The
Gestapo was the official
secret police of
Nazi Germany and
German-occupied Europe.
Hermann Göring first formed the unit in 1933. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of
SS national leader,
Heinrich Himmler who in 1936 was appointed Chief of German Police (
Chef der Deutschen Polizei) by Hitler.
[2] In 1936, Himmler made it a suboffice of the
Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) ("Security Police"). Then from 27 September 1939 forward, it was administered by the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) ("Reich Main Security Office") and was considered a sister organization of the
Sicherheitsdienst (SD) ("Security Service").
[3]
According to historian Rupert Butler, "From its creation in 1933 until
its death in May 1945, anyone living in Nazi controlled territory lived
in fear of a visit from the Gestapo...".
[4]
History
As part of the deal in which
Adolf Hitler became
Chancellor of Germany, Hermann Göring—future commander of the
Luftwaffe and an influential Nazi Party official—was named
Interior Minister of
Prussia.
This gave him command of the largest police force in Germany. Soon
afterward, Göring detached the political and intelligence sections from
the police and filled their ranks with Nazis. On 26 April 1933, Göring
merged the two units as the Gestapo. He originally wanted to name it the
Secret Police Office (
German:
Geheimes Polizeiamt), but discovered the German initials "GPA" would be too similar to the
Soviet GPU.
[5]
Its first commander was
Rudolf Diels, a protégé of Göring. Diels was best known as the primary interrogator of
Marinus van der Lubbe after the
Reichstag fire. In late 1933, the
Reich Interior Minister
Wilhelm Frick
wanted to integrate all the police forces of the German states under
his control. Göring outflanked him by removing the Prussian political
and intelligence departments from the state interior ministry.
[6]
Göring himself took over the Gestapo in 1934 and urged Hitler to extend
the agency's authority throughout Germany. This represented a radical
departure from German tradition, which held that law enforcement was
(mostly) a
Land (state) and local matter. In this, he ran into conflict with
Heinrich Himmler, who was police chief of the second most powerful German state,
Bavaria.
Frick did not have the muscle to take on Göring by himself so he allied
with Himmler. With Frick's support, Himmler (pushed on by his right
hand man,
Reinhard Heydrich) took over the political police of state after state. Soon only Prussia was left.
[7]
Göring, concerned that Diels was not ruthless enough to use the Gestapo effectively to counteract the power of the
Sturmabteilung
(SA), handed over its control to Himmler on 20 April 1934. Also on that
date, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of all German police outside
Prussia. Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April
1934, also continued as head of the SS Security Service (
Sicherheitsdienst, SD).
[8]
On 17 June 1936 Hitler appointed Himmler as Chief of all German police and decreed the unification of all police forces.
[9] In this role, Himmler was still nominally subordinate to Frick, but the de facto power was now in the hands of Himmler, who as
Reichsführer-SS, answered only to Hitler. This move gave Himmler operational control over Germany's entire detective force.
[10]
The Gestapo became a national state agency rather than a Prussian state
agency. Himmler also gained authority over all of Germany's uniformed
law enforcement agencies, which were amalgamated into the new
Ordnungspolizei (Orpo: Order Police), which became a national agency under SS general
Kurt Daluege.
[9] Shortly thereafter, Himmler created the
Kriminalpolizei (Kripo: Criminal Police), merging it with the Gestapo into the
Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo: Security Police), under Heydrich's command. The SiPo was considered a complementary organization to the SD.
[3] Heinrich Müller was at that time the Gestapo operations chief.
[11] He answered to Heydrich; Heydrich answered only to Himmler and Himmler answered only to Hitler.
The Gestapo had the authority to investigate cases of
treason, espionage,
sabotage and criminal attacks on the
Nazi Party and Germany. The basic Gestapo law passed by the government in 1936 gave the Gestapo
carte blanche to operate without
judicial oversight. The Gestapo was specifically exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could
sue
the state to conform to laws. As early as 1935, however, a Prussian
administrative court had ruled that the Gestapo's actions were not
subject to judicial review. The SS officer
Werner Best, onetime head of legal affairs in the Gestapo,
[12] summed up this policy by saying, "As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally."
