Terror State

• The Police System of the Third Reich:

  • controlled by Himmler
  • party controlled political police force
  • SS, SD, SA (till stopped), Gestapo
  • confusion and competition between different forces
• Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945):

  • SS leader from 1929
  • took over police and concentration camps
  • killed himself at the end of the war
  • tried to betray Hitler near the end to save himself
  • Waffen SS
  • WW2 it was the SS that killed the Jews
• The SS (Schurzstaffel):

  • was a subsection of the SA
  • Hitler's personal body guard
  • became a state within a state
  • 1933 -> 50 000 members
  • lead role in upholding the regime
  • far reaching
  • 1939 --> Reich security office
  • Death Heads Units opened the first concentration camp. Protective custody
• Reich Security Office:

  • SS
  • Gestapo
  • SD --> intelligence, catalogued threats
  • SIPO ----> state security
  • Kirpo ------> criminal police
• Gestapo:

  • reputation of being all seeing and all knowing
  • secret police
  • created by Goerring but then given to Himmler
  • some were regular policemen
  • controlled by Heinrich Himmler
  • relied heavily on regular Germans to give leads + info
  • relatively small -> 20 000 - 40 000 men
  • fear was disproportionate
• Courts:

  • judges were remove if they did not comply
  • not fair trials
  • sense of legality
  • used alongside regular courts to deal with opponent of the regime --> special peoples courts
  • Nazi officials were alongside judges to enforce nazi ideology
  • Judges gave harsher sentences
• Concentration camps:

  • Jews, Gays, Asocials and workshys
  • 25% died in custody
  • 1934 -> 3000 captured
  • question and torture
  • not death camps
  • 1939 -> 6
  • Dacheau
• Impact of terror:

  • Gestapo wasn't as large as believed
  • consolidated Hitler's power well
  • SS + Gestapo broke political opposition