The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (5 page)

As will become clear, the regime was less dependent than one might have expected on an enthusiastic reception of the 'new order' by all, or even most, citizens. A crucial factor in the enforcement process was not the 'popularity' of the system; German society as a whole did not need to become thoroughly National Socialist, anti-Semitic, or racist. What was required was that the regime establish the official 'line', elicit co-operation, and act relentlessly on the basis of information received.

5. WHAT THE BOOK DOES NOT DO

A word needs also to be said about what the book does not do. It does not catalogue the many and various crimes, recounts little about the torture and beating inflicted on some who fell into the hands of the state police, and does not provide a detailed institutional history of the Gestapo as such. The book has something to say about arbitrary arrest and 'protective custody' (Schutzhaft), which provided the Gestapo with virtually unlimited powers of arrest and confinement, for it was precisely such sanctions that set the Gestapo apart from all earlier political police in Germany. The book deals with a small part of the Gestapo's full work-load. Little is said about the deportations and the death camps. The Gestapo came to concern itself with so many issues that no single monograph can deal adequately with all of them. The book is not a 'history of everyday life' if one understands by that term a reconstruction of the experiences of the people as they themselves would have understood them. I agree with Jurgen Kocka that 'it simply is insufficient to reconstruct experiences', a goal set by many authors in the studies of 'everyday life'; 'experiences can be false', he continued. 'Imagine if one were to reconstruct the experiences of peasants in the r 88os; they were sincere anti-Semites; I have not understood the phenomenon through reconstructing these experiences.' In order to achieve understanding, it is necessary to go beyond the immediate environment, to conduct research into numerous aspects of the problem 'totally hidden from the poor peasant'.so
Many things were also hidden from citizens of Nazi Germany; yet the actions of some of these same citizens made possible the very tyranny under which they suffered. This is what the historian must recall and try to understand.

6. DOCUMENTARY SOURCES AND MATERIALS

The main materials drawn on in the book are Gestapo case-files. These were created by the police whenever a person was brought to their attention. Some of the files contain an insignificant half-sheet of paper, others run to hundreds of pages; some are very revealing, many of no apparent use to the historian. At best, they bring the study of Nazi Germany down to the grass roots, and the intentions of the leaders-whether Hitler as policy-maker or Himmler as chief of the German police-are left behind in the distant capital city. The files give clues about what the regime could actually accomplish, implement, or enforce out in the provinces. They are excellent sources for a study of the dynamic interaction between police, people, and policy. The strengths and weaknesses of these sources are discussed below, but here it can be said that, while flawed, they have not been laundered (that is, selectively cleansed of certain kinds of information).

Everywhere in Germany these materials were destroyed, with just two major exceptions; i9,ooo or so survived for the small city of Wurzburg, with its surrounding province of Lower Franconia, Bavaria. It is primarily these sources that are explored in detail, but the study also makes selective use of some of the 70,000 files that survive for Dusseldorf and the areas under its control. These rare materials are, to reiterate, heterogeneous and uneven. One starting-point for a study of them is the recent work on the social history of the Dusseldorf Gestapo by the late Reinhard Mann. The posthumous publication of a number of his articles and papers, even though some of them are bare sketches and not without weaknesses, makes available to a wider audience at least some of the efforts he made to quantify the workings of the Gestapo."

The Gestapo materials from Wurzburg and Dusseldorf permit some interesting comparisons. While it might be perfectly justified to maintain that the pattern was slightly different elsewhere, and that Wurzburg and Lower Franconia or the Government District of Dusseldorf were `exceptional', it is fortuitous that neither was a hotbed of Nazism. Since most of the sources elsewhere were distroyed there is no ultimate way to ascertain the degree of difference and similarity.

Besides the Gestapo case-files, the study utilizes other kinds of Gestapo fragments that have come to light from around the country, and the whole range of national, regional, and local records. In addition, it draws upon the well-known underground records of the illegal SPD, the Sopade reports, as well as surveys of opinion and mood composed for the war-years by the Security Service (SD). Material from the post-war trials, especially from the International Military Tribunal held in Nuremberg, is utilized as well. Finally, much use has been made of autobiographies and diaries.

For a number of reasons the book makes little use of interviews with the survivors of persecution, for that would be a separate project in its own right. As noted above, the book does not set out to reconstruct their experiences in the manner of a 'history of everyday life'. Moreover, the people of the time would have had difficulty recounting how the surveillance and terror system worked, not least because the mystery and uncertainty about the system was deliberately exploited by the Gestapo.

