Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Unlike other concentration camps, it was located in a remote area, in the Fichtel Mountains of Bavaria, adjacent to the town of Flossenbürg and near the German border with Czechoslovakia. The camp's initial purpose was to exploit the forced labor of prisoners for the production of granite for Nazi architecture. In 1943, the bulk of prisoners switched to producing Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes and other armaments for Germany's war effort. Originally intended for German "criminal" and "asocial" prisoners, the camp's numbers swelled with political prisoners from outside Germany and, after Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, Soviet prisoners of war. It also developed an extensive subcamp system that eventually collectively held many more prisoners than the main camp.
Before it was liberated by the United States Army in April 1945, 89,964 to 100,000 prisoners passed through Flossenbürg and its subcamps. Around 30,000 died from malnutrition, overwork, executions, or during the death marches. Some of those responsible for these deaths, including administrators, guards, and others, were tried and convicted in the Flossenbürg trial. The camp was repurposed for other uses before the opening of a memorial and museum in 2007.
Background
During the first half of 1938, the Nazi concentration camp population expanded threefold due to increased arrests by the Schutzstaffel (SS) of individuals deemed undesirable, especially "asocial" and "criminal" prisoners, to create a slave labor force. SS leader Heinrich Himmler ordered the founding of new concentration camps to expand the SS economic empire. The SS intended to exploit the slave labor of prisoners to quarry granite, which was in high demand for monumental building projects in the Nazi style. This would also profit the SS-owned and -operated company German Earth and Stone Works (DEST), which had been founded in April.
During the second half of March 1938, a high-ranking SS commission led by Oswald Pohl and Theodor Eicke toured southern Germany, searching for a site for a new camp that would meet the SS' specifications. On 24 March 1938, they chose a site near the small town of Flossenbürg, in the Upper Palatinate, for the establishment of a concentration camp due to the quarries of blue-gray granite located nearby. Unlike all other Nazi concentration camps to date, which were near rail junctions and population centers, the camp was to be located in the remote Upper Palatine Forest near , formerly owned by Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa.
Flossenbürg was a poor rural area, with about 1,200 inhabitants who mostly worked on the quarries, which had existed since the 19th century. The local economy, especially the stone industry, was negatively impacted by the new border with Czechoslovakia after the Treaty of Versailles and the 1930s economic slump. Adolf Hitler's rise to power increased the demand for granite, earning the Nazi Party local support. The construction of the camp was funded by a contract with Albert Speer's ministry for the reconstruction of Berlin; it was the first occasion that economic considerations had determined the site of a camp.
Establishment
The order for the construction of eight barracks at Flossenbürg went through on 31 March, SS guards arrived in April, and on 3 May 1938, a transport of 100 prisoners arrived from Dachau, establishing the camp. More prisoners arrived from Dachau on 9 and 16 May; Himmler visited the camp on 16 May with Pohl, indicating that the SS considered it an important project. The SS attempted to segregate prisoners incarcerated for criminal offences at Flossenbürg because forced labor in the quarries was considered a particularly harsh punishment. Most of the prisoners at Flossenbürg were classified as criminal, with some "asocial" and a few homosexual prisoners; the criminals quickly took over the prisoner functionary positions.
The new prisoners had to construct the camp themselves, beginning with the barbed wire fence; this was initially the main use of forced labor. While performing this heavy and dangerous work, the prisoners lived in makeshift structures. Simultaneously, hundreds of prisoners had to work in the quarries. The camp's population had increased to 1,500 following arrivals from Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald. In January 1939, the first commandant, Jakob Weiseborn, unexpectedly died, having committed suicide over a matter concerning his time at Buchenwald.Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 664. He was replaced by a former SS officer at Dachau, Karl Künstler, who presided over an era in which the camp became an economically productive center for granite quarrying, and increasingly deadly for its prisoners. With the first barracks complete, in 1939 work began on an internal jail, guard towers, a washing facility, and a sewer system. In April 1939, the economic productivity of the camp led to Pohl ordering the camp to be expanded to fit 3,000 prisoners. To build additional barracks, terraces had to be cut into the hillsides, an arduous task that led to many injuries.
Fifty-five prisoners died before the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. During mid-1939, Nazi authorities planned to invade Poland. It was decided to stage false flag attacks in order to justify a German declaration of war. Several prisoners from Flossenbürg and other concentration camps were secretly transferred to a Gestapo prison in Breslau, poisoned, and dressed in Polish uniforms. On 31 August 1939, the bodies were dumped at a border post in Hochlinden where they were shot and hacked; photographs were taken as "proof" of a Polish attack on Germany.
