Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps (in German Konzentrationslager, or KZ) throughout the territories it controlled
The first Nazi Concentration Camps were hastily erected in Germany in February 1933 immediately after Hitler became Chancellor and his NSDAP was given control over the police through Reich Interior Minister W Frick and Prussian Acting Interior Minister H Goring .
The first camp in Germany,Dachau was founded in March 1933.
The camps held around 45,000 prisoners by 1933 and were greatly expanded after the Reichstag Fire of that year.
In 1934-35 H Himmler's SS took control of the police and concentration camps throughout Germany and Hitler allowed Himmler to start using the camps' facilities and personnel to purge German society of so-called "racially undesirable elements" like Jews, criminals, homosexuals, and gypsies.
Between 1939 and 1942 during World War II, the number of camps exploded to 300+, as political prisoners and "undesirable elements" from across Europe were mass-incarcerated generally without judicial process.
Between 1933 and the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, more than 3.5 million Germans were forced to spend time in concentration camps and prisons for political reasons, and approximately 77,000 Germans were executed for one or another form of resistance by Special Courts,Courts- Martial and the civil justice system
Concentration camps became places where millions of ordinary people were enslaved as part of the war effort, often starved, tortured and killed after Sep 1939 with the beginning of WW II
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