7. THE BOOK'S ORGANIZATION

Part I deals with the evolution of the Gestapo. The first chapter indicates some of the continuities and discontinuities from earlier periods. The limits and possibilities of the new police powers and expanding spheres of activity are also discussed. Once the 'nationalization' of the political police has been clarified, the next chapter moves to the local level, for that is where routine enforcement takes place. It examines the local operation of the political police, and reveals its set-up and the people who worked for it. Because the Gestapo headed an extensive police network beyond the Gestapo proper, it is important to deal with this topic. It needs to be said that not only does the history of the Gestapo remain to be written, but much more work is needed on the social history of other elements in the police network at whose head it stood, such as the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst), the Criminal Police (KriminalPolizei or Kripo), and even the ordinary uniformed police (Ordnungspolizei and its subsidiary part, the Schutzpolizei or Schupo). Even the Nazi Party's functioning as a local political watch-dog after 1933 requires more research.

Part II turns to German society, and to the concrete social context in which policing occurred. The book's geographical emphasis is the Bavarian region around the city of Wurzburg, Lower Franconia, an area unique and exceptional in many ways-as are all the regions across the country. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the problem of the representativeness of the area by drawing upon sources from similar and contrasting areas within Bavaria and across Germany, and by utilizing as wide a range of sources as possible. Given the complexity of German society, it is clear that most communities have specific structures (the urban-rural mix, or the industrial-agrarian one) and unique cultural characteristics (especially those of religion, attitudes to the central government, the degree of visibility of racial minorities) which influence the particular configuration of police-society relationships. The daily operation of the political police, which is tied to its local environment to some extent, was probably a little different in one area from the practice somewhere else. In Lower Franconia it would seem that the extent of co-operation attained by the Gestapo was in all likelihood towards the lower end of the spectrum rather than near the maximum which probably obtained in the Protestant parts of Bavaria, such as neighbouring Middle Franconia, centred around the city of Nuremberg.

Part III studies the enforcing of racial policy on the basis of Gestapo casefiles. The transition to the examination of concrete practice at the local level is made by dealing, in Chapter 5, with what the book argues was the crucial mechanism in the routine functioning of the Gestapo, that of political denunciations or, simply stated, the provision of information or tip-offs.

Chapter 6 looks at how the Gestapo sought to enforce racial policies designed to separate Jews from non-Jews. In particular, it shows some of the ways in which the effort failed, and points to local examples of non-compliance of the racist message, even some rare heroic resistance to it.

Chapter 7 indicates that in order to overcome any such opposition or dissent, the Gestapo doubled its efforts to obtain compliance. The Gestapo interpreted its mandate in the broadest possible terms, and went about fulfilling it by applying pressure when necessary, at times by the use of extremely brutal methods. Although a reputation for brutality to some extent contributed to the effectiveness of the Gestapo, like the knowledge that anyone could be sent to a concentration camp for an indefinite period, such fears do not provide an entirely satisfactory explanation for how the Gestapo was able to carry out its mandate so `successfully'. In the sphere of racial policies designed to isolate the Jews, policies that sought to encroach into the most private spheres of social and sexual life, the Gestapo-brutal or otherwisewas never in a position to accomplish its tasks on its own. It required the collaboration of many people in official or semi-official positions. It was also heavily dependent upon public participation in the enforcement process, specifically through the provision of information on suspected deviations from or disagreements with, the Nazi stand on the `Jewish question'.

In Chapter 8 the emphasis shifts to the enforcement of another kind of racial policy, that aimed at Polish foreign workers, who, though considered 'racially foreign' and inferior, were brought to the Reich in ever greater numbers but rigorously segregated and, according to the letter and spirit of the law, subjected to the most radical kinds of apartheid measures. How the regime went about enforcing these policies in this area of social life helps fill out the picture of how racial policy was enforced. It goes without saying that any study of Nazi racism must deal with the persecution of the Jews. It is important to recognize that any explanation of the evolution of racial policy and its enforcement ought not to ignore the many other varieties of persecution that took place in the name of race inside Germany's borders.

As it turns out, in the last years of the Third Reich several factors combined to alter significantly the pattern of involvement of the German people in the process of enforcing racial policy inside the country, now largely aimed at the foreign workers, especially the Poles. This changing pattern of involvement, as will become clear, only serves to underline the crucial role played by ordinary citizens in the Nazi terror system.52

The conclusion of the book draws together the strands of the argument as set forth in each chapter. A brief epilogue outlines the results of the post-war trials of Gestapo officials and several key Nazi leaders in Wurzburg and Lower Franconia.