[117] The Gestapoat timeswas overwhelmed with denunciations and most of its time was spent sorting out the credible from the less credible denunciations. In December, 1932, Schleicher became chancellor. Both the Gestapo and Kripo became distinct departments within the RSHA. SS vs. Gestapo - VS Pages History has indeed told us terrifying tales of the Holocaust and World War II, which claimed countless innocent lives. [33] In January 1943, Himmler appointed Ernst Kaltenbrunner RSHA chief; almost seven months after Heydrich had been assassinated. [102], In 1933, there was no purge of the German police forces. This page was last edited on 26 April 2023, at 18:29. It was also largely responsible for planning and carrying out the Holocaust. [125] The Gestapo always showed a special interest in denunciations concerning sexual matters, especially cases concerning Rassenschande with Jews or between Germans and foreigners, in particular Polish slave workers; the Gestapo applied even harsher methods to the foreign workers in the country, especially those from Poland,[126] Jews, Catholics and homosexuals. Schleicher and Bredow tried to control the activities of the National Socialist . [35] During the Holocaust, Eichmann's department within the Gestapo coordinated the mass deportation of European Jews to the Nazis' extermination camps. [113] In Germany proper, many towns and cities had fewer than 50 official Gestapo personnel. [g], Several terms redirect here. However, this fact was cashed upon to invite empathy from the public as well as to add shock value. [121], The popular picture of the Gestapo with its spies everywhere terrorising 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. [18] Rhm's position was menacing as more than 4.5 million men fell under his command once the militias and veterans organisations were absorbed by the SA,[19] a fact which fuelled Rhm's aspirations; his dream of fusing the SA and Reichswehr together was undermining Hitler's relationships with the leadership of Germany's armed forces. The Gestapo is a short-lived police organization that existed around 1934-1939 only while the SS is longer since they existed for sixteen years around 1929-1945 before being abolished. [62] From the Nazis rise to national power in 1933, the number of court verdicts against homosexuals steadily increased and only declined once the Second World War started. [134] As historian Eric Johnson remarked, "The Nazi terror was selective terror", with its focus upon political opponents, ideological dissenters (clergy and religious organisations), career criminals, the Sinti and Roma population, handicapped persons, homosexuals and above all, upon the Jews. [98] 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. Rhm wanted the SA to be run like the German Army, and he went about creating a structural hierarchy in the organization, a general staff, a training college, and placed Hitler himself at the very top of the hierarchy he had created. [137] Lastly, the Gestapo's effectiveness, while aided by denunciations and the watchful eye of ordinary Germans, was more the result of the co-ordination and co-operation amid the various police organs within Germany, the assistance of the SS, and the support provided by the various Nazi Party organisations; all of them together forming an organised persecution network. Within Germany and areas which were incorporated within the Reich for the purpose of civil administration, local offices of the Gestapo, criminal police, and SD were formally separate. [151][152] Nineteen of the 22 were convicted, and twelveMartin Bormann (in absentia), Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Hermann Gring, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Julius Streicherwere given the death penalty. [100] It was the Gestapo chief, SS-Brigadierfhrer Heinrich Mller, who kept Hitler abreast of the killing operations in the Soviet Union and who issued orders to the four Einsatzgruppen that their continual work in the east was to be "presented to the Fhrer. The Abwehr ( German for resistance or defence, but the word usually means counterintelligence in a military context; pronounced [apve]) was the German military-intelligence service for the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht from 1920 to 1945. [103] By March 1937, the Gestapo employed an estimated 6,500 people in fifty-four regional offices across the Reich. [4] "Selective terror" by the Gestapo, as mentioned by Johnson, is also supported by historian Richard Evans who states that, "Violence and intimidation rarely touched the lives of most ordinary Germans. within the Reich as the Gestapo, in the occu-pied countries it was known as the Sipo-SD. 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. By 1932, the SA employed about 400,000 people and by the time Hitler had come to power in 1933, it consisted of over 10,00,000 people. Bonhoeffer was initially charged with conspiring to rescue Jews, using his foreign travels for non-intelligence matters, and misusing his intelligence position . The Gestapo were has always done only a dirty job in cooperation with the . Others were arrested simply on the basis of being "suspected of activities hostile to the State" or that there was reason to "suppose that his dealings might harm society". [99] 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. "[101], According to regulations issued by the Reich Security Main Office in 1940, women who had been trained in social work or having a similar education could be hired as female detectives. Schutzstaffel Agency overview Type Paramilitary Jurisdiction Nazi Germany German-occupied Europe Headquarters Prinz-Albrecht-Strae . [79] Despite the fear of the Gestapo after mass arrests and executions in the spring, the opposition still plotted and planned. The Abwehr was a German intelligence organization from 1921 to 1944. [34] The specific internal departments of Amt IV were as follows:[95], In 1941 Referat N, the central command office of the Gestapo was formed. To join the SS, prospective members had to prove that none of them had any sort of Jewish roots in the ancestry traced back to over one hundred years. Denunciation was the exception, not the rule, as far as