Gestapo
Its 1st commander was Rudolf Diels, a protxgx of Gxring. 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. Gxring outflanked him by removing the Prussian political and intelligence departments from the state interior ministry. Gxring 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 a Land (state) and local matter. In this, he ran into conflict with Heinrich Himmler, who was police chief of the 2nd most powerful German state, Bavaria. Frick didn't have the muscle to take on Gxring 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.
Gxring, concerned that Diels wasn't ruthless enough to use the Gestapo effectively to counteract the power of the Sturmabteilung, 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).
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 Reichsfxhrer-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, 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 Mxller 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 reviewâ€"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 Germanyâ€"with the exception of the Orpoâ€"were consolidated into the Reich Main Security Office, headed by Heydrich. The Gestapo became Amt IV (Department IV) of RSHA and Mxller 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. Mxller 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 Mxller's direct subordinate.
The power of the Gestapo most open to misuse was called Schutzhaftâ€""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 imprisonmentâ€"presumably out of fear of personal harm. In addition, thousands of political prisoners throughout Germanyâ€"and from 1941, throughout the occupied territories under the Night and Fog Decreeâ€"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, Mxller's power and the independence grew substantially. This trickled down the chain of his subordinates. It led to much more independence of action.
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 1st 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 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 2nd major reason was that the opposition's peace feelers to the Western Allies didn't 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 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 didn't 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.
Between 14 November 1945 and 3 October 1946, the Allies established an International Military Tribunal 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, Gxring, 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 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 groupsâ€"the Nazi party and government leadership, the German General Staff and High Command ; the Sturmabteilung (SA); the Schutzstaffel (SS), including the Sicherheitsdienst (SD); and the Gestapoâ€"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 and the Gestapo. Gestapo members Hermann Gxring and Arthur Seyss-Inquart were individually convicted.
Three groups were acquitted of collective war crimes charges, but this didn't 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.
In 1997, Cologne transformed the former regional Gestapo headquarters in Cologneâ€"the EL-DE Hausâ€"into a museum to document the Gestapo's actions.
On January 1933, Hermann Gxring, 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 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. 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. 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 central administrative office of the Gestapo, responsible for card files of all personnel including all officials.
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