Part 1

The thing is that we don't know the exact rational behind the use of the slogan over the gates of concentration camps. While it has been fairly easy to establish the beginning of the use of the slogan in connection with concentration camps and some historians have used the slogan in a very fruitful and interesting fashion as a jump-off point for an exploration of the connection between the ideological conceptualization of labor of the Nazis and its connection to the camps as an institution, the exact reasoning behind the slogan and why it was first used remains unknown.

Various historians have traced the use of the slogan back to Theodor Eicke, the first inspector of the Concentration Camps, and its first appearance to a so-called "wild" concentration camp set up in a former brewery near the city of Oranienburg (later to be incorporated into the Sachsenhausen camp) in 1933 with further use shortly after in Dachau, the "model" concentration camp of Eicke. With the expansion of the camp system came a proliferation of the use of the slogan in camps that were erected later, from Groß Rosen to Neuengamme to Auschwitz and even Theresienstadt. Buchenwald on the other hand used to slogan "Jedem das Seine" (translated as "to each his own", meaning "everybody gets what they deserve").

Given how closely the slogan is associated with the beginnings of the camp system and given that it was Eicke himself who chose the slogan to be displayed over the entrance to various camps, the most convincing theory about the rational behind its use to me seems to be the following: While it started out as a "genuine" message denoting resp. highlighting the "educational" aspect the camp system was presented under to the German public shortly after its inception in the early 30s, the slogan took on a sort of tradition within the camp system with its later cynical implications becoming a sort of in-joke among the Nazi camp administration.

To further explain this: When concentration camps were first erected and used in the early 30s important traditions and continuities to the later camp system were established but at the same time, both purpose and set-up of these camps were noticeably different to what would later become of the whole system, especially with its first expansion in the late 1930s and its later massive expansion and role in the genocide against Europe's Jews during the war.

The Concentration Camp in Germany has its origin in various Nazi and police agencies erecting ad-hoc prisons and camps after the Nazi take over of power in 1933 as places to imprison political opponents, mainly Social Democrats and Communists who were often arrested without a court order and simply locked up in a variety of places, ranging from the cellars of Nazi bars in Berlin and other big cities to hastily erected barrack camps somewhere outside of cities, to abandoned factories and breweries such as the aforementioned in Oranienburg. Recognizing how useful these extra-legal prisons were, the regime was quick to take further steps to institutionalize these camps as tools of state power in their campaign against political dissent in their "new" Germany, especially after the Reichstag Fire Decree that granted the new regime a whole slew of emergency powers.

The crucial figures in this process were Heinrich Himmler and Theodor Eicke, the later having very close ties to Himmler. Eicke was appointed the commandant of Dachau – one of the early camps slated by Himmler to become a "model" camp after Hitler had ordered that he didn't want a mere detention camp system but something more – on June 26, 1933. Eicke was a crucial figure in history of the camps because it was him who modeled a lot of the traditions and continuities of the camp system: He established new provisions for both guards and prisoners, had regulations on punishment and so forth issued, introduced uniforms for both guards and prisoners, and established a lot of the informal rules of the camp system (being shot while trying to escape etc.). Furthermore, he fended off other institutions that sought to bring the camps under a sort of legalistic principle such as when the district attorney of Munich started to investigate unnatural deaths in the camps (it was and still is established procedure in Germany that in every case of unnatural death, an investigation by DA and police needs to happen).

The measures taken by Eicke who modeled Dachau and subsequently other camps that came under his jurisdiction as he was later made Inspector of the Concentration Camps by Himmler on both prison camps by the German army in WW1 as well as a variety of prisons in the Weimar Republic were crucial in selling the new camps to the German public. E.g. here is a picture of a newspaper article in the Eschweiler Zeitung (a local paper) about the Dachau Concentration Camp being established from 1933. Early reports on the camp system highlight their purpose as places where political opponents and others such as "asocial" people are "educated" through work to become part of the new German People's Community under the Nazi regime and fall in line with the new regime, hailing them as revolutionary new tools in the fight against communism and anti-Germaness finally shedding the much too lax Weimar prison system that coddled prisoners far too much in the popular opinion. They were, in essence, expressions of a new law and order policy by the Nazi regime.

And within this context, the use of the slogan "Arbeit macht frei" (work will set you free) must be seen in my interpretation. The Nazis and Eicke during the inception of the camps and their first years really believed in the message behind this slogan, really saw these camps as "educational" institutions where the opponents of the Nazi regime and other people regarded as problems would be transformed into good new Nazi Germans through hard work, discipline, and violence.

That this was the case is further compounded by the fact that after the initial waves of mass arrest and up until 1937/38 the number of prisoners in the concentration camps started to dwindle massively because of people being released from the camps. In 1935, at the lowest point or prisoner numbers, hardly 3000 people were imprisoned in the concentration camps. This, in turn, even lead to a variety of people within the regime, from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Justice even calling for the camps to be closed and the system to be dismantled. They argued that with the communists being either imprisoned or in the majority of all cases having been imprisoned but released from the camps, the threat was over and the camps weren't needed anymore.

But after the initial time of consolidation of the regime and the use of the concentration camps as places of "educating" political opponents, 1936 saw several important changes in the regime and subsequently in the camp system. Not only was 1936 the year the Nazis fully embraced an economic policy in preparation for all out war, it also saw the massive expansion of the Gestapo's responsibilities and authority in form of the 3rd Gestapo Law. Subsequently, the Gestapo was to function as the "doctor of the German's Volk's body" and engage not only in crime fighting but in massive crime prevention.

Out of this amalgamation arose a new impulse for the concentration camp system. With the Gestapo now setting their sights on massively expanded new groups of victims and the massive preparation of Germany for war, the camps should become labor force reservoirs together with disciplinary institutions.

1937/38 saw a big wave of persecution of so-called "asocials" taking place (though as Julia Hörath recently researched in her dissertation, which is to be published this year, it did start on a smaller scale with the Nazi take over of power).

The German Labor Administration had in the course of the preparation for war received new and even further reaching competencies than they had before: They could now decide that a person was needed in a different job for the war economy and in essence order them to take up a new job/profession, something that was possible because they had been working on registering all labor forces in Germany since the 1920s. In consequence unemployment, at least the kind based on someone unable to find a job in their profession, ceased to exist. If you couldn't find work as a tailor, the labor administration would simply order you to become a factory worker in a tank factory.

This left those people who were either unable to hold down a steady job – people with un-diagnosed mental illnesses and alcoholics e.g. –, those who were on the outside of the employment system altogether – the homeless e.g. – and those who for a variety of reasons were not all too happy about this new system and started acting out in some form. I mean, imagine you are a shoemaker and suddenly you are ordered to instead work in a munitions factory. It is easy to imagine that for many reasons you are not happy about this and in consequence start stuff like taking many sick days, quarrel with your boss or try to find different employment without authorization. These were the people targeted as "asocial" because they alleged out of a ideological and economic reasons that those unable or unwilling to work were a threat to both the people's community and the war economy.