The pockets were for pencils and paper. Many of the forced labour jobs would have needed paper for notes, measurements, tallies, instructions, etc. The Capos would have needed a pencil and paper for role calls, and instructions from guards and commanders.
I mean, I guess you're not going to use a shirt pocket for spoilage in a tunneling operation or something. Can't really fit much in it without it being obvious... but I'm still quite certain that folks were limitedly using them to hide contraband. I don't know what the 'best' way to do this would be, playing devil's advocate... You don't want to give them mailman pouches or even small purses. Having the storage compartment flat, visible, and connected to the uniform would reduce rule violations and still allow the functionaries to do their jobs. The whole thing grosses me out. I don't like thinking from the perspective of the guards. But knowing your enemy is the first step in finding and exploiting their vulnerabilities
@@Grimpy970 a netted pocket would probably do the job and allow easy identification of any item inside. Probably best that the Nazis didn't think of that, though.
@@pcblah it would probably be more expensive and more fragile, needing replacement of the net or the uniform more often, also i don't know if they had thin nets back then like we have today, so the own uniforms fabric were probably more cheap and easier to produce and make, etc etc
While researching for his book, The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick went through Gestapo documents, including diaries by SS guards. He was horrified by the casual cruelty. In particular, there was the SS complaining that the cries of starving children kept them awake. The notion of humans becoming so savage and non-empathetic led him to write Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the basis for the Blade Runner movies.. a book about non-empathic androids.(they weren't called replicants in the book.)
@@yaya_is_real That wasn't in his book... it was research for The Man in the High Castle. He was going through diaries of SS guards. As for the Man in the High Castle, in case you're unfamiliar with the book or miniseries, it's an alternate history book about Germany and Japan winning WWII and dividing the US between them.
One of the things that always gets me about the holocaust is that extermination camps were often discussed in terms of 'throughput'. Designers of gas chambers worked out that you can put steps at the entrance instead of a ramp as this was less threatening (victims were usually told they were going in for showers or delousing. Meanwhile the same designers worked out the optimum ramp angle at the back for a man, in what we would consider poor health, to be able to take a body up to the crematorium. Imagine being the kind of person who can sit down and work that out? Who can draw up the plans for it?
It's German engineering. Typically well thought out and thorough. It's just horrifying that it's translated to the context of human extermination, rather than getting the right glass quality and shape for a pair of binoculars or such.
My great uncle George had a friend in Seattle who worked for IBM during the war. IBM provided the counting machines used at the camps to account for all inventory. The designs were often augmented by local German engineers, but the initial plans might have come from overseas.
@@AA-ke5cu Designing a rifle or warship is fundamentally different to designing an extermination camp even if all of these can be used for murder. At least weapons and combat vehicles are designed to kill people who are fighting back. Quickly, too, without excessive suffering.
even more confusing and grim is "But have you ever heard of “Holocaust money,” the currencies that the Nazis forced on Jews and others in concentration camps and ghettos?" Yup, people in concentration camps used camp script inside the camp.
and there was a huge black market in the ghettos and camps, sometimes for things as simple as cigarettes and soap, and up to nicer clothes, reading materials, more food, etc
Imagine being an ally soldier amd entering one of these camps, and finding all the nightmarish stuff the germans did, imagine the stench of death, the living conditions, people extremely starved, piles of bodies in ditches, the horrific realization of what went down. Must've been shocking
Great video. It's easy to get lost in the sheer emotion- the horror, the tragedy, the sheer incredulity. It's hard to process an entire industry dedicated to genocide. There's always an infrastructure. I think it's important to talk about that part so we can connect it to other events and learn how to recognize what a genocide looks like, when do we see something and finally ask ourselves "Are we the baddies?" The reason the Holocaust is so well covered is so that it never happens again.
another big factor that serves as an important undertone for this video: the SS purposefully offered privileges as you mentioned, but this served an even more useful purpose: it made them into collaborators and sowed division. When talking about the prisoner conditions and their day to day life, we forget to humanize them, including, the dark side of their humanity. They regularly got into fights and formed gangs within the camps, even the SS would regularly agitate and encourage fighting for nothing more than their own entertainment (while this may sound like something you'd be quick to judge, remember that the SS guards were young men in the early 20s sent to depressing conditions forced to become the worst versions of themselves without any recreation themselves, yes, controversial as it may sound, the lower ranked SS were as much victims as they were perpetrators) The nihilistic sense of solidarity you see in movies existed, but so did divisions, prison gangs, fights, and riots, all while being overworked, starved, and sleep deprived. If there was any chance for the slightest extra comfort or privilege, they had no problem walking over each other to get it, being "snitches" so to speak, and establishing hierarchies because starving men will do anything for an extra bite of bread so there was no single unprotected "snitch" but a literal gang capo with a hierarchy of enforcers. If there was a perfect "us vs them" mentality it risked the prisoners uniting and revolting, but by sowing divisions among them and creating artificial hierarchies it becomes a self establishing order... and there is nothing profound or clever about this, it's been passed down through military leadership for 2000 years since Sun Tzu, the SS just had the bright idea to apply this to their prisoners And because of all this, when you study the holocaust in depth, you get this overwhelming sense of how the worst perpetrators of the holocaust were often fellow victims being the collaborators. This not only applied to camp prisoners, but also to party officials of mixed ancestry who denounced their Judaic heritage (yes, this was a thing! and they were called "honorary Aryans" by the Nazi party), and you hear offhand tales of how they would be some of the most vocally antisemitic members of the party with no sense of irony (many theories for this include survival instinct, self hatred, internalized racism, etc), so it was not limited to the concentration camps but also to daily life in Nazi Germany from day to day life on the street to Party activities All of this were the real evil orchestrations of the Nazi party and especially the SS, getting their victims to willingly do their work for them
SS soldiers deserve no sympathy. There were plenty of people that knew and understood what the Nazi's were doing was unacceptable at the time. If you don't directly believe in the most psychotic aspects of Nazism but fear persecution then join the Wehrmacht. If you are SS it is because you chose to be. "boohoo I just wanted to exterminate degenerates, I never meant to get caught in an abusive system boohoo."
A great presentation Brandon! There's little I can add except seeing one of those uniforms in person always sends a cold chill down my spine. Growing up in northern New Jersey as I did in the 1960s and into the 1970s it wasn't unusual to occasionally see Holocaust survivors, that part of NJ has a large Jewish population. It was most apparant during the summer months when men and women would wear short-sleeves. Every once in a while that unmistakable tattoo on the left forearm (unmistakable if you knew what it was) would be seen on a man or woman and the sight of it would make you shudder. Not over the person themselves of course but the realization of the hell that person survived. It brought the reality of the Holocaust home like few things do. I was real all right. Don't any of you let the Holocaust deniers sway you.
I've decided that when I have kids, if they spout any sort of holocaust denial, I'm going to sit them down, give them a Long talk about what happened, that the holocaust was real, etc. I will assign them books, movies, articles, to watch and read and I will make them write reports on it. I will find out how they even got into that sphere of influence in the first place. I was a very bookish kid, I was reading the diary of anne frank in grade 4, and night in grade 6. the holocaust fucking happened, and it was fucking horrifying.
We had Konzentrationslager and Vernichtungslager. The first was a hell hole for many demographics like communists, criminals, Jehovas, Dissidents with a chance of leaving it alive and the latter you could only leave thorough the chimney. I presume the higher quality garments were for capos at the concentration camps, those places had tailor shops and a lot of cheap labour.
Well don't spoil it, now! But yes, that is a large part of it, although many illicit alterations were also made which I cover at the end of this video. Primarily the video is intended to fill in those gaps of individuals less familiar with the 'processes' of the Holocaust- the different camp types, the ranking structures of the Prisoner Functionaries, etc.
Also presumably at the first the camps would source the uniform from the stock that the german prison system used, and thus made to the standard of german prisons.
