Glucks was born 1889 in Odenkirchen (now part of Monchengladbach) in the Rhineland. Having completed gymnasium in Dusseldorf, he worked in his father's business, a fire insurance agency. In 1909, Glucks joined the army for one year as a volunteer, serving in the artillery. In 1913, he was in England, and later moved to Argentina as a trader.

When Eicke became field commander of the SS Division Totenkopf during the summer of 1939, Glucks was promoted by Himmler on 15 November 1939 as Eicke's successor to the post of Concentration Camps Inspector. As the Concentration Camps Inspector, Glucks was directly subordinate to Himmler--as Eicke had been--but, in contrast with the warm relation between Himmler and the older Eicke, Glucks only rarely met with Himmler, who promoted him not for his leadership competencies but for his ability to "provide the administrative continuity" with Eicke's policies. Glucks made few changes, leaving the organizational structure intact as Eicke had set it up. Because Glucks never served inside a concentration camp, some senior camp members were suspicious and considered him nothing more than a desk-side bureaucrat. In terms of his leadership style, he preferred men of action and allowed them some autonomy in operating their respective camps. Glucks's responsibilities at first mainly covered the use of concentration camp inmates for forced labour. In this phase, he urged camp commandants to lower the death rate in the camps, as it went counter to the economic objectives his department was to fulfill. Other orders of his were to ask for the inmates to be made to work continuously. At the same time, it was Glucks who recommended on 21 February 1940, Auschwitz, a former Austrian cavalry barracks, as a suitable site for a new concentration camp to Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. Glucks accompanied Himmler and several chief directors of I.G. Farben on 1 March 1941 for a visit to Auschwitz, where it was decided that the camp would be expanded to accommodate up to 30,000 prisoners, an additional camp would be established at nearby Birkenau capable of housing 100,000 POWs, and that a factory would be constructed in proximity with the camp prisoners placed at I.G. Farben's disposal. On 20 April 1941 Glucks was promoted to the rank of an SS-Brigadefuhrer and in November 1943, Glucks was made SS-Gruppenfuhrer and a Generalleutnant of the Waffen-SS. From 1942 on, Glucks was increasingly involved in the implementation of the "Final Solution", along with Oswald Pohl. To oversee the coordination of camp related activities, which varied from the medical concerns of personnel and prisoners, the status of construction projects, and the progress of extermination operations, Glucks, along with other senior SS camp managers, attended weekly meetings conducted by Pohl. Glucks never attempted to outshine his superior and was quite aware of his subordination to Pohl.

how many camps were there
and that a factory would be constructed in proximity with the camp prisoners placed at I.G. Farben's disposal.