Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression
C. Place of the GESTAPO and SD in the Conspiracy.
(1) Tasks and Methods of the GESTAPO. In the basic law of 10
February 1936, the GESTAPO was declared to have "the duty to
investigate and to combat in the entire territory of the
State, all tendencies dangerous to the State." The decree
issued for the execution of said law gave the GESTAPO the
authority to make police investigations in treason,
espionage, and sabotage cases, and in other cases of
criminal attacks on Party and State." (2107-PS, 2108-PS)
[Page 258]
In referring to the above law, the Nazi jurist, Dr. Werner
Best, commented as follows:
The duties of the GESTAPO were described in 1938 as follows,
in an order published by the Party Chancery:
In Das Archiv, January 1936, the duties of the GESTAPO were
described in part as follows:
"Since the National Socialist revolution, all open
struggle and all open opposition to the State and to
the leadership of the State is forbidden, and a Secret
State Police as a preventive instrument in the struggle
against all dangers threatening the State is
indissolubly bound up with the National Socialist
Fuehrer-State." (1956-PS)
The successful accomplishment of this mission to strike down
the political and ideological opponents of the Nazi
conspiracy was stated in the official magazine of the SIPO
and SD on 1 February 1943 in the following words:
The methods used by the GESTAPO were limited only by the
results to be obtained.
The GESTAPO was not restricted to the limitations of written
law. The Nazi jurist, Dr. Werner Best, states:
The GESTAPO was given the express power to take action
outside the law in the occupied territories. The laws
pertaining to the
[Page 259]
administration of Austria and the Sudetenland provided that
the Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police will
take measures for the maintenance of security and order
"even beyond the legal limitation otherwise laid down for
this purpose." (1437-PS, 1438-PS)
The actions and orders of the GESTAPO were not subject to
judicial review. The decision of the Prussian High Court of
Administration on 2 May 1935 held that the status of the
GESTAPO as a special police authority removed its orders
from the jurisdiction of the Administrative Tribunals. The
court said that under the law of 30 November 1933 the only
redress available was by appeal to the next higher authority
within the GESTAPO itself. (2347-PS)
The basic law of 10 February 1936 on the powers of the
GESTAPO provided specifically in Section VII:
Concerning the power of the GESTAPO to act outside the law,
the Nazi jurist, Dr. Werner Best, states:
The great power of the GESTAPO was "Schutzhaft" -- the power
to imprison people without judicial proceedings on the
theory of "protective custody." This power was based upon
the law of 28 February 1933 which suspended the clauses of
the Weimar Constitution guaranteeing civil liberties to the
German people, including Article 114 thereof, which provided
that an abridgement of personal liberty was permissible only
by authority of law. (2499-PS)
In April 1934 the Reich Minister of the Interior issued a
decree (which was not made public) stating that in view of
the stabilizing of the national situation it had become
feasible to place restrictions upon the exercise of
protective custody and providing for limitations upon its
exercise. (L-301, 779-PS)
The Gestapo did not observe such limitations, and the
practice of taking people into protective custody increased
greatly in
[Page 260]
1934. The GESTAPO did not permit lawyers to represent
persons taken into protective custody and, in one instance,
counsel were themselves placed in protective custody for
trying to represent clients. Civil employees were
investigated and taken into protective custody by the
GESTAPO without knowledge of their superiors. (775-PS)
As of 1 February 1938, the Reich Minister of the Interior
rescinded previous decrees relating to protective custody,
including the decree of 12 April 1934, and issued new
regulations. These regulations provided that protective
custody could be ordered:
that the GESTAPO had the exclusive right to order protective
custody; that protective custody was to be executed in the
State concentration camps; and that the GESTAPO, which
authorized release from protective custody, would review
individual cases once every three months. The Chief of the
Secret Police was given authority to issue the necessary
regulations. (1723-PS)
The importance of this power of protective custody was set
forth in Das Archiv, 1936, in the following language:
The authority of the GESTAPO to administer the concentration
camps was set forth in the decree to the basic law of 10
February 1936. (2108-PS)
Other methods used by the GESTAPO consisted of the
dissolution of associations, prohibition and dissolution of
assemblies and congregations, prohibition of publications of
various kinds and so forth. (1956-PS)
(2) Tasks and Methods of the SD. The task of the SD, after
it became the intelligence service for State and Party, was
to obtain secret information concerning the actual and
potential enemies of the Nazi leadership so that appropriate
action could be taken to destroy or neutralize opposition.
(1956-PS)
[Page 261]
The duties of the SD were stated by the Nazi jurist, Dr.
Werner Best, as follows:
To accomplish this task, the SD created an organization of
agents and informants operating out of various SD regional
offices established throughout the Reich, and later in
conjunction with the GESTAPO and Criminal Police throughout
the occupied territories. The organization consisted of
several hundred full-time agents whose work was supplemented
by several thousand part-time informants. Informants were
located in schools, shops, churches, and all other spheres
of German life, operating under cover, and reporting any
utterances or actions against the Nazi Party, State or
leadership. (2614-PS)
The SD had direct and powerful influence in the selection of
Nazi leaders. It investigated the loyalty and reliability of
State officials, evaluating them by their complete devotion
to Nazi ideology and the Hitler leadership. It secretly
marked ballots and thereby discovered the identity of
persons who cast "No" votes and "invalid" votes in the
referenda. (2614-PS, R-142)
The SD worked closely with the GESTAPO. An article in the
"Voelkischer Beobachter" published in Das Archiv, January
1936, stated:
[Page 262]
(3) The Place of the GESTAPO and the SD in the Conspiracy.
