The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (56 page)

32 See Riirup (ed.), 30ff., and Tuchel and Schattenfroh, 63ff. For an introduction to Goring see Overy, Goering, 22ff.

33 For a copy of the law see Hirsch, Majer, and Meinck (eds.), 326-7; also IMT xxix. 250-1, doc. PS 2104.

" See esp. the biography in Graf, p. 230.

'S See Buchheim, 38-40. In 1935 Werner Best commented that 'the Gestapo is an independent branch of the internal administration' (quoted by Buchheim, 40). Hans Bernd Gisevius said that from the point of view of the police system it was 'nonsense' to separate the Gestapo from the criminal and order police. See his testimony in IMT xii. 171.

"See the detailed analysis in Graf, 139 ff. For the law of 3o Nov. 1933 see IMT xxix. 251-2, doc. PS 2105.

17 Graf. 144. For the law of 8 Mar. 19 34 see IMT xxix. z 58-69. doc. PS a 113. Cf. the testimony of Gisevius. ibid. xii. 17 3.

Hirsch, Majer, and Meinck (eds.), 89.

"' Geoffrey Pridham, Hitler's Rise to Power: The Nazi Movement in Bavaria 1923-33 (London, 1973), 302. For a copy of the Hitler-Held discussions see Falk Wiesemann, Die Vorgeschichte der nationalsozialistischen Machtubernahme in Bayern 1932/1933 (Berlin, 1975), 294ff,

See tables vi and vii in Kershaw, Popular Opinion, 24-5.

For the background see Wiesemann, 272ff.

"Edward N. Peterson, The Limits of Hitler's Power (Princeton, 1969), i 5y.

*' Pridham, 312.

44 Jamin, Zwischen den Klassen, 2-5. For some self-portraits of SA members see Peter H. Merkl. The Making of a Stormtrooper (Princeton, 1980), 26ff.

47 Peter Diehl-Thiele, Partei and Staat im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1969), 75ff.

Wolfgang Sauer, 'Die Mobilmachung der Gewalt', in Bracher, Sauer, and Schulz, 866-7.

46 Ibid. 868.

Cf. Wolfgang Kruger, Entnazifiziert! (Wuppertal, 1982), 97ff.; Lutz Niethammer, Die Mitldu- ferfabrik: Die Entnazifizierung am Beispiel Bayerns (Berlin, 1982), 593ff.

'' Gisevius. 101.

"" Diehl-Thiele, Partei and Staat in Dritten Reich, 75 ff.

49 Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power, 15 7.

sz Ibid. 225.

Diels, 222.

54 Ibid. 112.

i5 Ortwin Domr6se, Der NS-Staat in Bayern von der Machtergreifung bis zum Rohm-Putsch (Munich, 1974), 185ff.; Jochen Klenner, Verhdltnis von Partei and Staat 1933-1945: Dargestellt am Beispiel Bayerns (Munich, 1974), 116ff.

s Domrose, i 8 5 ff; for the east see Bessel, 114.

17 Bessel, 113.

"Erich C. Reiche, The Development of the SA in Niurnberg 1922-1934 (Cambridge, 1986), 199- 8o.

Hans Frank, quoted in Pridham. 314. Cf. Diehl-Thiele, 8off.

"' Ibid. 199.

The phrase is quoted by Buchheim, 40-I.

See the document in Aronson, 3z 3.l

" Gisevius. 1187.

17 Quoted in ibid. 81.

Hartmut Mehringer, 'Die KPD in Bayern 1919-1945 Vorgeschichte, Verfolgung and Widerstand', in Broszat et al. (eds.). Bayern in der NS-Zeit, v. 74-6. 17 -

E.g. Bay HStA: MA 106682, RP Schwaben/Neuburg, zz Mar. 1933.

Bay HStA: MA 106670, RP Oberbayern, 20 Mar. 1933.

" Hartmut Mehringer, 'Die bayerische Sozialdemokratie bis zum Ende des NS-Regimes: Vorgeschichte, Verfolgung and Widerstand', in Broszat et al. (eds.). Bayern in der NS-Zeit, v. 348-9.