the behaviour of the vast majority of Germans was concerned. Although an agent in uniform wore the collar insignia of the equivalent SS rank, he was still addressed as, e.g., Operation Crossbow Preliminary missions for the Operation Overlord, https://english.radio.cz/petscheks-palace-once-headquarters-nazi-secret-police-8575365, USHMM, "Law and Justice in the Third Reich", US National Archives, "German Police Records Opened at the National Archives", Avalon Project, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, The National Socialist Document Center of Cologne, "From Nazi to Criminal to Post-War Spy: German Intelligence Hired Klaus Barbie as Agent (20 January 2011)", "Press Release nr00-52: German Police Records Opened at the National Archives", Festung Furulund magasinet Dagbladet.no, Collection of testimonies concerning Gestapo activity in occupied Poland during WWII in "Chronicles of Terror" database, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gestapo&oldid=1151862694, Reactionaries, liberals and opposition (A3). The ordinary uniformed ones doing office jobs were called Algemeine SS or ordinary SS The size of the SS increased dramatically and eventually had 38 Divisions of which half were not German. [131] Beyond that, sleep deprivation and various forms of harassment were used as investigative methods. [87] Describing the activities of the organisation, Gring boasted about the utter ruthlessness required for Germany's recovery, the establishment of concentration camps for that purpose, and even went on to claim that excesses were committed in the beginning, recounting how beatings took place here and there. [67] 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. The Gestapo ruthlessly eliminated opposition to the Nazis within Germany and its occupied territories and, in partnership with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD; Security Service), was responsible for the roundup of Jews throughout Europe for deportation to extermination camps. When the war started, the Gestapo basically had to identify and arrest any suspicious person and send him/her to a concentration camp, or kill him/her on the spot. He had to count on his senior officials support for his rule, and he gave the go-ahead for the plan to put Rhm out of the picture once and for all. "[141] Once the German armies advanced into enemy territory, they were accompanied by Einsatzgruppen staffed by officers from the Gestapo and Kripo, who usually operated in the rear areas to administer and police the occupied land. Together with the SS, the Gestapo managed the treatment of inferior races, such as Jews and Roma (Gypsies). On June 17, 1936, Himmler, in addition to his position as head of the SS, took control of all German police forces, including the Ordnungspolizei (German: Order Police), with his appointment as Reichsfhrer SS and chief of the German police. [109], Whether trained as police originally or not, Gestapo agents themselves were shaped by their socio-political environment. The Gestapo was somewhat of a division of the SS, making SS the parent organization. Nevertheless, in practice there was jurisdictional overlap and operational conflict between the SD and Gestapo. The Nazi Party: The Abwehr [27] Heinrich Mller was at that time the Gestapo operations chief. Rhm harbored the same intentions. The original foundation date of the Gestapo can be traced back in April 1933 whereas the foundation date of the SS is originally on 1923. [39], 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. Hitler's Two Armies - HistoryNet Abwehr | Encyclopedia.com Their victims also included the unemployed, the disabled, homosexuals, religious leaders, and political opponents. With its dramatic rise to power, the SA began to slowly assume themselves to be somewhat of a replacement to the German Army. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. [140] To this end, the Gestapo was "a vital component both in Nazi repression and the Holocaust. [15] Many of the Gestapo employees in the newly established offices were young and highly educated in a wide variety of academic fields and moreover, represented a new generation of National Socialist adherents, who were hard-working, efficient, and prepared to carry the Nazi state forward through the persecution of their political opponents. 6789 Quail Hill Pkwy, Suite 211 Irvine CA 92603. The SS - Definition & Facts Terror against "state enemies" had become a way of life to such a degree that the Gestapo's presence and methods were eventually normalised in the minds of people living in Nazi Germany. [146] While in many countries the Nazis occupied in the East, the local domestic police forces supplemented German operations, noted Holocaust historian, Raul Hilberg, asserts that "those of Poland were least involved in anti-Jewish actions. The right collar patch was black without the sig runes. Josef Jakobs - Agent of the Abwehr or the Gestapo? The organisation of the security structures in the Nazi Germany was very complicated, often quite illogical, and the limit between different organisations like Gestapo or the SD or the Abwehr, is often difficult to draw. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. by Walter Schellenberg 12 Aug 2002, 20:05, Post Uniforms worn by Gestapo men assigned to the Einsatzgruppen in occupied territories, were at first indistinguishable from the Waffen-SS field uniform. Abwehr was the German military intelligence organization. [119] Gellately has also suggested that the Gestapo was "a reactive organisationconstructed within German society and whose functioning was structurally dependent on the continuing co-operation of German citizens". [33] After Heydrich's 1942 assassination, Himmler assumed the leadership of the RSHA until January 1943, when Ernst Kaltenbrunner was appointed chief. Anyone suspected of even having made an anti-Nazi joke would be subjected to such treatment, or worse. However, with the Abwehr and GFP being flooded with work, the situation changed and the SS shrewdly used the opportunity to gain a foothold in Belgium. [22] Once persuaded, Hitler acted by setting Himmler's SS into action, who then proceeded to murder over 100 of Hitler's identified antagonists.