Expansion
In September 1939, the SS transferred 1,000 political prisoners to Flossenbürg from Dachau in order to clear the latter camp to train the first regiment of the Waffen-SS. These prisoners, who were the first political prisoners at Flossenbürg, were moved back to Dachau in March 1940. The first foreign prisoners were transferred to the camp by the Gestapo in April, including Czech student protestors and Polish resistance members. The vast majority of the new foreign prisoners were incarcerated due to their opposition to the Nazi regime; a few of them were Jews. Most of the Jewish political prisoners were executed or died shortly after arriving from mistreatment. The last twelve surviving Jews were deported to Auschwitz on 19 October 1942, pursuant to Himmler's order to make the Reich Judenrein.
The number of Polish prisoners increased sharply in 1941; on 23 January, 600 arrived from Auschwitz. In mid-October 1941, 1,700 to 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrived at Flossenbürg as part of a massive transfer of Soviet prisoners to the SS camp system. In poor condition due to their previous mistreatment, they spent several months recovering before they were deemed fit to work. They were accommodated in a special, cordoned-off area.
By February 1943, Flossenbürg had 4,004 prisoners, not including the Soviet prisoners of war. From April 1943, the commandant was Max Koegel, described by American historian Todd Huebner as "a vicious martinet" who lacked the ability to manage the camp during its rapid expansion. Continuing influxes of political prisoners from occupied countries caused Germans to become a minority that same year. During 1944, Flossenbürg's population expanded almost eightfold, from 4,869 to 40,437, due to a high influx of mainly non-German prisoners. This was part of an expansion that applied over the entire Nazi concentration camp system.
By the end of 1943, the number of guards had increased to about 450, including 140 Ukrainian auxiliaries. As with other concentration camps, guards initially consisted of SS men from Germany and Austria, whose ranks were augmented with Volksdeutsche recruits after 1942. The number of guards increased sixfold during 1944 and reached 4,500 by the time the camp was evacuated. Due to manpower shortages, fit young guards were called up for front-line service and many older men, members of the Wehrmacht and five hundred SS women were recruited into the guard force at Flossenbürg.
Subcamps
The expansion of the camp led to the establishment of subcamps, the first of which was established at Stulln in February 1942 to provide forced labor to a mining company. Many of them were located in the Sudetenland or across the border in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Initially, the subcamps were not involved in armaments production, which changed in the second half of 1944 due to a large influx of available prisoners and the activities of the Jägerstab, which sought to increase German aircraft production. The Jägerstabs dispersal of aircraft production spurred the expansion of the subcamp system in 1944 and resulted in the establishment of the two largest of the subcamps, at Hersbruck and Leitmeritz. In the second half of 1944, 45 new camps were created, compared to three camps in the previous six months. The staffing of these new camps was increasingly filled by Luftwaffe soldiers, Volksdeutsche SS men (ethnic Germans from outside the Reich), and SS women, for the subcamps containing female prisoners. By April 1945, 80% of the prisoners were at the subcamps.
Forced labor
Quarries
Three quarries were operational by the end of 1938, and a fourth opened in April 1941. All four quarries were located near the main camp, and the total planned output was annually. The stone was average quality blue-gray and yellow-gray granite, 90% of which was suitable for architectural purposes. Production gradually increased during 1940, but remained constant in 1941. Initially all work was done by manual labor; prisoners worked alongside civilian laborers and performed the most arduous and dangerous tasks. Accidents led to many deaths. Beginning in 1940 and 1941, machines were introduced to increase efficiency. In mid-1939, the quarries became the main use of labor in the camp and the following year they consumed half of the total labor, which was valued at 367,000 Reichsmark.
From November 1940, some prisoners were trained as stonemasons in a specialized workshop; their numbers reached 1,200 by December 1942. The prisoners were instructed by civilian experts in a ten-week course covering both practical and theoretical topics but watched carefully by kapos. Those who failed to advance were sent to work in the quarries, while those whose productivity improved were given cigarettes and extra food. The stone that they cut was used for construction of the camp, the Autobahn, and various SS military projects, but later on it was destined for the monumental German Stadium project and the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg.
Of the five prewar concentration camps where economic industries were prominent, Flossenbürg was the one that was most significant and consistent in producing income for DEST. For example, it produced of stone in 1939, almost three-quarters of the total production that year. The largest buyer of Flossenbürg granite was Albert Speer's office for the reconstruction of Berlin. Within this project the largest and most significant orders were for Wilhelm Kreis' Soldiers' Hall (Soldatenhalle) project, beginning in 1940. Increasing amounts of stone were used for road building; 15% in 1939 but 60% the next year.