I will post the information of the Gestapo
from Wikipedia and other links.
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Schutzstaffel (SS)
Emblem
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Plainclothes Gestapo
agents during the White Buses operations in 1945.
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Agency overview
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Formed
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26 April 1933
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Preceding Agency
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Prussian Secret Police
Founded 1851. |
Dissolved
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8 May 1945
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Type
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Secret Police
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Jurisdiction
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Nazi Germany
Occupied Europe |
Headquarters
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Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin
52°30′26″N 13°22′57″E |
Employees
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32,000 c.1944
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Ministers responsible
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Hermann Göring 1933–1934, Minister
President of Prussia
Wilhelm Frick 1936–1943 (nominal authority), Interior Minister Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, Chef der Deutschen Polizei, 1936–1945; Interior Minister, 1943–1945 |
Agency executives
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Rudolf Diels 1933–1934, Commander, Prussian
Secret Police Office
SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, Director, Gestapo, 1934–1936; Director, SiPo, 1936–1939; Director, RSHA 1939–1942 SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, Chief of Operations, Gestapo, 1936–1939; Director, Gestapo (RSHA Amt IV), 1939–1945 |
Parent agency
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The
Gestapo (German pronunciation: [ɡeˈstaːpo, ɡəˈʃtaːpo];
abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei, "Secret State
Police") was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and
German-occupied Europe. Hermann Göring 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. 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"). 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...".
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Heinrich Himmler and
Hermann Göring at the meeting to formally hand over control of the Gestapo
(Berlin, 1934).
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Rudolf
Diels, first Commander of the Gestapo; 1933–1934
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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" looked and sounded too much like
the Russian GPU.
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. 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.
Concerned
that Diels was not ruthless enough to effectively counteract the power of the Sturmabteilung
(SA), Göring handed over control of the Gestapo 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).
On
17 June 1936, Hitler decreed the unification of all police forces in the Reich
and named Himmler as Chief of German Police. While Himmler was still nominally
subordinate to Frick, this action effectively merged the police into the SS,
removing it from Frick's control. Himmler, as Reichsführer-SS, answered
only to Hitler. This move gave Himmler operational control over Germany's
entire detective force. 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. 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. Heinrich Müller was at that time the
Gestapo operations chief. 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 review—in effect, putting it above the law. 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, summed up this policy by saying,
"As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is
acting legally."
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. The Gestapo became Amt IV (Department IV) of RSHA and Müller
became the Gestapo Chief, with Heydrich as his immediate superior. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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1939 photograph; shown
from left to right are Franz Josef Huber, Arthur Nebe, Heinrich Himmler,
Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller. According to the archival caption, these
men are planning the investigation of the bomb assassination attempt on Adolf
Hitler of 8 November 1939 in Munich.
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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.
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German Gestapo agents
arrested after the liberation of Liège, Belgium, are herded together in a cell
in the citadel of Liege. (October 1944)
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Nuremberg
Trials
Main
articles: Nuremberg Trials
and The Holocaust
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 that time, the Gestapo was
condemned as a criminal organization, along 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, Ernst Kaltenbrunner 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.
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Gestapo headquarters
at 8 Prinz Albrecht Street in Berlin (1933)
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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. On 26
April 1933, he reorganized the force's Amt III as the Gestapo, a
secret state police intended to serve the Nazi cause. 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.
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). 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.
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.
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. In 1942 Ernst Kaltenbrunner became the RSHA
chief after Heydrich was assassinated in Prague. The specific internal
departments of Amt IV were as follows:
Department
A (Political opponents)
- Communists (A1)
- Counter Sabotage (A2)
- Reactionaries and Liberals (A3)
- Assassinations (A4)
Department
B (Sects and Churches)
- Catholics (B1)
- Protestants (B2)
- Freemasons (B3)
- Jews (B4)
Department
C (Administration and Party Affairs)
The
central administrative office of the Gestapo, responsible for card files of all
personnel including all officials.
Department
D (Occupied Territories)
A repeat of
departments A and B for use outside the Reich.- Opponents of the Regime (D1)
- Churches and Sects (D2)
- 1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment
Department
E (Counterintelligence)
- In the Reich (E1)
- Policy Formation (E2)
- In the West (E3)
- In Scandinavia (E4)
- In the East (E5)
- In the South (E6)
It
should be noted that in 1941 Referat N, the central command office of
the Gestapo was formed. However, these internal departments remained and the
Gestapo continued to be a department under the RSHA umbrella.
