An Examination of the Development of SS Guard Behaviours and the Factors which Contributed to their Actions in the Nazi Concentration Camp System

The men of Heinrich Himmler’s SS have long been recognised as the chief implementers of the Nazis’ Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe. Their crimes were extensive, occurring whilst SS men served in different formations, in different places and affected different victims. In the concentration camps, SS guards developed alongside the system in which they worked from 1933-1945. Over this time, the Camp SS abused and killed enemies of the regime at will. Due to the camp system’s fluidity, evolving in its purpose from protective custody prison network to slave labour enterprise and, in some instances, killing facility, addressing perpetrator behaviour is complex. Nonetheless, it is essential in improving our collective understanding of the SS’ actions in the camps and a prerequisite for ensuring such crimes cannot be repeated in future. This thesis explores the journey of SS guards through the system’s existence with the purpose of identifying the key factors which prompted them to display cruel behaviours. Supported by analyses of youth influences and of the supposed elite status of the SS, it maps out the development of the camp killers across the early, middle, and late periods of the camp system. Though in recent decades perpetrator histories have sought to identify the key catalysts for SS behaviour, there is a lack of consensus on the topic. This study demonstrates that as the camps grew increasingly independent, the units attached to them developed a resolve to act as they pleased. The camp guards and their officers became masters of their murderous craft and were poorly controlled by the SS leadership which allowed for vice and excess to thrive. The camp system ultimately became an unwieldy behemoth manned by autonomous killers who had more power over life in the camps than senior Nazis in Berlin