Gestapo

An acronym for Geheime Staatspolizei ("Secret State Police"), Gestapo was the name of the political police of Nazi Germany. This agency operated within the country to root out and eliminate opposition to the government and the Nazi Party, and, outside the country, in the occupied territories, Gestapo agents were responsible for suppressing resistance and underground movements and for directing and to a large extent executing the mass arrest of Jews pursuant to the Final Solution. The Gestapo had its origin on April 26, 1933, when Hermann Göring, at the time minister of the interior for Prussia, assumed personal control of the political and espionage units of the regular Prussian police, built them up with a large cadre of Nazis, then consolidated and reorganized the units as the Gestapo. At about the same time, Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and his principal lieutenant, Reinhard Heydrich, did the same with the Bavarian police and then with the police forces of the other German Länder ("states"). In April 1934, Adolf Hitler gave Himmler command over Göring's Gestapo, and, two years later, on June 17, 1936, Himmler was appointed Reichsführer in charge of the state police. Thus, Himmler came to control both the SS and the Gestapo. He assigned command of the Gestapo to Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller and joined the Gestapo to the Kriminalpolizei ("Criminal Police") within a newly created organization, the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo, or "Security Police"). In 1939, the SS was extensively reorganized, and Sipo was combined with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) ("Security Service"), the SS intelligence department, to create the Reichssicherheitshauptamt ("Reich Security Central Office") commanded by Heydrich. The consolidation of these various forces did not submerge the Gestapo, which retained a high profile throughout the war years, but it did create confusion, competition, and duplication of effort among the agencies. Doubtless, this was less a bureaucratic misstep than a deliberate attempt to add a layer of security by causing one agency continually to look over the shoulder of another. The Gestapo had virtually limitless power, including the authority of preventative arrest. Its actions were outside the conventional judicial system and could not be appealed through the courts or, indeed, to any authority. Gestapo agents swept up political dissidents, social undesirables, uncooperative clergy, "dangerous" intellectuals, homosexuals, and, of course, Jews. These individuals were customarily "deported" to concentration and extermination camps. Working in conjunction with the SS, the Gestapo was also responsible for the suppression of resistance and partisan activities in the occupied territories. Gestapo agents were charged with executing reprisal actions against civilians in the occupied territories as a means of suppressing the resistance. Gestapo agents were also attached to the SS Einsatzgruppen that followed closely behind the regular German Army in Poland and Russia, their mission to round up and summarily murder Jews as well as others deemed undesirable. Adolf Eichmann was a Gestapo officer, who headed Bureau IV B4, which was responsible for the mass deportation of Jews from occupied countries to the death camps of Poland.