Social Defence in Nazi Germany (Pages of History)

‘Social defence’ against ‘antisocial elements’, as the German scholar P.-A. Albrecht rightly points out, has usually been a feature of totalitarian societies, as exemplified by the category of ‘dangerous social democrat‘ in the German Empire, the category of ‘usurer and speculator‘ in the Weimar Republic, or the Soviet category of ‘enemy of the people‘, which was the basis of social defence policy in the USSR during the Stalinist repressions of 1920-1930.[1]

In the Third Reich, the category of “dangerous professional criminal”, as Albrecht defined it, was the “point of contact” of police crime control[2] . However, social defence was not only directed against criminals or politically unreliable elements. Social defence was also directed against “superfluous persons” who did not meet the criteria of a “true citizen” of a totalitarian state. Any “antisocial person” was considered weak of spirit by definition.

Instead of the Weimar Republic’s social welfare policy, Nazi social policy was aimed at the complete elimination of relevant social problems through the “radical eradication” of all “inferior,” “suspicious,” “dangerous” or “superfluous” people. The main focus was not on caring for the individual person in need of such care, but on preserving national unity. As “asociality” was often seen by the National Socialists as a hereditary trait, the German national community of “hereditarily healthy, productive and valuable Kameraden was to be protected from actual or potential harm and strengthened through the comprehensive application of biological measures such as forced sterilisation and other forms of “prevention of hereditary disease offspring”, including the physical destruction of people deemed “inferior” or “hereditarily diseased”[3] .

“Asocial persons”, also called “strangers to the community” (Gemeinschaftsfremde) in the language of the National Socialists, were considered inferior and therefore not members of the German national community, even if they were of “German blood” by origin. However, it remained unclear who exactly was to be considered “asocial” or “alien to the community”.

The term “antisocial” was not clearly defined during the National Socialist era, nor before or after it[4] . According to the “Guidelines” to the “Grunderlass vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung” (Basic Decree on Crime Prevention) of 4 April 1938, which was the basis for the use of preventive detention by the criminal police, “antisocial” was defined as “anyone who, by behaviour contrary to society, even if it is not criminal, demonstrates that he does not wish to integrate into society”. Accordingly, the following persons were considered asocial, for example: 1) persons who, by committing minor but repeated offences, do not wish to obey the order that is taken for granted in a national socialist state; 2) persons, regardless of previous convictions, who evade their labour duties and place the burden of their existence on the shoulders of the state and society.”

The group of people labelled “asocial” and persecuted by the National Socialists was heterogeneous. The lack of a definition of this term was further exacerbated during the transition in 1937-1938 to the implementation of the “principle of comprehensive social and sanitary and general social prevention“, when the categories of “asocial” and “criminal“, as well as other categories related to criminal law, were increasingly mixed in the activities of the administration, police and courts. As a result, homosexuals, Jews, Sinti and Roma, as well as later political opposition in any form, were also increasingly and indiscriminately labelled “asocial” in the judicial and administrative practice of the Nazi state and subjected to corresponding sanctions and restrictions[5] . Thus, the qualification and subsequent administrative and judicial registration of individuals or social groups as “asocial” remained rather abstract and uncertain, with a tendency to expand.

The abstract and open definition of the term “antisocial” during the Third Reich meant that the following categories were usually included in the relevant registers:

• Jews;
• Sinti and Roma;
• alcoholics and drug addicts;
• homeless people, beggars and vagrants (“travellers“);
• homosexuals;
• pimps, prostitutes and “sexually liberated” women;
• single women with children born out of wedlock;
• persons with infectious diseases (especially venereal diseases) “who evade treatment“;
• persons who “evade work“, “evade the obligation to work and place the burden of their support on the public“;
• casual or short-term workers;
• recipients of social benefits;
• politically unreliable persons;
• alimony debtors and their family members;
• employees of the war economy found guilty of improper work performance and frequent absenteeism;
• persons who “systematically come into conflict with criminal law, the police or authorities“;
• large families living in unstable economic and social conditions and/or dependent on social benefits and constituting a “burden on the nation“;
• persons who are “particularly uneconomical and uninhibited and, due to their lack of sense of responsibility, are unable to run an orderly household or raise children to be useful members of society“.

One of the most famous examples of such a “point of contact”, which Albrecht writes about, is die Schutzhaft, or preventive detention.

