"The SS camps have become symbols of the crimes committed by the Third Reich during the Second World War. But the camps were not products of the war or the Holocaust – they were much older. A major research project based at Birkbeck (University of London) has recently investigated the emergence and development of the SS camps between 1933 and 1939, as well as their legacy for the infernal wartime camps. The website includes a history of the pre-war SS camps, over 30 documents (in translation), facsimiles of original German documents, podcasts of lectures on the Nazi camps, guides to further reading, links to online resources."