[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. [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. [110] Browder also describes a sandwich effect, where from above; Gestapo agents were subjected to ideologically oriented racism and criminal biological theories; and from below, the Gestapo was transformed by SS personnel who did not have the proper police training, which showed in their propensity for unrestrained violence. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. [96][97], In total, there were some fifty-four regional Gestapo offices across the German federal states. The SS was also known as the parent organization of the Secret State Police, the Gestapo, and was responsible for organizing mobile killing units that went on a murder rampage in the occupied territories. As we continue to explore the differences between abfraction and abrasion, it can be helpful to see these terms used in context. What was the difference between the SS, SA, SD, Abwehr, Gestapo, and Though all largely contributed to Hitlers rise to power and his abuse of that power, the three organizations differed slightly in their functions. For several leaders the punishment was death. [74] One of the methods employed by the Gestapo to contend with these resistance factions was 'protective detention' which facilitated the process in expediting dissenters to concentration camps and against which there was no legal defence. Although Maier and the other group members were severely tortured, the Gestapo did not uncover the essential involvement of the resistance group in Operation Crossbow and Operation Hydra. 6789 Quail Hill Pkwy, Suite 211 Irvine CA 92603. The Nazi Party felt the need for a secret police organization, and hence, the Geheime Staatspolizei was born in 1933. [85], In January 1933, Hermann Gring, 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. Groups like the White Rose and others, such as the Edelweiss Pirates, and the Swing Youth, were placed under close Gestapo observation. The Gestapo had terrible methods of interrogating people who they deemed to be anti-Nazi or suspicious in any way. [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. As I understand it the SD was focused on intellectual crimes, Jewish Question and foreign espionage, while the Gestapo concentrated on domestic political crimes and arresting Jews. Their victims also included the unemployed, the disabled, homosexuals, religious leaders, and political opponents. He appointed General Ferdinand von Bredow, as head of Abwehr. Himmler was given command over Grings Gestapo in April 1934. The Gestapo aided and supported the mobile killing units, and even provided its men for the same. [113] In Germany proper, many towns and cities had fewer than 50 official Gestapo personnel. The Abwehr was the German military intelligence organization from 1866 to 1944. Answer (1 of 3): The SS Schutz Staffel were originally Hitler's bodygaurd. [153][f], 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 Gestapo was officially declared to be answerable only and only to Hitler, and could not be reviewed by the judiciary in any way. [86] A year after the organisation's inception, Gring wrote in a British publication about having created the organisation on his own initiative and how he was "chiefly responsible" for the elimination of the Marxist and Communist threat to Germany and Prussia. When Rhm refused to commit suicide, he was shot by two SS officers. [43] The Maier group informed very early about the mass murder of Jews. What was the difference between the SS and the Gestapo in terms of who We hope you enjoy this website. The Gestapo had its own system of arrests, judiciary, and execution. To summarize the information above, we have provided the following short table. [42] Habsburg loyalist Karl Burian's (who was later executed) plan to blow up the Gestapo headquarters in Vienna represented a unique attempt to act aggressively against the Gestapo. 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. The SD was mainly an information-gathering agency, while the Gestapoand to a degree the Criminal Police (Kriminalpolizei or Kripo)was the executive agency of the political police system. [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. [5] Up to 30 April 1944, at least 6,639 persons were arrested under Nacht und Nebel orders. Complaints from the Waffen-SS led to a change of rank insignia shoulder boards from those of the Waffen-SS to those of the Ordnungspolizei. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. [94] However, Gestapo leader Heinrich Mller was never tried, as he disappeared at the end of the war. [133], While the total number of Gestapo officials was limited when contrasted against the represented populations, the average Volksgenosse (Nazi term for the "member of the German people") was typically not under observation, so the statistical ratio between Gestapo officials and inhabitants is "largely worthless and of little significance" according to some recent scholars. [114] "V-men", as undercover Gestapo agents were known, were used to infiltrate Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Communist opposition groups, but this was more the exception than the rule. No reason was ever given for their arrest or executionjust the fact that they seemed suspicious was enough. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. With its dramatic rise to power, the SA began to slowly assume themselves to be somewhat of a replacement to the German Army. The leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, along with a few other senior Nazi officials carefully plotted and planned the murder of the leader of the SA. The stricter laws did not apply to lesbians as their behaviour was never officially criminalised, even though their behaviours were labelled "deviant". Schleicher and Bredow tried to control the activities of the National Socialist . [143] Correspondingly, Gestapo offices were established in a territory once occupied. What was the difference in function between the Gestapo and the SD 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 military and conservative aristocrats who opposed the regime no option (in their eyes) other than continuing the military struggle. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. We've created informative articles that you can come back to again and again when you have questions or want to learn more! The SS officer Werner Best, one-time head of legal affairs in the Gestapo,[30] summed up this policy by saying, "As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally".[31]. [25][26], 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). Files, card, indexes, information and administration (C1), Department D (Occupied Territories), administration for regions outside the, Protectorate affairs, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, regions of Yugoslavia, Greece (D1). Canaris was appointed to head the Abwehr Military Intelligence in 1935. [149] Whereas in France, the number of members in the Carlingue (French Gestapo) who worked on behalf of the Nazis was upwards of 30,000 to 32,000; they conducted operations nearly indistinguishable from their German equivalents. 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. Both the Gestapo and Kripo became distinct departments within the RSHA. The SS remained in existence until the end of the war. [26] The Gestapo became a national state agency. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. [25] Shortly thereafter, Himmler created the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo; Criminal Police), merging it with the Gestapo into the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo; Security Police), under Heydrich's command. within the Reich as the Gestapo, in the occu-pied countries it was known as the Sipo-SD. The political section could order prisoners to be murdered, tortured, or released. [36] An oddity of the system was that the prisoner had to sign his own Schutzhaftbefehl, an order declaring that the person had requested imprisonmentpresumably out of fear of personal harm. After the Gestapo uncovered the "Operation Seven" funds that had been sent abroad for the emigrants, Bonhoeffer and his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi were arrested in April 1943. [115] The Gestapo office in Saarbrcken had 50 full-term informers in 1939. This led to corresponding arrests, being sent to concentration camps and execution. 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. 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. The infamous Night of Long Knives, in June 1934, saw the murder of Rhm and several important SA members. When Church leaders (clergy) voiced their misgiving about the euthanasia program and Nazi racial policies, Hitler intimated that he considered them "traitors to the people" and went so far as to call them "the destroyers of Germany". [83], Some Germans were convinced that it was their duty to apply all possible expedients to end the war as quickly as possible. The SS was given the complete authority of all the concentration camps in Germany as well as the occupied regions after 1934. Wilhelm Canaris, born January 1, 1887, in Aplerbeck, Germany, was celebrated as a war hero during the First World War for his exploits as a submarine captain, and he later became a top military spy for Germany. The Abwehr summary report of 28 April 1939 ("Lagebericht I - Sabotagettigkeit Sowjetrussland," 12 pp. [79] Despite the fear of the Gestapo after mass arrests and executions in the spring, the opposition still plotted and planned. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Our site includes quite a bit of content, so if you're having an issue finding what you're looking for, go on ahead and use that search feature there! [124], An examination of 213 denunciations in Dsseldorf 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. Simultaneously, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary corps, together with his aide Reinhard Heydrich, similarly reorganized the police of Bavaria and the remaining German states. In 1929, Heinrich Himmler was appointed as the head of the SS. [159], Leitstellung (district office) staff did wear the grey SS service uniform, but with police-pattern shoulderboards, and SS rank insignia on the left collar patch. Hitler's Two Armies - HistoryNet [106] In Wrzburg, 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. [47], Shortly after the Nazis came to power, they decided to dissolve the 28 federations of the General German Trade Union Confederation, because Hitlerafter noting their success in the works council electionsintended to consolidate all German workers under the Nazi government's administration, a decision he made on 7 April 1933. [132] Brutality on the part of interrogatorsoften prompted by denunciations and followed with roundupsenabled the Gestapo to uncover numerous resistance networks; it also made them seem like they knew everything and could do anything they wanted. by Walter Schellenberg 16 Aug 2002, 02:48, Post 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. "[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. Varying degrees of pacification and police enforcement measures were necessary in each place, dependent on how cooperative or resistant the locals were to Nazi mandates and racial policies. [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. [17] Himmler wanted to free himself entirely from Rhm, whom he viewed as an obstacle. (2013). [20] Several Nazi chieftains, among them Gring, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, and Himmler, began a concerted campaign to convince Hitler to take action against Rhm. Gestapo, abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei (German: Secret State Police), the political police of Nazi Germany. [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. When asked for identification, an operative was required only to present his warrant disc and not a picture identification. Himmler was nominally subordinate to Frick as police chief, but as Reichsfhrer-SS, he answered only to Hitler. This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the Axis nations and related topics hosted by the Axis History Factbook in cooperation with Christian Ankerstjernes Panzerworld and Christoph Awender's WW2 day by day. However, these tactics were quite useful for the rise of the Nazi movement. 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. [4] Those arrested by the Gestapo were often held without judicial process, and political prisoners throughout Germanyand from 1941, throughout the occupied territories under the Night and Fog Decree (German: Nacht und Nebel)simply disappeared while in Gestapo custody. The people who came under the suspicious category were political opponents, Jews, the Gypsies, people from other ethnic minorities, the disabled, the unemployed, and the homosexuals. 