"From the moment they seized power, the Nazi leaders professed the greatest contempt for the individual. A large number of German conservatives, ignorant of the facts and appalled by the burning of the Reichstag, assented to the incarceration of the political enemies of the regime without a trial. They may have regarded this measure as purely provisional and justified by the danger of civil war, and assumed that the National Socialists would soon reinstate legal procedure. They were mistaken. The concentration camps, better called torture camps, are, to this day, a state institution."