Local
offices
The
local offices of the Gestapo, known as Stapostellen and Stapoleitstellen,
answered to a local commander known as the Inspekteur der Sicherheitspolizei
und des SD ("Inspector of the Security Police and Security
Service") who, in turn, was under the dual command of Referat N of
the Gestapo and also his local SS and Police Leader. The classic image of the
Gestapo officer, dressed in trench coat and hat, can be attributed to Gestapo
offices in German cities and larger towns. This image seems to have been
popularized by the assassination of the former Chancellor General Kurt von
Schleicher in 1934. General von Schleicher and his wife were gunned down in
their Berlin home by three men dressed in black trench coats and wearing black
fedoras. The killers of General von Schleicher were widely believed to have
been Gestapo men. At a press conference held later the same day, Hermann Göring
was asked by foreign correspondents to respond to a hot rumour that General von
Schleicher had been murdered in his home. Göring stated that the Gestapo had
attempted to arrest Schleicher, but that he had been "shot while
attempting to escape".
Auxiliary
duties
The
Gestapo also maintained offices at all Nazi concentration camps, held an office
on the staff of the SS and Police Leaders, and supplied personnel as needed to
formations such as the Einsatzgruppen. Personnel assigned to these
auxiliary duties were often removed from the Gestapo chain of command and fell
under the authority of branches of the SS.
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Obergruppenführer und General
der Polizei und Waffen-SS Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Chief of the RSHA and
President of Interpol
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Ranks
The
Gestapo maintained police detective ranks which were used for all officers,
both those who were and who were not concurrently SS members.
Junior
Career
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Senior
Career
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Orpo
Equivalent
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SS
Equivalent
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Kriminalassistentanwärter
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Wachtmeister
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Unterscharführer
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apl. Kriminalassistent
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Oberwachtmeister
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Scharführer
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Kriminalassistent
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Revieroberwachtmeister
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Oberscharführer
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Kriminaloberassistent
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Hauptwachtmeister
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Hauptscharführer
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Kriminalsekretär
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Meister
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Sturmscharführer
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Kriminalobersekretär
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Hilfskriminalkommissar
Kriminalkommissar auf Probe apl. Kriminalkommissar |
Leutnant
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Untersturmführer
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Kriminalinspektor
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Kriminalkommissar with less than three years in that rank
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Oberleutnant
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Obersturmführer
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Kriminalkommissar
Kriminalrat with less than three years in that rank |
Hauptmann
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Hauptsturmführer
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Kriminalrat
Kriminaldirektor Regierungs- und Kriminalrat |
Major
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Sturmbannführer
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Oberregierungs- u. Kriminalrat
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Oberstleutnant
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Obersturmbannführer
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Regierungs- u. Kriminaldirektor
Reichskriminaldirektor |
Oberst
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Standartenführer
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- Junior Career = einfachen Vollzugsdienst der Sicherheitspolizei (Laufbahn U 18: SS-Unterführer der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD).
- Senior Career = leitenden Vollzugsdienst der Sicherheitspolizei (Laufbahn XIV: SS-Führer der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD).
Pay
Grades
Pay
Grade
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Annual Salary 1938
Reichsmark (RM) |
Ranks
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A8c3
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2,160–2,340
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apl.
Kriminalassistent
Kriminalassistent |
A7c
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2,000–3,000
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Kriminaloberassistent
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A7a
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2,350–3,500
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Kriminalsekretär
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A5b
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2,300–4,200
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Kriminalobersekretär
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A4c1
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2,800–5,300
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Hilfskriminalkommissar
Kriminalkommissar auf Probe apl. Kriminalkommissar Kriminalkommissar |
A4c2
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2,800–5,000
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Kriminalinspektor
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A3b
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4,800–7,000
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Kriminalrat
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A2d
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4,800–7,800
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Kriminaldirektor
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A2c2
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4,800–8,400
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Regierungs-und
Kriminalrat
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A2b
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7,000–9,700
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Oberregierungs-und
Kriminalrat
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A1b
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6,200–10,600
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Regierungs-
und Kriminaldirektor
Reichskriminaldirektor |
Median
annual wage for an industrial worker was 1,495 RM in 1939. In the same year the
median salary for a privately employed white-collar worker was 2,772 RM.
Membership
of the Gestapo
In
1933, there was no purge of the German police forces. 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. In 1939, only 3,000 out
of the total of 20,000 Gestapo men held SS ranks, and in most cases, these were
honorary. 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..." 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. 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. 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.
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Grey service uniform
worn by RSHA personnel.
