Nothing embodied the brutality of the Nazi regime more than the concentration camps. Yes, they were hell on earth, but they were very much human creations, as the historian Nikolaus Wachsmann demonstrates in his new book about the camps. Known as the Konzentrationslager, they were first conceived of as penal colonies, then as camps for prisoners of war, and finally as factories. Wachsmann joins us Tuesday to examine the lifespan of the camps, their place in the Third Reich, and what life was like inside them.
Nikolaus Wachsmann is a professor of modern European history at Birkbeck College, University of London. His new book is called KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps [Amazon|Indiebound].
