Dachau was started pretty early...

[RACPISA]

One of the first Nazi Concentration Camps, located in the small town of Dachau, about ten miles (15 km) northwest of Munich.
The first group of so-called protective-custody prisoners, consisting mainly of Communists and Social Democrats, was brought to Dachau on March 22, 1933. On becoming commandant of the camp in June 1933, Theodor Eicke setup a scheme of organiztion with detailed regulations for camp life. Later, when Eicke was appointed inspector general for all concentration camps, these regulations were used, with local variations, elsewhere. With Dachau as his model, he developed an institution that was intended, by its very existence, to spread fear among the populace, and be an effective tool for silencing every opponent of the regime. Dachau became a useful training ground for the SS. The transformation of the terror system of National Socialism into bloody reality began in the Dachau concentration camp.

I bolded the date because I thought it was strange that Dachau was founded when Hitler was still only Chancellor. Hindenberg was still alive, Hitler was only second fiddle. I didn't know Hitler had the power to do this at that time. And didn't Hindenberg have any say in the matter? Couldn't he have protested because he was, after all, the President?

[David Thompson]

RACPISA -- The Reichstag fire and its legislative aftermath changed Germany a lot.

[RACPISA]

So Hindenberg basically had little power at that point?

[David Thompson]

RACPISA -- President von Hindenburg had plenty of power, but he was elderly, and thought Germany was in danger from left-wing elements in the Reichstag, and their turbulent supporters. I don't think he saw what was coming.

Do you want me to try and fill this subject in with a lot more information? If so, let me know.

[Hasso]

I believe the Enabling Act signed by Hindenburg given Hitler (as Chancellor) broad powers to "protect the state" from internal strife contained the legal basis for establishment of Dachau.

[Ritter Von-X]

How could there be a legal basis for a camp that would only give the prisioners 250 calories a day? What were these people charged with that would place them in this camp anyway? Was it terrorism? In that case we need to watch out for the Islamic people so that doesn't happen to them. Just because someone is a certain religion or decent doesn't mean they are all the same.

[Hasso]

Let me explain my post a bit further so that there is no misunderstanding of what I meant:

The Enabling Act gave Hitler a legal basis for establishing the camp in German law. This does not mean that the conditions there were of a legal nature. By "legal" I meant that within the tenets of the Enabling Act, he could camouflage his true intent in establishing the camp as a means of combatting anti-government forces such as those that supposedly started the Reichstag fire, for which the Enabling act was imposed.

This is not to say that an objective body would look at any concentration camp in their form in Germany and the occupied territories as within the laws of mankind, and this would be shown in the first international tribunal at Nuremberg.

[Ritter Von-X]

It's unfortunate that no one realized his true intent earlier. If they did know they either supported his ideas or were too afraid to oppose them. I just wonder about political propaganda today. It just seems like conditions may be favorable to repeat the past to a degree. I didn't know that they were blamed for starting the fire and that was the basis for this camp. Thanks for the info.

[Peter H]

Dachau is mentioned in Robert Gellately's Backing Hitler as being set up,like all camps in 1933,to hold political prisoners(mainly Communists).Nazi spin was 'protective custody and re-education'.

Between June and December 1933 at Dachau there "was usually around 3,800 prisoners at any one time,of whom between as many as 2,000 and as few as 600 were released each month,with about the same number rearrested.For all of 1933,a total of about 100,000 people spent time in a concentration camp;an estimated 500 to 600 were killed."

Thus in the early years of 1933/34 a floating in/out camp population was the norm and at anyone time around 7,000 prisoners were in camps in Germany.The lowest figure for the camps,in Germany, was 3,000 prisoners at the end of 1934 ,due also to the Hitler amnesty of 7th August 1934..."Organised opposition was silent or as good as dead."

Talk about dissolving the camp system in early 1935 was misproved with Hitler supporting Himmler's view on retaining the camps at a meeting on the 20th June 1935.The more sinister rounding up of 'asocials and Jews' then began,and all camps became funded by the federal budget in 1936;previously they had not stemmed from a "centrally guided action" and were under regional control.