The Gestapo: Nazi Germany's Feared Secret Police Force

In the early 1930s, the residents of the picturesque city of Dachau, Germany, were completely unaware of the horrific events about to unfold that would overshadow their city still today. The citizens of Dachau were oblivious that their city was going to become the origin of concentration camps and of the Holocaust, the mass murder committed by the Nazi s in World War II. Dachau Concentration Camp, which would soon be placed on the edge of their community, would serve as a model for all Nazi extermination camps. This perfect prototype of a Nazi killing machine has come to represent the start of the horror-filled Holocaust and the Nazi's determination to achieve a perfect society during World War II.

In the beginning Adolf Hitler couldn 't run all of germany by himself so he elected officials to take charge while he was worrying about taking over the world. “Heinrich Himmler who was appointed Reichsfuhrer- SS in 1929 and from its very inception he saw the SS as an elite force, as an elite unit, the party 's "Praetorian Guard," with all SS personnel selected on the principles of racial purity and unconditional loyalty to the Nazi Party” (Holocaust Education). Himmler took his job very seriously, he took barely trained bodyguards and turned them into an elite force who was know as “Schutzstaffel or SS “. There was nothing that Himmler didn 't do that impress the fuhrer,”Thanks to his control of the police Himmler was able to build up the concentration camps, in order to provide “protective custody” for political suspects.” Since Hitler and Himmler were

The Gestapo was created to help solidify Nazi control by identifying and arresting people with anti-nazi thoughts in Germany. The agency was restructured several times during its twelve year history and was very important in helping the Nazi deportation and destruction of Europes jews during the Holocaust

Klaus Barbie was a Gestapo in Lyon with only two orders to fight the Resistance in the area and to remove all the Jews in the city. Barbie was an able and enthusiastic officer while he was in Amsterdam he earned a reputation for being cunning and especially brutal. While he arrived in Lyon he set up shop in Hotel Terminus.

The Nazi concentration camps were established beginning in 1933 for the purpose of imprisoning political opponents. The S.S. expanded the concentration camp system, and used these facilities to warehouse other "undesirables," including hundreds of thousands of Jews. Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen were among the first concentration camps

The Nazi concentration camp system began as a system of repression directed towards the political opponents of the Nazi party. In the early years of the Third Reich, when Germany was a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, the Nazi concentration camps were primarily filled with Communists and Socialists as prisoners. In about 1935, Nazi Germany also began to imprison those whom were deemed as racially or biologically inferior. This included political opponents, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's witnesses, Roma and Sinti or "gypsies", homosexual men, and, most notoriously,

The SS police and the Gestapo's where a big part of the holocaust, Have you ever wondered who was taking the Jewish and who was finding them? Well the S.S police and gestapo would go around and find Jewish people in their hiding spots and even if they were just walking down the street they would still take them. The S.S police are the people that would send them to concentration camps. When most people read or do research on the holocaust they don’t really read into the police or the gestapo’s but there is a lot of information about them, that has a big part to do with the holocaust.

Hitler created many organizations and one of them was the propaganda team. Hitler hired a man named Joseph Goebbels to create the propaganda. The Holocaust Explained stated, “Goebbels used people’s fear of uncertainty and instability to portray Hitler as a man with a great vision for prosperity and stability”. The Gestapo did something similar. Anne Frank said, “If the saboteur can’t be traced, the Gestapo simply put about five hostages against the wall. Announcements of their deaths appear in the paper frequently. These outrages are described as ‘fatal accidents’”(Frank 39). The Gestapo hid the truth from the citizens and added false information stating deaths were fatal accidents. Despite them lying like Hitler did, they also killed people in the process. It was a common thing for the Gestapo to do and did it daily. Hitler made concentration camp sound better while the Gestapo called it a dead accident which made them sound more