Wrong. Konzentrationslager = Concentration camp (a prison with much beating from the guards) Arbeitslager = Forced labor camp Vernichtungslager = A death camp. A place where 80% of the people were pushed inside a gas chamber as soon as they arrived. Elderly, handicapped, children and their mothers were usally always the ones selected to die from gas. While a few men and women were selected to do forced labor. Some slaves collected the clothes and valuables from the undressing room next to the "shower room" (gas chamber). Other slaves helped with putting all the shoes in one place, the jackets in another and so on. Some slaves were out in the woods cutting timber. And some slaves were handling the jewelry stolen from the victims, and separated the gold from gold teeths. And the worst job of all did the slaves called "Sonderkommando" (special command) have. They were the slaves which worked with carrying out all the dead bodies of innocent women and children that just had been gassed to death. It was a heartbreaking job. Everyone felt awful about it, and suicides were common among these slaves. Many jews regarded the sonderkommando slaves as traitors to their own people who helped the nazis murdering their own people. But truth is that it was never their fault, and the only ones to blame for this situation were the nazis. Nearly no sonderkommandos survived the holocaust, because the nazis were very careful to keep their industrial mass murder a secret. And these slaves who lived in a seperate area of the camp away from all the other prisoners knew too much about the crimes of the nazis - so they were therefore usally murdered after a few months. And then came another train to the camp, and the doctors would find some new men that they could use as slaves instead. So nearly every day they did carry out dead bodies from the gas chambers. And then throw them into mass graves... and later in the war they decided to burn their bodies into ash in ovens instead. And then some slaves had to carry all ash and dump it into rivers or into forests where it were used to grow trees. So all blood from millions of innocent people have been used as fertilizer to feed the growth of pine trees. That is all what is left of places like Sobibor and Treblinka today. The nazis did destroy those death camps to hide their crimes. All bodies were burned into ash to hide all remains of dead bodies, and Himmler ordered pine trees to grown on Sobibor. And when you visit the place you can find a greyish soil there from all the ash of all the murdered people. While skeleton bones were crushed in a bone mill by jewish slaves before they also were killed. And on the ground you can find such pieces of skeleton. Life in concentration camps, and forced labor camps was really bad. But they were still nothing compared to life inside one of the six death camps - Belzec, Majdanek, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Life in those places were hell on earth. And all of them were equally bad in slightly different ways according to a survivor. The goal here was to murder people. And as a holocaust survivor told me, a human can be disgusted and hate an insect with a fiery hate, but even he could sometimes show mercy a spare an insects life. But the nazi guards he said, did never show any mercy or compassion. They murdered people everyday and did it just for fun. I spoke with this old man at Stockholms historical museum maybe 3 years ago.. so I will assume that this man was just a young boy when he experienced this. And during roll call did the man stading next to him get his head split by a spade on the first day at the camp. So the movies like Schindlers List do understate how bad things were. And while one can question the economically wise in killing doctors, scientists and engineers and jews willing to fight for Germany in world war. Do I not think there is any doubt that the nazis were extremely effiecent in murdering people. Somewhere between 8 and 14 million people were murdered in the he holocaust. 98% of Polands jewish population died. And murdering a person with Zyklon-B poison gas did only cost 15 cents. And even in the most small and primitive death camps like Belzec, only about 250 x300 meters large and was able to kill half a million people. And only 2 prisoners managed to survive this camp by fleeing. And the story is the same about the camp Chelmno where 200.000 people died and only 2 people managed to flee. Some starved prisoners with shaved heads, striped pyjamas, tattoos did not have it easy even if the somehow managed to flee from all electric fences, barbed wire, minefields, guard towers with machine guns, and guard dogs. Finding a place to hide was not easy. It would be cold outside. And while polish civilians usually felt much sympaties for the fleeing jews was it dangerous to help them. If the Germans found a jew hidden in your house would you likely get killed along with all your family, and everyone in the village. So the jews might perhaps get some bread or a blanket if they were lucky. But the Germans were chasing them with military patrols and dogs. And for every succesful escape of a prisoner did the Germans select 10 people that they did choose to execute in public in front of all the other prisonders, so that they would feel bad about fleeing from the camp and causing the death of many innocent people.
@@nattygsbord Punishment for any offence against german war machine was usually severe here in Poland. My granddad told me a story in which one German soldier was beaten up by some village folks, probably due to hunger and/or anger for stealing crops, and punishment was few belts from mg40 shot at the village from neighboring hill. That must have been horrifying to experience.
@@nattygsbord And the extermination camps only lasted 18 months. From mid- 1942-1944. 1944 until the end of the war, slow starvation was the method used to kill people.
this is what my grandfather was wearing in the camp, in the last days exactly, just before when he got his photos taken - when it was liberated, they wore different stuff before, grey and bluish rags, most people by the end did worn their clothing as well as used uniforms of the dead prisoners, in the end they needed to get identified as liberated people for documentation and biuroctatic reasons, you know the tattoo was not enough to get a status of a “survivor”, you needed to be documented with photos, and in some cases you needed a person to confirm your status, can you imagine that? you survive but need a fellow survivor as a witness, so the uniform was kinda put on every survivor just to take photos as the id’s were made, and many people at time didn’t have any shirt - they got a uniform to wear for the photo and then just wrapped in cloth and taken away to hospital tents, sorta like a borrowed jacket, not many people kept the uniform, it was usually rags at that point, gramps actually got to have a wash before it was his turn to get photographed, he managed to see his friend die in arms when they tried feeding him in the hospital, gramps grieved him and they gave him a comb and took him to go wash up, so he looked cleaner, so the photo survived - because he looked ok it, he used that photo, he was young had dark hair, and was handsome so the photo looked like he was in a stripped jacket when it was cropped down, yes, my gramps used his Camp Survivor Photo as an ID photo for a while, this is why the photo and film has survived till today, it was when We developed the full photo when you can see that was not just a jacket, I always found it weird the shirt had a collar, I didn’t think pockets were odd, but a collar seemed like a luxury, it looks like a jacket
People underestimate how widespread the camps were. We had one on the outside of my small city < 20k with a couple of hundreds of prisoners building an small airport against british and american airial attacks. I never knew about it until I was well in my 20's.
I remember few years ago. I heard in interview with some polish author of books about life of women in the camps. That some prisoners didn't even get uniforms just some randoms mismateched clothing in wrong sizes that was supposed to humiliate prisoners by making them look goofy. Like some women got elegant dress and some ugly shoes etc.
By the way you should really visit concentration camp some day. I myself unfortunately only have been in majdanek which is just very close to were i live. But i think everyone should visit auschwitz at least once in their life. Because this place really leaves a strong impact on a person from what i heard.
It's all so...disgustingly clinical. Someone put thought into this. Not just someone. Dozens of someones. Designers, tailors, industrialists, manufacturers. Had to look at that, knowing what it was for, knowing that in part it was some small step toward the outcome of the "final solution". And no one stopped it. They sketched the uniform, they designed it, they sent it out. More thought spared for the cloth than their neighbors who will be made to wear it.
My British mother used to tell a wonderful story about World War 2. She knew a man who was a prisoner in a German POW camp. It was right next to a concentration camp. Even though the POW's had very little food, they would still try to throw pieces of bread over the barbed wire into the concentration camp because those people had almost nothing to eat. They risked getting shot if they were caught to do this. It has always warmed my heart to hear of such good people in such a horrible situation.
Thanks for another important and much needed episode of things we needed to know, and had questions of, that we never had a chance to otherwise get answered.
They seem to have varied from camp to camp. Sometimes there were no uniforms - at least some prisoners in Dachau photographed just after liberation have normal civilian work clothes with a square of striped cloth stitched on the back of their shirts or jackets to show they are inmates. Soviet POWs, frequently sent to concentration camps, seem often to have worn the uniforms they were captured in, with insignia removed, but "SU" for Soviet Union might be painted on their backs or legs, usually with red paint. There seems to have been a tailoring department in most of these places, so a pocket or pockets could be added to a uniform if necessary.
the most insane part is how methodical, uncaring, and bureaucratic the thing was. people's entire livelihoods and professional experience was dedicated to...mass looting, extraction, and slaughter of civilians and POWs. it's just maddening to imagine how so few of the cogs in the machine of death ever questioned why they were turning.
ALL GOVERNMENTS ARE,GIVEN LITTLE TO NO OVERSIGHT..... CAPEABLE OF SIMILAR ATROCITIES......LOOK AT THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD IN 1960'S CHINA.....20 MILLION KILLED MAINLY BY STARVATION.....AND SOVIET UNION IN THE 1930'S TAKING APPROX. 35-50 MILLION LIVES , AGAIN MAINLY DUE TO STARVATION.....GERMANY WAS NOT UNIQUE IN THIS ....JUST PERHAPS MORE ORGANIZED .........STATE SPONSORED GENOCIDE IS NOT A RECENT NOR ISOLATED PHENOMENA .
If from a young age learned to work for the survival of the collective where individual lives were of no importance than it is just part of this goal. Today we see the same with the Climate Jugend and Green Shirts. The goal is to save the planet everything else should be sacrificed for that goal.
Interesting fact; There's whole book by polish autor describing "fashion" in those camps Apparently those uniforms were not worn by all of prisoners - a lot of them got random dresses and other pieces of clothing chosen for them by kapos. That was also used as form of mental torture to dress those poor ppl in unmatching outfits, not matching the season or being completely useless for camp surroundings (like making prisoners wear gowns and laughing at them)
Fwiw clogs were common for workers in British factories even post war. They were utilitarian footwear so I don't think it's that surprising in this context.
