The Gestapo
John C Pursley goes behind the scenes of the infamous German Secret Police
In the years prior to WWII, Germany was a police state where everyone was expected to do as they were told or face the consequences. It worked on the principle rule that if citizens had doubts about the direction the country was going and said nothing, there was little to fear. But those choosing to voice an opposing opinion were punished.
To ensure dissidents would be quickly silenced, a government police force was formed known as the Gestapo. This term is an abridgement for the formal German name Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police), which was essentially the political police force of the National Socialist regime.
The organisation was formed to protect the government from insurrection, sabotage or overthrow, by using surveillance and intelligence gathering. It was also used to suppress dissent and political opposition. The activities of the organisation benefitted and maintained the tyrannical power of the minority who ran the government. Operating outside the established judicial process, prosecuting offenders in its own courts, the Gestapo was effectively allowed to act as judge, jury and executioner.
Gestapo policemen and agents used torture and violence in their interrogations, organised the methods for killing millions of Jews, and severely punished any opposition movements in Germany or in occupied territories.
Origin of the Gestapo
In 1933 the National Socialist Party took control of the government and benefitted from issuing emergency decrees, many of which absolved political police forces from any
limitations concerning legal and constitutional matters.
Among the most serious of the declarations was the Reichstag Fire Decree, issued on 28 February, that suspended individual rights and legal protections, including the right to privacy. This opened the door for the police to investigate, question, and arrest political opponents by reading private mail, listening to telephone calls in secrecy, and unannounced, warrantless searches of citizen's homes.
By 1934, the German government had been transformed into a dictatorship, with Hitler as the head os state. One of the first objectives that the new government pursued was establishing a centralised political police force that would answer directly to government authority.
To start the process the existing decentralised police system was reformed under the leadership of Hermann Göring , second in command of the National Socialist party. He was given the title of Minister of the Interior in Prussia, making him the most important figure in the creation of the Gestapo.
To fortify the organisation, he integrated the forces of the Gestapo into the Prussian political police and handed authority to the organisation to scrutinise and tyrannise any suspected adversaries of the Nazi Party. Although Göring was technically in-charge, Heinrich Himmler felt the SS should control the organisation and instantly became a political rival. However, Göring's interest in police matters diminished as Hitler's plans for a huge military buildup became apparent. Wanting instead to head the
German Air Force (Luftwaffe), on 20 April 1934, Göring yielded complete control to Himmler. Two days later Reinhard Heydrich was made chief of the organisation.
The mission of the Gestapo was to scrutinise and counter all perceived threats to the German regime. Their index of threats included myriad
activities ranging from political disagreement to individuals criticising anything regarding established principles of the government.
Even being a member of certain racial categories or social groups was considered a potential endangerment to the government. To address the extensive range of conceivable threats, the Gestapo was granted substantial authority to decide the ultimate fate of those they arrested.
The organisation was staffed by plainclothes policemen, often referred to as agents. Many of them had been professionally trained as detectives or political policemen during the previous Weimar Republic period. Others came from through the SS intelligence service (SD) and had limited or no training as policemen. They were all hired as part of Himmler's plan to transform the police structure into an institution merging the knowledge of professional policemen with the passion of National Socialist ideologies.
The members were often young, well-educated people that also imparted a fanatic commitment to Hitler's ideas and the preservation of the Third Reich. Although it was a very radical organisation, with seemingly limitless authority, at the peak of its power there were only, surprisingly, about 20,000 members, most of whom were either honorary or auxiliary staff. In reality, the organisation proper consisted of only about 3,000 agents.
Gestapo agents owed their effectiveness to using common police investigation methods, albeit without legal boundaries. Most often, agents relied on information from other police forces and NSDAP organisations; on the public or family members to inform on one another; and random searches. This is why most people incorrectly believed there was widespread surveillance of the German population.