[5]
On 27 September 1939, the security and police agencies of Nazi
Germany—with the exception of the Orpo—were consolidated into the Reich
Main Security Office (
RSHA), headed by Heydrich.
[2] The Gestapo became
Amt IV (Department IV) of RSHA and Müller became the Gestapo Chief, with Heydrich as his immediate superior.
[13] After Heydrich's 1942 assassination, Himmler assumed the leadership of the RSHA, but in January 1943
Ernst Kaltenbrunner was appointed Chief of the RSHA. Müller remained the Gestapo Chief, a position he occupied until the end of the war.
[13] Adolf Eichmann headed the Gestapo's Office of Resettlement and then its Office of Jewish Affairs (
Referat IV B4 or Sub-Department IV, Section B4). He was Müller's direct subordinate.
[14]
The power of the Gestapo most open to misuse was called
Schutzhaft—"protective custody", a
euphemism
for the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings. An
oddity of the system was that the prisoner had to sign his own
Schutzhaftbefehl,
an order declaring that the person had requested
imprisonment—presumably out of fear of personal harm (which, in a way,
was true). In addition, thousands of
political prisoners throughout Germany—and from 1941, throughout the occupied territories under the
Night and Fog Decree—simply
disappeared while in Gestapo custody.
[15]
During World War II, the Gestapo was expanded to around 46,000 members.
After Heydrich's death in June 1942, and as the war progressed,
Müller's power and the independence grew substantially. This trickled
down the chain of his subordinates. It led to much more independence of
action.
Student opposition
Between June 1942 and March 1943, student protests were calling for
an end to the Nazi regime. These included the non-violent resistance of
Hans and
Sophie Scholl, two leaders of the
White Rose
student group. However, resistance groups and those who were in moral
or political opposition to the Nazis were stalled by the fear of
reprisals from the Gestapo. In fact, reprisals did come in response to
the protests. Fearful of an internal overthrow, the forces of Himmler
and the Gestapo were unleashed on the opposition. The first five months
of 1943 witnessed thousands of arrests and executions as the Gestapo
exercised their powers over the German public. Student opposition
leaders were executed in late February, and a major opposition
organization, the
Oster Circle, was destroyed in April, 1943.
The German opposition was in an unenviable position by the late
spring and early summer of 1943. On one hand, it was next to impossible
for them to overthrow Hitler and the party; on the other, the Allied
demand for an unconditional surrender meant no opportunity for a
compromise peace, which left the people no option (in their eyes) other
than continuing the military struggle.
Nevertheless, some Germans did speak out and show signs of protest
during the summer of 1943. Despite fear of the Gestapo after the mass
arrests and executions of the spring, the opposition still plotted and
planned. Some Germans were convinced that it was their duty to apply all
possible expedients to end the war as quickly as possible; that is, to
further the German defeat by all available means. The Gestapo cracked
down ruthlessly on the dissidents in Germany, just as they did
everywhere else.
In June, July and August, the Gestapo continued to move swiftly
against the opposition, rendering any organized opposition impossible.
Arrests and executions were common. Terror against the people had become
a way of life. A second major reason was that the opposition's peace
feelers to the Western Allies did not meet with success.
This was partly because of the aftermath of the
Venlo incident of 1939, when SD and Gestapo agents posing as anti-Nazis in the
Netherlands kidnapped two British
Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officers lured to a meeting to discuss peace terms. That prompted
Winston Churchill
to ban any further contact with the German opposition. In addition, the
British and Americans did not want to deal with anti-Nazis because they
were fearful that the
Soviet Union would believe they were attempting to make deals behind the Soviets' back.
[citation needed]
Nuremberg Trials
Between 14 November 1945 and 3 October 1946, the Allies established an
International Military Tribunal (IMT) to try 22 of 24 major Nazi war criminals and six groups for
crimes against peace,
war crimes and
crimes against humanity.
