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The Great Gestapo: Germany's Political Police

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The Great Gestapo
The Gestapo was Germany’s political police. The Gestapo eliminated opposition of the Nazis within Germany and its territories, with help from the Sicherheitsdientst who was responsible for the collecting of Jews throughout Europe for deportation to extermination camps.
The Gestapo had a history of power struggles. First Hitler had given Hermann Goering control of Prussia. In this capacity Goering took control of the police in Prussia.Goering set up the Central Security Office of the Third Reich in buildings on Prinz Albrechtstrasse in Berlin. He made his protégés, Rudolf Diels head of the secret police. At this time Diels had the official position of Chief of Department 1A in the Prussian Secret Police with the Ministry of …show more content…

He detached the political and espionage units from the Prussian police and then filled them with thousands of Nazis. Simultaneously command of the Gestapo was given to Heinrich Himmler in April 1934. Himmler who was already in control of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary corps, together with Reinhard Heydrich. They reorganized the police of Bavaria and the remaining German states in a way similar to the Gestapo. Himmler then took all of the German police forces and united them under his rule. In April 1934, Hitler put Himmler in control of a unified police force. As Diels was one of Goering’s ‘men’, Himmler dismissed him after accusing him of being too soft to do the job. Himmler replaced Diels with Heinrich Müller who had been one of Himmler’s assistants in Munich and was utterly loyal to him. Under Müller, the Gestapo gained its reputation for efficiency and brutality. Its brief was simple: to hunt down anyone who was suspected of treachery to Hitler. This included anyone who told jokes about Hitler or even celebrated the birthday of Wilhelm II as this was seen as evidence of someone sympathetic to monarchism and not National Socialism. the Gestapo was joined with the Kriminalpolize under a new organization, the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo). The Sipo was joined with the Sicherheitsdienst, which is and SS intelligence department, to form the Reichssicherheitshauptamt which was controlled …show more content…

The members were included in the deployment groups, which were mobile death squads that followed the German army into Poland and Russia to kill Jews and other oposers. Adolf Eichmann who had control of Bureau IV B4 of the Gestapo organized the deportation of millions of Jews from other occupied countries to extermination camps.
In Occupied Europe, they used nationals sympathetic to Hitler and the Nazis to do their job. This was occupied mainly in Norway and France. The Milice worked with the Gestapo to hunt out resistance groups in France. Members of the murdered POW’s who were protected under the Geneva Convention. The Gestapo was responsible for millions of the deaths of Jews.
At the Nuremberg Trials, the Gestapo was declared a criminal organisation. The International Tribunal listed the atrocities the Gestapo was linked to. Heinrich Müller was never brought to justice. What happened to him is not known for sure. Some say he was killed in the final days of the Battle for Berlin while others believed that he was spirited away to South America once the war had ended where he lived

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