Explores Auschwitz's construction, revealing architectural plans and documents that expose the SS's role in orchestrating genocide.

Commemorating 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, this book tells the story of the camp’s construction and its evolution into the largest mass murder factory of all time. Using hundreds of captured German documents and architectural plans, the book is a unique historical source of how the architects came to plan and accomplish the horror we now call Auschwitz.

Drawing on key documents from the Building Office archive, this in-depth study uses plans, letters, telegrams, worksite labour reports and minutes of meetings. It reveals how the SS needed civilian knowledge to install electrical, sewage and heating systems, and build chimneys and other structures. It explains how various outside contractors were involved in cooperating in genocide and shows just how eager they were to produce goods for the SS for financial reward.

Just after the construction had begun on Birkenau in 1941, architectural plans were presented to include new crematoria and gas chambers. By the summer of 1943 Birkenau had been transformed into a murder camp but building and planning to further extend the site continued. In November 1944 Himmler gave the order to halt and dismantle the extermination facilities to conceal their murderous activities. When the Red Army arrived on 27 January 1945, most of the camp was still intact. Although the SS had incinerated the camps’ archives they forgot to destroy the construction archive, which was kept in another building. As a result, the Russians found many of the technical drawings including construction blueprints that clearly detailed the extermination facilities.

With detailed captions and text together with a plethora of rare photographs, the book is an important study into those that masterminded the murder of over 1 million people.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter I: Auschwitz I Stammlager 1940–1941
• Chapter II: Evolution of Auschwitz 1941
• Chapter III: Blueprint to Murder – Birkenau 1941–1943
• Chapter IV: Operation of the Crematoria 1943
• Chapter V: Frenzied Killing 1944
• Aftermath
• Appendix 1: The SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, May 1940
• Appendix 2: The SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, 1 February 1942
• Appendix 3: The Central Construction Office, January 1943
• Appendix 4: List of Private Companies Assisting in Construction and Maintenance of Auschwitz
• Appendix 5: Civilian Workers
• Appendix 6: List of Members of the Central Construction Office of Auschwitz, 25 November 1941
• Appendix 7: List of Members of the Central Construction Office of Auschwitz, 15 December 1942
• Appendix 8: List of Members of the Central Construction Office of Auschwitz, January/2 July/1 September 1943
• Appendix 9: List of Officers Appointed to Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1940–1945
• Appendix 10: List of Construction Sites at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, 31 March–15 July 1942. List of Construction Sites at Birkenau, 9 April 1943
• Appendix 11: Departments of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (SS-Wirtschafts und Verwaltungshauptamt; SS-WVHA)
• Appendix 12: Architects of Genocide
• Notes and Sources
• Backmatter