Nikolaus Wachsmann | |
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Born | Nikolaus Daniel Wachsmann 1971 (age 52–53) |
Nationality | German |
Awards |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Reform and Repression: Prisons and Penal Policy in Germany, 1918–1939 (2001) |
Academic advisors | Richard J. Evans |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Modern European history,penology,Nazi concentration camps |
Institutions | |
Notable works |
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Nikolaus Daniel Wachsmann (born 1971) is a professor of modern European history in the Department of History,Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College,University of London.
Wachsmann was born in Munich. He graduated from the London School of Economics with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree,from the University of Cambridge with a taught Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degree,and from the University of London with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree. [1] His doctoral thesis,which he completed in 2001,was titled "Reform and Repression:Prisons and Penal Policy in Germany,1918–1939". [2]
In October 1998,Wachsmann began his academic career as a research fellow at Downing College,Cambridge. [3] He was then a lecturer at the University of Sheffield. In 2005,he joined the Department of History,Classics and Archaeology of Birkbeck,University of London. [1]
He is the author of the 2004 book,Hitler's Prisons:Legal Terror in Nazi Germany and the 2015 book KL:A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps. [4]
He is currently writing a new history of Auschwitz. [5]
Theodor Eicke was a senior SS functionary and Waffen SS divisional commander during the Nazi era. He was one of the key figures in the development of Nazi concentration camps. Eicke served as the second commandant of the Dachau concentration camp from June 1933 to July 1934,and together with his adjutant Michael Lippert,was one of the executioners of SA Chief Ernst Röhm during the Night of the Long Knives purge of 1934. He continued to expand and develop the concentration camp system as the first Concentration Camps Inspector.
Oswald Ludwig Pohl was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. As the head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office and the head administrator of the Nazi concentration camps,he was a key figure in the Final Solution,the genocide of the European Jews. After the war,Pohl went into hiding;he was apprehended in 1946. Pohl stood trial in 1947,was convicted of crimes against humanity,and sentenced to death. After repeatedly appealing his case,he was executed by hanging in 1951.
Richard James Overy is a British historian who has published on the history of World War II and Nazi Germany. In 2007,as The Times editor of Complete History of the World,he chose the 50 key dates of world history.
From 1933 to 1945,Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps,including subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.
The Allgemeine SS was a major branch of the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces of Nazi Germany;it was managed by the SS Main Office (SS-Hauptamt). The Allgemeine SS was officially established in the autumn of 1934 to distinguish its members from the SS-Verfügungstruppe,which later became the Waffen-SS,and the SS-Totenkopfverbände,which were in charge of the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps. SS formations committed many war crimes against civilians and allied servicemen.
Richard Glücks was a high-ranking German SS functionary during the Nazi era. From November 1939 until the end of World War II,he commanded the Concentration Camps Inspectorate,later integrated into the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office as "Amt D". As a direct subordinate of Heinrich Himmler,he was responsible for the forced labour of the camp inmates and was the supervisor for the medical practices in the camps,ranging from Nazi human experimentation to the implementation of the "Final Solution",in particular the mass murder of inmates with Zyklon B gas. After Germany capitulated,Glücks committed suicide by swallowing a potassium cyanide capsule.
Extermination through labour is a term that was adopted to describe forced labor in Nazi concentration camps whose inmates were held in inhumane conditions and suffered a high mortality rate;in some camps most prisoners died within a few months of incarceration. In the 21st century,research has questioned whether there was a general policy of extermination through labor in the Nazi concentration camp system because of widely varying conditions between camps. German historian Jens-Christian Wagner argues that the camp system involved the exploitation of forced labor of some prisoners and the systematic murder of others,especially Jews,with only limited overlap between these two groups.
The SS Main Economic and Administrative Office was a Nazi organization responsible for managing the finances,supply systems and business projects of the Allgemeine-SS. It also ran the concentration camps and was instrumental in the implementation of the Final Solution through such subsidiary offices as the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and SS camp guards.
Lichtenburg was a Nazi concentration camp,housed in a Renaissance castle in Prettin,near Wittenberg in the Province of Saxony. Along with Sachsenburg,it was among the first to be built by the Nazis,and was operated by the SS from 1933 to 1939. It held as many as 2000 male prisoners from 1933 to 1937 and from 1937 to 1939 held female prisoners. It was closed in May 1939,when the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women was opened,which replaced Lichtenburg as the main camp for female prisoners.
Johannes Baptist "Hans" Beimler was a trade unionist,Communist Party official,deputy in the 1933 Reichstag,an outspoken opponent of the Nazis and a volunteer in the international brigades fighting for the Spanish Republic.
Hans Koch was an SS-Unterscharführer and member of staff at Auschwitz concentration camp. He was prosecuted at the Auschwitz Trial.
The Concentration Camps Inspectorate (CCI) or in German,IKL was the central SS administrative and managerial authority for the concentration camps of the Third Reich. Created by Theodor Eicke,it was originally known as the "General Inspection of the Enhanced SS-Totenkopfstandarten",after Eicke's position in the SS. It was later integrated into the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office as "Amt D".
Jane Caplan is an academic and historian specialising in Nazi Germany and the history of the documentation of individual identity. She is currently Visiting Professor at Birkbeck,University of London,Visiting Professor of History at Gresham College and Emeritus Fellow at St. Antony's College,University of Oxford.
Hitler's Prisons:Legal Terror in Nazi Germany is a 2004 book by Nikolaus Wachsmann,a modern European history professor. Wachsmann argues that the Nazi judiciary played a key role in Nazi terror. The prison systems inflicted harsh punishments against Jews,homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses while enforcing Nazi racial policies. Wachsmann describes how law enforcement promoted the Nazi and terror acts in Germany before and during World War II and each chapter describes a specific topic relating to political prisoner terror. The book illuminates the bureaucratic and institutional history of prisons and the history of inmates themselves.
KL:A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps is a 2015 book by Birkbeck College professor Nikolaus Wachsmann.
On 27 January 1945,Auschwitz—a Nazi concentration camp and extermination camp in occupied Poland where more than a million people were murdered as part of the Nazis' "Final Solution" to the Jewish question—was liberated by the Soviet Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive. Although most of the prisoners had been forced onto a death march,about 7,000 had been left behind. The Soviet soldiers attempted to help the survivors and were shocked at the scale of Nazi crimes. The date is recognized as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The early camps were extrajudicial sites of detention established in Nazi Germany in 1933. Although the system was mostly dismantled by the end of the year,these camps were the precursor of the Nazi concentration camps.
Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany:The New Histories is a collection of essays on aspects of the Nazi concentration camps,edited by Jane Caplan and Nikolaus Wachsmann. It was published by Routledge in 2009.