Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

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Chinaski1917
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Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#1

Post by Chinaski1917 » 04 Jun 2009, 14:20

Does anyone have any stats on the prison population of Nazi Germany prior to 1939 ?

Thanks.

Chinaski1917
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#2

Post by Chinaski1917 » 11 Aug 2009, 12:50

it's seem to be 1614 to 100.000 circa 1940 according to the source below

An almost certain world history record.

http://books.google.gr/books?id=wKonXLg ... q=&f=false


Hubert
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#3

Post by Hubert » 12 Aug 2009, 19:53

Some interesting facts from the book "Schlag nach!" Wissenswerte Tatsachen aus allen Gebieten, published by Bibliographisches Institut AG, Leipzig, 1938

In 1936 the following numbers of people were sentenced:

66 to death
8 lifetime Zuchthaus (prison with hardest forced labour)
11420 limited Zuchthaus (less than lifetime)
160525 Prison (Gefängnis)
4 Festungshaft (low-security prison for criminals with "honorable backround" comp.Hitler 1923)
1699 Arrest
209041 fines (Geldstrafe)

Regards

Hubert

Chinaski1917
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#4

Post by Chinaski1917 » 07 Dec 2009, 12:06

Image

this is population in camps of Nazi Germany excluding the Eastern death camps.

EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, December 1996

The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings,
1930-45
STEPHEN WHEATCROFT



Could someone post the population that was in PRISONS ?

Boby
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#5

Post by Boby » 07 Dec 2009, 13:44

Prisons: 100.000 in 1939 (pre-1939 borders).1
KL: 25.000 in 1939.2

1 Source: Nikolaus Wachsmann, “Annihilation through Labor”: The Killing of State Prisoners in the Third Reich", Journal of Modern History 71, Nr. 3 (1999), pp. 624-659, here: p. 648

2 Nbg.-Dok. 1469-PS

Boby,

Chinaski1917
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#6

Post by Chinaski1917 » 07 Dec 2009, 14:04

What's KL ?

This number seems to be in accordance with Richard Evans' number he quotes the same author :

"New laws and greater police powers drove the number of inmates of all kinds in state prisons ...until it reached a peak of 122.000 at the end of February 1937 [144]

[144]Gruchmann , Hitler's Prisons, 69-71 and figure I.


So except from Camps and Prisons did the nazis have other forms of detainment ? Like special exile places or something like that ?

I'm asking because we need to add that up for the total prison rate.

Thanks

Boby
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#7

Post by Boby » 08 Dec 2009, 15:11

KL = Concentration camps.

Boby,

michael mills
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#8

Post by michael mills » 15 Dec 2009, 03:09

According to this source, the United States of today has the World's highest incarceration rate, over 2% of the adult population:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarcerat ... ted_States

If the population of Germany in 1939 was around 60 million, an incarceration of 2% would yield 1,200,000 prisoners. If we assume that,say, 40 million were classed as adults (to make the comparison with the present adult incarceration rate in the United States more accurate), then an adult incarceration rate of 2% would yield 800,000 prisoners.

In other words, the prisoner population in Germany in 1939, stated to be 100,000, r epresentedanincarceration rate less than one-eighth of the present incarceration rate in the United States.

Accordingly, this statement by Chinaski1917, in relation to the German incarceration rate in 1939:
An almost certain world history record.
is shown to be utter drivel. Apparently the United States of today holds the world record.

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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#9

Post by Chinaski1917 » 15 Dec 2009, 18:58

a)nowadays USA the prison rate is 756 for 100.000 , the 2 point something rates are if you add also those on parole and probation.

b) everybody knows that the exterminations camps of Nazi Germany were set up after 1942. No historical comparison for the horror of those camps exists.

michael mills
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#10

Post by michael mills » 16 Dec 2009, 03:23

b) everybody knows that the exterminations camps of Nazi Germany were set up after 1942. No historical comparison for the horror of those camps exists.
Irrelevant to your argument, Chinaski1917. You were talking about the size of the peacetime prison population in National Socialist Germany; you referred to a figure of 100,000 prisoners in 1939.

An incarceration rate of 756 per 100,000 yields 7,560 per one million, or 453,600 prisoners in a population of 60 million.

Accordingly, the incarceration rate in Germany in 1939 was less than 25% of the present incarceration rate in the United States. The United States is not at present engaged in a life-and-death struggle against vastly more powerful external enemies, and is not in a situation of desperate food shortage, so it does not need to have extermination camps for internal enemies.

David Thompson
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#11

Post by David Thompson » 16 Dec 2009, 03:53

Michael -- You wrote: (1)
Irrelevant to your argument, Chinaski1917. You were talking about the size of the peacetime prison population in National Socialist Germany; you referred to a figure of 100,000 prisoners in 1939.

An incarceration rate of 756 per 100,000 yields 7,560 per one million, or 453,600 prisoners in a population of 60 million
(a) No, you are trying to compare the estimated German prison population in 1939, excluding concentration camps, local jails and persons under state supervision, with the US statistics which combine the prison and local jail populations with the very large number of persons under state supervision who are not in prison, or even physically confined. This is obvious from your link ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarcerat ... ted_States ). Consequently, the statistical bases for your comparison are skewed -- the German figures are minimized and the US figures are maximized.

