. To begin with he directed affairs from Dachau, but later he went to Berlin in order to be near the Reichsführer SS.

He now started with great enthusiasm to remold the existing camps Esterwegen, Sachsenburg, Lichtenburg, and Columbia on the Dachau model. Officers and men from Dachau were constantly transferred to the other camps in order to inject them with the “Dachau spirit” and with a dose of Prussian militarism.

The Reichsführer SS gave him a completely free hand, knowing that there was no more suitable person to whom he could entrust the camps. Himmler had often emphasized his complete agreement with Eicke’s views concerning the concentration camps and the “enemies of the state.”

In Berlin, Eicke became convinced that the jolly, comradely, Bavarian type of military “instruction,” with plenty of sociable evenings and a lot of Bavarian beer, was quite insufficient for the training of a really efficient soldier, capable of being employed in any capacity.

He therefore looked for a Prussian “instructor” and found one in Schulze, a police captain, whom he then charged with the task of instilling some Prussian spirit into the easygoing Bavarian methods, and of giving the officers and men some of the old Prussian type of military training. It caused a lot of ill-feeling in Dachau, when the “Prussian pig” initiated his more rigorous system of training. The older members of the Dachau guard were never able to get over it, and they obstructed Schulze to such a degree that after a year they succeeded in getting rid of him.

He was told that the reason for his sudden dismissal was that although he was an excellent officer and had achieved exceptional results by his methods of training, yet he was not a National Socialist or SS man and therefore did not understand how to handle the men properly!

Eicke retained his habit, both when he was Inspector and afterward, of talking with the guards and the lower ranks without their superior officers being present. In this way, he enjoyed a popularity and devotion in the eyes of his men which was exceptional even in the SS (where a special value was placed on comradeship), and which was keenly observed by the Reichsführer SS. The superior officers greatly disapproved of this habit of Eicke’s. For one thing, Eicke got to know all that went on in the camp and nothing of any importance was hidden from him. For another, he was kept constantly informed about the behavior of the SS officers, both on and off duty, and the SS men naturally made use of this opportunity to tell some malicious tales. Many SS officers had to answer to Eicke for matters which existed only in the imagination of the SS men who had recounted them.

Eicke, however, attained his object and got all the camps completely under his control.

Later on he had letter boxes put up- in every camp, which could only be opened by him and which gave every SS man a means of communicating reports, complaints, and denunciations direct to him. He also had his confidants among the prisoners in every camp, who, unknown to the others, informed him of anything that was worth knowing.

From the start of his activities as Inspector of Concentration Camps Eicke placed a special importance on increasing the strength of the guards in the camps.

Up to the end of 1935, the financing of the concentration camps was a matter for the districts concerned, but this did not apply to the financing of the guards. Up till then Eicke had paid his men out of contributions from the treasury, subsidies from the Party, and SS bank credits and canteen profits.

Finally he got the Reichsführer SS to agree that he should ask the Führer to make a decision in the matter. The Führer authorized an establishment of twenty-five companies of 100 men each who were to be financed out of state funds. The financing of the concentration camps remained the responsibility of the various districts until further notice.

Eicke had now taken the first decisive step toward building up the strength of the guards, which were later called the Death’s Head formations.

In the meantime plans and preparations were made for the construction of further concentration camps. The acquisition of suitable sites and the arrangements for the necessary finance gave rise to great difficulties which were nevertheless overcome by Eicke’s perseverance.

Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald were created. They were erected from the start by prisoners under Eicke’s administration, who were alone responsible for deciding on the way they were to be built. As a result he came into sharp conflict with Pohl, who had meanwhile been put in charge of all SS building operations and was responsible for financing them.

The Esterwegen camp was closed down and transferred to Sachsenhausen, similarly Berlin-Columbia. Sachsenburg, Lich-tenburg, and Bad Suiza were transferred to Buchenwald. Lichtenburg then became a women’s camp. In addition, Flossenburg, Mauthausen, and Gross-Rosen were also under Eicke’s administration before the war. At first these were entirely labor camps, which Eicke had planned for use in the quarries acquired by the SS, but they very soon became independent concentration camps.

