# Why did NAZI concentration camps warehouse prisoners instead of just killing them right away? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 28, 2016, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451 "2016-01-28T02:18:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/21 "2016-01-28T06:28:16Z")
> [@race\_to\_the\_bottom](#): > > We have had millennia of cruel dictators, yet the people survived. There has only been one Hitler and one Nazi Germany. Even Mussolini was not Hitler. Nonsense. Stalin, Mao, Suharto, and Pol Pot all oversaw massive genocides committed against ethnic groups or disenfranchised populations (in the case of Stalin, multiple times including the forced famines). Hitler is not unique in either the quantity murdered or the senseless brutality of the killing. The biggest distinction that can be made is that Germany mechanized the art of genocide. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/22 "2016-01-28T06:29:55Z")
The Serbs in the 1990’s may have been close to Hitler in terms of systematized killing. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/23 "2016-01-28T07:06:00Z")
Let’s remember that even in the Nazi concentration camps, the SS didn’t really care if their prisoners lived. They just weren’t set up for killing them or disposing of their bodies on an industrial scale. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/24 "2016-01-28T07:51:58Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Nonsense. Stalin, Mao, Suharto, and Pol Pot all oversaw massive genocides committed against ethnic groups or disenfranchised populations (in the case of Stalin, multiple times including the forced famines). Hitler is not unique in either the quantity murdered or the senseless brutality of the killing. The biggest distinction that can be made is that Germany mechanized the art of genocide. > > Stranger You Holocaust denier! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/25 "2016-01-28T09:19:11Z")
Even a Nazimann’s got a heart. [![](https://i.imgur.com/2t50H5P.jpg) ](https://i.imgur.com/2t50H5P.jpg) Only half in jest. One factor was that the use of prisoners for self-policing and body disposal as well as the Taylorization of the killing made it easier on German personnel. "After a time, Himmler found that the killing methods used by the Einsatzgruppen were inefficient: they were costly,\*\* demoralising for the troops\*\*, and sometimes did not kill the victims quickly enough.[102] **Many of the troops found the massacres to be difficult if not impossible to perform. Some of the perpetrators suffered physical and mental health problems, and many turned to drink.** [103] As much as possible, the Einsatzgruppen leaders militarized the genocide. The historian Christian Ingrao notes an attempt was made to make the shootings a collective act without individual responsibility. Framing the shootings in this way was not psychologically sufficient for every perpetrator to feel absolved of guilt.[104] Browning notes three categories of potential perpetrators: those who were eager to participate right from the start, those who participated in spite of moral qualms because they were ordered to do so, and a significant minority who refused to take part.[105] A few men spontaneously became excessively brutal in their killing methods and their zeal for the task. Commander of Einsatzgruppe D, SS-Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf, particularly noted this propensity towards excess, and **ordered that any man who was too eager to participate or too brutal should not perform any further executions**.[106] During a visit to Minsk in August 1941, Himmler witnessed an Einsatzgruppen mass execution first-hand and concluded that **shooting Jews was too stressful for his men**.[107] By November he made arrangements for any **SS men suffering ill health from having participated in executions to be provided with rest and mental health care**.[108] He also decided a transition should be made to gassing the victims, especially the women and children, and ordered the recruitment of expendable native auxiliaries who could assist with the murders.[108][109] Gas vans, which had been used previously to kill mental patients, began to see service by all four main Einsatzgruppen from 1942.[110] However, the **gas vans were not popular with the Einsatzkommandos** , because removing the dead bodies from the van and burying them was a horrible ordeal. Prisoners or auxiliaries were often assigned to do this task so as to **spare the SS men the trauma**.[111]" > **[Einsatzgruppen | Transition to gassing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen#Transition_to_gassing)** > > After a time, Himmler found that the killing methods used by the Einsatzgruppen were inefficient: they were costly, demoralising for the troops, and sometimes did not kill the victims quickly enough. Many of the troops found the massacres to be difficult if not impossible to perform. Some of the perpetrators suffered physical and mental health problems, and many turned to drink. As much as possible, the Einsatzgruppen leaders militarized the genocide. The historian Christian Ingrao note During a ... Bolded emphasis mine. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/26 "2016-01-28T10:57:56Z")
