The Documentation of Stutthof Concentration Camp as a Reflection of the Totalitarian System of the Third Reich

Abstract

The documentation of the former concentration camp of KL Stutthof,both that produced by its chancellery – including the personnel filesof the SS garrison and the inmates – and the accounts of survivors,shows just how consistently totalitarian principles were implementedthroughout Germany following Hitler’s rise to power. It also reveals howthe foundations of totalitarian rule, introduced in the Third Reich before1939, came to form the basis of occupation rule in the lands conqueredby the Nazis. The files of KL Stutthof bear witness to the shaping (fullyin accordance with the socio-political tenets of the Third Reich) of the “newman”, who was ready to make sacrifices for the fatherland, was loyalto the Führer until death, and who ruthlessly, and often of his ownvolition, carried into effect the heartless recommendations concerningthe treatment of concentration camp inmates, essentially considered asenemies of the “German state” – a broad category which included Jews andall those who did not approve of the National Socialist order. This policywas followed unwaveringly until the end of the camp’s existence in April1945, when the Third Reich was already in ruins.