What was the Gestapo?

Question

Can someone please break it down really brief or into detail if you would like (I prefer) about what exactly was the Gestapo and their role during the war? I read a lot of things about them but basically it is too factual and I need to hear it from someone else's view and not so much with extreme wording and whatnot. I would like to hear it from a different perspective. Thank you very much for all replies.

Answer 1

The Gestapo were the secret police of Nazi Germany.

Laws were passed that gave the Gestapo permission to do pretty much anything they wanted to do. And what they wanted to do was to protect the Nazi regime by investigating anything they deemed sabotage, treason, etc. If you belonged to another political party, you'd be "visited" by the Gestapo.

They were not accountable to anyone and operated outside of the law. They oversaw the running of concentration camps.

Answer 2

It was a secret police force, perhaps political police would be a better term. They ensured that the NSDAP was not rivaled in their exclusive use of power with in the German Reich from 1933 to 1945.

The methods employed where what are typical of all secretive police organizations.

They did not have anything to do with the concentration camps, or hunting down Jews for being Jewish, even thou all of these functions where carried out under the authority of Himmler and usually by way of the SS. Now if a Jew--or anyone of any race for that matter--was politically active then the Gestapo went to 'talk' to them, otherwise other police units dealt with that perceived problem. The camps where ran by the SS but not by the Department that directed the Gestapo.

Trying to understand National Socialist Germany is an attempt to understand a countless series of committees and panels and.........all of whom in the end knew very little of what they other committees, panels, and .........where actually doing at any given time. Few would have been privy to the overview, including most rank and file members of the Gestapo.

Answer 3

The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. The name itself came from the official abbrevation of "Geheimes Staatspolizei-Amt (GeStaPA)" and soon became "Gestapo". Under the overall administration of the Schutzstaffel (SS), it was administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) (“head office of the reich security service”) and was considered a dual organization of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) (“security service”) and also a suboffice of the Sicherheitspolizei (SIPO) (“security police”).

Answer 4

Geheimes Staatspolizei
Secret state police not as large a group as one was lead to belive at the time..they where so good at making people belive they are every where.
That most poeple would rat out other's at the smallest infraction or word against the law.
leading all to think they are every place.
The Stazi use the same plan in E.German after that.

Answer 5

Gestapo is an terror org organized by Adolph Hitler regime in 1932 Germany.

It job was to protect the Nazi party members, and keep them in tune with the Fuhrer.

They was in charge of all jails, consecration camps, prisoners

I almost got killed by one officer in 1943, he asked me whom to I swear a legion to?

I was suppose to say Adolph Hitler our God!

I said the King of Norway

He went for knife, but his buddies stopped him.

He was sent to Russia, and froze to death there in 1944

That is Gestapo, they are like the Iranians Elite Guard

Answer 6

Today, the Gestapo is the DEA, FBI, BATF, INS, NSA, CIA, Boy Scouts, UPS, FEDEX, schools, churches, do-gooders, and anyone the govt. can intimidate to do its dirty work.

Answer 7

you have got inter sting answer from all i agree with them

Answer 8

The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. The name itself came from the official abbrevation of "Geheimes Staatspolizei-Amt (GeStaPA)" and soon became "Gestapo". Under the overall administration of the Schutzstaffel (SS), it was administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) (“head office of the reich security service”) and was considered a dual organization of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) (“security service”) and also a suboffice of the Sicherheitspolizei (SIPO) (“security police”).

The Gestapo was established on April 26, 1933, in Prussia, from the existing organization of the Prussian Secret Police. The Gestapo was first simply a branch of the Prussian Police known as “Department 1A of the Prussian State Police”. The role of the Gestapo was to investigate and combat “all tendencies dangerous to the state.” It had the authority to investigate treason, espionage and sabotage cases, and cases of criminal attacks on the Nazi Party and Germany.

Laws passed in 1936 effectively gave the Gestapo carte blanche to operate without judicial oversight. Nazi jurist Dr. Werner Best stated that “[a]s long as the Gestapo ... carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally.”[citation needed] The Gestapo was specifically exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws.

A further law passed later in the year gave the Gestapo responsibility for setting up and administering concentration camps. Also in 1936, Reinhard Heydrich became head of the Gestapo and Heinrich Müller, chief of operations; Müller would later assume overall command after Heydrich's assassination in 1942. Adolf Eichmann was Müller's direct subordinate and head of department IV, section B4, which dealt with Jews.

The power of the Gestapo most open to misuse was called Schutzhaft—“protective custody,” a euphemism for the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings, typically in concentration camps[citation needed]. The person imprisoned even had to sign his or her own Schutzhaftbefehl, an order declaring that the person had requested imprisonment (ostensibly out of fear of personal harm). Normally this signature was forced by beatings and torture. During World War II, the Gestapo was expanded to around 45,000 members. Between November 14, 1945, and October 3, 1946, the allies also established an International Military Tribunal (IMT) to try 24 major Nazi war criminals and six groups. They were to be tried for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit the crimes so specified were declared responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan. The official positions of defendants as heads of state or holders of high government offices were not to free them from responsibility or mitigate their punishment; nor was the fact that a defendant acted pursuant to an order of a superior to excuse him from responsibility, although it might be considered by the IMT in mitigation of punishment.