(b) You also have not factored in the very high death rates of concentration camp prisoners in Nazi Germany, which reduced the population of persons in confinement -- in 1939, perhaps 25% or 30% of the concentration camp inmates died -- see the chart in Chinaski1917's post at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 6#p1405816 ). For readers interested in learning more about the death rates of registered prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, see this thread:

Documents on Nazi Concentration Camp Mortality Rates
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=63730

(c) Furthermore, as the wikipedia article states, the US rate is 738 per 100,000 -- not 756:
The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world at 738 persons in prison or jail per 100,000 (as of 2005).
(d) Finally, you fail to confront the Council of Europe: Parliamentary Assembly, 2006 Ordinary Session's far greater estimate of Nazi incarceration -- 1,614 per 100,000 in 1940 in the citation given by Chinaski1917 at http://books.google.gr/books?id=wKonXLg ... q=&f=false This is more than double the current US rate.

(2)
The United States is not at present engaged in a life-and-death struggle against vastly more powerful external enemies, and is not in a situation of desperate food shortage, so it does not need to have extermination camps for internal enemies.
Until the end of 1939, Nazi Germany had neither a war nor a food shortage.

Chinaski1917
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#12

Post by Chinaski1917 » 16 Dec 2009, 12:01

(c) Furthermore, as the wikipedia article states, the US rate is 738 per 100,000 -- not 756:
You're wrong. That's an old rate in wikipedia.


c The United States has the highest prison population
rate in the world, 756 per 100,000 of the national
population, followed by Russia (629), Rwanda (604),
St Kitts & Nevis (588), Cuba (c.531), U.S. Virgin Is.
(512), British Virgin Is. (488), Palau (478), Belarus (468),
Belize (455), Bahamas (422), Georgia (415), American
Samoa (410), Grenada (408) and Anguilla (401).


source :Roy Walmsley, World Prison Population List (eigth edition), International Centre for Prison Studies, King's College London - School of Law
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/researc ... 8th_41.pdf

David Thompson
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#13

Post by David Thompson » 16 Dec 2009, 15:37

Thanks for the sourced correction, Chinaski1917.

michael mills
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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#14

Post by michael mills » 17 Dec 2009, 00:24

The statistics used by the moderator in his post of 16 December are irrelevant in that they refer to the situation in wartime Germany, which of course is in no way comparable with the United States of today.

The figures originally quoted by Chinaski1917 were those of Germany in 1937 and 1939, ie in peacetime conditions. i thne made a comparison with the incarceration rate in the United States of today, under similar peacetime conditions as those obtaining in Germany prior to the outbreak of war.

According to this source

http://www.tacitus.nu/historical-atlas/ ... ermany.htm

the population of Germany in 1939 within its 1937 borders was 69.5 million.

If we take the current incarceration rate in the United States, which according to Chinaski1917 is 756 per 100,000 of the national population, and apply it to the Germany of 1939, we obtain a figure of 695 x 756 = 525,420.

That is to say, if Germany in 1939 had had the same incarceration rate as the United States does today, it would have had 525,420 prisoners.

However, according to the historian Richard Evans, who is by no stretch of the imagination an apologist for Hitler, the German prison population of all kinds reached a peak of 122,000 at the end of February 1937.

Accordsing to the sourced figures quoted by Boby, the number of prisoners in 1939 was 125,000, of which 100,000 were in prisones in Germany proper (pre-1939 borders) and 25,000 in concentration camps.

Thus, the incarceration rate in pre-war Germany, under peacetime conditions, was only 23.8% of the current incarceration rate in the United States.

In other words, the United states of today is a political entity that imprisons the population under its power at four times the rate that Germany under National Socialist rule did in the period before the outbreak of war.

A reference has been made to the extra-judicial killings that occurred in German concentration camps even before the outbreak of war. It would a very brave person who would claim that there were no extra-judicial killings in penal establishments in the United States in the 1930s. In fact, such extra-judicial killings were still being perpetrated on prison farms in the sState of Arkansas in the 1960s, which caused a great scandal when they were revealed by then-Governor Winthrop Rockefeller.

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Re: Prison population in Nazi Germany before the war

#15

Post by David Thompson » 17 Dec 2009, 03:55

Michael -- The problems in your approach are obvious. In order to accurately compare different sets of statistics, the collection method has to be similar. In this case, it isn't.

The German statistics you rely upon are an estimate for the numbers of people in prisons in 1939, and the lowest of the estimates of the concentration camp population in 1939, which range from 25,000 to 132,000-330,000. We don't have exact figures for either category, and we don't know how they were compiled.

The US statistics are more detailed. They date from seventy years later than the German estimates. The US figures include people confined in local jails for a variety of misdemeanors and other minor offenses -- drunks, persons who disturb the peace, petty shoplifters, etc., who are confined for brief periods, but not in prisons. The 1939 German statistics don't include those persons, who doubtless far outnumber the hard-core criminals kept in prison, and the political criminals, habitual offenders, etc. held in concentration camps.

As for deaths in police custody, you have failed to grasp or avoided the point. The question is not whether such deaths happen at all, but the scale on which they occur -- the prisoner death rate. Furthermore, in discussing your non-issue, you abandoned the 2009 US model, and shifted your claim to conditions in the US during an indeterminate timeframe ranging from the 1930s to the 1960s, which you did not bother to document. Even so, if you have any statistics indicating that the average death rates in US prisons and/or jails were remotely comparable to the figures I mentioned for Nazi concentration camps, let's see them.

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