Dachau: The First Nazi Concentration Camp

In Operation From 1933 to 1945

The Dachau concentration camp in Germany

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Auschwitz might be the most infamous camp in the Nazi system of terror, but it was not the first. The first concentration camp was Dachau, which was established on March 20, 1933, in the southern German town of the same name (10 miles northwest of Munich).


Building the Camp

The first buildings in the Dachau concentration camp complex consisted of the remnants of an old World War I munitions factory that was in the northeastern portion of the town. These buildings, with a capacity of about 5,000 prisoners, served as the main camp structures until 1937, when prisoners were forced to expand the camp and demolish the original buildings.

The “new” camp, completed in mid-1938, was composed of 32 barracks and was designed to hold 6,000 prisoners. The camp population, however, was usually grossly over that number.



First Prisoners






Camp Leadership

The first commandant of Dachau was SS official Hilmar Wäckerle. He was replaced in June 1933 after being charged with murder in the death of a prisoner. Although Wäckerle’s eventual conviction was overturned by Hitler, who declared concentration camps out of the realm of the law, Himmler wanted to bring in new leadership for the camp.


Discussion of political views was strictly prohibited and violation of this policy resulted in execution. Those who attempted to escape were put to death as well.

Eicke’s work in creating these regulations, as well as his influence on the physical structure of the camp, led to a promotion in 1934 to SS-Gruppenführer and Chief Inspector of the Concentration Camp System. He would go on to oversee the development of the vast concentration camp system in Germany and modeled other camps on his work at Dachau.


Training SS Guards


A variety of SS officers trained with Eicke, most notably the future commandant of the Auschwitz camp system, Rudolf Höss. Dachau also served as a training ground for other camp staff.

Night of the Long Knives

On June 30, 1934, Hitler decided it was time to rid the Nazi Party of those who were threatening his rise to power. In an event that became known as the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler used the growing SS to take out key members of the SA (known as the “Storm Troopers”) and others he viewed as being problematic to his growing influence.


With the SA officially eliminated as a threat, the SS began to grow exponentially. Eicke benefited greatly from this, as the SS was now officially in charge of the entire concentration camp system.

Nuremberg Race Laws




During the night of November 9-10, 1938, the Nazis sanctioned an organized pogrom against the Jewish populations in Germany and annexed Austria. Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were vandalized and burned.


Forced Labor

In the early years of Dachau, most of the prisoners were forced to perform labor related to the expansion of the camp and the surrounding area. Small industrial tasks were also assigned to make products used in the region.


By mid-1944, sub-camps began to spring up around Dachau in order to increase war production. In total, over 30 sub-camps, which worked more than 30,000 prisoners, were created as satellites of the Dachau main camp.

Medical Experiments

Throughout the Holocaust, several concentration and death camps performed forced medical experiments on their prisoners. Dachau was no exception. The medical experiments conducted at Dachau were ostensibly aimed at improving military survival rates and bettering medical technology for German civilians.


Many of these prisoners died from the experiments.

Nazi Dr. Claus Schilling hoped to create a vaccine for malaria and injected over a thousand prisoners with the disease. Other prisoners at Dachau were experimented on with tuberculosis.

Death Marches and Liberation

Dachau remained in operation for 12 years—nearly the entire length of the Third Reich. In addition to its early prisoners, the camp expanded to hold Jews, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and prisoners of war (including several Americans.)



In total, over 188,000 prisoners had passed through Dachau and its sub-camps. An estimated 50,000 of those prisoners died while imprisoned in Dachau.