The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (13 page)

Some people were various kinds of confidential informers. The most important of these were the 'V'-persons (agents): often paid, but not always, they were recruited by the various 'desks' or specialists in the local Gestapo branches; there were also 'G'-persons (contacts), in general, occasional tellers of tales; finally came 'I'-persons (reporters), who were not really part of the network proper but kept track of the public mood and reported to the police."

Very little is known about such people, about their number, the rate of their turnover, their occupations, and the contribution they made to policing Nazi Germany. One Bavarian locality where some information has come to light is Nuremberg, the immediate superior headquarters for the Wurzburg Gestapo. As of i September 1941 there was a total of 15o Gestapo officials centred in the Middle Franconian city, responsible for a population which totalled 2, 771, 720, distributed over 14,115 square kilometres.''
Elke Frohlich discovered that in the years 1943-4 there were six officials in charge
of the informers' department-section IVn-and that there were some 8o- roo people regularly informing the Gestapo but not formally members of it.68
The figures for Nuremberg were probably not all that exceptional, since the numbers of informers and areas of specialization that any given Gestapo post could support, as well as the size of their remuneration and even their reliability tests, were regulated nationally, as were most other political police matters. The ratio of informers to full-time officials in Nuremberg was at the outside one paid informer for every official. Normally these people conveyed information on an area of specific concern to the regime, while continuing to pursue their regular full-time jobs and professions. In Bremen a few who worked on the docks and in factories were paid to report on what they saw, and apparently some foreign workers provided useful information.69
However, the relatively small numbers of Gestapo members were far from being at the head of an `army' of agents.

The Gestapo's confidential informants have recently been the subject of a publication by Walter Weyrauch.70
In 1945, under the auspices of the United States military government, Weyrauch had analysed a collection of the Frankfurt Gestapo card-files on informers. His updated summary deals only with the 1,200 or so cards of people who at one time or another were paid to inform. He deliberately excludes other kinds of collaborators, such as those he calls `spite informers', even though, as Chapter 5 will show, they were of far greater significance in generating cases than those who were paid and/or who worked regularly for the Gestapo and SD on an honorary basis. The contribution of confidential informers, in so far as Reinhard Mann detected their efforts in initiating cases in Dusseldorf, seems to have been small, for the category of cases he labelled `observations of the Stapo-Dusseldorf and VPersons' comprised only 15 per cent of all cases, although what proportion of these can be traced to the activities of the Gestapo itself and what proportion to informers is not clear.71

Weyrauch sees the `typical Nazi informant' in the Frankfurt data as 'unconnected with the Nazi party or the official German government structure'; such a person might often be known as `unsympathetic' to Nazism and `sometimes seemed suited for a leadership position after the war'.72
The informers of the Frankfurt Gestapo included a disproportionately large number of Swiss citizens (who seem to have been permanent German residents), though no specific figures are given; `enemy citizens' living in the
country were also recruited to inform.73
Informants were drawn from people who had a record of known opposition to the regime and some individuals whom the regime considered 'tainted' for 'ethnic or religious reasons'. It is a grim fact that some Jews as well as some Catholic priests acted as Gestapo informers; these assertions are supported by evidence from other parts of the country
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Weyrauch remarks that some priests misused the confessional to gain confidential information, then turned it over to the secret police. He adds that 'personal knowledge about one such case makes me hesitate to pass judgment. This particular priest was revered as a saint among his parishioners for his unselfish devotion to his tasks, sometimes under circumstances that seemed to require extreme personal commitment and courage. Yet he appeared as a confidential informant in the Gestapo files.'''