Nineteen of the 22 were convicted, and twelve of them (Bormann [in
absentia], Frank, Frick, Göring, Jodl, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel,
Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Sauckel, Seyss-Inquart, Streicher), were given
the death penalty; the remaining three (Funk, Hess, Raeder) received
life terms. At this time, the Gestapo was condemned as a criminal
organization with the SS.
Leaders, organisers, investigators and accomplices participating in
the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit
the crimes specified were declared responsible for all acts performed by
any persons in execution of such plan. The official positions of
defendants as heads of state or holders of high government offices were
not to free them from responsibility or mitigate their punishment; nor
was the fact that a defendant acted pursuant to an order of a superior
to excuse him from responsibility, although it might be considered by
the IMT in mitigation of punishment.
At the trial of any individual member of any group or organisation,
the IMT was authorised to declare (in connection with any act of which
the individual was convicted) that the group or organisation to which he
belonged was a criminal organization. When a group or organization was
thus declared criminal, the competent national authority of any
signatory had the right to bring persons to trial for membership in that
organisation, with the criminal nature of the group or organisation
assumed proved.
These groups—the
Nazi party and government leadership, the German
General Staff and High Command (OKW); the
Sturmabteilung (SA); the
Schutzstaffel (SS), including the
Sicherheitsdienst
(SD); and the Gestapo—had an aggregate membership exceeding two
million, making a large number of their members liable to trial if the
organisations were convicted.
The trials began in November 1945. On 1 October 1946, the IMT rendered its judgement on 21 top officials of the
Third Reich:
18 were sentenced to death or to long prison terms, and three
acquitted. The IMT also convicted three of the groups: the Nazi
leadership corps, the SS (including the SD) and the Gestapo. Gestapo
members
Hermann Göring and
Arthur Seyss-Inquart were individually convicted.
Three groups were acquitted of collective war crimes charges, but
this did not relieve individual members of those groups from conviction
and punishment under the
denazification programme. Members of the three convicted groups were subject to apprehension by Britain, the United States, the
Soviet Union and France.
Aftermath
In 1997,
Cologne transformed the former regional Gestapo headquarters in Cologne—the
EL-DE Haus—into a museum to document the Gestapo
's actions.
Organization
On January 1933,
Hermann Göring, Hitler's
minister without portfolio, was appointed the head of the Prussian Police and began filling the political and intelligence units of the
Prussian Secret Police with
Nazi Party members.
[16] On 26 April 1933, he reorganized the force's
Amt III as the
Gestapo, a secret state police intended to serve the Nazi cause.
[17] In 1936, the Gestapo was moved from the Prussian Interior Ministry to the
Reich Interior Ministry and combined with the Kripo (National criminal police) to form the SiPo,
Sicherheitspolizei
(Security Police). Classed as a government agency, it was nominally
under the control of the Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick. However
Himmler, who had been appointed
Chef der Deutschen Polizei (Chief
of German Police) by Hitler, controlled the SS, the Gestapo, the Orpo
(uniformed police) and all investigation units. Although technically
subordinate to Frick, he answered only to Hitler.
[9][10]
The SiPo was placed under the direct command of Reinhard Heydrich who
was already chief of the Nazi Party's intelligence service, the
Sicherheitsdienst (SD).
[9]
The idea was to fully combine the party agency, the SD, with the SiPo,
the state agency. SiPo members were encouraged to become members of the
SS. However in practise, the SiPo and the SD came into jurisdictional
and operational conflict. Gestapo and Kripo had many experienced,
professional policemen and investigators, who considered the SD to be an
incompetent agency run by amateurs.
[3]
In September 1939, the SiPo together with the SD were merged into the newly-created
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA: Reich Main Security Office). Both the Gestapo and Kripo became distinct departments within the RSHA.
[2] Although the
Sicherheitspolizei
was officially disbanded, the term SiPo was figuratively used to
describe any RSHA personnel throughout the remainder of the war.
