In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

by Erik Larson

Article 19, dealt with “incidental punishments,” which were to include reprimands, beatings, and “tying to stakes.” Another section laid out the rules for hangings. Death was the penalty for anyone who, “for the purpose of agitating,” discussed politics or was caught meeting with others. Even collecting “true or false information about the concentration camp” or receiving such information or talking about it with others could get an inmate hanged. “If a prisoner attempts to escape,” Eicke wrote, “he is to be shot without warning.” Gunfire also was the required response to prisoner uprisings. “Warning shots,” Eicke wrote, “are forbidden on principle.” Eicke made sure all new guards were fully indoctrinated, as one of his trainees, Rudolf Höss, would later attest. Höss became a guard at Dachau in 1934 and recalled how Eicke repeatedly drummed home the same message. “Any pity whatsoever for ‘enemies of the State’ was unworthy of an SS-man. There was no place in the ranks of the SS for men with soft hearts and any such would do well to retire quickly to a monastery. He could only use hard, determined men who ruthlessly obeyed every order.” An adept pupil, Höss went on to become commandant at Auschwitz.