I apologize as this is somewhat difficult to word, but what I'm wanting to ask is what the original scope/intent of Nazi concentration camps were. As in, were they always intended to lead up to genocide, where they meant to end after the war, were they intended to create a permanent slave class, etc
First I apologize for all those german sources, but it's really hard to find first hand sources in english, plus I'm german so it's a bit easier for me.
The first conentration camp, Dachau, was kind of an experiment and a prototype. It opened im March 1933, just two months after the NSDAP took over the government. It was used for communists who were a "threat to the secruity of the state".
Here's the original article in the newspapers. Interesting about this article is that the term "Konzentrationslager" is already being used. Further more it says the camp is meant for 5.000 people.
So in the beginning they were used to abuse, torture and kill political enemies.
At the 12th of April 1933 the first inmates were murdered:
- 4.Erste Morde an den Häftlingen Benario, Goldmann und Kahn.
All of them were jewish and communists.
In the second phase (1936-1938) everyone who didn't fit into the nationalistic view was targeted: unemployed people, asocials, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses.
The Kristallnacht marks the ending of the second phase: 26.000 Jews were imprisoned with the goal to take their fortune and force them out of the country. By the end of 1938 over 60.000 people were imprisoned.
With the beginning of the war more concentration camps were built outside of Germany. A lot in Poland and
Czechoslovak.
The first death camps (Camps with the only purpose of killing people) were built in 1941. Most of them were located in Poland and Belarus. The most famous death camp is Auschwitz-Birkenau which was in fact a mix between a "normal" conentration camp and a death camp. If you're interested in this, look up Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec.
To sumarize: the intention of the first concentration camp was, to kill and get rid of political enemies. The intention of the first death camp was to kill Jews and others who didn't fit into this kind of society and the political agenda.
As stated on the Wannsee Conference, every german administration should work together for the final solution of the Jewish question. Thus it is pretty clear that those facilities would have been used until the last Jew on land occupied by germans is killed.