The Gestapo became known as
Amt IV ("Department or Office IV") with
Heinrich Müller as its chief.
[13] In 1942
Ernst Kaltenbrunner became the RSHA chief after Heydrich was
assassinated in Prague.
[13] The specific internal departments of
Amt IV were as follows:
[18]
Membership of the Gestapo
In 1933, there was no purge of the German police forces.
[26]
The vast majority of Gestapo officers came from the police forces of
the Weimar Republic, members of the SS, the SA, and the NSDAP also
joined the Gestapo.
[27] In 1939, only 3,000 out of the total of 20,000 Gestapo men held SS ranks, and in most cases, these were honorary.
[28]
One man who served in the Prussian Gestapo in 1933 recalled that most
of his co-workers "were by no means Nazis. For the most part they were
young professional civil service officers..."
[28]
The Nazis valued police competence more than politics, so in general in
1933, almost all of the men who served in the various state police
forces under the Weimar Republic stayed on in their jobs.
[29] In
Würzburg,
which is one of the few places in Germany where most of the Gestapo
records survived, every member of the Gestapo was a career policeman or
had a police background.
[30] The Canadian historian
Robert Gellately
wrote that most Gestapo men were not Nazis, but at the same time were
not opposed to the Nazi regime, which they were willing to serve, in
whatever task they were called upon to perform.
[30]
Uniforms
Before their 1939 amalgamation into the RSHA, the Gestapo and Kripo
were plainclothes police agencies and had no uniforms. Although
individual Gestapo officers could and did join the
Allgemeine-SS or other Party organizations, those uniforms would not have been worn on duty.
From June 1936, a concerted effort was made to recruit policemen of
the SiPo into the SS, and SS members into the Kripo and especially the
Gestapo, but with limited success; by 1939 only a small percentage of
Gestapo agents were SS members. With the formation of RSHA in September
1939, Gestapo officers who also held SS rank began to wear the wartime
grey
SS uniform when on duty in the
Hauptamt or regional headquarters (
Abschnitte). Hollywood notwithstanding, after 1939 the sinister black SS uniform was only worn by
Allgemeine-SS reservists; it was abolished in 1942.
[31] Outside the central offices, Gestapo agents working out of the
Stapostellen and
Stapoleitstellen continued to wear civilian suits in keeping with the secretive nature of their work.
There were in fact very strict protocols protecting the identity of
Gestapo field personnel. In most cases, when asked for identification,
an operative was only required to present his warrant disc. This
identified the operative as Gestapo without revealing personal identity
and agents, except when ordered to do so by an authorized official, were
not required to show picture identification, something all non-Gestapo
people were expected to do.
Beginning in 1940, the grey SS uniform was worn by Gestapo in
occupied countries, even those who were not actually SS members, because
agents in civilian clothes had been shot by members of the
Wehrmacht thinking that they were partisans.
Unlike the rest of the SS, the right-side collar patch of the RSHA
was plain black without insignia, as was the uniform cuffband. Gestapo
agents in uniform did not wear SS shoulderboards, but rather
police-pattern shoulderboards piped or underlaid in "poison green" (
giftgrün).
A diamond-shaped black patch with "SD" in white was worn on the lower
left sleeve even by SiPo men who were not actually in the SD. Sometimes
this
Raute was piped in white; there is some debate over whether this may or may not have indicated Gestapo personnel.
Contrary to popular belief, the Gestapo was not the all-pervasive, omnipotent agency in German society.
[32]
In Germany proper, many towns and cities had fewer than 50 official
Gestapo personnel. For example, in 1939 Stettin and Frankfurt am Main
only had a total of 41 Gestapo men combined.
[32] In
Düsseldorf, the local Gestapo office of only 281 men were responsible for the entire Lower Rhine region, which comprised 4 million people.
[33] "V-men", as undercover Gestapo agents were known, were used to infiltrate
Social Democratic and
Communist opposition groups, but this was more the exception, not the rule.
[34] The Gestapo office in
Saarbrücken had 50 full-term informers in 1939.