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. [g], Several terms redirect here. Discussions on all aspects of the SS and Polizei. These groups became a special focus of the Gestapo because of their insurrectionist goalsthe overthrow of the Nazi regime, the re-establishment of an independent Austria under Habsburg leadershipand Hitler's hatred of the Habsburg family. As the war progressed, however, the number of people working for the Gestapo increased to approximately 150,000 men. From 27 September 1939, it was administered by the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). With Frick's support, Himmler (pushed on by his right-hand man, Reinhard Heydrich) took over the political police in state-after-state. [129] 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. Secret State Police), abbreviated Gestapo (German: [tapo]; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. by Phil Nix 01 Feb 2004, 12:16. Together, they began convincing Hitler of Rhm being a threat to the Nazi regime, his hunger for more power, and his supposed plans to overthrow Hitler. Female youth leaders, lawyers, business administrators with experience in social work, female leaders in the Reichsarbeitsdienst and personnel administrators in the Bund Deutscher Mdel were hired as detectives after a one-year course, if they had several years professional experience. Read on for the difference between the three ruthless organizations. It was also largely responsible for planning and carrying out the Holocaust. [160], The Gestapo maintained police detective ranks which were used for all officers, both those who were and who were not concurrently SS members. [41], In Austria, there were groups still loyal to the Habsburgs, who unlike most across the Greater German Reich, remained determined to resist the Nazis. In that bureaucratic maze, the functions of the Gestapo often overlapped with those of other security departments, with which the Gestapo had both to cooperate and compete. [14] Himmler and Heydrich both immediately began installing their own personnel in select positions, several of whom were directly from the Bavarian Political Police, such as Heinrich Mller, Franz Josef Huber and Josef Meisinger. Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Gring along with some Army officials began plotting Rhms downfall. The word Gestapo is an abbreviation of the German term Geheime Staatspolizei, which translates to Secret State Police. [63], Between June 1942 and March 1943, student protests were calling for an end to the Nazi regime. [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. [48] As a preface to this action, Hitler decreed May 1 as National Labor Day to celebrate German workers, a move the trade union leaders welcomed. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This move also gave Himmler operational control over Germany's entire detective force. While three groups were acquitted of collective war crimes charges, this did not relieve individual members of those groups from conviction and punishment under the denazification programme. In 1939, the SA was largely used as a training center for the Army when the war started. Gestapo. In lieu of naming convention changes, the original construct of the SiPo, Gestapo, and Kripo cannot be fully comprehended as "discrete entities", since they ultimately formed "a conglomerate in which each was wedded to each other and the SS through its Security Service, the SD". The gestapo were Nazi Germany's brutal secret-police. [150], Between 14 November 1945 and 3 October 1946, the Allies established an International Military Tribunal (IMT) to try 22 major Nazi war criminals and six groups for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Nominally under the Ministry of the Interior, Germanys police, including the political police, the detective force, and the uniformed police forces, were now unified under Himmler. SS vs. Gestapo - VS Pages 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. Oberstleutnant Werner Schrader (July 20 & Abwehr) - Axis History [145] Many of the auxiliary police personnel operating on behalf of German Order Police, the SD, and Gestapo were members of the Schutzmannschaft, which included staffing by Ukrainians, Belorussians, Russians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and Latvians. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. The Poles identified and tracked German military trains to the Eastern front and identified four Order Police battalions sent to occupied areas of the Soviet Union in October 1941 that engaged in war crimes and mass murder. Sources: His direct subordinate 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). Sabotage efforts were undertaken by members of the Abwehr (military intelligence) leadership, as they recruited people known to oppose the Nazi regime. Wilhelm Canaris - Jewish Virtual Library Many others were beaten and tortured to death. The SS initially had an all-black uniform specially designed for its men, which was replaced by uniforms in camouflaging colors during the war. (Hitler felt he deserved the chance to kill himself rather than have someone else kill him.) [46] Because the Gestapo seemed omniscient and omnipotent, the atmosphere of fear they created led to an overestimation of their reach and strength; a faulty assessment which hampered the operational effectiveness of underground resistance organisations. Opposition became more difficult. More than that, the Anglo-American common language and capital interests kept Stalin at a distance since he felt the other Allied powers were hoping the fascists and Communists would destroy one another. "[145] Nonetheless, German authorities ordered the mobilisation of reserve Polish police forces, known as the Blue Police, which strengthened the Nazi police presence and carried out numerous "police" functions; in some cases, its functionaries even identified and rounded up Jews or performed other unsavory duties on behalf of their German masters. The SD and Gestapo did have integration through SS members holding dual positions in each branch. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. The SA, or the Sturmabteilung, were formed in Munich, Germany, in 1921 by Adolf Hitler himself. To claim that Josef Jakobs was a "Gestapo agent" is to fail to understand the difference between the Secret State Police and the Army. Frick did not have the political power to take on Gring by himself so he allied with Himmler. Some historians feel he was killed in the final days of the war, while others believe he escaped to South America and lived the rest of his life unidentified. [116], According to Canadian historian Robert Gellately's analysis of the local offices established, the Gestapo wasfor the most partmade up of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon denunciations by citizens for their information. Whereas the Gestapo agents, were mostly of police background. In this article, we will explore the differences between Gestapo and SS, and shed light on their respective histories and legacies. What was the difference between the SD and the Gestapo? The Gestapo was officially declared to be answerable only and only to Hitler, and could not be reviewed by the judiciary in any way.
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