Die Schutzhaft was one of the most powerful tools of the Nazi regime to deal with its many opponents. With the help of die Schutzhaft, the formal legal basis of which was the decree “On the Fire in the Reichstag” of 28 February 1933, the Gestapo created a zone of state arbitrariness, exempt from any constitutional rights, guarantees and restrictions .[6]

The first victims of die Schutzhaft were mainly labour movement functionaries and Jews, who were initially held in the so-called “wilder Konzentrationslager” (“wild” concentration camps)[7] . As of the end of July 1933, more than 26,000 people were held in preventive detention throughout Germany. Later, preventive practices were deepened by the Decree on Preventive (Protective) Detention of 25 January 1938 .[8]

The Gestapo was designated as the body responsible for the use of preventive detention. District and local police authorities (Ordnungspolizei) became auxiliary bodies of the Gestapo and were subordinate to it. The jurisdiction of ordinary courts in civil and criminal cases remained limited (there were no provisions for judicial review of detention orders issued by the Gestapo), and therefore lawyers could not represent clients who were detained for “preventive purposes” (lawyers were not even informed of the reasons for preventive detention).

The first nationwide campaign to “solve” the problem of “antisocial” “travellers” was the “Beggar’s Week” (Bettlerwoche), which was organised just a few months after the National Socialists came to power in September 1933. As part of the campaign, the SA and SS, with the support of the police, arrested tens of thousands of homeless and beggars. Most of those arrested received a warning and were released after a short period of imprisonment, six weeks at the latest. Some, however, remained much longer in prisons, workhouses or beggar’s camps set up specifically for the campaign to remove particularly visible ‘antisocial’ groups from the public street scene. A few weeks later, the Decree on Combating Dangerous Habitual Offenders and on Security and Correctional Measures of November 1933 created the first legal basis for the prosecution of “asocial elements“. The Decree made it possible to intern “asocial” individuals for an indefinite period, possibly even for life, as “labour evaders” and on charges of “debauchery” or “commercial activity” as well as “depravity“[9].

In terms of purely police (non-political) prevention, some repeat offenders were placed under “preventive detention” (polizeiliche Vorbeugehaft) as early as 1933. On 2 November 1933, Hermann Goering signed the decree “On the Application of Preventive Police Detention to Professional Criminals” (Anwendung der vorbeugenden Polizeihaft gegen Berufsverbrecher)[10] . Initially, this measure was limited to a few hundred people who were sent to concentration camps for an unlimited period (in February 1934, 525 people were held there) .[11]

On 14 December 1937, the Reich Ministry of the Interior issued a decree “On the Preventive Prevention of Crime by the Police” (der Runderlass über die vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung durch die Polizei), which was to standardise preventive crime control throughout the Reich[12] . The police preventive detention introduced based on this decree primarily concerned previously convicted “professional and habitual criminals” who could be supervised and interned by the police, not the Gestapo.

However, other ‘asocial’ groups such as truants, homeless people, Sinti and Roma, prostitutes and homosexuals were also covered by the system of preventive detention. To protect the “state and society”, such “dangerous persons” were to be “neutralised” (unschädlich) in “state reform and labour camps” (staatlichen Besserungs- und Arbeitslagern). From then on, responsibility for “antisocial persons” was increasingly transferred from municipal welfare offices and local courts to the police under the leadership of the Reich Criminal Police and later, in some cases, to the Gestapo.

The decree proved to be a dangerous instrument of unlimited repression, which significantly intensified the previous practice of persecution of many social groups. It allowed for the prosecution of any behaviour that deviated from the strict norms of the National Socialist state and social order and justified the widespread use of preventive detention of “antisocial persons” by the criminal police. As a result, the situation of such persons became increasingly threatening. If the practice of internment that had existed up to that time, despite the strict daily camp routine and the danger of forced sterilisation, still offered the prospect of eventual release or at least survival, the mass internment of “asocial elements” to concentration camps based on a decree meant for most internees not only permanent humiliation and torture, but also, ultimately, physical destruction.

In April and June 1938, two waves of arrests took place, known as the “Arbeitsscheu Reich” and the “Juni-Aktion” respectively. Imprisonment and deportation to concentration camps primarily affected the disabled, homeless, beggars, Sinti and Roma, prostitutes, homosexuals, and Jews with minor criminal records[13] . The relevant decree “Preventive detention of antisocial persons” referred to the basic decree “On preventive prevention of crimes by the police” of 14 December 1937. The deportation of Sinti and Roma to the so-called Auschwitz Gypsy camp from February 1943 based on Heinrich Himmler’s Auschwitz Decree was also carried out as preventive detention.

The life of “asocial elements” in the concentration camps was made much more difficult by the fact that they occupied the lowest place in the informal hierarchy of prisoners. Concentration camp staff and other “real” prisoners treated them with the same contempt, prejudice and rejection as they did in society as a whole[14] . The contempt for ‘antisocial elements’ in the camp microsociety meant that they were particularly targeted by the guards and subjected to more cruelty and torture than other groups of prisoners. This may also explain the relatively high mortality rate among this group of prisoners in concentration camps.