> [@race\_to\_the\_bottom](#): > > This is why we should never, ever allow anyone to get away with comparing someone to Hitler. “Saddam is Hitler; Assad is Hitler; Ahmadinejad is Hitler; Iran is the new Nazi Germany, etc” > > We have had millennia of cruel dictators, yet the people survived. There has only been one Hitler and one Nazi Germany. Even Mussolini was not Hitler. If anything, Mussolini was more benevolent than either Saddam or Assad. However, I disagree with you. People who directed the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda were hardly better than Nazis, for instance. Part of the Tutsis survived (as did part of Jews during WWII) but it wasn’t due to not trying hard enough, just to military defeat before the job could be completed, exactly as it happened in Germany. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/27 "2016-01-28T11:04:00Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > There is an excellent HBO movie titled [_Conspiracy_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266425/) set at the Wannsee conference with Kenneth Branagh as Rienhard Heydrich and Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichmann, two of the main architects of the “Final Solution”. > > Stranger Also an excellent German dramatization, [Die Wannseekonferenz](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088377/combined), 1984, with Dietrich Mattausch as Heydrich and Gerd Böckmann as Eichmann. And the most chilling lines from the HBO movie come when one of them says, “Do the Jews even have a Hell?” “They do now”, replies Heydrich. ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/28 "2016-01-28T12:50:11Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > Even a Nazimann’s got a heart. > [http://i.imgur.com/2t50H5P.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/2t50H5P.jpg) Is that cute fluffy kitty playing with a hand grenade? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/29 "2016-01-28T15:17:36Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > One factor was that the use of prisoners for self-policing and body disposal as well as the Taylorization of the killing made it easier on German personnel. This is what I came to post. There had also been pushback from German army commanders who didn’t want to support the field mass executions. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/30 "2016-01-28T15:30:44Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > The “Final Solution”, the project of simply murdering all the Jews in Europe, didn’t get under way until January 1942, by which time the concentration camp system had been up and running for years. The Nazis first concentration camps were established in 1933 and were used for holding (and torturing) political opponents, union organisers. In due course they were used for other undesirable elements - Jews, homosexuals, incorrigible criminals, Romani, etc. Lots of people - particularly in the early years of the regime - served a fixed term in the concentration camps and were then released. > > Holocaust scholars distinguish between concentration camps and extermination camps. Extermination camps came later and their object was indeed to kill the inmates. Some camps did indeed kill the great majority of inmates within a short time of arrival, temporarily sparing only so many as were needed to provide the labour to keep the camp running. Others were mixed concentration/extermination camps, which had the aim of profiting from the slave labour of able-bodied inmates before killing them. In some cases camps originally conceived as concentration camps, for punishment and/or the exploitation of labour, came to be used as extermination camps, the established function of the camps serving as a cover for their new purpose. This is incorrect. The wholesale mass murder of the Jews began with the invasion of the USSR. Groups of Einsatzgruppen followed the Army into all towns and villages rounding up and shooting the Jews. It quickly became apparent that this method was inefficient and took a great toll on the killing groups. Thus…add his post here. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/31 "2016-01-28T15:55:31Z")
My father is well known as one the world’s greatest scholars of the Holocaust. I asked him that a while ago. In short: Jew’s had minimal but real value as slave laborers for products of value outside the camps (as opposed to their value wthin camp operations as capos, etc.) until they would be killed or died, and industrial and logistics problems that, despite the best minds building on systems engineering (not his word) newly developed, had not kept pace with the requirements demanded. ETA: Einsatzgruppe killing lasted for years (round them up and machine gun, setting on fire, and then, with help from German engineers, gas them in portable facilities). Estimates are well over a million victims. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/32 "2016-01-28T16:23:43Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > There is an excellent HBO movie titled [_Conspiracy_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266425/) set at the Wannsee conference with Kenneth Branagh as Rienhard Heydrich and Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichmann, two of the main architects of the “Final Solution”… Yes, I think of that movie often. The dramatization and characters of the various competing interests – representing different interests in government of society as a whole – in getting the job done is memorable and is it’s triumph. Lawyers really are interested in the law, generals in winning battles, diplomats in image, technocrats in operations, labor ministers in supply, ideologists in refinement of purpose, and a boss really has to be informed, manage, cajole, and threaten. All in one room with real representatives. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/33 "2016-01-28T17:11:08Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > ETA: Einsatzgruppe killing lasted for years (round them up and machine gun, setting on fire, and then, with help from German engineers, gas them in portable facilities). Estimates are well over a million victims. [2 million, 1.3 million of them Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen) between 1941-45. > [@Shagnasty](#): > > Help educate me here because I always believed the lines were blurry. Didn’t all three of those categories overlap to some degree and weren’t people purposely killed at least in the last two? > > What was Auschwitz in that terminology? People usually refer to it as concentration camp but, even if it was an ‘extermination camp’, why did they keep so many sick people around for so long rather than just fulfill the stated title quickly? This