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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 black SS uniform was only worn by Allgemeine-SS
reservists; it was abolished in 1942. 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 strict protocols protecting the identity of Gestapo field personnel. 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. 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. In Düsseldorf, the local Gestapo
office of only 281 men were responsible for the entire Lower Rhine region,
which comprised 4 million people. "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. The Gestapo
office in Saarbrücken had 50 full-term informers in 1939. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. Many of the local offices were
understaffed and overworked, struggling with the paper load caused by so many
denunciations. 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".
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. For information about what was happening in
German society, the Gestapo continued to be mostly dependent upon
denunciations. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. As time went by, anonymous
denunciations to the Gestapo caused trouble to various NSDAP officials, who
often found themselves being investigated by the Gestapo.
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. Most of the
political investigations took place between 1933–35 with the all-time high of
57 cases in 1935. 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. 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. The "administrative control" category concerned whose were
breaking the law concerning residency in the city. The "conventional
criminality" category concerned economic crimes such as money laundering,
smuggling and homosexuality.
Normal
methods of investigation included various forms of blackmail, threats and
extortion to secure "confessions". Beyond that, sleep deprivation and
various forms of harassment were used as investigative methods. Failing that,
torture and planting evidence were common methods of resolving a case,
especially if the case concerned someone Jewish.
Cooperation
with the NKVD
From
the Autumn of 1939, Soviet secret police (NKVD)
and Gestapo closely collaborated in the aftermath of the partition of Poland.
Several conferences took place (see: Gestapo-NKVD
Conferences). Exchanges of prisoners took place as early as December
1939. In March 1940, representatives of the NKVD and Gestapo met for the third
time in the best known of these conferences which lasted for one week in
Zakopane, to coordinate the pacification of resistance in Poland. The Soviet
Union delivered hundreds of German and Austrian communists to the Gestapo, as
unwanted foreigners, together with relevant documents. The Soviet-Nazi
cooperation continued up to the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June
1941.
Counterintelligence
The
Polish government in exile in London during World War II received sensitive
military information about Nazi Germany from agents and informants throughout
Europe. After Germany conquered Poland in the autumn of 1939, Gestapo officials
believed that they had neutralized Polish intelligence activities.
Polish
intelligence resistance
Some
of the Polish information about the movement of German police and SS units to
the East during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1941
was similar to information British intelligence secretly got through
intercepting and decoding German police and SS messages sent by radio
telegraphy.
In
1942, the Gestapo discovered a cache of Polish intelligence documents in Prague
and were surprised to see that Polish agents and informants had been gathering
detailed military information and smuggling it out to London, via Budapest and
Istanbul. The Poles identified and tracked German military trains to the
Eastern front and identified four Ordnungspolizei ("Order
Police") battalions sent to conquered areas of the Soviet Union in October
1941 and engaged in war crimes and mass murder.
Polish
agents also gathered detailed information about the morale of German soldiers
in the East. After uncovering a sample of the information the Poles had
reported, Gestapo officials concluded that Polish intelligence activity
represented a very serious danger to Germany. As late as 6 June 1944, Heinrich
Müller—concerned about the leakage of information to the Allies—set up a
special unit called Sonderkommando Jerzy that was meant to root out the
Polish intelligence network in western and southwestern Europe.
Principal
agents and officers
- Heinrich Baab (SiPo-SD Frankfurt)
- Ernst Misselwitz (Hauptscharführer SiPo-SD Paris)
- Klaus Barbie (SiPo-SD Lyon)
- Werner Best (SiPo-SD Copenhagen)
- Karl Bömelburg
- Theodor Dannecker (SiPo-SD Paris)
- Rudolf Diels (Chief 1933–1934)
- Adolf Eichmann (RSHA Berlin)
- Hans Ehlich
- Gerhard Flesch
- Hermann Göring (Founder of the Gestapo)
- Oswald Gudenlach
- Viktor Harnischfeger
- Reinhard Heydrich (SD, SiPo, Gestapo Chief 1934–1939, RSHA Chief 1939–1942)
- Heinrich Himmler (Reichsführer-SS)
- Ernst Kaltenbrunner (RSHA Chief 1943–1945)
- Herbert Kappler
- Helmut Knochen (Paris)
- Kurt Kohl (SiPo-SD Lille)
- Kurt Lischka (Paris)
- Violette Morris
- Heinrich Müller (Chief 1939–1945)
- Karl Oberg (Paris)
- Pierre Paoli
- Henry Oliver Rinnan
- Karl Eberhard Schöngarth
- Franz Six (RSHA)
- Max Wielen
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