The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (15 page)

At the Nuremberg trials Party officials at the lowest end of the scale were accused both of being 'little Caesars' who lorded it over households in their realm, and of being police informers, though both charges were emphatically denied.'
17 On 5 October 1936 Rudolf Hess, deputy Party leader, warned these functionaries that they were 'never' to get involved in the 'snooping' or
'spying' on those in their care.'
28 Yet some of the tasks entrusted to them made that difficult to avoid. They were often asked to investigate the political background of someone from their area who applied for a position in the civil service or who came up for some kind of promotion. Even senior members of the Gestapo, such as Heinrich Muller, were not immune from being checked out for a 'political evaluation' (politische Beurteilung). Such reports, which dealt with twenty-three specific questions, could only be drawn up by calling upon the lowliest cogs in the Party machine, for they alone knew how generous a citizen was in giving to Nazi collections, and, importantly, his or her 'reputation'.
129

Some Nazi Gauleiters asked local leaders to list every citizen's political habits on the card-index file (including matters such as whether the family had possessed a `national' flag before the swastika-flag law of 1935), subscribed to the Party paper, and so on. A check was supposed to be made on the political reliability of every citizen, but such far-reaching measures were probably not implemented.'
311 On the other hand, there is evidence from elsewhere that any kind of political deviation was recorded.'
31

More specific inquiries might take place as the occasion demanded such as when Minister of the Interior Frick asked local Party offices to check whether civil servants complied with their duty to vote in the elections of March 1936. The SD wanted to know who might vote No in the elections of April 1938.132
Local Party leaders handled countless matters, such as complaints of one neighbour against another, grumblings about provisioning of a local restaurant, treatment of wounded soldiers on the home front, personal disputes-especially about rents and living conditions in the apartment buildings.

On 14 December 1938, and not for the first time, Hess issued orders which specifically denied the Party the right `to institute investigations and interrogations in the jurisdiction of the Gestapo'. Apprised of an operation of a `political-police character', the NSDAP was to inform the nearest Gestapo post.133
A reminder issued by Bormann in August 1943 about restricting the role of the Party as information-gatherer-a job said to belong to the SDsuggests that earlier efforts to delineate lines of competence between the Party
and SD did not put a stop to the Party's ambitions.'
34

The war opened greater possibilities for the Party to broaden its control over the population and to undertake new tasks in the administration of welfare, made necessary by the war.'
35 Given the inflated authority which resulted, Michael Kater points out that some local party leaders went so far as to exercise their prerogative by proxy, like a Zellenleiter near Wiirzburg who entrusted his 14-year-old daughter with the task of snooping on the neighbours'.136
It may be an exaggeration to suggest that the Party in the provinces constituted the real control of the population', but there is no doubt that at the neighbourhood and village level it participated in the enforcement process.'
37

9. CONCLUSION

This chapter concludes the discussion of the emergence of the Gestapo and its local operations. The emphasis has been placed on the history of the institution, its tasks and personnel, and its relationship to the police network and Nazi Party. Members of the Gestapo were not merely fanatical Nazis, men put in place after a thorough purge of the older political police. Most were not initially members of the Nazi Party, but were trained policemen, and many were carry-overs from the Weimar days. It was a much smaller force than is sometimes suggested, a kind of high-level group of 'experts', though certainly not 'apolitical' ones. It did not possess the omnipotence often attributed to it, but relied upon the collaboration of a whole host of organizations and institutions. Once moved into action, it pursued the accused in a relentless fashion, and at times organized wholesale round-ups of suspects. However, it did not have sufficient personnel in its local branches to do much more, in the first instance, than the work of sifting through the massive numbers of accusations which came to light. Nor did it have sufficient resources to generate its own cases, but relied on information supplied from elsewhere. As will become clearer in the chapters that follow, all control organizations of Party and state relied to a greater or lesser extent upon the provision of information by the population, although the degree of cooperation varied over time, and according to the issue and the locality.

APPENDIX: PERSONNEL IN THE WURZBURG GESTAPO

The order of entries is: name, date of birth, highest rank, and date of joining NSDAP, where information is available.

Bauer, Karl (19.9.1893), Krim. Sek.: in NSDAP, i May 1937, in SS (1.4.33).

Baumann, Georg (n.d.), Krim. Ob. Sek.: in NSDAP, I May 1937.

'B.L.' (1901): in NSDAP, end 1939.

Gerum, Josef (22.9.1888), Krim. Rat: in NSDAP, I Jan. 1920; in SS (15.9.32) (later 'was one of the most feared, brutal, and ruthless Gestapo-Chefs in Wurzburg').

Goss, Stefan (6.2.1903), Krim. Sek.: in NSDAP, I May 1937.

