I wondered if anyone else had come across this, flicking through material tends to be rather fruitless and online searches even less so. Essentially according to some information from former inmates the Waffen-SS were operating a 'Punishment Camp for Waffen-SS and Police' as part of Dachau,with all inmates stripped of citizenship and subjugated to much of the same depravities as ordinary prisoners. The lucky ones, after a period of incarceration, were eventually returned to their Divisions to serve out their sentences in Penal Platoons. Has anyone else come across this before is it an anomaly? Once more it highlights that if the Waffen-SS treated their own personnel in this manner, it further indicates the extreme culture of brutality prevalent within Nazi Germany and these organisations.
I would think this would be a SS disciplinary regime set up by Theo Eicke,the first commandant of Dachau from June 1933.Second to Himmler,the brutal procedures for concentration camps stemmed from Eicke who had total influence and power over the concentration camp system.He had little regard for those SS who failed the system, being dismissed from the SS would be the minimum punishment. At the start of WW2,he delivered a presentation to his concentration camp commanders...."It is the duty of SS man to identify himself body and soul with the cause.Every order must be sacred to him and he must carry out,even the most difficult and hardest of them without hesitation" However,amid the brutality,there were a number of SS senior personnel found guilty of sadism in discharging the Third Reich ideology of genocide...all charged by the SS disciplinary section featuring Dr Konrad Morgen who also had the authority of investigating financial irregularities in SS businesses. Eicke was then appointed in April 1934 by Himmler as Inspector of Concentration Camps and went on to be Waffen SS Gruppenfuhrer in 1943 and was killed in action on the Russian Front. In 1940,Eicke was succeeded as Inspector of Concentration Camps in 1940 by Richard Gluecks who later went underground in April 1945 and disappeared. Another point about the SS,they headed many businesses and woe betide those SS who were found guilty of lack of probity while administering them....the "Financial Crimes Unit" would be consulted and involve Dr Konrad Morgan who appears to have been the chief investigator in overall SS disciplinary matters
In the First World War the authorities executed those including boys who failed, in their eyes to maintain a specific grade. The Germans were no different discipline is paramount or the 'united' front collapses. The SS enacted discipline on those they believed had transgressed their code.