Really interesting to note even the smallest detail of a Uniform can tell both the status of the wearer and the state of the organisation who issued them. Even the existence of a Pocket and a different style of Materials would tell you where the person wearing it lies on the hierarchy. Clearly someone who's given a convenience to store their personal effect on their immediate self, and given more durable material means they hold more significance than those who didn't have such a privilege. And I remember fondly that some nations Ensign equivalent rank uniforms in WW1 cut on the number of pockets, especially Map Pockets (the big pockets between the sides of a battle/field dresses) because of austerity measures for fabric. I've been studying the construct of uniforms Amateur/Non Professionally for quite a while and everything in the video immediately clicks like a button of a shirt (heh...). And indeed it's especially interesting to see the uniform of what was considered the lowest form of existence to a brutal tyrannical regime to even exhibit similarity with any other uniforms
Wrong initial premise: those inmates that were immediately killed, most probably never wore a camp uniform. A lot of camp inmates were forced labour, and those need clothing.
I'm from Florida. The Holocaust museum in St Petersburg is a must see. They have a railway car from Germany that was used to transport Jews to the camps. It's very intense. I touched it and a splinter fell into my hand. Then I prayed. St Mary's.
Very well researched presentation. Last year I was analyzing photographs of Soviet prisoners on war made to do forced labor in Nazi occupied Europe. In looking at their clothing, I discovered something interesting. Not all but many were wearing bits of old German military kit…Weimar era feldrocks and early pattern feldblusen (Army wool tunics). These garments had been stripped of insignia and dyed black. Some seemed to have a stencil on the back as well. Looking at photographs of concentration camp inmates, I also noted a few of these jacket in wear by the prisoners. I agree with your analysis that they weren’t given these jacket out of any kindness but rather out of necessity to callously extract from these prisoners the maximum amount of labor. I don’t have specific documentation of this but I believe these jackets had almost certainly been worn until they were threadbare by the military but instead of being discarded, they were given to the undesirable Soviet and concentration camp inmates.
This said, I believe there is a cultural precedent in many countries of issuing military surplus items to prisoners. Take what I say with a grain of salt as I can’t recall any resources from memory right now but I have heard some anecdotal evidence that surplus Civil War Union jackets were issued to prisoners into the early Twentieth Century. You also see images of German prisoners in captivity in the United States during World War II wearing specially marked surplus denim and HBT military fatigue uniforms.
That may have been true,but not always. The Soviet and Jewish slaves brought to the Channel Islands to work for Organisation Todt often disembarked from their boats wearing cement sacks or nothing at all.
"why did some concentration camp uniforms have pockets" - well there's a question I never imagined that I simply won't be able to think about anything else until I learn more about it.
rather than NCOs a better way of thinking of Capos is as Prison Trusties. Prisons don't run w/o prisoner labour. "The "trusty system" (sometimes incorrectly called "trustee system") was a penitentiary system of discipline and security enforced in parts of the United States until the 1980s, in which designated inmates were given various privileges, abilities, and responsibilities not available to all inmates" Note prison Trusties were used for prison security enforcement.
That was very fascinating. There is so much about the holocaust that I dont know about. When I was in high school one of the students in my class, her mother was a child in one of those concentration camps. If I recall correctly I think that during part of her captivaty she was kept in a small cage, like for a dog. She didnt mind answering some questions but she could handle only so many. I am glad that you are doing videos of the holocaust because we can't say it never happened or ever forget about. It is something we need to remember not only for those who suffered in them, but so it never happens again. 🇨🇦
This seems similar to death row inmates getting a final meal of their choice. Pointless as they are about to die, but it is a form of taking pity/making the impending death have less of an effect on the gaurd's/public's minds. Maybe the uniforms were allowed because it was a way for the N*zis to deal with guilt. Convincing themselves that these people were labourers and not just cattle to the slaughter. That the camps they were gaurding whilst their comrades were fighting on the frontlines were productive and helping the war effort. Hopefully what I have said makes some sense. Interesting video, I appreciate this sort of thought provoking content.
AYYYYY Dayton represent I love this museum. Did you get a change to see the A-10 they have on display outside? It's a very good up close view of the aircraft.
Honestly, this was fascinating! To my knowledge, there are 0 other videos on this platform covering the topic. You're doing humanity a service by openly considering the subject. Thanks, man! I am now subscribed.
Hello Brandon. It seemed so wrong, but the song "You've got to pick a pocket or two" kept coming to mind when you talked of contraband. Years ago, I visited Midland Texas and went to what was called "The Confederate Air Force". This kept the title CAF by substituting the word "Commemorative" in line with the argument in your recent video about nostalgic views on the old south.
There's a story about how the title "Confederate Air Force" came about, I read it in Air Classics magazine almost 50 years ago in an article about the same. It went like this: There was a group of Texas big-money friends, ex WW2 fighter pilots as well, who owned some surplus WW2 fighters, mostly P-51 Mustangs. They'd get together on weekends and fly in formation to a particular destination, have lunch, then fly home. On one trip when they'd finished lunch they found someone had painted "Confederate Air Force" on the side of one of the planes. It was a water-based paint and washed off easily and instead of being angry about it the group took it as the joke it was and in fact adopted the name "Confederate Air Force" as a club name. And it just took off (no pun intended) after that. Confederate nostalgia or "Lost Cause" ideology had absolutely nothing to do with it, it was all in fun, and all the members called themselves "colonels," really due to the Hollywood cliche' of the un-Reconstructed die-hard Confederate "cuhnel." "Those day-um Yankees! They was afraid of a fa-yuh fight!" And that's all there was to it. The name was changed to "Commemorative Air Force" much later in deference to modern sensibilities, although not without some controversy within the organization, especially those who remembered where the original name came from.
@@wayneantoniazzi2706 bro this comment contradicts itself. You said they weren't motivated by Lost Cause ideology but if they were truly repulsed by the idea they wouldn't accept being called a Confederate colonel. And the type of "cuhhrnel" description is such a staple of the Lost Cause myth, you're basically saying " oh no they weren't supporting the Confederate ideology, they were just completely cool with everyone thinking they do"
I'll definitely do one, at some point or other, about the economics of it all. If it didn't come through in the video, I have been increasingly obsessed with the role of slave labour in WW2 lately.
The wright Patterson afb museum was a great part of my childhood. Glad you could experience it :) did you do any of the flight simulators? My friend and I used to be aces in the fighter pilot one. I always flew, he always gunned.
I highly recommend the book KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann. It's an extremely indepth study of the entire Concentration camp apparatus and how it operated at various stages of the third reich. As well as the reasoning behind a lot of the stuff they did.
It's interesting how the meaning of concentration camp changed over time. The term was literal at first. It was a place where authorities concentrated people to make anti geurilla operations outside the camps easier, not a place where authorities sent people to die.
The Nazis used euphemism used to subtly deny what they were actually doing. But the euphemisms superseded the original meanings and instead became words for what they were once euphemisms for. It's all over the events surrounding the holocaust.
Hey, i am currently making a video about the Battle of Plassey. Would you please tell me the weapons used by the Nawabs forces, along with the range the company forces fired upon on the Nawabs cavalry forces when they charged?
Hello Brandon, loved the video, was wondering if you would consider the possibility of making a video about (or relating to) the 1798 rebellion that took place in Ireland. As the 225th anniversary is coming up I thought it would be perfect timing and right down your alley as a subject. Please keep up the great work!
I would like to point out that slavery had been outlawed in Germany around the 15th century. I've read accounts of Germans travelling abroad during colonialism who were appaled by the practise. This is partly why Germany had a relatively small black population until the recent increase in immigration from Africa. That, in my mind, makes what the Nazis did even worse. They didn't just exploit a practise that was already common, the way US farmers did. No, they reintroduced a practise that had been absent from the country for 500 years.
@@user-cv8qe9ru8c yes, slave labor was a large part of Nazi economics. To the point where most major factories were contracting labor from labor camps. Although I suppose if you want to get technical, it's peonage or share-cropping, but that's the kind of distinction that only slavers care about.
Another reason is that death camps were not part of the original "solution" to the Jewish Question. The German government at the time negotiated with the British to transplant Jews inside the Reich to live in Palestine, modern day Israel as part of the Haavara Agreement. The outbreak of war however stopped this entire process. Ironically, Nazi Germany helped kickstart the creation of Israel as to what it is today through their migration efforts with German-educated and skilled Jewish populations coming into the area.
I remember seeing a film about Sobibor showing that they had no uniforms. However, I believe that the camp I read on was Sobibor. This camp was an extermination camp, so it might explain why they would not have the need for this. Although, that could be fiction and in reality the prisoners were uniformed. But both the a film I saw made by the US and a film made by the Russian's depicted them wearing just ordinary garments.