Weyrauch suggests that 'circumstantial coercion' was probably the overriding factor behind the confidential informers' activity. However, he admits that 'the index-cards were silent about specific threats', that the extent to which these putative threats 'amounted to duress as a legal defense is a matter of speculation', and that 'significantly the vast majority of suspect persons seem to have been able to avoid becoming confidential informants after having been interrogated and detained by Gestapo officials'."
In the end, a leap of faith is required to accept the notion of circumstantial coercion as the overriding factor. It may be suggested instead that positive motives might have been behind collaboration, as, for example, has been established for collaborators elsewhere in Europe.77

Material on several Gestapo agents that survives from Aachen suggests that coercion was not invariably used. The Gestapo and its regular informers were evidently always on the look-out for recruits. An Aachen report to the Cologne Gestapo of 24 August 1942 stated that an agent who was on holiday chanced to meet a certain priest whom he had known for some time. The priest was characterized as 'suitable' for the job of informant because of his positive opinions and disposition towards the regime. From agents' files in the Dusseldorf archive one gets the distinct impression that many saw working
for the Gestapo in similar terms. Agents who wished to discontinue, or who failed to show the requisite enthusiasm, were simply dropped. One agent, it was reported, simply lost interest, another was let go because of a nervous disorder, while yet another had to be taken off the roll when he was drafted into the armed forces.78

Detlev Peukert believes that the information passed on to the Gestapo from planted spies was not as useful as the denunciations from the population at large or the reports of 'the smaller agents on the periphery of the Communist milieu'.79
Still, there is evidence in the Gestapo materials that specially planted agents at times played an important role. The Aachen Gestapo, for example, wrote in October 1944 that one of them was working under cover on the Communist Party; he is described as 'very gifted' in making contacts with 'enemy circles', 'intelligent, cautious, but nevertheless unerring'. He could be regarded as 'reliable ... his reports were flawless and led to the greatest success'. 'His active and gifted collaboration' is mentioned in a letter to Cologne headquarters. On the basis of one of his reports it was possible to destroy a very large 'terror organization of mixed character'.80

Gertrud Meyer's account of Gestapo methods of tracking the workers' movement in Hamburg shows that in a number of instances undercover agents were crucial in the arrest of Communist functionaries, who were subsequently killed."
In the autumn of 1934 a Gestapo spy in Wiirzburg, acting as an agent provocateur, went so far as to initiate and organize an underground KPD group, even getting the illegal literature from the police, only to turn in those who could be recruited."
A number of other works also show that the Gestapo had to make greater efforts in planting spies in the working-class movement than was usually the case when it came to dealing with 'opponents'. While some collaborators may have had to be intimidated into working with the police, as Meyer and others show, this was not invariably the case."
More will be said about the role of agents and political denunciations in the working-class milieu below; here it should be noted that even a few spectacular 'successes' led to an overestimation of the strength of the Gestapo, especially within the underground opposition movement.84

6. OTHER INFORMERS: THE 'SECURITY SERVICE' (SD)

The SD also played a part in the enforcement process. Some confusion has arisen on this point because Reinhard Heydrich, eventually 'Chief of the Security Police and of the SD' within the national umbrella body, the RSHA, was (under Himmler) technically the head of all police.85
In 1932, a year after the SD was created as a separate branch of the SS, Heydrich was made its chief. Before Hitler's appointment the SD served as watch-dog of both SS and the Nazi Party, but from 1933 it developed various missions that would make possible a distinctive contribution. One account emphasizes the role that members of the SD played in consolidating the political police in the hands of Himmler and Heydrich.86
Notwithstanding 'increasingly close personnel and institutional connections' between Gestapo and SD after 1933, however, 'attempts to delineate their respective areas of responsibility testified [to a rivalry] ... without removing it'.87

Walter Schellenberg, subsequently a leader of the SD, recalls in his memoirs the aims of the organization as told to him when he moved to Frankfurt in 1934, when the rivalries were in full swing:

An SS Oberfuehrer whom I had already met ... explained to me the mission of the SD and its aims. The SD was the chief organ of the information service of the Party. Its task was to inform the top Party leaders of all opposition movements and forces at home and abroad. It covered the administration, the Party, industry, the theatre, journalism, the police-in fact there was no sphere that was not under the watchful eye of the SD, no place where it did not seek out the first signs of opposition among movements or individuals 'hostile to the state'."'

