Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

D
Dachau. The model for the concentration camp system used by the Nazis during World
War II, Dachau was located near the town with the same name, about seven kilometers
from Munich. It was established in 1933 and remained opened until its prisoners were liberated
in 1945. At its height, over two hundred thousand prisoners representing more
than thirty countries were incarcerated there, of whom more than thirty thousand of them
were murdered there or in its more than thirty subcamps that surrounded it. Medical
experiments were also performed there, under the direction of Dr. Sigmund Rascher
(1909–1945), including those involving high-altitude compression chambers, hypothermia,
and injections of experimental medications. Its first commandant was Theodor Eicke
(1892–1943), who developed the camp system itself and was later promoted to inspectorgeneral
of all concentration and death camps. Dachau was also the main camp for
religious prisoners, including Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984), and began to add
women to its prison rolls in August 1944. Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Roman
Catholic priests, so-called asocials (e.g., the Roma and Sinti or Gypsies, vagrants, beggars,
alcoholics, the homeless), and criminals were also incarcerated there, but very few Jews.
From the end of 1944 until its liberation by U.S. troops on April 29, 1945, more than fifteen
thousand prisoners died from increasingly deteriorating conditions, including overcrowding
and rampant disease such as typhus. In addition to Niemöller, its inmates
included Bruno Bettelheim (1903–1990), Polish writer Tadeuscz Borowski (1922–1951),
and French writer Robert Antelme (1917–1990).
Daimler-Benz. A German manufacturer of automobiles whose management provided
valuable assistance to the National Socialist (Nazi) party prior to Adolf Hitler’s accession
to office in January 1933. It reaped substantial financial rewards from its association with
the Nazi government throughout the 1930s, and exploited captive labor forces in Nazi
concentration camps and elsewhere after the outbreak of war in 1939. By 1934, as a result
of business provided by Hitler, production at Daimler-Benz had more than doubled; in
1935 military manufacture accounted for 38 percent of production; by 1940 this had risen
to 76 percent, and, in 1944, to 93 percent. Daimler-Benz was largely responsible for
motorizing the German army and creating the new German air force in the years following
Hitler’s rise to power. Owing to the enormous growth of Daimler’s output during the
war years, manpower became a major problem, particularly as men were conscripted into
the armed forces and women were brought into new roles within the German workforce.