Early camps

[2] The concentration camp system arose in the following months due to the desire to suppress tens of thousands of Nazi opponents in Germany.

[1] The legal basis for the arrests was the previous practice of "protective custody", which meant either to restrict a person's liberty for their own protection, or "taking seditious elements into custody during emergencies", including some Communist Party of Germany (KPD) members in the Weimar Republic.

[4] Newspapers at that time reported on the concentration camps in considerable detail and demonized the prisoners as dangerous leftist elements.

[4][3] There was no national system;[8] camps were operated by local police, SS, and SA, state interior ministries, or a combination of the above.

[4][3] The early camps in 1933–1934 were heterogenous and unlike those created in and after 1936, in fundamental aspects such as organization, conditions, and the groups imprisoned.