Dachau and the SS : a schooling in violence / Christopher Dillon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dillon, Christopher, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dachau (Concentration camp).

Waffen-SS.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Waffen-SS--History.

History.

Physical Description:

282 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2015.

Summary:

Dachau and the SS studies the concentration camp guards at Dachau, the first SS concentration camp and a national 'school' of violence for its concentration camp personnel. Set up in the first months of Adolf Hitler's rule, Dachau was a bastion of the Nazi 'revolution' and a key springboard for the ascent of Heinrich Himmler and the SS to control of the Third Reich's terror and policing apparatus. Throughout the pre-war era of Nazi Germany, Dachau functioned as an academy of violence where concentration camp personnel were schooled in steely resolution and the techniques of terror. An international symbol of Nazi depredation, Dachau was the cradle of a new and terrible spirit of destruction. Combining extensive new research into the pre-war history of Dachau with theoretical insights from studies of perpetrator violence, this book offers the first systematic study of the 'Dachau School'. It explores the backgrounds and socialization of thousands of often very young SS men in the camp and critiques the assumption that violence was an outcome of personal or ideological pathologies. Christopher Dillon analyses recruitment to the Dachau SS and evaluates the contribution of ideology, training, social psychology and masculine ideals to the conduct and subsequent careers of concentration camp guards. Graduates of the Dachau School would go on to play a central role in the wartime criminality of the Third Reich, particularly at Auschwitz. Dachau and the SS makes an original contribution to scholarship on the pre-history of the Holocaust and the institutional organization of violence. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 'We'll Meet Again in Dachau': The Early Dachau SS 10

A Bavarian Revolution 14

SA and SS 22

The Civil War Narrative 29

The Early Dachau SS Leadership 35

The Early Violence in Dachau 40

2 The Dachau Guard Troops 49

Volunteers 50

Command and Compliance 63

Leadership 69

Training 80

Everyday Violence 82

Beyond the Barbed Wire 86

3 The Dachau Commandant Staff 94

Department I: Commandant and Adjutant 96

Department II: The Political Department 108

Department III: The Protective Custody Compound Department 110

4 The Dachau SS and the Prisoners 135

Homogeneity 136

Categorization 161

5 'Tolerance Means Weakness': The Dachau SS and Masculinity 179

Martial Masculinity in the Third Reich 180

SS Masculinity 184

SS Masculinity at Dachau 192

The Dachau School and Masculinity 198

The Dachau SS and Prisoner Masculinities 207

6 The Dachau SS and the Locality 218

The Dachau Locality 220

The Dachau Site 221

The Dachau SS in Institutional Context 223

Camp and Citizenry 227

SS Guards and Locality 230

Standing By 236.

Notes:

Includes bibliography and index.

ISBN:

0199656525

9780199656523

OCLC:

902702328