History books often get the vibe wrong. They make it sound like the Holocaust was a single, sudden event that just happened one Tuesday in 1941. It wasn't. If you’re asking when did Hitler start the concentration camps, the answer is actually way earlier than most people realize. We are talking weeks after he took power, not years.
It was 1933.
The ink on his appointment as Chancellor was barely dry when the first barbed wire went up. It started in a dilapidated gunpowder factory in a town called Dachau. You’ve probably heard the name. But back then, it wasn't about the Jewish population—at least not primarily. It was about crushing anyone who could talk back to the new regime. It was about political survival through raw, unfiltered terror.
The Chaos of March 1933
Context matters here. Germany in early 1933 was a mess. The Reichstag (their parliament building) had just burned down in February. Hitler used that fire—which many historians still debate was a "false flag" or just a lucky break for the Nazis—to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree. Basically, it suspended all civil liberties. No free speech. No right to assemble. No privacy.
Heinrich Himmler, who was the acting police president of Munich at the time, didn't waste a second. On March 20, 1933, he held a press conference. He announced the opening of a "concentration camp" for political prisoners near Dachau. He wasn't hiding it. He wanted people to know.
The first prisoners arrived on March 22. They were mostly Communists, Social Democrats, and trade unionists. The Nazis called them "protective custody" prisoners. It’s a sick bit of irony, right? They claimed they were "protecting" these people from the public’s anger, but really, they were just removing the opposition from the chessboard.
Why Dachau Changed Everything
Dachau wasn't just the first; it was the blueprint. Theodor Eicke, the second commandant of Dachau, developed a system of "structured cruelty" that eventually spread to every other camp. He wrote the "Disciplinary and Punishment Code." It turned guards into unthinking machines and prisoners into numbers.
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Before Dachau, there were hundreds of "wild" camps—informal torture basements run by the SA (the Brownshirts) in empty warehouses or local jails. They were chaotic and messy. Hitler and Himmler realized that wasn't sustainable if they wanted to look like a "legitimate" government. So, they consolidated. They shut down the messy SA camps and moved everything under the control of the SS. This was the birth of the state-sponsored system.
The Evolution from Political Prison to Death Factory
A lot of people think the camps were always about gas chambers. They weren't. Not at the start. From 1933 to 1938, the camps were primarily used for political "re-education" through hard labor and beatings. The goal was to break the spirit of the German Left.
Then came 1938.
Kristallnacht—the Night of Broken Glass—changed the demographic of the camps overnight. After a massive state-sponsored pogrom, the Nazis arrested about 30,000 Jewish men. They didn't send them to jail. They sent them to Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. This was the first time "Jewishness" was the primary reason for mass detention.
But even then, it was weird. The Nazis would often release these men if they agreed to leave Germany forever and hand over all their property. It was a massive, violent shakedown. The transition to the "Final Solution"—the systematic murder of millions—didn't fully kick in until the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and the subsequent Wannsee Conference in 1942.
Key Locations and Early Dates
If you’re looking for a timeline, it helps to see how fast this cancer spread across the German landscape.
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Dachau was the pioneer in March 1933. By July 1933, they opened Oranienburg near Berlin. Then came Esterwegen. In 1936, Sachsenhausen was built as a "model" camp, designed with a fan-shaped layout so a single machine gun in the center could cover every angle. Buchenwald followed in 1937, Flossenbürg in 1938, and Mauthausen shortly after the annexation of Austria.
Each one was built to serve the war machine. Prisoners weren't just sitting in cells; they were mining stone, building roads, and eventually, manufacturing V-2 rockets. It was slavery under the guise of "national security."
Common Misconceptions About the Early Camps
One thing that trips people up is the difference between a concentration camp and an extermination camp. Honestly, the terms get used interchangeably, but historically, they served different functions in the Nazi machine.
- Concentration Camps (Konzentrationslager): These were the ones started in 1933. Their primary goal was detention, forced labor, and "containment." Many people died there from exhaustion, disease, or "individual" executions, but they weren't designed for industrial-scale killing.
- Extermination Camps (Vernichtungslager): These didn't start until much later, around 1941 and 1942. Places like Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Their only purpose was death. People would arrive, and within hours, they were gone.
Auschwitz is the outlier because it was both. It started as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners in 1940 and then evolved into the world's most efficient killing center.
The Role of Public Knowledge
Did the German public know? This is the question that haunts historians like Christopher Browning or Robert Gellately. The answer is a resounding yes.
When did Hitler start the concentration camps? He started them in broad daylight. Newspapers in 1933 actually reported on the opening of Dachau. It was used as a threat. "If you don't fall in line, you'll end up at the camp." It wasn't a secret until the scale of the atrocities became so great during the war that the regime tried to hide the "industrial" side of the killing. But the camps themselves? They were part of the landscape. They were a tool of public intimidation.
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The Psychological Impact of 1933
Imagine being a local in Munich in 1933. You see trucks of "dissenters" being driven out to the old gunpowder factory. You see the smoke. You hear rumors. The genius—and I use that term in the most horrific sense—of the early camp system was that it didn't kill everyone. It released some people.
Those who were released from Dachau in the early years went home with stories of horror. They told their neighbors about the beatings and the "standing cells." This created a ripple effect of fear. It silenced a nation before the war even began. By the time the mass deportations of 1942 rolled around, the mechanism of terror was so well-oiled that resistance felt impossible.
Practical Lessons and Next Steps
Understanding the origins of this system isn't just about dates. It’s about recognizing the patterns of how authoritarian regimes consolidate power. It always starts with the suspension of civil rights under the guise of an "emergency." It always moves toward the dehumanization of a specific group.
If you want to dig deeper into the actual documents from this era, here is what you should do:
1. Study the Reichstag Fire Decree. Read the text. See how easily a government can legally strip away every right you think you have. It’s the legal foundation for everything that happened at Dachau.
2. Look into the ITS (International Tracing Service) Archives. They have millions of records on individual prisoners. It puts a human face on the "numbers" and shows exactly how the bureaucracy of the camps functioned from 1933 onward.
3. Visit the memorials. If you’re ever in Germany, go to Dachau. It’s a short train ride from Munich. Standing on that parade ground where the first prisoners stood in March 1933 changes your perspective on history. It makes the "dates" feel real.
The camps didn't start with gas chambers. They started with a fence, a few guards, and a public that was too afraid—or too indifferent—to stop it. Knowing that it began on day one of Hitler's rule is the most important piece of the puzzle. It shows that the camps weren't a byproduct of the war; they were the point of the regime from the very beginning.