Eicke built all these camps autocratically, using the experiences he had gained to assist him in his perpetual battle of opinions with Pohl.

Pohl already wanted more space to accommodate the prisoners and he also foresaw the future development of the camps more clearly than Eicke, who adopted a narrow-minded attitude in this matter. Eicke was in favor of keeping the camps compact, so that they could be more easily guarded, and he was against any substantial enlargement. The following is an example of this, which Ï experienced for myself when I was adjutant at Sachsenhausen.

It is 1938. Plans have been made for the construction of a new women’s camp. Lichtenburg is not suitable for a concentration camp and is far too small. After much search, Pohl and Eicke have picked on an area by the lake near Ravens-brück. The Reichsführer SS has expressed his approval. A conference is arranged to take place between Pohl and Eicke on the site to discuss details of construction. The commandant of Sachsenhausen who is to provide the prisoners for the building work and who has to arrange for their accommodation is summoned to attend, and also myself. The question of the size of the women’s concentration camp is still undecided. Eicke estimates that at the very most there will be not more than 2,000 female prisoners. Pohl wants to build for 10,000. Eicke says that he is crazy and that number will never be reached.

Pohl wants the camp to be built in such a way that it can be extended in the future to hold the number of prisoners that he envisaged. Eicke sticks stubbornly to his figure of 2,000 and considers that even this figure is unreasonably high. Eicke wins with his 2,000!

The Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp is built and later on has to be perpetually enlarged under the most difficult conditions and in a completely unmethodical manner. Ravensbrück ultimately had to accommodate up to 25,000 women. They were crowded together under the most cramped conditions with the inevitable results. Pohl’s judgment was correct and farseeing. Eicke was always narrow-minded and petty in matters relating to concentration camps.

His inability to see sufficiently far ahead was to blame for the fact that the old camp could not be extended to accommodate the enormous increase in numbers that came to be imprisoned during the war.

The extension of the camp was nevertheless continued, to the detriment of the prisoners, who were packed together even more tightly. I have already sufficiently described the consequences of this overcrowding. Not only was it practically impossible to increase the living accommodation, but the water supply and drainage installations, which were barely adequate under normal conditions, could not be improved in any important respect. Thus the way was laid for future defects, which were to prove impossible to remedy.

In contrast to the narrow-mindedness which Eicke displayed in all matters relating to the concentration camps, he showed an unprecedented liberality in all that concerned the troops. The strengthening of the Death’s Head formations had become his main preoccupation. The concentration camps with their “enemies of the state” were for him only a means to an end.

At later budget conferences he constantly produced overwhelming arguments concerning the danger represented by the “enemies of the state” and the consequent necessity for increasing the strength of the guards.

The new barracks, which were under construction, were never big enough or spacious enough for him. The furnishings were never comfortable enough. For every bit of space that was saved in the concentration camp, the troops were given ten times as much in return. He had to square matters with Pohl in order to get the necessary money for furnishing the troops’ quarters.

Eicke had no knowledge of human nature and time and again he allowed himself to be deceived by appearances and clever talk by men who knew how to make themselves seem skillful and adept, and he trusted these individuals far too much. His opinions of people were apt to be colored by chance events or by his moods. If an SS officer had got himself disliked, or if Eicke, for some reason or other, could not tolerate him, then it was best for that officer to arrange to be transferred from Eicke’s service as rapidly as possible.

