Third Reich

Gestapo

Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)

Geheime Staatspolizei, the Secret State Police of the Third Reich, created in Prussia in April 1933. It hunted the regime’s opponents in Germany and occupied Europe and organised the deportation of Jews.

The Gestapo grew out of the political police of the Weimar Republic. On 26 April 1933 Hermann Göring created the Secret State Police Office in Prussia; in 1934 he handed it to Himmler and Heydrich, who by 1936 controlled the political police of all Germany. From 1939 the Gestapo was Office IV of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), headed by Heinrich Müller.

It could send people to concentration camps without trial under ‘protective custody’, and it relied heavily on denunciations by ordinary citizens. During the war Gestapo officers served in the Einsatzgruppen, hunted resistance movements, tortured prisoners under interrogation and organised the deportation of Jews to the extermination camps. The Nuremberg tribunal declared the Gestapo a criminal organisation.