Mode of operations
The Gestapo utilised horrific interrogation methods that included a rudimentary form of modern waterboarding by repeatedly almost drowning prisoners in a bathtub filled with ice-cold water; shocking victims with electric wires attached to their hands, feet, ears and genitalia; crushing a man's testicles in a special vice; securing a prisoner's arms behind their back then hanging the person by the wrists causing shoulder dislocation; beatings with rubber nightsticks and cow-hide whips; burning flesh with matches or a soldering iron; and pulling out finger and toe nails.
Local police were allowed to arrest people on suspicion that they were about to do wrong. They only had to draw up a list of people in their locality who might be suspected of being an enemy of the state and hand it over to the Gestapo. They went after leftists, communists, Jews, gypsies, freemasons, and any others considered to be a dissident or potential opponent.
The agents operated with no civil restraint and had the authority of preventive arrest. They could, on a whim, send people directly to a concentration camp. Under this pretext, it was possible to bypass the court system and deny those arrested legal representation, an appeal of their sentence, or due process regarding a defense in court hearings. The Gestapo was also known to override court decisions when it considered the sentence too lenient. No other institution was authorised to overrule its decisions, it had the last word in all matters.
Those arrested usually had less than three minutes to pack clothing and say goodbye to their families before being sent to the nearest police cell where they were told to sign Form D-11; this was an Order For Protective Custody.
The form was essentially a document
whereas the signee was agreeing to go to prison. Any victims choosing not to sign were beaten or tortured until they did so, or someone simply forged their signature. Once the form was signed, the prisoner was sent to a concentration camp.
How long the prisoner spent in custody depended on the authority’s interpretation of if they had learned their lesson (if indeed there was one to learn in the first place) and would toe the line of the regime once released. However, thousands of citizens simply disappeared after being apprehended.
One of the more notable arrests occurred on 1 July 1937, when Protestant Bishop Martin Niemöeller, a heroic WWI U-boat captain, was arrested for his sermons against National Socialist principles. This made the incompatibility of Christianity with totalitarianism clear to the world. After refusing the offer of a high position in the Nazified German Christian Church, he was sent to Dachau to spend the next seven years in solitary confinement but survived and was liberated by the Allies.
However, things were different for the Jews as the National Socialists considered them political adversaries and any arrested during that time were typically detained because they were either communists or social democrats, not just because of their religion.
The Gestapo also aided and kept track of Jewish relocation as this was considered the best way of dealing with the supposed threat to the National Socialist regime and would rid Germany of the Jews. However, the organisation worked to ensure that Jews’ financial, real estate, and personal property assets were transferred to the state prior to their departure.
With the introduction of the Nüremberg Laws, in the fall 1935, adulterous relationships and potential marriages between Jews and nonJewish Germans were outlawed. Treatment would continue to worsen when the answer to the
Jewish Question was resolved by SS Sturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann.
If not already intolerable, the advent of the war totally removed any remaining restraints from operations as agents followed the Wehrmacht everywhere they invaded. The practice of encouraging individuals to inform on the activities of fellow countrymen was encouraged and the same terror tactics that had been so successful in Germany were incorporated.
Agents employed in German
occupied regions brutally handled the local populations with the intent to terminate any action they considered resistance to the occupation. They partook in the most repulsive atrocities in the occupied countries including suppression of partisan activities and vicious reprisals against civilians.
They also participated in the Einsatzgruppen (deployment groups), which were mobile death squads that followed the German regular army into Poland and Russia to kill Jews and other people they considered inferior or undesirable.
Included in their reign of terror was the policing of foreign forced labourers and organising the deportations of Jews from across Europe to ghettos, concentration camps and killing sites.
Nüremberg Trials
When the war in Europe ended on 8 May 1945, so did the activities of the Gestapo. Many agents were apprehended, but numerous others evaded the allies. The SS, SD and Gestapo were declared criminal organisations and some senior members were tried for the organisation of war crimes and participation in the execution of offences against humanity.
These trials of former Party and Gestapo members were held in Nüremberg, Germany, in 1945–46. In total, 199 defendants were tried, resulting in 161 convictions and 37 death sentences. Some of the trials included Holocaust crimes, but the ones held by the USA focused attention on leaders of the Einsatzgruppen, which included the Gestapo.