Honestly I think the Reich's Labor Service and how it functioned could explain a lot of this. Basically in Nazi Germany all labor was put into the control of the Reich's Labor Service. It basically functioned as a labor Army, or labor Union. Basically the State Monopolized Labor. The concept of Boss and Employee was stricken from the books, it was now "Leaders" and "Followers." Basically businesses were expected to basically treat themselves as if they were the Army. Some business owners took it quite seriously, while others absolutely groaned under the idea. Business couldn't hire or fire employees at their own leisure, nor could they treat their employees as employees as they're the "State's" Employees. The State leased them, and decided where people would work, decided wages, and decided hours, and they believed someone would be most valued. If a business needed more workers, they'd have to go to the Reich's Labor Service, for it's approval in short. This Militarization of Business you can say very well leaked down into the Concentration Camp system. You can argue many camp commanders took it that seriously. Just as it was in the business and industrial world of the 3rd Reich. I mean who wouldn't want your prisoner's standing to attention in fancier uniforms than the other camp, likely made the commander feel a bit more superior than his peers, he could gloat to himself that he does a better job. I mean all labor in the Reich was essentially militarized before the war ever started.
@@anarchomando7707 Yes but by the Logic of Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Giovanni Gentile and Adolf Hitler, a State that consist of the People is a "People's State." Hence why in the Marx's eye a one Party Dictatorship is a Democracy. Being these regimes were not technically ruled by a 'special' ruling class, but by people who rose through the ranks of the Party's running these countries, it was a People's State. Anyone could join the party, and rise those ranks. At least in their minds. Now it didn't always work out that way, North Korea being a great example turning into a pseudo Monarchy. So a People's State with a State owned Trade Union isn't Taking Power from the People in the eyes of a Collectivist. Marxist, Fascist and Nazis have a different idea on what Democracy is in short. Voting isn't technically required, and honestly if you're truly honest, voting is just you surrendering your political power voluntarily to the State by assigning representation that rarely represents you anyways. Also to be brutally honest about State owned Trade Unions. The Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, Communist China, and Nazi Germany all monopolized labor into the State. It's pretty much required. Otherwise you wouldn't have a collective.
I visited a death camp in Poland and was startled at the quality of construction of the camp. Nothing ramshackle - everything was square and well built - still in good shape 60 years after construction. The truth is the Nazis were smart but truly crazy and explaining why they did what they did is almost impossible.
Před 11 měsíci+4
If i recall correctly, Auschwitz 1 was a polish army barrack complex before the germans used it as a concentration camp. There is also survivor bias. You'll get the best looking buildings, not the shacks that got burned when the nazis left, or the impromptu concentration camps that were founded in 1933 and got progressively "upgraded" once the concentration camp system went from SA guarded to SS guarded
Before I watch, Im going to guess the pockets were to put things in and the reason some had no pockets was because not every prisoner had things to put in pockets. What things might they be? Work related objects of course.
I went to Sachsenhausen as a young lad. It was a school-trip and mandatory, quite sobering. Since then I feel the responsibility to not let it happen again. Your analysis is pretty good, I have only one objection: Most Germans did not want to know what the higher-ups were up to. So they did not profit directly and deliberately looked in the other direction. So I consider asking what the Germans wanted to get out of the Holocaust generalising and a little misleading.
@brandon f. There are many different lager uniforms men and women uniforms, but many different subclassifications, every classification has its own version of blue white clothing, strange to do indeed
Im guessing the answer at 3.18, as it being down to different responsibilities within the camps for prisoners. I believe that the Germans had Jewish and other prisoners act as internal guards and assisted the Germans with the movement of prisoners, I wonder if the better uniforms were for individuals who did work such as this, these individuals may have been expected to use paper and a pencil at times?
5:46 it is Zwangsarbeitslager nicht Zwangarbeitslager. The genitive s is important. But apart from that there were no "Zwamgsarbeitslager". There were Schutzhaftlager, Arbeitserziehungslager, Konzentrationslager und Vernichtungslager
I don't have evidence for it but my guess before watching was that perhaps at least some of the uniforms were just ordered as standard patterns from German clothing companies, albeit with the specification that the striped fabric be used. Maybe that would have been the case in the earlier days, before the camps got up and running with in house uniform manufacture?
Funny, it was exactly what I expected due to my German education, but it's good to see that my sometimes half baked general knowledge is true this time
Pausing at 8:37 because I have ADHD and cannot wait to comment, lol... My first hunch would be that having some "nicer" uniforms, while it might simply be manufactured at different times with different levels of quality; it might also be more sinister that they picked some "favourites" to be sort of "officers" among the prisoners to help manage the camp and as an intended side effect breed envy to divide and conqueror the prison population. Also some of the prisoners were highly skilled people which they might just have had more use for alive than worked quickly to death so they would give them better uniforms to help in their work and keep them alive for longer.
15:26 Yes, that photo is a shot from the 1960 Italian movie "Kapo" by Gillo Pontecorvo. However, at first I thought it was from the 1948 Polish movie "The Last Stage" by Wanda Jakubowska (who herself was a survivor of Auschwitz, where the movie is set and filmed on-location).
Possibly some may have been altered by individuals who were tailors or some sewing skills pre incarceration, some of the uniforms may have been from those camps that were used for the propaganda image when visited by Swiss Delegations for example.
I’ve been to the museum, I love the museum Also they have a whole section at the entrance to the ww2 section about the holocaust, because if some wehrb wants to drool over the v2 and the me262, they have to have a reminder that the germans were not good guys, they were evil
11:11 keep in mind survivor's bias.if it wasn't well made it wouldn't have survived this long. 20:34 even the museum needed to add a lining to stop it from disintegrating
The pockets were for pencils and paper. Many of the forced labour jobs would have needed paper for notes, measurements, tallies, instructions, etc. The Capos would have needed a pencil and paper for role calls, and instructions from guards and commanders.
I mean, I guess you're not going to use a shirt pocket for spoilage in a tunneling operation or something. Can't really fit much in it without it being obvious... but I'm still quite certain that folks were limitedly using them to hide contraband. I don't know what the 'best' way to do this would be, playing devil's advocate...
You don't want to give them mailman pouches or even small purses. Having the storage compartment flat, visible, and connected to the uniform would reduce rule violations and still allow the functionaries to do their jobs.
The whole thing grosses me out. I don't like thinking from the perspective of the guards. But knowing your enemy is the first step in finding and exploiting their vulnerabilities
@@Grimpy970 a netted pocket would probably do the job and allow easy identification of any item inside.
Probably best that the Nazis didn't think of that, though.
so I've just saved 20 minutes because of this comment
thanks
@@pcblah pencil would fall through
@@pcblah it would probably be more expensive and more fragile, needing replacement of the net or the uniform more often, also i don't know if they had thin nets back then like we have today, so the own uniforms fabric were probably more cheap and easier to produce and make, etc etc
I think "Complicated, nuanced and tragic" is a good description of history as a whole.
While researching for his book, The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick went through Gestapo documents, including diaries by SS guards. He was horrified by the casual cruelty. In particular, there was the SS complaining that the cries of starving children kept them awake. The notion of humans becoming so savage and non-empathetic led him to write Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the basis for the Blade Runner movies.. a book about non-empathic androids.(they weren't called replicants in the book.)
No wonder Americans often shot officers and guards whenever they liberated these camps
I'm sure everything stated in that book Is 100 % true !
@@yaya_is_real That wasn't in his book... it was research for The Man in the High Castle. He was going through diaries of SS guards.
As for the Man in the High Castle, in case you're unfamiliar with the book or miniseries, it's an alternate history book about Germany and Japan winning WWII and dividing the US between them.
@@yaya_is_real I'm sure you are 100 % illiterate!
@@yaya_is_real Is this a thinly veiled attempt at Holocaust denial?
One of the things that always gets me about the holocaust is that extermination camps were often discussed in terms of 'throughput'.
Designers of gas chambers worked out that you can put steps at the entrance instead of a ramp as this was less threatening (victims were usually told they were going in for showers or delousing.
Meanwhile the same designers worked out the optimum ramp angle at the back for a man, in what we would consider poor health, to be able to take a body up to the crematorium.
Imagine being the kind of person who can sit down and work that out? Who can draw up the plans for it?
Antisemites are people who don’t just see Jews as being evil, but see evil itself as being Jewish. That’s how.
It's German engineering. Typically well thought out and thorough. It's just horrifying that it's translated to the context of human extermination, rather than getting the right glass quality and shape for a pair of binoculars or such.
My great uncle George had a friend in Seattle who worked for IBM during the war. IBM provided the counting machines used at the camps to account for all inventory. The designs were often augmented by local German engineers, but the initial plans might have come from overseas.
The same people who design weapons and systems.