Gramowski, Ernst (2.4.1903), Krim. Komm.: in NSDAP, I Dec. 1931; in SS (6.11.41) date of entry unknown (later a head of the Gestapo in Wurzburg).

Gundelach, Oswald (18.2.1904), Krim. Ob. Ass. in SA (date unclear, probably post1933): in NSDAP, I May 1937.

Heisig, Helmut (1.8.1902), Krim. Rat.: in NSDAP, i May 1933; in SS (21.12.38) (head of Wurzburg Gestapo for a time).

Keil, Franz (2.4.1898), Krim. Sek.: in NSDAP, 1 May 1937.

Krapp, Georg (24.2.1887), Krim. Sek.

Kraul3, Friedrich (17.2.1902), Krim. Sek.: in NSDAP, i May 1937 (joined Gestapo in 1939).

Laub, Hans (24.12.1899), Krim. Sek.: in NSDAP, I May 1939.

Lutz, Balthasar (2.11.1895), Krim. Sek.: in NSDAP, I May 1937.

Possinger, August (14.11.1897), Krim. Sek.: in NSDAP, I May 1937.

Schafer, Franz, (22.8.1898), Krim. Sek.: in NSDAP, I May 1937.

Schilling, Hans (31.7.1904), Krim. Ob. Sek.: in NSDAP, I May 1937.

Stolz, Georg (30.9.1899), Krim. Sek.: in NSDAP, I May 1937.

Vogel, Georg (27.9.1895), Krim. Insp.: in NSDAP, I May 1933.

Volkl, Michael (13.7.1892), Krim. Insp.: in NSDAP, I May 1933: in SA, I Dec. 1933.

Wittmann, Franz (27.11.1895), Krim. Insp.: in NSDAP, I May 1933.

Zwingmann, Josef (20.2.1902), Krim. Sek.: in NSDAP, I May 1937.

Source: BDC. For Gerum see also Frohlich. 76ff. For a guide to the ranks see Black, 293-4.

T HE operation of the Gestapo had to adjust to social circumstances. Though the country was centralized and controlled as never before, local diversity persisted in dialect, customs, religion, and political views. Some districts were notorious for their support of Nazism, while some Catholic and rural areas, and the red working-class neighbourhoods in the biggest cities, were slow to convert or remained downright hostile. There was considerable variation in responses to government racial policies, such as those designed to isolate the Jews or to keep the army of foreign workers separated from the population. Even two small Protestant towns in rural settings, Northeim and Marburg, responded differently to Nazi racial doctrine.'
It is important to note that the patterns of Jewish settlement were not identical; some Jews stayed on in the scattered small communities in rural parts, most moved to the metropolitan centres, but many areas had never had any Jews to begin with. Any discussion of how the Gestapo went about enforcing racial policy must take into account the peculiarities of the locality under study. This chapter looks at the history, religion, and politics, of the people who lived in Lower Franconia. It places particular emphasis on their experiences with the Jews. The next chapter gives an overview of the area in the Third Reich.

I. LOWER FRANCONIA

Franconia, or 'Franken', was one of the five tribal or 'stem' duchies that comprised 'Germany' on the day of its birth in the year 911, when a German king was elected successor to the monarchy created by Charlemagne. The district lies on either side of the Main river which flows westwards until it meets the Rhine at Frankfurt. Over the centuries, the long-settled area was continually disrupted by intruders, but an identifiable folklore, culture, and dialect(s) persisted, and it is still possible to distinguish its inhabitants from those to the south, the Bavarians, as well as the Swabians to the south and west and the Hessians to the north. Divisions based in dialect and culture were reinforced by religious differences, even within Franconia.

'Protestant Franconia' refers to the two districts of Upper and Middle
Franconia. Like Lower Franconia, they were given those names as part of the rationalization scheme introduced in 1837 by King Ludwig I of Bavaria. By the end of the Weimar Republic the similarity between Upper and Middle Franconia was reflected in the decision of the Bavarian government to link them under a single administrative capital in Ansbach. Protestantism was the religion of 64.83 per cent of the inhabitants of the two districts in 1933, almost the exact reversal of the overall Bavarian figures (with 69.9 per cent Catholic).'
Not surprisingly, Upper and Middle Franconia did not vote as uniformly for the Catholic Centre Party as elsewhere in Bavaria: in thirteen federal elections before 1914 some districts never returned a Centre deputy to the Reichstag (Hof, Bayreuth, Nuremberg, Erlangen-Furth, Dinkelsbiihl).3
In the Weimar Republic this was the part of Bavaria from which the NSDAP received its greatest support; in the elections of July 1932 the Party obtained from Upper and Middle Franconia, respectively, 44.4 and 47.7 per cent of the votes cast, and in November 1932 41.3 and 42.3 per cent, well above the Bavarian figures of 32.9 and 30.5 per cent.4