[3] As part of the disempowerment of the SA through murder during the "Night of the Long Knives" he had personally shot Ernst Röhm on 1 July 1934.

[4][5] Shortly after the Röhm affair on 4 July 1934, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler officially named Eicke chief of the Inspektion der Konzentrationslager—IKL (Concentration Camps Inspectorate or CCI).

[b] While the offices of Reinhard Heydrich's police apparatus was in close physical proximity to the CCI office of Eicke, Himmler kept them distinct and separated; Heydrich policed the Reich, arrested and detained people and then sent them to concentration camps, where the inmates were superintended by the CCI under Eicke.

[10] The head of the CCI (first Eicke) was subordinate both to the SS-Amt as an SS member but really only reported directly to the Chief of the German Police, Reichsführer-SS Himmler in this role.

[11] This form of dual subordination was characteristic of many SS posts and created free room for interpretation for their members, which is how and why the CCI under Eicke became an institution of both the Nazi Party and the state.

Under Eicke's direction, the smaller detention centers and punitive facilities throughout Germany were consolidated into five principle camps at Esterwegen, Lichtenburg, Moringen, Sachsenburg, and Dachau.

[15] The SS camp guards of the CCI came from all walks of life; there were men, women, Germans, non-Germans, Protestants, Catholics, other religious faiths, elderly soldiers, young men, army conscripts, ideologues, sadistic killers, and those who treated inmates humanely.

[16] In 1936, the concentration camp guards and administration units were formally designated as the SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head Troops; SS-TV).

[17] In April 1936, Eicke was named commander of the SS-Totenkopfverbände and the number of men under his command increased from 2,876 to 3,222; the CCI was also provided official funding through the Reich's budget office, and Eicke was allowed to recruit future troops from the Hitler Youth based on regional needs.

He also did his best to instill a sense of loyalty within the SS men assigned to the camps, encouraging "bombast, bravado, and deadly earnestness" in carrying out their duties.

[23] Sometime in August 1938, Eicke's entire support staff was moved to Oranienburg (near Sachsenhausen) where the CCI's main office would remain until 1945.

[24] Nonetheless, Eicke's role as the chief of the CCI placed him within the framework of Heydrich's secret state police; whereas his command of the Death's Head units, made him accountable to the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) of the SS.

[25] On 1 April 1937, the SS leadership consolidated the CCI's primary organization, the Death's Head Battalion, into three units; the first for service at Dachau, the second at Sachsenhausen, and the third at Buchenwald.

[29] The war contributed to this expansion as the camp system itself grew to support the Nazi territorial occupation with corresponding rapidity.

Just one day after invading Poland (2 September 1939) for instance, the Nazis established the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig.

Eicke's Waffen-SS unit carried-out policing duties, deportations, and even executions through 1940 and into 1941, a function that was in accordance with the Nazi regime's ethnic and political goals.

By 1940, the CCI came under the control of the Verwaltung und Wirtschaftshauptamt Hauptamt (VuWHA; Administration and Business office) which was set up under Oswald Pohl.

[35] Near the end of 1941 and beginning of 1942, it was decided that to support the Nazi war machine, concentration camp prisoners should be put to work in armaments factories.

[36] Competing interests and SS beliefs placed the leadership of the WVHA and the CCI at odds with one another, particularly concerning slave labor; namely as Eicke thought of concentration camp inmates more along punitive politico-ideological lines, whereas Pohl viewed prisoners within the camps as economic fodder to be fully exploited, especially in cases where they possessed needed industrial skills or expertise.

[37] Conflicts between the WVHA and the CCI only proved deadly to the prisoners due to the fact that both organizations were equally reckless and inconsiderate to the needs of their slave-labor force.

[41] Perhaps unique in part due to the scope of its operations, Auschwitz-Birkenau was concomitantly under the jurisdiction of the WVHA and within the administrative control of the CCI.

[42] The Politische Abteilung ("political department"), which controlled the lives of prisoners at each camp, became the most important subdivision within the CCI.

[44] Because of the CCI Inspector's personnel policy, which was based largely on personal relationships, there was only a small elite cadre of concentration camp commandants during the entire Nazi era.

He was subordinate to the local Gestapo headquarters, but often received instructions and orders from the RSHA, generally the office involved with matters related to "protective custody".

It was the chief accounting clerk in a commercial enterprise, responsible for the verification of all material goods and their current status and the management and upkeep of its real property.

[49][50] In a study, historian Karin Orth established that the management level at the concentration camps (commandants and division heads) repeatedly were recruited from a small group of SS members.

Excluding the approximately 110 camp doctors, who were subject to a bit more fluctuation, this group numbered about 207 men and a few women.

Orth showed numerous similarities within this group, including social background, path of life, year of birth (around 1902), the date they joined the SS and their political development.

A prisoner could be punished for violations related to camp order, such as missing a button on his jacket, for a dish that wasn't washed well enough.

The rules stipulated that the following people were involved in carrying out punishment: Himmler cited the protracted procedure as alleged proof that SS concentration camps were absolutely run as orderly prisons that safeguarded against abuse.