Theodor Eicke - Bestial Nazi Commandant of Dachau and Killing General of the Waffen SS. Theodor Eicke was born on the 17th of October 1892 in Hampont, then part of German Empire.
After Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party came into power in January 1933, the Nazis worked to dismantle democratic institutions, suspended civil liberties, curtailed the freedom of the press, and quickly implemented a series of discriminatory policies, primarily targeting Jews. The Nazi regime ruthlessly suppressed any form of dissent or opposition. Political opponents, including communists, socialists, and members of other parties, were arrested, imprisoned, or sent to concentration camps.
Eicke had a difficult personality and after his return from Italy in March 1933, he had a fall-out with Joseph Bürckel, a Nazi politician, who had him arrested and detained at the mental asylum in Würzburg. The same month the first concentration camp, Dachau, was opened and Himmler needed someone to effectively run the camp because there were many complaints and criminal proceedings against the camp’s first commandant, Hilmar Wäckerle. When a director of the mental asylum told Himmler that Eicke was not mentally unstable, Himmler in June 1933 decided to replace Wäckerle with Eicke.
When Eicke came to Dachau he first fired half of the 120 guards and introduced the so-called ‘Dachau model, a set of regulations which served as model for future SS-run concentration camps during the Nazi regime. He established new guarding provisions, which included rigid discipline, total obedience to orders, and tightening disciplinary and punishment regulations for detainees. Eicke introduced the concept of "Kapos," prisoners who were selected and given limited authority to enforce discipline among fellow prisoners. This system fostered a climate of fear and ensured prisoner compliance. Uniforms were issued for prisoners and guards alike, and it was Eicke who introduced the infamous blue and white striped pyjamas that came to symbolize the Nazi concentration camps across Europe. In the camp, Eicke was soon known as Papa Eicke and his guards as Papa Eicke’s boys and under the slogan ‘Tolerance means weakness’ he advised his men that any SS man with a soft heart should retire at once to a monastery. Eicke was a fanatical Nazi, who demanded absolute obedience from inmates and one of the regulations he introduced proves his cruelty: "He who talks about politics with rebellious intent, assembles with others or distributes horror propaganda of the enemy will be hanged, according to revolutionary law; he who attacks a guard, disobeys an order or incriminates himself in any other way will be executed on the spot or hanged later."
Dachau served as a training ground for SS personnel who would later be assigned to other concentration camps including Rudolph Höss, who would later become a commandant of Auschwitz or Max Kögel, who would oversee Majdanek concentration camp.
In early 1934, Hitler and other Nazi leaders became concerned that Ernst Röhm, the SA Chief of Staff, was planning a coup d'état.
As early as April 1934, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich began to conspire with Göring to persuade Hitler to eliminate Röhm.
In June 1934, in preparation for the purge known as the Night of the Long Knives, both Himmler and Heydrich, chief of the SS Security Service, assembled a dossier of manufactured evidence to suggest that Röhm had been paid 12 million Reichs Marks by the government of France to overthrow Hitler. Leading officers in the SS were shown falsified evidence on 24 June that Röhm planned to use the SA to launch a plot against the government. At Hitler's direction, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich drew up lists of people in and outside the SA to be killed.
Meanwhile, President von Hindenburg, the leadership of the Reichswehr – the German armed forces, and Hitler’s conservative coalition partners, including Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, issued warnings about the increasingly radical Nazi regime. If the “revolutionary elements” of the Nazi regime were not brought under control...
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