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Concentration Camps Concentration camps were an integral feature of the regime in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy. AUTHORITY TO IMPRISON PEOPLE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS After 1938, authority to incarcerate persons in a concentration camp rested exclusively with the German Security Police (made up of the Gestapo and the Criminal Police). The “legal” instrument of incarceration was either the “protective detention” order or the “preventative detention” order. The Gestapo could issue a “protective detention” order for persons considered a political danger after 1933. The Criminal Police could issue a “preventative detention” order after December 1937 for persons considered to be habitual and professional criminals, or to be engaging in what the regime defined as “asocial” behavior. No other agency had to review decisions made by the German Security Police. FORCED LABOR From as early as early as 1934, concentration camp commandants used prisoners as forced laborers for construction projects such as the construction or expansion of the camps themselves. By 1938, Nazi leaders envisioned using the supply of forced laborers incarcerated in the camps for a variety of construction projects. Beginning a pattern that became typical after the war began, economic considerations had an increasing impact on the selection of sites for concentration camps after 1937. For instance, two concentration camps were strategically located near large stone quarries. Likewise, concentration camp authorities increasingly diverted prisoners from meaningless, backbreaking labor to still backbreaking and dangerous labor in extractive industries, such as stone quarries and coal mines, and construction labor. CONCENTRATION CAMPS AFTER THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR II After Nazi Germany unleashed World War II in September 1939, vast new territorial conquests and larger groups of potential prisoners led to the rapid expansion of the concentration camp system to the east. The war did not change the original function of the concentration camps as detention sites for the incarceration of political enemies. The climate of national emergency that the conflict granted to the Nazi leaders, however, permitted them to expand the functions of the camps. The concentration camps increasingly became sites where the Nazi authorities could kill targeted groups of real or perceived enemies of Nazi Germany. They also came to serve as holding centers for a rapidly growing pool of forced laborers used for construction projects, extractive industrial sites, and, by 1942, the production of armaments, weapons, and related goods for the German war effort. Despite the need for forced labor, the Nazi authorities continued to deliberately undernourish and mistreat prisoners incarcerated in the concentration camps. Prisoners were used ruthlessly and without regard to safety at forced labor, resulting in high mortality rates. Retrieved 3 October 2015 from http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005263