The GESTAPO was founded in April 1933 by Goering to serve as
a political police force in Prussia. Goering instructed
Diels, the first Deputy Chief of the GESTAPO, that his main
task would be the elimination of political opponents of
National Socialism and the fight against Communism. (2460-PS)
In "Aufbau Einer Nation," published in 1934, Goering said:
So effective had the GESTAPO proven itself in combatting the
political opposition to National Socialism by the fall of
1933 that Goering took over direct control of the GESTAPO
(2105-PS). Goering's position as Chief of the GESTAPO in
Prussia was recognized by Himmler even after he became Chief
of the German Police in 193 (272-PS). Even as late as
December 1938 Goering continued to exercise his direct
control over the Prussian GESTAPO. (D-183)
Himmler was named Deputy Chief of the GESTAPO in Prussia in
1934. He used the GESTAPO, infused with new personnel
recruited in large part from the SS, to carry out the Roehm
purge of 30 June 1934. (2460-PS)
The GESTAPO, through its great power of arrest and
confinement to concentration camps without recourse to law,
was the principal means for eliminating enemies of the Nazi
regime. Diels, the former Deputy Chief of the GESTAPO under
Goering, declared:
[Page 263]
cases were at that time published in the papers. For
people guilty of immorality such illegal shootings
became the rule. As for deprivation of freedom, there
was no legal reason any more for protective custody
orders after 1934, which had still been the case before
that date, since from 1934 on the power of the
totalitarian state was so stabilized that the arrest of
a person for his own protection was only an excuse for
arbitrary arrest -- without court verdict and without
legal measures for him. 'The terroristic measures,
which led to the development of the pure force system
and punished to an increasing degree each critical
remark and each impulse of freedom with the
concentration camp, took on more and more arbitrary and
cruel forms. The GESTAPO became the symbol of the
regime of force."
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Volume II
Criminality of Groups and Organizations
The Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) & Sicherheitsdienst
(Part 3 of 9)
"Not the State in its outward organic appearance but
the tasks of the leadership in the sense of the
National-Socialist idea is the object of protection."
(2232-PS)
"To the GESTAPO has been entrusted the mission by the
Fuehrer to watch over and to eliminate all enemies of
the Party and the National Socialist State as well as
all disintegrating forces of all kinds directed against
both." (1723-PS)
"The Secret State Police by carrying out these tasks,
contributed decisively to the fact that the National
Socialist constructive work could be executed in the
past ten years without any serious attempts of
interference by the political enemies of the nation."
(1680-PS)
"The duties of the political police and the necessary
means for their performance are not chosen freely but
are prescribed by the foe. Just like the operations of
an army against the outward enemy and the means to
fight this enemy cannot be prescribed, so the political
police also must have a free hand in the choice of the
means necessary at times to fight the attempts
dangerous to the State." (2232-PS)
"As long as the 'police' carries out the will of the
leadership, it is acting legally." (1852-PS)
"Orders in matters of the Secret State Police are not
subject to the review of the administrative
courts.".(2107-PS)
"It is no longer a question of law but a question of
fate whether the will of the leadership lays down the
'right' rules, i.e., rules feasible and necessary for
police action -- the 'police' law suitable for and
beneficial to the people. Actual misuse of the
legislative power by a people's leadership -- be it a
harmful severity or weakness -- will, because of the
violations of the 'laws of life,' be punished in
history more surely by fate itself through misfortune,
overthrow and ruin, than by a State Court of Justice."
(1852-PS)
"*** as a coercive measure of the Secret State Police
against persons who endangered the security of the
people and the State through their attitude, in order
to counter all aspirations of enemies of the people and
State";
"The most effective preventive measure is without doubt
the withdrawal of freedom, which is covered in the form
of protective custody, if it is to be feared that the
free activity of the persons in question might endanger
the security of the State in any way. While protective
arrest of short duration is carried out in police and
court prisons, the concentration camps under the Secret
State Police admit those taken into protective custody
who have to be withdrawn from public life for a longer
time." (1956-PS)
"As the intelligence service of the German National
Socialist Labor Party, the Security Service has first
of all the task of investigating and keeping a watch
over all forces, events and facts which are of
importance for the domination of the National Socialist
idea and movement in German territory. With this task
follows that duty laid down by the Reich Minister of
the Interior -- the duty of supporting the Security
Police -- which is fulfilled, so far as it goes, under
State orders. In support of the tasks of the Security
Police in securing the ranks of the German people
against interference and destruction of any kind, the
Security Service has to watch over every sphere of life
of the German people with regard to the activities of
inimical forces and the result of state and political
measures, and to inform continually the competent State
authorities and offices about the facts which have come
to light Finally, it has to investigate politically and
explore fundamentally the activities and connections of
the great, ideological, arch-enemy of National
Socialism and the German people, in order thereby to
render possible a purposeful and effective fight
against it." (1852-PS)
"As the Secret State Police can not carry out, in
addition to its primary executive tasks, this
observation of the enemies
of the state, to the extent necessary, there steps
alongside to supplement it the Security Service of the
Reichsleader of the SS, set up by the Deputy Fuehrer as
the political intelligence service of the movement,
which puts a large part of the forces of the movement
mobilized by it into the service of the security of the
state." (1956-PS)
"For weeks I had been working personally on the
reorganization and at last I alone and upon my own
decision and my own reflection created the office of
the Secret State Police. This instrument which is so
feared by the enemies of the State, has contributed
most to the fact that today there can no longer be talk
of a Communist and Marxist danger in Germany and
Prussia." (2344-PS)
"*** From (1934) on the GESTAPO is responsible for all
deprivations of freedom and breaches of law and
killings in the political field which took place
without court verdict. Of primary importance among
these was the shooting of numerous persons who had been
committed to jails by the courts and then shot
supposedly because of resistance. Many such