The significant increase in the persecution of “antisocial elements” in Germany, which began in 1938, can also be traced back to the police and administrative treatment of prostitutes and young “antisocial elements”. In the interests of “keeping the streets clean”, the police and judiciary had already taken action against street prostitutes, in particular at the beginning of the National Socialist regime, through raids, short-term detentions, forced resettlement and other repression[15] . The use of preventive detention under the decree of 14 December 1937, which was also initially directed against prostitutes, now steadily increased. The imprisonment of prostitutes in concentration camps for violating police orders also increased rapidly

Moreover, after the outbreak of the Second World War, prostitution in Germany was subjected to strict state control, combined with a broad rationality-oriented diligence. This consistent “eradication” of prostitution did not prevent the Nazis from creating brothels in concentration camps as part of national state policy – the so-called “Joy Departments” (Lagerbordell or Freudenabteilungen) – in order to increase productivity among prisoners. Only “privileged” “Aryan” prisoners, primarily kapo, or “prison officials,” and criminal elements could use them. Jewish inmates were prohibited from using brothels due to rules against racial mixing.

Ultimately, camp brothels did not lead to a noticeable increase in prisoner productivity but instead created a coupon market among the more privileged concentration camp inmates[16] . The first camp brothel was established in Mauthausen in 1942. After 30 June 1943, a camp brothel existed in Auschwitz, and from 15 July 1943, in Buchenwald. A camp brothel was opened in Neuengamme in early 1944, in Dachau in May 1944, in Dora-Mittelbau in late summer 1944, and in Sachsenhausen on 8 August 1944[17] . The Reich leadership had high hopes for the camp brothels to stimulate prisoners to work and therefore paid due attention to their functioning. There is a photograph of Heinrich Himmler personally inspecting a camp brothel in Mauthausen in 1942.

As the Nazis feared that the war would lead to the “moral devastation” of young people and an increase in juvenile delinquency, measures were also stepped up against young people who “already constituted a source of danger to other young people due to their degree of neglect”. As in previous cases, the aim of these measures was to “protect the nation” from the destructive influence of young people with “criminal and antisocial tendencies”.

As early as May 1939, the Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung der Jugendkriminalität (Reich Centre for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency) was established within the Reich Criminal Police Commissariat, which focused on “criminal police supervision of children and adolescents who are likely to have hereditary criminal tendencies”[18] . The Reich Criminal Police Commissariat also considered the prospect of creating possibilities for the transfer to the police of “criminally dangerous and antisocial minors” for whom “despite their criminal or antisocial behaviour, social education cannot be prescribed or continued due to hopelessness or exceeding the age limit”.

From the summer of 1940, with reference to the 1937 Decree on Preventive Prevention of Crime by the Police, “criminal and ‘antisocial’ young people” aged 16 to 19 (from November 1940, up to 21) were sent to concentration camps and “youth protection camps” set up and run by the security police for this purpose, which were organised in the same way as concentration camps. The final decision on the detention of minors was made by the Reich Criminal Police Commissariat on the recommendation of the responsible youth authorities. Detention was not limited in time. Upon reaching the age of majority, inmates of youth protection camps were transferred to an adult concentration camp .[19]

This is evidenced by an order issued on 25 April 1944 by Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS and German police, to the police authorities. The target groups, tasks and methods of work of the “youth protection” camps were determined by the racial and biological programme of the National Socialists and were ultimately aimed at segregating and physically destroying “elements harmful to society”: 1) The task of the youth protection camps is to screen prisoners according to criminal and biological criteria, to assist those still capable of social life so that they can take their place in the national community, and to hold the uneducated until final placement elsewhere (in sanatoriums and nursing homes, concentration camps, etc.) while using their labour; 2) The means of education are strict camp discipline, hard work, ideological education, sports, training and planned leisure; 3) Minors who have reached the age of 16, in respect of whom the care of the state youth services has not led to the desired result or seems hopeless from the very beginning and whose criminal anti-social tendencies need to be combated by police means, are entitled to be admitted to police camps for the protection of youth .[20]

---

So, as Enrico Ferri wrote in his Criminal Sociology, “they condemned me without any evidence,” says the habitual offender, “just because I could do it, and they were absolutely right.“[21]  Even Foucault mentions the “incorrigible criminal”[22] .