Nya: Well sir the purpose of the Gestapo was to cause destruction which persecuted Germans, and opponents of the regime, and Jews. Later the Gestapo had a role in carrying out the Nazi 's “Final Solution”. When the Gestapo was told to guard the ghettos they had to impose labor, causing starving, and disease in an effort to kill many Jews that inhabited the ghettos

At the time the Nazi party was beginning to acquire popularity in Germany, Adolf Hitler created the Schutzstaffel, which occupied a major role in the Holocaust, and had a structure that included several branches, however the military wing eventually met its end at the conclusion of World War II. When the SS was first founded, it served as a guard to important leaders of the Nazi party, and then grew to be involved in the planning of the Holocaust. The SS was divided into two main groups. As the threat of the Allied powers became more imminent to the Germans, the SS began to disband and officials managed to avoid punishment. Hitler had ordered the Schutzstaffel to create a “Final Solution” against the Jews, and once it was large enough, was divided into the Allgemeine-SS and the Waffen-SS, but once the SS had separated, most of the

The Nazi party took over Germany in 1933. By 1939, the Nazis had begun sending the people marked as inferior to the Aryan race that Adolf Hitler had idealized to concentration camps and imprisoning people in ghettos. Life in these camps was, to say the least, sad and without hope. The

Adolf Hitler joined the Nazi party in 1920. The large Nazi party wanted to unite as one nation and form a strong central government. Soon later in 1930, a depression had hit Germany and the entire nation. Hitler promised to get rid of Jewish people and communists throughout many speeches during the depression. People in Germany were in need of a leader and needed someone that could help them out of the rough times. Many people in Germany believed in Hitler and trusted him. As soon as Von Hindenburg, the leader of Germany, died in 1934, Hitler had full control over Germany. First, Hitler began to enforce strict laws on the Jewish people. Then Hitler began to move Jewish people to what are called Ghettos. Ghettos were small communities that fenced all the Jews inside. People thought they were on some sort of vacation and that the Nazis were keeping them safe from the nearby war. The Ghettos were buildings with small apartments inside. Families were very crammed and had to give up any gold or valuables. There was

The Nazis had taken control of the whole state. They had become the most dominant political force in almost every way of German Life. This meant that the Nazi did as they pleased. As second in command Himmler oversaw the mass murder of Jews. He organised the slaughter of millions of Jews in extermination camps in Poland. “After fainting at the sight of 100 Jews being shot on the eastern front he ordered a "more humane means" of execution the use of poison gas in specially constructed chambers disguised as shower rooms.” In 1933 Himmler became the head of the Munich police. From this position he organized the first concentration camp at Dachau and began to organize the Nazi political police throughout Germany known as the Gestapo. In the years after the Nazis seized power , Himmler built an position by taking control of the German police forces. On March 9, 1933, he was appointed president of police in Munich. he. By late 1934, Himmler had obtained command of each of the state political police departments in Germany, and had made them within a single new agency the Secret State Police (Gestapo). Himmler also had other enforcement positions in the Nazi party. He had such positions as the S.S. It served as Hitler’s secret personal bodyguards, and later became one of the most powerful and feared organizations in all of Nazi Germany. Heinrich Himmler, became head of the SS and expanded the group’s role and size. By the start of World War II , the SS had more than 250,000 members and divisions, they were engaged in activities ranging from intelligence operations to running Nazi concentration camps. The SS was deemed a criminal organization for its direct involvement in war

Auschwitz concentration camp was established in May 1940. It’s initial purpose was a detention center for political prisoners.

One of the major reasons in which West Germany developed national police was to cope up with the ghost of Nazi. Apparently, the atrocities that had been committed by the ruthless regime under the control of Hitler created a state of paranoia and xenophobia among the citizens of West Germany. The cruel acts of the secret police in the Nazi regime continued to haunt the West Germans even after the downfall of Nazi and Hitler. To counter this feeling, the authority of West German saw it fit to build a national police force that subscribed to a complete different human school of thought compared to the secret police of Nazi