Crushing opposition: The Nazi police state

Question 1

What were the 4 main methods within the Nazi police state?

Answer 1

• The Gestapo
• The SS
• Concentration Camps
• The police and the courts

Question 2

The Gestapo

Answer 2

• Secret state police
• Commanded by Reinhard Heydrich
• Had sweeping powers
• Could arrest citizens and send them to concentration camps without trial or even explanation
• Network of ‘informers’ listening in on people’s conversations
• Seems that they were the most feared organisation
• Recent research shows that Germans believed the Gestapo was much more powerful than it actually was
• Ordinary Germans informed on each other because they thought the Gestapo would find out anyway

Question 3

The SS

Answer 3

• After virtually destroying the SA in 1934, the SS grew into a huge organisation with various responsibilities
• 1 million staff by 1944
• Led by Heinrich Himmler
• SS men were Aryans, very highly trained and totally loyal to Hitler
• Under Himmler, the SS had the main responsibility for crushing opposition and carrying out Nazi racial policies
• Around 200,000 Germans were sent to concentration camps by SS courts

Question 4

What were the three important sub-divisions of the SS?

Answer 4

• The SD
• The Death’s Head units
• The Waffen-SS

Question 5

The SD

Answer 5

• The SS’s own internal security service
• The SD would investigate potential disloyalty within armed forces or politically sensitive cases like a crime committed by a senior Nazi

Question 6

The Death’s Head units

Answer 6

• Responsible for the concentration camps
• Also the transportation and murder of Jews

Question 7

The Waffen-SS

Answer 7

Armoured regiments that fought alongside the regular army.

Question 8

Concentration camps

Answer 8

• The Nazis’ ultimate sanction against their own people
• First camps set up as soon as Hitler took power in 1933
• They were makeshift prisons in disused factories and warehouses
• Purpose-built camps were soon built in isolated areas- Jews, socialists, communists, trade unionists, churchmen and anyone else brave enough to criticise the Nazis ended up here
• Around 1.3 million Germans spent at least some time in a concentration camp between 1933 and 1939

Question 9

More about concentration camps

Answer 9

• Run by SS Death’s Head units
• Prisoners were forced to do hard labour
• Limited food and harsh discipline
• Beatings and random executions
• The aim was to ‘correct’ opponents of the Nazis
• By the late 1930s death in the camps were increasingly common and very few came out alive

Question 10

The police and the courts

Answer 10

• Top jobs in local police forces were given to high-ranking Nazis reporting to Himmler
• The police added ‘political snooping’
• Obviously, they were under strict instruction to ignore crimes committed by Nazi agents
• Nazis controlled magistrates, judges and the courts

Question 11

More about the police and the courts

Answer 11

• Sacked judges they disapproved of
• Led to self-imposed control
• Magistrates knew what they were expected to do and did it
• They wouldn’t last long if they didn’t
• Opponents of Nazism rarely received a fair trial