At the trial of any individual member of any group or organization, the IMT was authorized to declare (in connection with any act of which the individual was convicted) that the group or organization to which he belonged was a criminal organization. When a group or organization was thus declared criminal, the competent national authority of any signatory had the right to bring individuals to trial for membership in that organization, with the criminal nature of the group or organization assumed proved.

These groups—the Nazi party and government leadership, the German General Staff and High Command (OKW); the Sturmabteilung (SA); the Schutzstaffel (SS), including the Sicherheitsdienst (SD); and the Gestapo—had an aggregate membership exceeding 2 million, and it was estimated[attribution needed] that approximately half these people would be made liable for trial if the groups were convicted.

The trials began in November 1945, and on October 1, 1946, the IMT rendered its judgment on 21 top officials of the Third Reich. The IMT sentenced most of the accused to death or to extensive prison terms and acquitted three. The IMT also convicted three of the groups: the Nazi leadership corps, the SS (including the SD), and the Gestapo. Gestapo members Hermann Göring and Arthur Seyss-Inquart were individually convicted by the IMT.

Three groups were acquitted of collective war crimes charges, but this did not relieve individual members of those groups from conviction and punishment under the denazification program. Members of the three convicted groups were subject to apprehension and trial as war criminals by the national, military, and occupation courts of the four allied powers. And, even though individual members of the convicted groups might be acquitted of war crimes, they still remained subject to trial under the denazification program.
After the Nuremberg Trials, the Gestapo ceased to exist.

In 1997, Cologne transformed the former regional Gestapo headquarters in that city—the EL-DE Haus—into a museum to document the organization's past actions. In various countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the term is used to denote in a derogatory manner all police forces, but particularly the communist-era riot police, such as ZOMO.
When the Gestapo was founded, the organization was already a well-established bureaucratic mechanism, having been created out of the already existing Prussian Secret Police. In 1934, the Gestapo was transferred from the Prussian Interior Ministry to the authority of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and for the next five years the Gestapo underwent a massive expansion.

In 1939, the entire Gestapo was placed under the authority of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), the main office of the SS. Within the RSHA, the Gestapo was known as Amt IV (“office IV”). The internal organization of the group is outlined below.


[edit] Referat N: Central Intelligence Office
The Central Command Office of the Gestapo, formed in 1941. Before 1939, the Gestapo command was under the authority of the office of the Sicherheitspolizei und Sicherheitsdienst (SD), to which the commanding general of the Gestapo answered. Between 1939 and 1941, the Gestapo was run directly through the overall command of the RSHA.


[edit] Department A (Enemies)
Communists (A1)
Countersabotage (A2)
Reactionaries and Liberals (A3)
Assassinations (A4)

[edit] Department B (Sects and Churches)
Catholics (B1)
Protestants (B2)
Freemasons (B3)
Jews (B4)

[edit] Department C (Administration and Party Affairs)
The central administrative office of the Gestapo, responsible for card files of all personnel.


[edit] Department D (Occupied Territories)
Opponents of the Regime (D1)
Churches and Sects (D2)
Records and Party Matters (D3)
Western Territories (D4)
Counter-espionage (D5)

[edit] Department E (Counterintelligence)
In the Reich (E1)
Policy Formation (E2)
In the West (E3)
In Scandinavia (E4)
In the East (E5)
In the South (E6)

[edit] Local Offices
The local offices of the Gestapo were known as Staatspolizeistellen and Staatspolizeileitstellen. These offices answered to a local commander known as the Inspekteur der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (“inspector of the security police and security services”) who, in turn, was under the dual command of Referat N of the Gestapo and also His local SS and Police Leader. The classic image of the Gestapo officer, dressed in trench coat and hat, can be attributed to Gestapo personnel assigned to local offices in German cities and larger towns. This image seems to have been popularized by the assassination of the former Chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher in 1934. General von Schleicher and his wife were gunned down in their Berlin home by three men dressed in black trench coats and wearing black fedoras. The killers of General von Schleicher were widely believed to have been Gestapo men. At a press conference held later the same day, Hermann Göring was asked by foreign correspondents to respond to a hot rumour that General von Schleicher had been murdered in his home. Göring stated that the Gestapo had attempted to arrest Schleicher, but that he had been “shot while attempting to resist arrest”.


[edit] Auxiliary Duties
The Gestapo also maintained offices at all Nazi concentration camps, held an office on the staff of the SS and Police Leaders, and supplied personnel on an as-needed basis to such formations as the Einsatzgruppen. Such personnel, assigned to these auxiliary duties, were typically removed from the Gestapo chain of command and fell under the authority of other branches of the SS.

Sometimes the word Gestapo is used colloquially for other organizations which are felt to be tyrannical.

Answer 9

It is not what WAS it is what IS!!!