The term “asocial” was not invented by the Nazis and was not used exclusively by them as a socio-political or criminal law categorisation of individuals and social groups. The negative socio-biological characteristics associated with the term “asocial”, which justified far-reaching sanctions, were an integral part of the socio-political discourse not only in the Weimar Republic, but also for a long time after 1945. At first glance, these categories seem to be incompatible with democratic values, but they have nevertheless found fertile ground in the legislation of many modern countries.

---

[1] Albrecht, P.-A. (2012). The forgotten freedom. Principles of criminal law in the European security debate. 2nd edition. Kharkiv: Pravo. 184 с. P.14.

[2] Albrecht, P.-A. (2012). The forgotten freedom. Principles of criminal law in the European security debate. 2nd edition. Kharkiv: Pravo. 184 с. P.14.

[3] Deutscher Bundestag (2016). “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus. Wissenschaftliche Dienste. Ausarbeitung. Deutscher Bundestag. WD1-3000-026/16 27. Juni 2016. Geschichte, Zeitgeschichte und Politik. S.4.

[4] Deutscher Bundestag (2016). “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus. Wissenschaftliche Dienste. Ausarbeitung. Deutscher Bundestag. WD1-3000-026/16 27. Juni 2016. Geschichte, Zeitgeschichte und Politik. S.5.

[5] Deutscher Bundestag (2016). “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus. Wissenschaftliche Dienste. Ausarbeitung. Deutscher Bundestag. WD1-3000-026/16 27. Juni 2016. Geschichte, Zeitgeschichte und Politik. S.6.

[6] Lebendiges Museum Online (2025). Die “Schutzhaft”. Lebendiges Museum Online. URL: www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/ns-regime/etablierung/schutzhaft

[7] Improvised detention centres.

[8] Gräfe, G., Post, B., Schneider, A. (2005). Quellen zur Geschichte Thüringens: Die Geheime Staatspolizei im NS-Gau Thüringen 1933 – 1945. Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen.

[9] Deutscher Bundestag (2016). “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus. Wissenschaftliche Dienste. Ausarbeitung. Deutscher Bundestag. WD1-3000-026/16 27. Juni 2016. Geschichte, Zeitgeschichte und Politik. S.4.

[10] A professional criminal was someone who had been convicted three or more times for crimes committed for mercenary reasons.

[11] Hörath, J. (2012). Terrorinstrument der “Volksgemeinschaft?” KZ-Haft für “Asoziale” und “Berufsverbrecher” 1933 bis 1937/38. Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft. 60 (2012), H.6. S.522-523.

[12] Bundesarchiv (1998). Vgl. den Abdruck des “Grunderlasses” bei: Wolfgang Ayaß (Bearb.): “Gemeinschaftsfremde”. Quellen zur Verfolgung von “Asozialen” 1933-1945. Koblenz, 1998. 50.

[13] Falud, C. (2013). Die “Juni-Aktion” 1938. Eine Documentation zur Radikalisierung der Judenverfolgung. Frankfurt/M. 2013. S.129.

[14] Deutscher Bundestag (2016). “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus. Wissenschaftliche Dienste. Ausarbeitung. Deutscher Bundestag. WD1-3000-026/16 27. Juni 2016. Geschichte, Zeitgeschichte und Politik. S.12.

[15] Deutscher Bundestag (2016). “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus. Wissenschaftliche Dienste. Ausarbeitung. Deutscher Bundestag. WD1-3000-026/16 27. Juni 2016. Geschichte, Zeitgeschichte und Politik. S.13.

[16] Wollheim Memorial (2025). Camp Brothel. Wollheim Memorial. URL: www.wollheim-memorial.de

[17] Wickert, C. (2002). Tabu Lagerbordell, in Eschebach/Jacobeit/Wenk: Gedächtnis und Geschlecht. S.44.

[18] Deutscher Bundestag (2016). “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus. Wissenschaftliche Dienste. Ausarbeitung. Deutscher Bundestag. WD1-3000-026/16 27. Juni 2016. Geschichte, Zeitgeschichte und Politik. S.13.

[19] Deutscher Bundestag (2016). “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus. Wissenschaftliche Dienste. Ausarbeitung. Deutscher Bundestag. WD1-3000-026/16 27. Juni 2016. Geschichte, Zeitgeschichte und Politik. S.13.

[20] Deutscher Bundestag (2016). “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus. Wissenschaftliche Dienste. Ausarbeitung. Deutscher Bundestag. WD1-3000-026/16 27. Juni 2016. Geschichte, Zeitgeschichte und Politik. S.14.

[21] Ferri, E. (1985). Criminal Sociology. London: Fisher Unwin. 284 p. P.148.

[22] Foucault, M. (2011). Security, territory, population. A course of lectures delivered at the Collège de France in 1977-1978. 544 pp. P.18.