@@AA-ke5cu Designing a rifle or warship is fundamentally different to designing an extermination camp even if all of these can be used for murder. At least weapons and combat vehicles are designed to kill people who are fighting back. Quickly, too, without excessive suffering.
even more confusing and grim is "But have you ever heard of “Holocaust money,” the currencies that the Nazis forced on Jews and others in concentration camps and ghettos?" Yup, people in concentration camps used camp script inside the camp.
and there was a huge black market in the ghettos and camps, sometimes for things as simple as cigarettes and soap, and up to nicer clothes, reading materials, more food, etc
Imagine being an ally soldier amd entering one of these camps, and finding all the nightmarish stuff the germans did, imagine the stench of death, the living conditions, people extremely starved, piles of bodies in ditches, the horrific realization of what went down. Must've been shocking
I just watched that scene in "Band of Brothers". Of course it is just an interpretation but it seemed well-done to me.
Great video. It's easy to get lost in the sheer emotion- the horror, the tragedy, the sheer incredulity. It's hard to process an entire industry dedicated to genocide. There's always an infrastructure. I think it's important to talk about that part so we can connect it to other events and learn how to recognize what a genocide looks like, when do we see something and finally ask ourselves "Are we the baddies?" The reason the Holocaust is so well covered is so that it never happens again.
It's already happening again, and this time no one is getting in it's way (because the US can't profit off it)
another big factor that serves as an important undertone for this video:
the SS purposefully offered privileges as you mentioned, but this served an even more useful purpose: it made them into collaborators and sowed division.
When talking about the prisoner conditions and their day to day life, we forget to humanize them, including, the dark side of their humanity. They regularly got into fights and formed gangs within the camps, even the SS would regularly agitate and encourage fighting for nothing more than their own entertainment (while this may sound like something you'd be quick to judge, remember that the SS guards were young men in the early 20s sent to depressing conditions forced to become the worst versions of themselves without any recreation themselves, yes, controversial as it may sound, the lower ranked SS were as much victims as they were perpetrators)
The nihilistic sense of solidarity you see in movies existed, but so did divisions, prison gangs, fights, and riots, all while being overworked, starved, and sleep deprived. If there was any chance for the slightest extra comfort or privilege, they had no problem walking over each other to get it, being "snitches" so to speak, and establishing hierarchies because starving men will do anything for an extra bite of bread so there was no single unprotected "snitch" but a literal gang capo with a hierarchy of enforcers. If there was a perfect "us vs them" mentality it risked the prisoners uniting and revolting, but by sowing divisions among them and creating artificial hierarchies it becomes a self establishing order... and there is nothing profound or clever about this, it's been passed down through military leadership for 2000 years since Sun Tzu, the SS just had the bright idea to apply this to their prisoners
And because of all this, when you study the holocaust in depth, you get this overwhelming sense of how the worst perpetrators of the holocaust were often fellow victims being the collaborators. This not only applied to camp prisoners, but also to party officials of mixed ancestry who denounced their Judaic heritage (yes, this was a thing! and they were called "honorary Aryans" by the Nazi party), and you hear offhand tales of how they would be some of the most vocally antisemitic members of the party with no sense of irony (many theories for this include survival instinct, self hatred, internalized racism, etc), so it was not limited to the concentration camps but also to daily life in Nazi Germany from day to day life on the street to Party activities
All of this were the real evil orchestrations of the Nazi party and especially the SS, getting their victims to willingly do their work for them
SS soldiers deserve no sympathy. There were plenty of people that knew and understood what the Nazi's were doing was unacceptable at the time. If you don't directly believe in the most psychotic aspects of Nazism but fear persecution then join the Wehrmacht. If you are SS it is because you chose to be. "boohoo I just wanted to exterminate degenerates, I never meant to get caught in an abusive system boohoo."
As someone who lost family in Auschwitz
Fuck you
The SS were not victims you peice of shit
A great presentation Brandon! There's little I can add except seeing one of those uniforms in person always sends a cold chill down my spine.
Growing up in northern New Jersey as I did in the 1960s and into the 1970s it wasn't unusual to occasionally see Holocaust survivors, that part of NJ has a large Jewish population. It was most apparant during the summer months when men and women would wear short-sleeves. Every once in a while that unmistakable tattoo on the left forearm (unmistakable if you knew what it was) would be seen on a man or woman and the sight of it would make you shudder. Not over the person themselves of course but the realization of the hell that person survived.
It brought the reality of the Holocaust home like few things do. I was real all right. Don't any of you let the Holocaust deniers sway you.
I've decided that when I have kids, if they spout any sort of holocaust denial, I'm going to sit them down, give them a Long talk about what happened, that the holocaust was real, etc. I will assign them books, movies, articles, to watch and read and I will make them write reports on it. I will find out how they even got into that sphere of influence in the first place. I was a very bookish kid, I was reading the diary of anne frank in grade 4, and night in grade 6. the holocaust fucking happened, and it was fucking horrifying.
We had Konzentrationslager and Vernichtungslager.
The first was a hell hole for many demographics like communists, criminals, Jehovas, Dissidents with a chance of leaving it alive and the latter you could only leave thorough the chimney.
I presume the higher quality garments were for capos at the concentration camps, those places had tailor shops and a lot of cheap labour.
Well don't spoil it, now! But yes, that is a large part of it, although many illicit alterations were also made which I cover at the end of this video. Primarily the video is intended to fill in those gaps of individuals less familiar with the 'processes' of the Holocaust- the different camp types, the ranking structures of the Prisoner Functionaries, etc.
Also presumably at the first the camps would source the uniform from the stock that the german prison system used, and thus made to the standard of german prisons.
Wrong.
Konzentrationslager = Concentration camp (a prison with much beating from the guards)
Arbeitslager = Forced labor camp
Vernichtungslager = A death camp. A place where 80% of the people were pushed inside a gas chamber as soon as they arrived. Elderly, handicapped, children and their mothers were usally always the ones selected to die from gas. While a few men and women were selected to do forced labor. Some slaves collected the clothes and valuables from the undressing room next to the "shower room" (gas chamber). Other slaves helped with putting all the shoes in one place, the jackets in another and so on. Some slaves were out in the woods cutting timber. And some slaves were handling the jewelry stolen from the victims, and separated the gold from gold teeths.
And the worst job of all did the slaves called "Sonderkommando" (special command) have. They were the slaves which worked with carrying out all the dead bodies of innocent women and children that just had been gassed to death. It was a heartbreaking job. Everyone felt awful about it, and suicides were common among these slaves. Many jews regarded the sonderkommando slaves as traitors to their own people who helped the nazis murdering their own people. But truth is that it was never their fault, and the only ones to blame for this situation were the nazis. Nearly no sonderkommandos survived the holocaust, because the nazis were very careful to keep their industrial mass murder a secret. And these slaves who lived in a seperate area of the camp away from all the other prisoners knew too much about the crimes of the nazis - so they were therefore usally murdered after a few months. And then came another train to the camp, and the doctors would find some new men that they could use as slaves instead.
So nearly every day they did carry out dead bodies from the gas chambers. And then throw them into mass graves... and later in the war they decided to burn their bodies into ash in ovens instead. And then some slaves had to carry all ash and dump it into rivers or into forests where it were used to grow trees. So all blood from millions of innocent people have been used as fertilizer to feed the growth of pine trees. That is all what is left of places like Sobibor and Treblinka today. The nazis did destroy those death camps to hide their crimes. All bodies were burned into ash to hide all remains of dead bodies, and Himmler ordered pine trees to grown on Sobibor. And when you visit the place you can find a greyish soil there from all the ash of all the murdered people. While skeleton bones were crushed in a bone mill by jewish slaves before they also were killed. And on the ground you can find such pieces of skeleton.
Life in concentration camps, and forced labor camps was really bad.
But they were still nothing compared to life inside one of the six death camps - Belzec, Majdanek, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Life in those places were hell on earth. And all of them were equally bad in slightly different ways according to a survivor.
The goal here was to murder people. And as a holocaust survivor told me, a human can be disgusted and hate an insect with a fiery hate, but even he could sometimes show mercy a spare an insects life. But the nazi guards he said, did never show any mercy or compassion. They murdered people everyday and did it just for fun. I spoke with this old man at Stockholms historical museum maybe 3 years ago.. so I will assume that this man was just a young boy when he experienced this. And during roll call did the man stading next to him get his head split by a spade on the first day at the camp.
So the movies like Schindlers List do understate how bad things were. And while one can question the economically wise in killing doctors, scientists and engineers and jews willing to fight for Germany in world war. Do I not think there is any doubt that the nazis were extremely effiecent in murdering people. Somewhere between 8 and 14 million people were murdered in the he holocaust. 98% of Polands jewish population died.
