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During the 1930’s, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) inspected twice several German concentration camps. Later, these initiatives of the ICRC were often considered as a sort of victory of an international humanitarian organization on the national socialist regime and its barbarian oppressive system. At least, this was the point of view of the institutional historiography, as far as the expedition of the ICRC delegates to the camps of Esterwegen, Oranienburg and Dachau in 1935 and in 1938 was concerned. However, these inspections had very limited results and were not able to prevent neither the extension of the concentration camps system of the Nazis nor its transformation to an instrument of massive extermination during the Second World War. Nonetheless, the ICRC was morally gratified through what was seen as a tentative to help the victims, whereas the powers of the Western world watched passively the establishment of the Nazi regime. Thus, the inspections of 1935 and 1938 would retrospectively serve to comfort a humanitarian institution that proved to be powerless when faced to the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis. This article takes the opposite position to the traditional interpretation of the ICRC activities in Nazi Germany during the ‘30s. Indeed, our aim is to demonstrate that it was not only out of humanitarian motivation that the ICRC expedited its missions to these three concentration camps. On the contrary, it was this institution’s own contribution to a policy of appeasement towards Hitler’s Germany, a policy also followed by Switzerland, the country that hosts the ICRC.