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Not so much on display is the Death's Head Brigade, whose main job is to guard the concentration camps. Their activities have, however, caused much comment. When the Nazis took over in 1933 Herr Himmler established his first concentration camp near Dachau, Bavaria. There, 150 unemployed members of the SS guarded some 2,000 Communists, Social Democrats and assorted dissenters whose freedom was generally regarded as dangerous to the newborn State. By the time of the June purge in 1934, the number of "enemies of the State" had increased to 7,000 and new camps, at Sachsenhausen near Berlin, and near Weimar, were set up. Other smaller ones sprang up in Saxony, Silesia, Prussia.
Following Anschluss, 15,000 Austrians were deemed unfit to continue at liberty. The Jewish pogroms of last November which so shocked the world and which were directed personally by Gestapo Chief Himmler temporarily trebled the population of the already bulging camps. During the last few weeks some 20,000 arrests have been made in newly acquired Bohemia and Moravia.
The three big camps are now permanent prisons where Communist agitators, homosexuals, disgraced Nazis, Jewish university professors, Protestant conscientious objectors are thrown together in common cells. They wear coarse, striped uniforms, their heads are cropped, they shave only once weekly. The Jews wear yellow badges and the homosexuals pink, and few steps are taken to prevent Jewish adolescents from being attacked or molested.
Too many alumni have emerged from concentration camps with the same story to leave any further doubt that sadism and brutality are part & parcel of the concentration camp routine. The whipping post is used freely; men are forced to run while carrying heavy loads, are prodded by bayonets if they fall out of step. A sport of the guards is to throw Jewish boys into latrines and push their heads under with rifle butts.
The SS has grown by leaps & bounds until it is now an organization of 230,000, and an SS man is far more important, politically, than a soldier or a policeman. Indeed, due to the fact that Herr Himmler followed the romantic, mystical streak of Wotan-worship developed by old General Ludendorff, the SS has become the most elite and exotic body of cops the world has ever known. Defined as a "National Socialist soldierly order of Nordic men," the SS took many of their rules from the old Order of Teutonic Knights. Fundamental principles: loyalty, honor, courage. The SS cardinal virtue: blind obedience to orders.
The working 55—Service Troops and Death's Head Brigade—are not only entrusted with keeping German order but with producing a great race of supermen for puny Herr Himmler. 55 marriages—the bride's physical qualifications and racial background are thoroughly investigated—were once surrounded with Druidic ceremonies to impress the young couple with the ancient background of their Teutonic destiny. 55 colonies for young married couples are made attractive breeding grounds. Smart Herr Himmler has made his police service not only a service but a cult.