Not only was this mission in actual or potential conflict with any number of other organizations, especially the Gestapo, but, according to Schellenberg, how it was to be accomplished posed a 'tremendous administrative problem'. The SD was a Nazi Party institution, and its relatively few full-time members were paid by it. It was organized across the country in a set-up broadly similar and parallel to that of the Gestapo. In time, at least on paper, there was a neat-looking division of tasks, a 'steel net' of Gestapo, SD, and Criminal Police through which no 'opponents' should be able to pass.89

The SD emerged on the domestic front as 'a national intelligence service based not on police spies and informers, but on every citizen who would feel a patriotic duty to give information'.
90 It relied for much of its information on well-placed volunteers or 'honorary members' in order, not only to fight 'opposition', but to provide Nazi leaders with accurate accounts of public opinion. SD informers were to keep in touch with the ebb and flow of German life, and constituted 'a most comprehensive secret Gallup Poll rather than a police force or spy network'."

The secretiveness of the SD, however, gave rise to all kinds of rumours and even complaints from the Nazi Party. In the summer of 1933 some Gauleiters charged that the SD was undermining authority, but even less powerful Party types, such as its 'old fighters', on occasions bemoaned its existence, saying it was 'not National Socialist' for such snooping to take place.92
Hans Buchheim believes that the main reason why the SD was not simply disbanded in the years leading up to the war was probably that through it 'Himmler could be sure of retaining his monopoly' as watchdog 'within the National Socialist movement'.93
The role of the SD was so complicated and confused that many members themselves were uncertain about their tasks and their place in the Nazi police system. One historian says that by the late 1930s'SD membership had become so complex', its self-images so incompatible, that it was torn between 'terroristic police work', 'illegal "dirty work"', and the demands of its 'idealistic functionaries'.94

Heydrich's decree of i July 193 7 on the 'division of labour between Gestapo and SD' attempted to put an end to the worst territorial disputes. The two organizations were said to comprise a 'unity' in which all duplication of effort and competition was to be avoided; one 'supplemented' the other, but was neither superior nor inferior. The SD was to deal 'exclusively' with the areas of 'learning' (Wissenschaft), art, Party and state, constitution and admin
istration, foreign lands, Freemasonry and associations, while the Gestapo's jurisdiction was Marxism, treason, and emigrants. In addition, the SD was to handle 'all general questions and matters of principle' in the areas of 'churches and sects', pacifism, the Jews, right-wing movements of various kinds, the economy, and the Press-but, and this is the vital point, it was to avoid all matters which touched 'state police executive powers [staatspolizeiliche Vollzugsmafinahmen]', since these belonged to the Gestapo, as did all 'individual cases'."

Estimates of membership in the SD have ranged widely. By the summer of 19411 there was a total of 57 SD Branches and/or Main Branches (SD Abschnitte/Leitabschnitte) for all of the 'new Germany'.96
Though the figures cannot be established, those given by Otto Ohlendorf put them at 3,000 salaried and 30,000 part-time or 'honorary' members.97
When evidence of political 'criminality' was discovered, the SD, which had no police powers, had to hand the case over to the Gestapo or other police for executive treatment (exekutivmdBig).98
As will be shown later, when it came to enforcing the law, or the spirit of National Socialism, the SD was not as active as is often supposed.

In July 1944 a list of some forty-three informers (V-persons) was sent to the Wurzburg SD headquarters from the Aschaffenburg subsection. The individuals, who were to continue in their normal line of work, were to report on specific areas of social life according to their speciality, vocation, or everyday experiences. The list of ten men who were to provide information on administrative matters contains numerous local notables, including three mayors, two magistrates, a tax inspector, three other kinds of higher administrative inspectors, and several other city officials; those in the 'education and religious life' section were two senior educational administrators, a senior teacher, and three additional teachers, as well as two businessmen; the person dealing with 'financial matters' was the assistant manager of a local savings bank; and so on. The people who were to report on the 'general life of the people' included mainly women, housewives as well as those employed outside the home. For the most part skilled workers and managers were to inform on 'industry and energy'. The evidence suggests that SD informers were
overwhelmingly volunteers.`
9 Walter Schellenberg recalled that these informants 'were usually men of wide experience in their own fields and were thus in a position to furnish very valuable information, giving special attention to reports on public opinion and reactions to legislation, decrees and other measures taken by the government'.'....