70 For the early accommodation of the churches see Klaus Scholder, Die Kirchen and das Dritte Reich, i. (Frankfurt, 1977), 277ff.; Ernst Christian Helmreich, The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue (Detroit, 1979), 121 ff.

71 Aronson, I 21-2.

74 Ibid. 117; 2,000 BVP persons is the figure mentioned in a report from Heydrich.

Aronson, 117.

iz Report of the action in Bay HStA: MA1o6410.

7 3 Aronson, 122.

77 See Lawrence D. Stokes, 'Zur Geschichte des "wilden" Konzentrationslagers Eutin', ViZ 27 (1979) 57o-625.

7" Communications of 15 Dec. 1933. 9 and 16 January 1934, cited in Broszat, 'Kozen- trationslager'. 29-31.

7' Sauer, 871.

7 5 Aronson, i 18.

7' For an introduction and general account of the Rohm purge see Max Gallo, The Night of the Long Knives, trans. L. Emmet (New York, 1992), 11ff.; see the remarks on the older literature in Conan Fischer, Stormtroopers: A Social, Economic and Ideological Analysis 1929-35 (London, 1983), 6ff.; Bessel, 130ff.

"' Ibid. 140.

Bessel, 139.

"Z The place of the Kripo and other 'control organizations' in the police network receives extensive coverage in the next chapter.

For example, on 20 Sept. i9.36 central control was extended with the appointment of Security Police Inspectors (Inspekteure der Sicherheitspolizei, IdS). These men were supposed to co-ordinate local political police and gradually to bypass the older administrative and police set-up, so that it has been suggested that they were 'the first planks in the new police organization Heydrich intended should supplant the old'. While this intention was only partially realized, and had the effect of constantly reducing the power of local Police Presidents-e.g. by making Gestapo officials federal civil servants (in Mar. 1937)-it was part of the trend towards the creation of the political police as an independent entity outside the control of the traditional state institutions: Buchheim, 93.

See e.g. Peter R. Black, Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Ideological Soldier of the Third Reich (Princeton, 1984). 176ff.

BAK: R58/236.

Ibid. 54. Buchheim calls the process Entstaatlichung (p. 55).

17 Buchheim, 117.

"" Gisevius, in IMT xii. 167.

' A classic example of the emphasis on numbers is Eugen Kogon, Der SS-Staat: Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager (1946: Munich, 1974). 28, who speaks of an 'army' of agents reaching as much as a quarter of a million in the war; Franz Droge. Der zerredete Widerstand: Zur Soziologie and Publizistik des Geruchts im 2. Weltkrieg (Dilsseldorf, 1970)• 54• suggests that for every 2,500 citizens there was one SD worker; had Droge included the whole range of those in the police network the ratio of police to population would have been much lower again.

2 See IMT xxi. 294ff. for affidavits. For the same points see the testimony of Werner Best, ibid. xx. 123ff. Note the national figures in StA M, Gestapo 23, RSHA, Feb. 1944: Gestapo total 31,374, Kripo, 12,992, and SD, 6,482, for a grand total of 50,648 as of i Jan. 1944 in the Sipo (security police).

,See IMT iv. 345.

BAK: R 58/61 o, 55-6: Personaistatistik der Staatspolizei, 31 Mar. 1937.

See the organization of the RSHA and the Gestapo in it in Black, 297ff. (app. D).

fi HStA D: RW 36/3, 6ff., plan of Dusseldorf Gestapo.

Klaus Moritz and Ernst Noam, NS-Verhrechen vor Gericht 1945-1955 Dokumente aus hessischen Justizakten (Wiesbaden, 1998), 272-3.

W Hoffmann, in IMT xx. 16o.

" See Landesarchiv Schleswig-Holstein, Reg. Eutin, A 112 (26o/1 7 462), Geschaftsbehandlung bei der Regierung and der Verteilung der Geschafte unter Mitgliedern: see also Lawrence D. Stokes, Kleinstadt and Nationalsozialismus: Ausgewdhlte Dokurnente zur Geschichte von Eutin, 19181945 (Neumunster. 1984), 504.