Any officers or Junior officers (he hoped to bring the men around to his way of thinking) whom he considered unsuitable for service with the troops would either be removed from his command or (after 1937 when, at his instigation, the troops and the concentration camps were separated from each other) transferred to a post in a concentration camp. As a result, the commandants’ staffs were gradually filled with incapable officers and junior officers, whom Eicke did not want to get rid of completely because of the length of time during which they had been a member of the Party or of the SS. The camp commandants would have to worry about them. They were constantly transferred in an effort to find them a suitable post and most of them eventually found their way to Auschwitz, which gradually became used by the Inspector of Concentration Camps as a dumping ground for discarded personnel. If Eicke had only removed these incapable officers entirely out of his command, the concentration camps would later on have been spared a great deal of unpleasantness and brutality. The effects of Eicke’s philosophy were to continue to make themselves felt for many years.

It can be ascribed to Eicke’s ignorance of human nature that camp commandants such as Koch and Loritz possessed his complete confidence, which could not be displaced even by the most disagreeable incidents. They were allowed to do as they pleased in their camps.

He indulged them in every respect and never interfered with them, even though he was fully informed about all that went on.

After the separation of the troops from the concentration camps, Eicke no longer took such an active interest in the latter as he had previously done. His main preoccupation was with the troops. The work in connection with the expansion of the camps was done on his authority, but he was concerned only with the outside appearances and no longer worried about the internal arrangements. He remained stuck in his ideas about “enemies of the state,” but he was now out of date. Only about 10 per cent of the inmates of the concentration camps were political prisoners, the rest being professional criminals, asocials, and so on. Eicke’s later orders and regulations on matters concerning the prisoners were made at his desk and were still based on his Dachau experiences and opinions. He made no more innovations or upheavals. In spite of his inexhaustible capacity for work and his resilience, and in spite of his perpetual urge for improvements and reforms, he had nothing to offer to the concentration camps. His energies were directed toward the troops. His position as Inspector of Concentration Camps was purely nominal.

When German troops marched into the Sudetenland, Eicke was with the Upper Bavarian Death’s Head formation, as the guard regiment at Dachau was later named. The 4th Regiment assisted in the occupation of Danzig. Isolated units of the Death’s Head formation also took part in the Polish campaign. After the campaign Eicke received orders from the Führer to form the Death’s Head Division as speedily as possible. He himself was created Lieutenant General.

At the beginning of the war all the front-line Death’s Head units in the camps were replaced by reservists from the General SS. This was also tried as a temporary expedient during the occupation of Czechoslovakia. It gave rise to many difficulties, since the veteran reservists had no knowledge whatever about guarding prisoners, and many of them were physically unsuited to the arduous requirements of the service. The professional criminals quickly took advantage of many of them and used them to abet their escape or for similar delinquencies.

Dachau concentration camp was evacuated to enable the Death’s Head Division to be formed, and the prisoners were transferred to Flossenburg and Mauthausen. After F Division had been formed and marched off to the training ground, the prisoners were brought back.

While the division was being formed, Brigadeführer Glücks, who up till then had been chief of staff to the Inspector of Concentration Camps, was appointed Inspector by order of the Reichsführer SS.

The Death’s Head Division first took part in the fighting in France and was then employed in occupation duties on the Spanish frontier, until the campaign against Russia, when it was constantly used where the fighting was fiercest. They were several times encircled, as at Demiansk, and suffered terrible losses.

Eicke’s behavior during the building up of this division was typical.

The army departments used all their endeavors to impede and delay the build-up. First it was to be a motorized division, then a cavalry division, then it was to be a partially motorized division.

With imperturbable calm Eicke watched all this happening and stole for himself, whenever he could, the weapons and equipment he required. In this way he collected all his heavy artillery from transports destined for Romania.

The training of active service guards into tough soldiers now began to bear fruit.

The achievements of the Death’s Head Division were only made possible because of the ironclad training which Eicke had given the troops, and because of the affection which they had for Eicke himself.

In the spring of 1942 he was shot down during a reconnaissance flight near Kharkov, while he was searching for a tank company commanded by his son-in-law. All that was found of him was a piece of his uniform, with the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.

In this way he met the soldier’s death, which he had sought ever since the time, a short while before, when his only son had also fallen in battle.