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For Auschwitz-Birkenau is a small part of what Auschwitz actually was. To this day, material traces of German investments from 1940-1945 remain in Auschwitz.The scale of these projects even today shatters customary perceptions of Auschwitz, associating the place primarily with barbed wire-fenced blocks and barracks, railroad sidings, and the ruins of gas chambers and crematoria. 

The area we now think of as Auschwitz is in fact the area of the museum, which was established on the most significant but small part of the area of interest. Indeed, it is less than 4% of the area created in 1941. Interessengebiet des KL Auschwitz, the total area of the camp is more than 48 square kilometers. It was this area that constituted the Auschwitz camp. This is evidenced by the way the area was managed – single-handedly by the camp commandant – as well as by the uniform police, guard and construction supervision over it. 

German investment activity-implemented by an organized administrative and design and construction background-manifests full coherence here in terms of economic and spatial planning.

The result was a state of development achieved by 1945 that met the living needs of the SS camp crew (housing, services and recreation) but, above all, fulfilled the current objectives of the German war economy (armaments, construction and food industries) and the forward-looking political and social plans of the Third Reich. Among the latter, one can mention the concept of the Nazi „new European order.” Integral, because closely related to Berlin’s political goals, part of such an organized structure were the mass extermination facilities built for the „final solution of the Jewish question,” as well as specialized facilities for the looting of property after the murdered and the factory exploitation of human corpses. 

The entire area of almost 50 square kilometers of the Auschwitz camp was thus a form of space organization unprecedented in the civilized world, in which an infrastructure was created for the biological elimination of selected national groups, while at the same time the slave power of the conquered nations developed the area for the full life of the German citizens who were to live here after winning the war.