' For Bavaria's Gestapo organization see BAK: R58/1112, 145-6, and R58/242, 101.

Karl Heinz Hoffmann in IMT xx 16o: cf the few in Bielefeld. ibid. xxi. 293-4

12 More will be said about Mann's work and the strengths and weaknesses of Gestapo case-files as historical sources.

" Ibid. 182, chart i.

" See Reinhard Mann, Protest and Kontrolle, 180, table 7, and 188, table 14.

15 Ibid, 266f.: 'nearly io per cent' is reached by adding 7 plus 75 = 82/825.

"See Reinhard Mann, Protest and Kontrolle, 252, table 3i, for a detailed breakdown of the criminality.

'6 See the case in Elke Frohlich, 'Die Herausforderung des Einzelnen: Geschichten fiber Widerstand and Verfol¢ung', in Broszat et al. (eds.), Bayern in der NS-Zeit, vi. 76ff.

"For example, Liang, 165 ff., speaks of a 'purge'; Tuchel and Schattenfroh, 63ff., deal with the Sduberungen; Bramstedt, 96, reports on the 'purification of the Political Police'. For an examination of the purge in the civil service as a whole see lane Caplan, Government without Administration: State and Civil Service in Weimar and Nazi Germany (Oxford, 1988), 145-6, in which she notes that across Germany, at all levels of administration, 'altogether, the purge itself directly affected about i to 2 per cent of the professional civil service, though its indirect effects were certainly more widespread'. She shows that though standards varied considerably, 'Jewish officials, known Communists, social democrats, and Centre party members or sympathizers, were the most common victims.' One wonders if the concept of a purge sufficiently takes into account the relatively restricted kinds of 'opponents' who were dismissed or had been retired, and the fact that roughly 98% of the civil service remained at their desks.

Best testimony, in IMT xx. 12 5-6. There is a great deal of information on Best in the BDC. Dr Ulrich Herbert of Essen is presently writing a biography of Best.

2° Best, in IMT xx. 126.

21 Ibid. 142.

22 See the testimony of Karl Heinz Hoffmann in IMT xx. 158: he refers to Koblenz. He added that 'according to my recollection, there were at most 10 to 15 percent of them who had entered the organization voluntarily after 1933'.

23 Robert Lewis Koehl, The Black Corps: The Structure and Power Struggles of the Nazi SS (Madison, Wisc., 1983), 159-60.

24 IMT iv. 344-5.

21 Ibid. 345.

:e Ibid. 167-8. For the portrait of Nebe see Gisevius, 56ff.

Ruth Bettina Birn, Die hdheren SS- and Polizeifahrer: Himmlers Vertreter im Reich and in den besetzten Gebieten (Dusseldorf, 1986), 340.

26 Gisevius, 56.

27 Ibid.: In time they were all eliminated as "unreliable".'

Z" Diels, 167.

Heinrich Orb, Nationalsozialismus: 3 Jahre Machtrausch (Olten, 1945), 124-5.

3i Friedrich Zipfel, 'Gestapo and SD: A Sociographic Profile of the Organizers of the Terror', in Stein Ugelvik Larsen et al. (eds.), Who were the Fascists? Social Roots of European Fascism (Bergen, 1980), 308-9. There were 66 professional graduates of various kinds among the 135 (46 of them lawyers); 12 additional non-graduates also had a profession, 23 others had had subordinate positions in the police or administration. 'As a group they were intelligent and proficient.' See also his 'Gestapo and SD in Berlin', Jahrbuch fur die Geschichte Mittel- and Ostdeutschlands, 9-io (1961), 284, where a table indicates that the local Stapostelle Berlin (responsible for the capital city only) recorded 391 male employees on 25 June 1935. Thirty-six of these were in the SS, 23 of whom were listed as 'clerks'.

s' See the figures in Diets, 166.

'Z Graf, 83ff., has important things to say about the 'Papen putsch'.

