The Gestapo.

    

     The secret police force of Nazi Germany was called the Gestapo. The term "Gestapo" is an abbreviation of Geheime Staats Polizei, which means "state secret police." The Gestapo was a driving force within Germany's Nazi regime and was infamous for its brutality. The Gestapo was instrumental in conquering areas of Europe during World War II.

     After the Nazi party came into power, Herman Goering became the Minister of the Interior for German's largest state, Prussia. The Geheime Staats Polizei was created in Prussia. This became the Gestapo, which Goering turned over to Heinrich Himmler in 1934. Gaining control of the Gestapo was Himmler's reward for helping to eliminate one of the Nazi's rivals. Himmler joined the Bavarian Political Police with the Gestapo and the Schutzstaffel, known as the SS. The SS was an elite force to serve and protect Hitler.

      The Gestapo was the political police for Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. Gestapo membership was voluntary, with many of the members coming from previous political police forces within Germany. Initially formed as a police force in Prussia, its primary purpose was the elimination of the Nazi Regime's enemies. The Gestapo was infamous in arresting anyone it believed were enemies (most notably the Jews) and confining them to concentration camps. Those persecuted had no legal recourse, and millions died.

     

     In 1920, Adolf Hitler changed the name of the German Worker's Party to the National Socialist German Worker's Party. The term "Nazi" is the German name for the first word of the party. The Gestapo was created in 1933. In 1936 it was combined with Germany's regular police force. That same year, a law passed giving the Gestapo the ability to operate without judicial oversight. After the start of the war, in 1939, the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) was created. It contained seven main branches, with the Gestapo being the fourth branch. World War II was from 1939 to 1945.

By 1943, the Gestapo was divided into five segments, with each focusing on specific objectives. One segment focused on sabotage, opponents and the protective service. The second dealt with political churches, including handling of the Jews. The third segment dealt with press and party matters and protective custody. The fourth segment focused on German influence in expanded regions, and the last segment handled alien police and passport issues.

     Contrary to popular belief, the Gestapo was not an omnipotent agency that had its agents in every nook and cranny of German society. So-called “V-men” as undercover Gestapo agents were known were used only to infiltrate Social Democratic and Communist opposition groups, but these cases were the exception, not the rule.

     As the analysis of the Gestapostellen done by the historian Robert Gellately has established, for the most part the Gestapo was made of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon denunciations by ordinary Germans for their information. Indeed, the Gestapo was overwhelmed with denunciations and spent most of its time sorting out the credible denunciations from less credible ones. Far from being an all-powerful agency that knew everything about what was happening in German society, the local Gestapostellen were under-staffed, over-worked offices that struggled with the paper-load caused by so many denunciations. 

    The ratio of Gestapo officers to the general public was extremely lop-sided; for a example, in the region of Lower Franconia, which had about one million people in the 1930s, there was only one Gestapo office for the entire region, which had 28 people attached to it, of whom half were clerical workers.

Furthermore, for information about what was happening in German society, the Gestapostellen were most part dependent upon these denunciations. Thus, it was ordinary Germans by their willingness to denounce one another who supplied the Gestapo with the information that determined who the Gestapo arrested. The popular picture of the Gestapo with its spies everywhere terrorizing German society has been firmly rejected by most historians.