And murdering a person with Zyklon-B poison gas did only cost 15 cents. And even in the most small and primitive death camps like Belzec, only about 250 x300 meters large and was able to kill half a million people. And only 2 prisoners managed to survive this camp by fleeing.
And the story is the same about the camp Chelmno where 200.000 people died and only 2 people managed to flee.
Some starved prisoners with shaved heads, striped pyjamas, tattoos did not have it easy even if the somehow managed to flee from all electric fences, barbed wire, minefields, guard towers with machine guns, and guard dogs.
Finding a place to hide was not easy. It would be cold outside. And while polish civilians usually felt much sympaties for the fleeing jews was it dangerous to help them. If the Germans found a jew hidden in your house would you likely get killed along with all your family, and everyone in the village.
So the jews might perhaps get some bread or a blanket if they were lucky. But the Germans were chasing them with military patrols and dogs. And for every succesful escape of a prisoner did the Germans select 10 people that they did choose to execute in public in front of all the other prisonders, so that they would feel bad about fleeing from the camp and causing the death of many innocent people.
@@nattygsbord Punishment for any offence against german war machine was usually severe here in Poland. My granddad told me a story in which one German soldier was beaten up by some village folks, probably due to hunger and/or anger for stealing crops, and punishment was few belts from mg40 shot at the village from neighboring hill. That must have been horrifying to experience.
@@nattygsbord And the extermination camps only lasted 18 months. From mid- 1942-1944. 1944 until the end of the war, slow starvation was the method used to kill people.
this is what my grandfather was wearing in the camp, in the last days exactly, just before when he got his photos taken - when it was liberated,
they wore different stuff before, grey and bluish rags, most people by the end did worn their clothing as well as used uniforms of the dead prisoners,
in the end they needed to get identified as liberated people for documentation and biuroctatic reasons,
you know the tattoo was not enough to get a status of a “survivor”, you needed to be documented with photos, and in some cases you needed a person to confirm your status, can you imagine that? you survive but need a fellow survivor as a witness,
so the uniform was kinda put on every survivor just to take photos as the id’s were made,
and many people at time didn’t have any shirt - they got a uniform to wear for the photo and then just wrapped in cloth and taken away to hospital tents, sorta like a borrowed jacket,
not many people kept the uniform, it was usually rags at that point,
gramps actually got to have a wash before it was his turn to get photographed, he managed to see his friend die in arms when they tried feeding him in the hospital, gramps grieved him and they gave him a comb and took him to go wash up, so he looked cleaner,
so the photo survived - because he looked ok it, he used that photo, he was young had dark hair, and was handsome so the photo looked like he was in a stripped jacket when it was cropped down,
yes, my gramps used his Camp Survivor Photo as an ID photo for a while,
this is why the photo and film has survived till today, it was when We developed the full photo when you can see that was not just a jacket,
I always found it weird the shirt had a collar, I didn’t think pockets were odd, but a collar seemed like a luxury, it looks like a jacket
Wow, thanks for this.
I always love videos that bring up a small detail I never thought about and expand on it. Keep it up Brandon 👍
People underestimate how widespread the camps were. We had one on the outside of my small city < 20k with a couple of hundreds of prisoners building an small airport against british and american airial attacks. I never knew about it until I was well in my 20's.
I remember few years ago. I heard in interview with some polish author of books about life of women in the camps. That some prisoners didn't even get uniforms just some randoms mismateched clothing in wrong sizes that was supposed to humiliate prisoners by making them look goofy. Like some women got elegant dress and some ugly shoes etc.
By the way you should really visit concentration camp some day. I myself unfortunately only have been in majdanek which is just very close to were i live. But i think everyone should visit auschwitz at least once in their life. Because this place really leaves a strong impact on a person from what i heard.
It's all so...disgustingly clinical. Someone put thought into this. Not just someone. Dozens of someones. Designers, tailors, industrialists, manufacturers. Had to look at that, knowing what it was for, knowing that in part it was some small step toward the outcome of the "final solution". And no one stopped it. They sketched the uniform, they designed it, they sent it out. More thought spared for the cloth than their neighbors who will be made to wear it.
I think that many of those who made these were not told of their purpose. Remember, the Nazis tried to keep the Holocaust secret.
Fascism is a plague , and this plague literally infected the entire nation
My British mother used to tell a wonderful story about World War 2. She knew a man who was a prisoner in a German POW camp. It was right next to a concentration camp. Even though the POW's had very little food, they would still try to throw pieces of bread over the barbed wire into the concentration camp because those people had almost nothing to eat. They risked getting shot if they were caught to do this. It has always warmed my heart to hear of such good people in such a horrible situation.
Thanks for another important and much needed episode of things we needed to know, and had questions of, that we never had a chance to otherwise get answered.
That's what I aim for!
They seem to have varied from camp to camp. Sometimes there were no uniforms - at least some prisoners in Dachau photographed just after liberation have normal civilian work clothes with a square of striped cloth stitched on the back of their shirts or jackets to show they are inmates. Soviet POWs, frequently sent to concentration camps, seem often to have worn the uniforms they were captured in, with insignia removed, but "SU" for Soviet Union might be painted on their backs or legs, usually with red paint.
There seems to have been a tailoring department in most of these places, so a pocket or pockets could be added to a uniform if necessary.
the most insane part is how methodical, uncaring, and bureaucratic the thing was. people's entire livelihoods and professional experience was dedicated to...mass looting, extraction, and slaughter of civilians and POWs. it's just maddening to imagine how so few of the cogs in the machine of death ever questioned why they were turning.
ALL GOVERNMENTS ARE,GIVEN LITTLE TO NO OVERSIGHT..... CAPEABLE OF SIMILAR ATROCITIES......LOOK AT THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD IN 1960'S CHINA.....20 MILLION KILLED MAINLY BY STARVATION.....AND SOVIET UNION IN THE 1930'S TAKING APPROX. 35-50 MILLION LIVES , AGAIN MAINLY DUE TO STARVATION.....GERMANY WAS NOT UNIQUE IN THIS ....JUST PERHAPS MORE ORGANIZED .........STATE SPONSORED GENOCIDE IS NOT A RECENT NOR ISOLATED PHENOMENA .
If from a young age learned to work for the survival of the collective where individual lives were of no importance than it is just part of this goal.
Today we see the same with the Climate Jugend and Green Shirts. The goal is to save the planet everything else should be sacrificed for that goal.
@@ducthman4737 BRUH
@@ducthman4737 You did not just fucking compare climate activism to the fucking Holocaust.
Fuck you.
They deluded themselves or simply believed in what they were doing, racism and all.
Interesting fact; There's whole book by polish autor describing "fashion" in those camps
Apparently those uniforms were not worn by all of prisoners - a lot of them got random dresses and other pieces of clothing chosen for them by kapos. That was also used as form of mental torture to dress those poor ppl in unmatching outfits, not matching the season or being completely useless for camp surroundings (like making prisoners wear gowns and laughing at them)
Fwiw clogs were common for workers in British factories even post war. They were utilitarian footwear so I don't think it's that surprising in this context.
Really interesting to note even the smallest detail of a Uniform can tell both the status of the wearer and the state of the organisation who issued them.
Even the existence of a Pocket and a different style of Materials would tell you where the person wearing it lies on the hierarchy. Clearly someone who's given a convenience to store their personal effect on their immediate self, and given more durable material means they hold more significance than those who didn't have such a privilege.
And I remember fondly that some nations Ensign equivalent rank uniforms in WW1 cut on the number of pockets, especially Map Pockets (the big pockets between the sides of a battle/field dresses) because of austerity measures for fabric.
I've been studying the construct of uniforms Amateur/Non Professionally for quite a while and everything in the video immediately clicks like a button of a shirt (heh...). And indeed it's especially interesting to see the uniform of what was considered the lowest form of existence to a brutal tyrannical regime to even exhibit similarity with any other uniforms
I did not expect this video but I'll watch anyway
The video about Fencibles is still on the way!
another episode of questions I've never considered asking but now need the answer
@@BrandonF That's good, as a desecendt of a holocaust survivor if makes me happy to see a good video on it, great as always Brandon
Wrong initial premise: those inmates that were immediately killed, most probably never wore a camp uniform. A lot of camp inmates were forced labour, and those need clothing.
That’s what he said.
You clearly didn't watch the video lmao.
That seems like a very specific topic for a video. Pockets.
Welcome to the internet, kiddo, don't tell anyone anything about yourself.
We take Pockets very seriously here.
Welcome to Brandon F
That museum is just crammed with fabulous details and exhibits like this. Hundreds of them. Worth a road trip.
This was amazingly done!
I'm from Florida. The Holocaust museum in St Petersburg is a must see. They have a railway car from Germany that was used to transport Jews to the camps. It's very intense. I touched it and a splinter fell into my hand. Then I prayed. St Mary's.
