The History of Nazi Concentration Camps

The famous historian, Professor Nikolaus Wachsmann from Birkbeck, University of London, researched and presented the complete history of Nazi concentration camps from 1933 to 1945. Based on authentic documentary materials about the camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg, Ravensbrück, and many others (twenty-two major camps and more than a thousand satellite camps intertwined Germany and Europe), the author presented the history of the creation, purposes, principles, structure, and management system of this monstrous misanthropic machine for the annihilation of people, paying special attention to the incredibly brutal conditions of the inmates. Concluding his colossal work, the author expresses the thought that "the system of concentration camps was a great perverter of values, a history of inhumane mutations of conscience, which made violence, torture, and murder the norm." And he insists: the modern world has no right to forget this. The appendix includes data on the prisoners of the camps from 1935 to 1945.