Ibid. 394.

34 Ibid.

" IMT XXi. 299. Forced membership was mentioned in 127 affidavits. George C. Browder, 'Sipo and SD, 1931-1940: Formation of an Instrument of Power' (University of Wisconsin Ph.D. thesis: Madison, 1968), 77. does not believe there was a purge: for the same point see Alwin Ramme, Der Sicherheitsdienst der SS (Berlin, 1970), 5o, and Delarue, 89ff.

Inge Marssolek and Rene Ott, Bremen im Dritten Reich: Anpassung, Widerstand, Verfolgung (Bremen, 1986), 176: Herbert Schwarzwalder, Geschichte der freien Hansestadt Bremen, iv. Bremen in der NS-Zeit (193.3-1945) (Hamburg, 1985), 110-11.

41 Marssolek and Ott, 183. Cf. Heinz Hohne, The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS, trans. R. Barry (1966: London, 1972), 163ff.

41 Helmut Fangmann, Udo Reifner, and Norbert Steinborn, Parteisoldaten: Die Hamburger Polizei im 'Dritten Reich' (Hamburg, 1987), 51-53: for an identical case in Nuremberg see Reiche, 18o.

42 Henning Timpke (ed.),Dokumente zur Gleichschaltung des Landes Hamburg 1933 (Frankfurt, 1964). 174.

Zipfel, 'Profile', 3o4. 40 ,r---------I - _-

Ibid. 179.

" Walter Schellenberg, The Labyrinth: The Memoirs of Walter Schellenberg, trans. L. Hagan (New York, 1956), 8.

~' Aronson, ioo-i.

45 Ibid. ioi.

4" After Muller became head of the Gestapo in Sept. 1939 the position he left as head of the Reich Centre for Jewish Emigration was inherited by Eichmann: Hannah Arendt. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, rev. edn. (New York. 1965). 67.

17 See doc. 13, 4 Jan. 1937. in Aronson. 32 1.

as Ibid.

51 Doc. 14, 12 Feb. 1937, in Aronson, 322-3.

'z Koehl, The Black Corps, 16o. On the gradual merger of police and SS, it should be noted that those who attained the 'SS recruiting standards' could be accepted into the SS and, in a second distinct step, might be promoted 'to an SS rank equivalent to their police rank', in what was called 'rank parity' (Dienstrangangleichung), which therefore involved much more than merely being co-opted into the SS. See Buchheim, 118 ff. Gerald Reitlinger, The SS: Alibi of a Nation 19221945 (1956; Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1981), 39, in emphasizing how many police stayed at their desks, said the myth was demolished 'that the inquisitors of the Gestapo were a new race of men, a scum brought to the surface by revolution'.

51 See the biographies in Birn, 330ff., and Graf, 330ff.

BAK: R58/24,, 1o1ff.

sa H. G. Adler, Der verwaltete Mensch: Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland (Tubingen, 1974), 372ff.

' BAK: R 58/6io, 91: Personalstatistik der Staatspolizei, 31 Mar. 1937. The population figure is for 1939.

S7 The letter is printed in Dr [Hans] Schutz, Justiz im 'Dritten Reich'. Dokumentation aus dem Bezirk des Oberlandesgerichts Bamberg (Bamberg 1984), annex 4.

s9 Thereafter it had the cumbersome title 'Geheime Staatspolizei-Staatspolizeistelle NurnbergFirth, AuBendienststelle Wurzburg'.

5a Kater, The Nazi Party, 263ff., figs. 1-4.

Ibid. 8i.

`'" jochen von Lang (ed.), Das Eichmann Protokoll (Berlin, 1982) 41.

61 Ibid. 113. See especially Hans Mommsen. The Realization of the Unthinkable: The "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" in the Third Reich', in Gerhard Hirschfeld (ed.). The Policies of Genocide: Jews and Soviet Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany (London, 1986), 93R.

62 Aronson, 229-30. This view of Muller is widely shared, e.g. by Crankshaw, 68: He was the arch-type of the non-political functionary, in love with personal power.'