Theodor Eicke was a high-ranking commander in the SS of Nazi Germany. He was responsible for developing and expanding the concentration camp system during the Holocaust.
Background
Theodor Eicke was born on 17 October 1892, in Hampont (Hudingen), Elsass-Lothringen, German Empire, now located in the Moselle department of north-eastern France. But at that time, it was known as Hudingen and was part of the German province of Elsass-Lothringen.
Little is known about his early years except that he was raised in a lower-middle-class family, which came from the Harz Mountain region of Germany. His father, Heinrich Eicke, was a railhead stationmaster at Hampont. He was also a great patriot.
Education
The youngest of 11 children, Eike did not do well in school and dropped out at the age of 17 before graduation. He joined the 23rd Bavarian Infantry Regiment at Landau as a volunteer, and then he was transferred to the Bavarian 3rd Infantry Regiment in 1913.
Career
Eicke joined the police administration in Thuringia after qualifying as an inspector in 1920, he was briefly employed by the security police and the criminal police and by the police administration in Ludwigshafen on the Rhine.
He lost various jobs because of his anti-republican political activities, but in 1923 he was hired as a commercial executive by I.G. Farben (Ludwigshafen), also looking after their anti-espionage service. Eicke joined the Nazi Party and the SA on 1 December 1928 and was transferred to the SS on 20 August 1930 where he was quickly promoted. Appointed SS-Standartenfuhrer on 15 November 1931, he was put in charge of the SS regiment in the Rhine-Palatinate. Sentenced to two years’ penal servitude in March 1932 for political bomb attacks, he fled to Italy on Himmler’s instructions, returning to Germany in mid-February 1933.
The aggressive, restless Eicke soon clashed, however, with the Gauleiter of the Rhine-Palatinate, Josef Burckel, who declared him a "dangerous lunatic," ordering his detention at the Psychiatric Clinic in Wurzburg on 21 March 1933. Eicke was struck off the SS rolls, but reconfirmed in his old rank on 26 June 1933 and promptly appointed by Himmler as the new commandant of the Dachau concentration camp.
In May 1934 he was entrusted by the SS leader with the take-over of the concentration camps by the SS and with their re-organization. On 4 July 1934 Eicke was appointed as Inspekteur der Konzentrationslager und SS- Wachverbande and a week later he was promoted to SS-Gruppenfuhrer. The brutal, energetic Eicke had earned his promotion by his important role in suppressing the so-called Rohm putsch; it was Eicke who personally executed the SA chief in his cell at Stadelheim prison, in Munich on 1 July 1934.
In his new role, Eicke proved to be a dedicated servant of Himmler and Heydrich, replacing the policemen who acted as guards at Dachau, by SS Death’s Head formations, the toughest and most ruthless troops that the Nazis possessed.
Under Eicke’s regime, no pity was to be shown for "enemies of the state" and prisoners were treated with maximum severity. Eicke laid down exact instructions on corporal punishment, beatings, solitary confinement, and shooting of offenders who were considered as "agitators," mutineers, or refractory elements who refused to obey instructions regarding working details. Dachau was with its SS motto that "tolerance is a sign of weakness," became a model for the German concentration camp system as a whole.
On 14 November 1939, he was appointed Commander of the first SS-Totenkopf Division which he constituted in Dachau and took over the organization and employment of the SS Death’s Head Formation which saw active service in Poland.
The Totenkopf division took part in the French campaign, first in northern France, at Arras, La Bassee - channel, Bethune, Bailleul, Loire, Lyon, and Charente. Subsequent to the Armistice, it served as part of the occupation forces in France until April/May 1941. In the war against the Soviet Union, the Totenkopf Division advanced through the Baltic States, liberating them from Russian occupation and proceeding to Lake Ilmen.
On 26 February 1943, Eicke was on an inspection flight in a Fiesler Storch when his plane was shot down by the Soviets near Orelka, Russia, and the plane crashed behind Soviet lines. Several attempts were made by reinforced assault squads to recover the remains of their commander, they finally succeeded. after losing several men. Eicke was given an elaborate funeral at one of the cemeteries of the Division near Orelka.
In a manner reminiscent of the funeral rites performed by the ancient Germans upon the death of their tribesmen or kings, Theodor Eicke, or "Papa Eicke" as his troops called him, was laid to rest.
Later, when the Germans were forced to withdraw, officers from the divisional staff together, with a few selected men, exhumed Eicke’s corpse and brought it by truck to Kyiv.
Eicke joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in 1928 and two years later took command of a Schutzstaffel (SS) regiment of the Rhine-Palatinate. Suspected of carrying out bomb attacks on political opponents, Heinrich Himmler advised Eicke to go and live in Italy. In March 1932 he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for preparing political bomb attacks.
Views
Under Eicke's regime, no pity was to be shown for "enemies of the State" and prisoners were treated with maximum, impersonal severity. He laid down exact instructions on corporal punishment, beatings, solitary confinement, and shooting of offenders who were considered as "agitators," mutineers, or refractory elements who refused to obey instructions or work while on detail. Dachau, with its SS motto, that "tolerance is a sign of weakness," became a model for the German concentration camp system as a whole.
Eicke encouraged his concentration camp staff to live up to their death's head symbol and treat Dachau's prisoners with "inflexible harshness."
Personality
Eicke was considered the ideal person to reorganize Dachau because of his obedience to authority, his great talent for organization, and his capacity to motivate people and make them subordinate to himself. Moreover, Eicke was a very fanatic Nazi and he fostered hate towards non-German parts of the German society. In the camp, Eicke was soon known as Papa Eicke and his guards as Papa Eicke’s boys. Together they made up a gang of murderers.
Quotes from others about the person
Rudolf Hoess, later Commandant of Auschwitz, recalling Eicke's Dachau training, observed: "The purpose of Eicke's everlasting lectures and orders to the same effect was ... to turn his SS men completely against the prisoners, to stir up their feelings against the prisoners... Eicke's writing paper bore the maxim: ‘Only one thing matters: the command given’, and he warned his SS guards of severe penalties for any trace of softness. Eicke saw his task in terms of establishing a military discipline in accordance with SS ideals of 'loyalty, bravery and devotion to duty', telling his concentration camp commanders in 1939 that they must be ready to 'carry out even the hardest and most difficult of orders without hesitation'."
Charles W. Sydnor, the author of Soldiers of Destruction (1977) has pointed out: "Ever-suspicious, quarrelsome, cruel, humorless, and afflicted with a cancerous ambition. Eicke was a genuinely fanatic Nazi who had embraced the movement's political and racial liturgy with the zeal of the late convert, advancing rapidly and unshakably into the power structure of the Third Reich. Moreover, Eicke had demonstrated that he possessed in abundance the basic qualities needed to get to the top in the SS-uncompromising ruthlessness in the service of obedience, a marked talent for organization, and a gift for inspiring and leading men."
Connections
Eicke married Bertha Schwebel on December 26, 1914. Their daughter Irma was born April 5, 1916, and four years later, on May 4, his son Hermann was born; he died December 2, 1941, at the front.
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