2 - police state & terror

Question 1

Nazi courts

Answer 1

• judges instructed to issue harsher sentences
• new laws regarding political offences
• ‘people’s courts’ established to try enemies of the state
• from 1939 - judges had to study Nazi beliefs (or else were removed)
• Nazis replaced senior officials
• SS group leader was appointed minister of justice

Question 2

the SS

Answer 2

• originally an elite bodyguard for Hitler in 1925
• ‘state within a state’, responsible only to Hitler
• dominated police state & preserved Nazi regime
• created ‘New Order’

Question 3

Heinrich Himmler

Answer 3

• became head of SS (1929)
• created SD (1931)
• took control of police, including Gestapo in Prussia (1934)
• in control of all police & Gestapo powers (1936)
• became ‘commissioner for consolidating German nationhood’ (responsible for resettling ethnic Germans from conquered territories, & elimination of certain groups)

Question 4

the SD

Answer 4

secret intelligence wing of the SS

Question 5

RSHA

Answer 5

Reich Security Office (1939) - brought together all police & security organisations

Question 6

When were all police organisations amalgamated into the RSHA?

Answer 6

1939

Question 7

What was the SS made up of?

Answer 7

SD, Gestapo, Kripo, Waffen SS

Question 8

In what year did the SS become an elite force that only Aryans could join?

Answer 8

1935

Question 9

roles of the SS

Answer 9

• policing
• intelligence gathering
• military functions
• responsible for: security, ideology & race, economy, military issues

Question 10

‘New Order’

Answer 10

term describing the economic, political & social integration of Europe under Nazi rule

Question 11

the Gestapo

Answer 11

• secret state police
• small organisation (only 20,000-40,000)
• many agents were little more than office workers relying on informers & block wardens for information

Question 12

role of the Gestapo

Answer 12

find opponents of Nazism & arrest them (could be sent to concentration camps without trial)

Question 13

role of wardens

Answer 13

• responsible for 50 houses or apartments
• ensured Nazi flags were displayed & rallies were attended
• around 2 million block wardens
• unpopular in working-class areas (sympathy for communists & socialists)

Question 14

impact of war on the police state

Answer 14

• role of policing & security expanded
• military increased - 3 divisions to 35
• ‘New Order’ created in occupied lands
• process of exterminating & resettling people based on race & ideology put in place

Question 15

concentration camps in 1933

Answer 15

when Himmler took control = only 3000 inmates (successful in silencing opponents)

Question 16

concentration camps in 1936

Answer 16

focused on asocials, criminals & gay people

Question 17

concentration camps in 1937

Answer 17

individuals who didn’t fit into Volksgemeinschaft were imprisoned (including homeless people, Gypsies & long-term unemployed)

Question 18

concentration camps in 1942

Answer 18

regular prisoners & foreign workers transferred to camps as source of labour, became extermination camps for Jewish people

Question 19

numbers held within camps

Answer 19

Sept 1939 -> 25,000
Dec 1942 -> 88,000
Jan 1945 -> 714,211