never really got answered properly; there were only two categories of camps. There was no division into labor camps and concentration camps; they were both the same thing. [Concentration camps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps), _Konzentrationslager_ were set up as soon as the Nazis took power in March 1933. They were more or less Gulags where nobody particularly cared if you died doing forced labor, but they weren’t trying to exterminate all of their inmates. Extermination camps (_Vernichtungslager_) or death camps (_Todeslager_) were terms used interchangeably for the camps that were set up from the end of 1941 whose only purpose was genocide and to kill all of their inmates. The word concentration camp is often used loosely in general culture when referring to both types of camps and internment camps as the term ‘concentration camp’ was used to describe the camps set up during the Second Boer War by the British and it was from here that the term really entered the English lexicon. And much as I’d personally agree with it were it the case, from the legal standpoint, simply working in an extermination camp did **not** automatically make you an accessory to murder. I’d hold that working as a guard at an extermination camp made one morally guilty of murder even if they never personally killed anyone trying to escape, I feel working as the quartermaster at an extermination camp made one morally guilty of murder and ought to legally have made one guilty of murder, but that is not the case. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/34 "2016-01-28T17:28:49Z")
Working at a camp IMO is certainly criminal even under the laws of the time; if you are actually killing people or herding them into gas chambers. The current German attitude OTH seems to be that you are guilty as an acessory even if they cannot prove what exactly was your role in the killings and even if you were doing your damdest to get away like Oskar Goerning, That I do have an issue with and its a precedent which will be regretted. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/35 "2016-01-28T17:39:50Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#): > > Is that cute fluffy kitty playing with a hand grenade? :dubious: Actually, the fluffy kitty isn’t playing with the grenade because it’s being distracted by the SS soldier offering it a flower. This, on the other hand, is a picture of a fluffy kitty playing with a hand grenade: [Imgur: The magic of the Internet](http://imgur.com/DfiZehC) And this is the dog version of that: [Imgur: The magic of the Internet](http://imgur.com/FXN8du0) There’s more. So much more: [http://imgur.com/gallery/jpwkp](http://imgur.com/gallery/jpwkp) Also, this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dXWpMSXdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dXWpMSXdk) > [@TokyoBayer](#): > > This is what I came to post. > > There had also been pushback from German army commanders who didn’t want to support the field mass executions. I can understand why the Nazis would have problems with army commanders given that there’s a scarce supply of skilled mid/high-level commanders so the ones who balked at mass civilians killings couldn’t be easily replaced. I don’t quite get why the Nazis didn’t manage to find enough sadists, sociopaths and supremacists to do the killing at a lower level, though. The Soviets seemed to have no problems finding enough NKVD killers like Vasily Blokhin\*. I wonder what part of the extermination camp process was the most psychologically difficult and how the Nazis selected those people and made sure they kept operating. \*[Vasily Blokhin - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Blokhin) ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/36 "2016-01-28T17:50:39Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Nonsense. Stalin, Mao, Suharto, and Pol Pot all oversaw massive genocides committed against ethnic groups or disenfranchised populations (in the case of Stalin, multiple times including the forced famines). Hitler is not unique in either the quantity murdered or the senseless brutality of the killing. The biggest distinction that can be made is that Germany mechanized the art of genocide. > > Stranger > [@clairobscur](#): > > If anything, Mussolini was more benevolent than either Saddam or Assad. > > However, I disagree with you. People who directed the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda were hardly better than Nazis, for instance. > > Part of the Tutsis survived (as did part of Jews during WWII) but it wasn’t due to not trying hard enough, just to military defeat before the job could be completed, exactly as it happened in Germany. Very true. The significance of the events in Rwanda was to remind us that it does not take the organisation and mechanisation of the Third Reich to commit genocide, with sufficient determination young men with machetes can get the job done. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/37 "2016-01-28T19:07:10Z")
> [@race\_to\_the\_bottom](#): > > This is why we should never, ever allow anyone to get away with comparing someone to Hitler. “Saddam is Hitler; Assad is Hitler; Ahmadinejad is Hitler; Iran is the new Nazi Germany, etc” > > We have had millennia of cruel dictators, yet the people survived. There has only been one Hitler and one Nazi Germany. Even Mussolini was not Hitler. Stalin, Pol Pot, Hideki Tojo. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/38 "2016-01-28T19:32:36Z")
Tojo wasnt Hitleresque either. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/39 "2016-01-28T23:21:44Z")
What was the general Japanese attitude toward the Ainu? ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451/40 "2016-01-28T23:23:00Z")
Bad, according to nearly everything I read about them. Just how bad, at any time in history, I not sure. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-nazi-concentration-camps-warehouse-prisoners-instead-of-just-killing-them-right-away/744451.md?page=3)