Very well researched presentation.
Last year I was analyzing photographs of Soviet prisoners on war made to do forced labor in Nazi occupied Europe. In looking at their clothing, I discovered something interesting. Not all but many were wearing bits of old German military kit…Weimar era feldrocks and early pattern feldblusen (Army wool tunics). These garments had been stripped of insignia and dyed black. Some seemed to have a stencil on the back as well.
Looking at photographs of concentration camp inmates, I also noted a few of these jacket in wear by the prisoners. I agree with your analysis that they weren’t given these jacket out of any kindness but rather out of necessity to callously extract from these prisoners the maximum amount of labor. I don’t have specific documentation of this but I believe these jackets had almost certainly been worn until they were threadbare by the military but instead of being discarded, they were given to the undesirable Soviet and concentration camp inmates.
This said, I believe there is a cultural precedent in many countries of issuing military surplus items to prisoners. Take what I say with a grain of salt as I can’t recall any resources from memory right now but I have heard some anecdotal evidence that surplus Civil War Union jackets were issued to prisoners into the early Twentieth Century. You also see images of German prisoners in captivity in the United States during World War II wearing specially marked surplus denim and HBT military fatigue uniforms.
That may have been true,but not always.
The Soviet and Jewish slaves brought to the Channel Islands to work for Organisation Todt often disembarked from their boats wearing cement sacks or nothing at all.
Great video topic, always interested in your thoughts on little details like garments as historical items
"why did some concentration camp uniforms have pockets" - well there's a question I never imagined that I simply won't be able to think about anything else until I learn more about it.
rather than NCOs a better way of thinking of Capos is as Prison Trusties. Prisons don't run w/o prisoner labour. "The "trusty system" (sometimes incorrectly called "trustee system") was a penitentiary system of discipline and security enforced in parts of the United States until the 1980s, in which designated inmates were given various privileges, abilities, and responsibilities not available to all inmates" Note prison Trusties were used for prison security enforcement.
Good analogy keep in maind also that many kapos were selected because they were criminals
This was fascinating! Depressing, but fascinating
Such an important video and so well done 👏
Normally I would say "Where Provincial units?" But this being a rather serious topic I will say thanks, Brandon
Why would Kim Jong-Un insult me by calling me “old,” when I would NEVER call him “short and fat?”
@@mycool_p6483
What ?
@@vinz4066You okay bud?
@@aribantala
Yes. Why ?
@@vinz4066 Pfhaha, CZcams puts on the wrong tag, was for the guy up there
That was very fascinating. There is so much about the holocaust that I dont know about.
When I was in high school one of the students in my class, her mother was a child in one of those concentration camps. If I recall correctly I think that during part of her captivaty she was kept in a small cage, like for a dog. She didnt mind answering some questions but she could handle only so many.
I am glad that you are doing videos of the holocaust because we can't say it never happened or ever forget about. It is something we need to remember not only for those who suffered in them, but so it never happens again. 🇨🇦
did it have a bear and an eagle in it
Well said and well explained Brandon.
Dark, stark and depressing AF, but well done.
This seems similar to death row inmates getting a final meal of their choice. Pointless as they are about to die, but it is a form of taking pity/making the impending death have less of an effect on the gaurd's/public's minds.
Maybe the uniforms were allowed because it was a way for the N*zis to deal with guilt. Convincing themselves that these people were labourers and not just cattle to the slaughter. That the camps they were gaurding whilst their comrades were fighting on the frontlines were productive and helping the war effort.
Hopefully what I have said makes some sense. Interesting video, I appreciate this sort of thought provoking content.
Great job on video, history is history we have to remember
It really was one hell of a trip. Thanks for the shoutout!
AYYYYY Dayton represent I love this museum. Did you get a change to see the A-10 they have on display outside? It's a very good up close view of the aircraft.
Honestly, this was fascinating! To my knowledge, there are 0 other videos on this platform covering the topic. You're doing humanity a service by openly considering the subject. Thanks, man! I am now subscribed.
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you'll enjoy my other videos as well!
Love this video
A bit of a left turn in darkness than your patriot reviews
You could say it was “ out of pocket”😏
@@faithlessberserker5921💀
Thanks Brandon. This came up in my recommended and now my friends are concerned...
Hello Brandon. It seemed so wrong, but the song "You've got to pick a pocket or two" kept coming to mind when you talked of contraband.
Years ago, I visited Midland Texas and went to what was called "The Confederate Air Force". This kept the title CAF by substituting the word "Commemorative" in line with the argument in your recent video about nostalgic views on the old south.
There's a story about how the title "Confederate Air Force" came about, I read it in Air Classics magazine almost 50 years ago in an article about the same. It went like this:
There was a group of Texas big-money friends, ex WW2 fighter pilots as well, who owned some surplus WW2 fighters, mostly P-51 Mustangs. They'd get together on weekends and fly in formation to a particular destination, have lunch, then fly home.
On one trip when they'd finished lunch they found someone had painted "Confederate Air Force" on the side of one of the planes. It was a water-based paint and washed off easily and instead of being angry about it the group took it as the joke it was and in fact adopted the name "Confederate Air Force" as a club name. And it just took off (no pun intended) after that. Confederate nostalgia or "Lost Cause" ideology had absolutely nothing to do with it, it was all in fun, and all the members called themselves "colonels," really due to the Hollywood cliche' of the un-Reconstructed die-hard Confederate "cuhnel."
"Those day-um Yankees! They was afraid of a fa-yuh fight!"
And that's all there was to it. The name was changed to "Commemorative Air Force" much later in deference to modern sensibilities, although not without some controversy within the organization, especially those who remembered where the original name came from.
@@wayneantoniazzi2706 bro this comment contradicts itself. You said they weren't motivated by Lost Cause ideology but if they were truly repulsed by the idea they wouldn't accept being called a Confederate colonel. And the type of "cuhhrnel" description is such a staple of the Lost Cause myth, you're basically saying " oh no they weren't supporting the Confederate ideology, they were just completely cool with everyone thinking they do"
@@LeadenMarshmallow Man if you don't get it you just don't get it. There's no point in my trying to explain it to you. Be safe and have a good day.
@@wayneantoniazzi2706 fair enough. I can't imagine a situation where I'd willingly be in Midland Texas anyway
Damn, I live 30 minutes away from there. Wish I had made a millionth visit to possibly have had a convo with you. Much love to your work.
The pocket question kept me up at night
Great video indeed! That poster to your left of the soldier is awesome, how does one go about getting one?
nativeoak.org/shop ! It's a bit of my merchandise!
I really love your videos, can you please make more videos about the Holocaust
I'll definitely do one, at some point or other, about the economics of it all. If it didn't come through in the video, I have been increasingly obsessed with the role of slave labour in WW2 lately.
The wright Patterson afb museum was a great part of my childhood. Glad you could experience it :) did you do any of the flight simulators? My friend and I used to be aces in the fighter pilot one. I always flew, he always gunned.
Nah- I'd love to one day, but I get really badly motion sick, so I'd have to go to do that and only that I think!
Damn, you know Falcon! That’s awesome!
I highly recommend the book KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann. It's an extremely indepth study of the entire Concentration camp apparatus and how it operated at various stages of the third reich. As well as the reasoning behind a lot of the stuff they did.
I've read this book. it's excellent! Highly recommend.
It's interesting how the meaning of concentration camp changed over time. The term was literal at first. It was a place where authorities concentrated people to make anti geurilla operations outside the camps easier, not a place where authorities sent people to die.
The Nazis used euphemism used to subtly deny what they were actually doing. But the euphemisms superseded the original meanings and instead became words for what they were once euphemisms for. It's all over the events surrounding the holocaust.
Just found you! You're a great young host.
Pre-watch hypothesis: The ones that got them were the Kapos (Capos?)
Yep... The Capos and Clerks (the one who worked on Commisaries or do clerical jobs)
It's a Trustee system common on any prison culture
As someone who works at a memorial site... thats was a solid analysis.
Oh boy. The comments could get realy weird .
Hey, i am currently making a video about the Battle of Plassey.
Would you please tell me the weapons used by the Nawabs forces, along with the range the company forces fired upon on the Nawabs cavalry forces when they charged?
interesting, never knew about this
I can't be the only one who noticed similarities in the camp social hierarchy and large corporate environments...
You are the only one. That is absolutely insane that you would even suggest something that stupid.
No way, you know Falcon too? Awesome! Man, the circle of actually credible history CZcamsrs is smaller than I thought.
Hello Brandon, loved the video, was wondering if you would consider the possibility of making a video about (or relating to) the 1798 rebellion that took place in Ireland. As the 225th anniversary is coming up I thought it would be perfect timing and right down your alley as a subject. Please keep up the great work!