[34] The District Office in
Nuremberg, which had the responsibility for all of northern
Bavaria, employed a total of 80–100 full-term informers between 1943 and 1945.
[34]
The vast majority of Gestapo informers were not full-term informers
working undercover, but were rather ordinary citizens who for whatever
reason chose to denounce those they knew to the Gestapo.
[35]
According to Canadian historian
Robert Gellately's
analysis of the local offices established, the Gestapo was—for the most
part—made up of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon
denunciations by citizens for their information.
[36]
Gellately argued that it was because of the widespread willingness of
Germans to inform on each other to the Gestapo that Germany between 1933
and 1945 was a prime example of
panopticism.
[37]
Indeed, the Gestapo—at times—was overwhelmed with denunciations and
most of its time was spent sorting out the credible from the less
credible denunciations.
[38] Many of the local offices were understaffed and overworked, struggling with the paper load caused by so many denunciations.
[39]
Gellately has also suggested that the Gestapo was "a reactive
organization" "...which was constructed within German society and whose
functioning was structurally dependent on the continuing co-operation of
German citizens".
[40]
After 1939, when many Gestapo personnel were called up for war-related work such as service with the
Einsatzgruppen, the level of overwork and understaffing at the local offices increased.
[39] For information about what was happening in German society, the Gestapo continued to be mostly dependent upon denunciations.
[41]
80% of all Gestapo investigations were started in response to
information provided by denunciations by ordinary Germans; while 10%
were started in response to information provided by other branches of
the German government and another 10% started in response to information
that the Gestapo itself unearthed.
[38]
Thus, it was ordinary Germans by their willingness to denounce one
another who supplied the Gestapo with the information that determined
whom the Gestapo arrested.
[41]
The popular picture of the Gestapo with its spies everywhere
terrorizing German society has been rejected by many historians as a
myth invented after the war as a cover for German society's widespread
complicity in allowing the Gestapo to work.
[41][42] Work done by
social historians such as
Detlev Peukert,
Robert Gellately,
Reinhard Mann, Inge Marssolek, René Otto, Klaus-Michael Mallamann and
Paul Gerhard, which by focusing on what the local offices were doing has
shown the Gestapo
's almost
total dependence on denunciations from ordinary Germans, and very much
discredited the older "Big Brother" picture with the Gestapo having its
eyes and ears everywhere.
[43] For example, of the 84 cases in
Würzburg of
Rassenschande (race defilement) as sex with Jews were known under the
Nuremberg Laws,
45 (54%) were started in response to denunciations by ordinary people,
two (2%) by information provided by other branches of the government, 20
(24%) via information gained during interrogations of people relating
to other matters, four (5%) from information from (Nazi) NSDAP
organizations, two (2%) during "political evaluations" and 11 (13%) have
no source listed while none were started by Gestapo
's own "observations" of the people of Würzburg.
[44]
An examination of 213 denunciations in
Düsseldorf
showed that 37% were motivated by personal conflicts, no motive could
be established in 39%, and 24% were motivated by support for the Nazi
regime.
[45] The Gestapo always showed a special interest in denunciations concerning sexual matters, especially cases concerning
rassenschande with Jews or between Germans and Polish slave workers; Jews and Catholicism and homosexuality.
[46]
As time went by, anonymous denunciations to the Gestapo caused trouble
to various NSDAP officials, who often found themselves being
investigated by the Gestapo.
[47]
Of the political cases, 61 people were investigated for suspicion of
belonging to the KPD, 44 for the SPD and 69 for other political parties.
[48] Most of the political investigations took place between 1933–35 with the all-time high of 57 cases in 1935.
[48]
After that year, political investigations declined with only 18
investigations in 1938, 13 in 1939, two in 1941, seven in 1942, four in
1943 and one in 1944.
[48]
The "other" category associated with non-conformity included everything
from a man who drew a caricature of Hitler to a Catholic teacher
suspected of being lukewarm about teaching National Socialism in his
classroom.
