The SS concentration camp system has been one of the most widely researched institutions of National Socialist Germany. Yet the fact that many of the forced-labor concentration camps were initially established around stone quarries and brickworks has received little attention. In The Architecture of Oppression, Paul B. Jaskot takes up this issue by asking the following question: why did the SS choose to focus so many of its forced-labor concerns around the production of building materials? Through an analysis of such major Nazi building projects as the Nuremberg Party Rally Grounds and Albert Speer’s plans for the rebuilding of Berlin, Jaskot ties together the development of the German building economy, state architectural goals and the rise of the SS as a political and economic force. In so doing, he argues that the architectural history of Nazi Germany is inextricably linked to its most punitive institutions.

This book re-evaluates not only the architectural history of Nazi Germany but also the development of the forced-labor concentration camp system. Further, the author sheds new light on Speer’s relationship to criminal state policy by foregrounding his involvement with the SS and the German monumental building The Architecture of Oppression standing of the conjunction of culture and politics in the Nazi period as well as the agency of architects and SS administrators in enabling this process.

The author

Paul B. Jaskot is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at DePaul University in Chicago. His work focuses on the relationship between politics and culture in modern European Art and Architecture.