10. Brutal treatment for prisoners began years before the war
After the Nazis consolidated their power in Germany in the mid-1930s, resistance to their movement and leadership moved underground. This resistance extended to within the barriers of several of the early concentration camps. Reports from prisoners were smuggled to supporters outside of the camps, describing conditions within, as early as 1936. These reports described the brutality of the SS guards, beginning with the arrival at camp. Newly arrived prisoners were beaten with rifle butts, kicked, and threatened with worse by screaming SS guards.
A report by a Social Democrat who was a member of the underground resistance described the shoes issued to the prisoners as “heavy wooden clogs” in which they were forced to perform military-style drill maneuvers. “This footwear was unfamiliar to all and even old army veterans were scarcely able to correctly implement the orders of the young louts”, he wrote. The wooden clogs were issued to all prisoners, as leather was far too valuable to be wasted on them in the minds of the SS hierarchy, it being needed to support other issues far more important for the war effort, such as the heavy boots which the guards used to kick the prisoners.