[48] The "administrative control" category concerned whose were breaking the law concerning residency in the city.
[48] The "conventional criminality" category concerned economic crimes such as money laundering, smuggling and homosexuality.
[49]
Normal methods of investigation included various forms of blackmail, threats and extortion to secure "confessions".
[50] Beyond that, sleep deprivation and various forms of harassment were used as investigative methods.
[50]
Failing that, torture and planting evidence were common methods of
resolving a case, especially if the case concerned someone Jewish.
[51]
Notes
^ Robert Gellately (1992-01). The Gestapo and German Society. ISBN 978-0-19-820297-4. Retrieved 2 June 2009.
^ a b c Lumsden, Robin. A Collector's Guide To: The Allgemeine – SS, p 83.
^ a b c Lumsden, Robin. A Collector's Guide To: The Allgemeine – SS, pp 80–84.
^ Butler, Rupert (2004). Gestapo: A History of Hitler's Secret Police.[page needed]
^ a b Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
^ Flaherty, The SS. 2004, pp 64–66.
^ Flaherty, The SS. 2004, p 66.
^ Williams, Max. Reinhard Heydrich: The Biography: Volume 1. 2001, p 61.
^ a b c d Williams, Max. Reinhard Heydrich: The Biography: Volume 1. 2001, p 77.
^ a b Longerich, Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life, p 204.
^ Weale, Adrian. The SS: A New History. 2010, p 132.
^ McNab, Chris. The SS: 1923–1945, p 156.
^ a b c d Lumsden, Robin. A Collector's Guide To: The Allgemeine – SS, p 84.
^ Weale, Adrian. The SS: A New History. 2010, p 145.
^ Snyder, Louis. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, p 242.
^ McNab, Chris. The SS: 1923–1945, p 150
^ McNab, Chris. The SS: 1923–1945, pp 150, 162.
^ Longerich, Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life, p 470.
^ Although an agent in uniform wore the collar insignia of the equivalent SS rank, he was still addressed as, e.g., Herr Kriminalrat, not Sturmbannführer. The stock character of the "Gestapo Major", usually dressed in the prewar black SS uniform, is a figment of Hollywood.
^ Der Reichsführer SS, Dich ruft die SS (Hermann Hillger KG, Berlin 1942).
^ Jens Banach, "Polizei im NS-System – Ausbildung und Rekrutierung in der Sicherheitspolizei", in: Hans Jürgen Lange (ed.), Die Polizei der Gesellschaft: Zur Soziologie der inneren Sicherheit, (VS Verlag, 2003), page 64.
^ Andrew Mollo, Uniforms of the SS, vol. 5: "Sicherheitsdienst und Sicherheitspolizei 1931–1945"
^ http://www.geschichte-reckenfeld.de/kapitel/entwicklung/00_pdf_dateien/buch_polizei_noethen_tab_dienstgrade.pdf 9 May 2009
^ Besoldung der Beamten http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Soldat/BBesoldung.htm
^ http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Soldat/Besoldung.htm
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1990, p 50.
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, p 50.
^ a b Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, p 51.
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, pp 54–55.
^ a b Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, p 59.
^ Lumsden, Robin. A Collector's Guide To: The Allgemeine – SS, p 56.
^ a b McNab, Chris. The SS: 1923–1945, p 163.
^ Mallmann & Paul, quoted in Crew, p 174
^ a b c Mallmann & Paul, quoted in Crew, p 181
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, pp 132–150.
^ Rees, p 64-65
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, pp 11–12 & 22.
^ a b Rees, p 65
^ a b Mallmann & Paul, quoted in Crew, p 175
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, p 136.
^ a b c Rees, p 64
^ Mallmann & Paul, quoted in Crew, p 168-169
^ Mallmann & Paul, quoted in Crew, p 172-173
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, p 162.
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, p 146.
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, pp 49, 146.
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, pp 151–152.
^ a b c d e Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, p 48.
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, p 49.
^ a b Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, p 131.
^ Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society, p 132.
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo [26.04.2013]