I would like to point out that slavery had been outlawed in Germany around the 15th century.
I've read accounts of Germans travelling abroad during colonialism who were appaled by the practise. This is partly why Germany had a relatively small black population until the recent increase in immigration from Africa.
That, in my mind, makes what the Nazis did even worse.
They didn't just exploit a practise that was already common, the way US farmers did. No, they reintroduced a practise that had been absent from the country for 500 years.
We didn't have slaves in the 40s
@@user-cv8qe9ru8c yes, slave labor was a large part of Nazi economics.
To the point where most major factories were contracting labor from labor camps.
Although I suppose if you want to get technical, it's peonage or share-cropping, but that's the kind of distinction that only slavers care about.
Another reason is that death camps were not part of the original "solution" to the Jewish Question. The German government at the time negotiated with the British to transplant Jews inside the Reich to live in Palestine, modern day Israel as part of the Haavara Agreement. The outbreak of war however stopped this entire process.
Ironically, Nazi Germany helped kickstart the creation of Israel as to what it is today through their migration efforts with German-educated and skilled Jewish populations coming into the area.
It's weird to think that this was only about 80 years ago....
I remember seeing a film about Sobibor showing that they had no uniforms. However, I believe that the camp I read on was Sobibor. This camp was an extermination camp, so it might explain why they would not have the need for this. Although, that could be fiction and in reality the prisoners were uniformed. But both the a film I saw made by the US and a film made by the Russian's depicted them wearing just ordinary garments.
Now that Brandon knows Falcon,his spot on the next NAFO even rounder table is secured 😎
I very quickly went from "this Brandon kids videos are kind of fun I'll let the video play in the background." to "For Serious?"
Honestly I think the Reich's Labor Service and how it functioned could explain a lot of this. Basically in Nazi Germany all labor was put into the control of the Reich's Labor Service. It basically functioned as a labor Army, or labor Union. Basically the State Monopolized Labor. The concept of Boss and Employee was stricken from the books, it was now "Leaders" and "Followers." Basically businesses were expected to basically treat themselves as if they were the Army. Some business owners took it quite seriously, while others absolutely groaned under the idea. Business couldn't hire or fire employees at their own leisure, nor could they treat their employees as employees as they're the "State's" Employees. The State leased them, and decided where people would work, decided wages, and decided hours, and they believed someone would be most valued. If a business needed more workers, they'd have to go to the Reich's Labor Service, for it's approval in short. This Militarization of Business you can say very well leaked down into the Concentration Camp system. You can argue many camp commanders took it that seriously. Just as it was in the business and industrial world of the 3rd Reich. I mean who wouldn't want your prisoner's standing to attention in fancier uniforms than the other camp, likely made the commander feel a bit more superior than his peers, he could gloat to himself that he does a better job. I mean all labor in the Reich was essentially militarized before the war ever started.
State owned union....
Tackes the power of the people
@@anarchomando7707 Yes but by the Logic of Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Giovanni Gentile and Adolf Hitler, a State that consist of the People is a "People's State." Hence why in the Marx's eye a one Party Dictatorship is a Democracy. Being these regimes were not technically ruled by a 'special' ruling class, but by people who rose through the ranks of the Party's running these countries, it was a People's State. Anyone could join the party, and rise those ranks. At least in their minds. Now it didn't always work out that way, North Korea being a great example turning into a pseudo Monarchy.
So a People's State with a State owned Trade Union isn't Taking Power from the People in the eyes of a Collectivist.
Marxist, Fascist and Nazis have a different idea on what Democracy is in short. Voting isn't technically required, and honestly if you're truly honest, voting is just you surrendering your political power voluntarily to the State by assigning representation that rarely represents you anyways.
Also to be brutally honest about State owned Trade Unions. The Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, Communist China, and Nazi Germany all monopolized labor into the State. It's pretty much required. Otherwise you wouldn't have a collective.
I visited a death camp in Poland and was startled at the quality of construction of the camp. Nothing ramshackle - everything was square and well built - still in good shape 60 years after construction. The truth is the Nazis were smart but truly crazy and explaining why they did what they did is almost impossible.
If i recall correctly, Auschwitz 1 was a polish army barrack complex before the germans used it as a concentration camp.
There is also survivor bias. You'll get the best looking buildings, not the shacks that got burned when the nazis left, or the impromptu concentration camps that were founded in 1933 and got progressively "upgraded" once the concentration camp system went from SA guarded to SS guarded
Before I watch, Im going to guess the pockets were to put things in and the reason some had no pockets was because not every prisoner had things to put in pockets. What things might they be? Work related objects of course.
The whole organisation of the camps was quiet...complexe, with a lot of unofficial roles and position which...is quiet sad really.
I went to Sachsenhausen as a young lad. It was a school-trip and mandatory, quite sobering. Since then I feel the responsibility to not let it happen again. Your analysis is pretty good, I have only one objection: Most Germans did not want to know what the higher-ups were up to. So they did not profit directly and deliberately looked in the other direction. So I consider asking what the Germans wanted to get out of the Holocaust generalising and a little misleading.
Man I miss that museum. When I live din Ohio as a kid, my family would visit it once a year. It was great.
Literal concentration camp uniforms had more pockets than modern women’s fashion.
I honestly feel a lot of anger towards you for being so flippant. This isn’t funny. Buy a fanny pack and stop talking
There's a joke and there somewhere about the collaborator, Coco Chanel, but I can't think of anything funny
I never know where to put my hands anyway...
@brandon f. There are many different lager uniforms men and women uniforms, but many different subclassifications, every classification has its own version of blue white clothing, strange to do indeed
I just went there for my birthday I love that place I’ve been there 4 times now
You LOVE the place? Why? How?
You and Bernadette banner should do a collab
Im guessing the answer at 3.18, as it being down to different responsibilities within the camps for prisoners. I believe that the Germans had Jewish and other prisoners act as internal guards and assisted the Germans with the movement of prisoners, I wonder if the better uniforms were for individuals who did work such as this, these individuals may have been expected to use paper and a pencil at times?
"throughput of lives" just the implication of such a pharse puts a cold in the blood. must have been an utter pain to utter
BREAKING NEWS: Brandon wants concentration camp victims to have even less!
5:46 it is Zwangsarbeitslager nicht Zwangarbeitslager. The genitive s is important. But apart from that there were no "Zwamgsarbeitslager". There were Schutzhaftlager, Arbeitserziehungslager, Konzentrationslager und Vernichtungslager
[shrugs] the same reason any other garment would have pockets on it.
Hey, I live RIGHT by that museum. Like, can see it from my house right by lol.
I don't have evidence for it but my guess before watching was that perhaps at least some of the uniforms were just ordered as standard patterns from German clothing companies, albeit with the specification that the striped fabric be used. Maybe that would have been the case in the earlier days, before the camps got up and running with in house uniform manufacture?
Funny, it was exactly what I expected due to my German education, but it's good to see that my sometimes half baked general knowledge is true this time
Pausing at 8:37 because I have ADHD and cannot wait to comment, lol... My first hunch would be that having some "nicer" uniforms, while it might simply be manufactured at different times with different levels of quality; it might also be more sinister that they picked some "favourites" to be sort of "officers" among the prisoners to help manage the camp and as an intended side effect breed envy to divide and conqueror the prison population. Also some of the prisoners were highly skilled people which they might just have had more use for alive than worked quickly to death so they would give them better uniforms to help in their work and keep them alive for longer.
15:34
I THINK that is from the movie "My Best Friend Anne Frank".
My grandpa died during the Holocaust...
He fell off a guard tower
15:26 Yes, that photo is a shot from the 1960 Italian movie "Kapo" by Gillo Pontecorvo. However, at first I thought it was from the 1948 Polish movie "The Last Stage" by Wanda Jakubowska (who herself was a survivor of Auschwitz, where the movie is set and filmed on-location).
Quarry at Mauthausen
Possibly some may have been altered by individuals who were tailors or some sewing skills pre incarceration, some of the uniforms may have been from those camps that were used for the propaganda image when visited by Swiss Delegations for example.
I’ve been to the museum, I love the museum
Also they have a whole section at the entrance to the ww2 section about the holocaust, because if some wehrb wants to drool over the v2 and the me262, they have to have a reminder that the germans were not good guys, they were evil
2:59 “What’s going on with these uniforms” sounded exactly like Jerry Seinfeld
Give a man a front pocket and you won't have to search his back pocket.
11:11 keep in mind survivor's bias.if it wasn't well made it wouldn't have survived this long. 20:34 even the museum needed to add a lining to stop it from disintegrating
Just wondering of all the languages, why they used the Italian word "capo"?
Just wondering about the union flag in the background, is it, black? Or is it just the lighting? Because the blue looks like solid black.
Just the lighting! Nothing special about the flag.