The Terror State Flashcards
How did the Nazis keep control?
- Gestapo
- SS
- Concentration Camps
- SD
- The courts and the justice system
Who were the Gestapo?
Under the Nazi’s regime it’s operations were extended to cover the whole country. They developed a reputation for being all knowing; ordinary Germans believed they had agents in every workplace, pub and neighbourhood. However, it was actually a relatively small organisation, with only 20,000 officers in 1939 to cover the whole country. Nazi Party activists, who were asked to spy on neighbours and workmates, were one important source of information. Every block had a ‘block leader’, who’d report suspicious activity. Even more information came from voluntary denunciations of workmates and neighbours by ordinary Germans motivated by ‘personal grudges’. So large was the volume of information of alleged crimes that the Gestapo increasingly resorted to arbitrary arrest and preventative custody. Political debate and criticism was stifled and people adjusted their behaviour accordingly.
Who were the SS?
By 1936, after Himmler had been appointed chief of the German police, the SS controlled the entire Third Reich police system and the concentration camps. Under SS control, the police system in Germany was an instrument of the Führer and the Nazi Party. Himmler intended the SS to be strictly disciplined, racially pure and unquestioningly obedient. After 1936, there was a noticeable tightening of control and an increase in repression, as can be seen in the increase in concentration camp inmates. Violence and murder were instruments of State power to be employed ruthlessly and without reference to moral standards. SS concentration camp guards were deliberately brutalised to remove any feelings of humanity they might feel towards their prisoners.
What were concentration camps?
The vast majority of prisoners in the early months if the regime were communists socialists and trade unions. Many of the temporary camps were closed down and, by May 1934, there were only a quarter as many prisoners as there had been a year before. Torture and brutality had rendered the majority of prisoners unwilling to continue resistance against the Nazis and many were released. All concentration camps came under SS control after 1934 with the result that the treatment of prisoners became systematised. After 1936, having crushed the communists and socialists, the regime reorientation the concentration camp system to deal with ‘undesirables’. Habitual criminals, Asocials and non-Aryans made up the majority of concentration camp inmates as the regime tried to purify the race. This change also coincided with an increase in violence and brutality in the camps. Camp guards had been given immunity from prosecution by Himmler. Concentration camps were not designed to kill, just to re-educate.
Who were the SD?
Established in 1931 as the internal security service of the Nazi Party. An offshore of the SS, it was set up to investigate claims that the party had been infiltrated by its political enemies. The SD was led by Reinhard Heydrich. After 1933, the SD’s role was intelligence gathering. One of its important roles was to monitor public opinion, identify those who voted ‘no’ in plebiscites, and to report on these to Hitler. By 1939, the SD had 50,000 officers, a sign of how successful Heydrich had been in establishing his own power base. The SD, as a Nazi Party organisation, worked independently of the Gestapo, which was a State organisation. This could, and did, lead to overlap and confusion between the two organisations. The SD was staffed nor by professional police officers but by amateurs who were committed Nazis.
How were the courts and the justice system organised?
The long tradition of freedom from political interference for lawyers and judges posed a problem for the Nazis, as the violence and intimidation carried out by the SA and the SS was clearly illegal and many, prosecutions against Stormtroopers were begun by lawyers who were determined to uphold the law. Hitler was also angered by the fact that the Supreme Court acquitted all but one of the defendants in the Reichstag fire trial. A few judges and state prosecutors were dismissed by the regime. Far more effective in ‘coordinating’ the justice system were:
- the merging of the various professional associations of judges and lawyers with the League of National Socialist Lawyers, creating the Front of German Law in April 1933. It was made clear to judges and lawyers that their career prospects depended on the regime’s bidding.
- Introducing new courts. Special courts were set up in 1933 and the People’s Court in April 1934 to run alongside the existing court system. These courts set up to deal with political crimes, had three Nazi ‘judges’ alongside two professional judges. There were no juries and defendants had no rights of appeal against their sentence.
With these measures, backed by threats from the SA and SS, lawyers and judges fell into line. Although the old court system continued to exist, and many, non-Nazi judges contributed in their jobs, the justice system had no power to interfere with the Nazis use of terror.
Between 1934 and 1939, around 3400 people were tried by the People’s Court, most of whom were former communists and socialists. Many of those brought before the courts were given the death penalty, which was used increasingly in the Third Reich.
Who was Heinrich Himmler?
Himmler was the Reichsfuhrer (leader) of the SS.
After Hitler came to power, Himmler extended his power within the Nazi State, gradually taking control over police forces and running concentration camps. The SS established military units and its own industrial conglomerate.
Near the end of the war, Himmler was appointed as a military commander to organise the fight against the Red Army’s advance, but his lack of military experience caused Hitler to relieved him of his command. The rift between the two led Himmler to betray Hitler by attempting to negotiate a secret peace deal with the Allies. When Hitler found out, Himmler went on the run and was captured by British forces. He committed suicide whilst in custody.
In general, how successful was conformity?
When assessing the nature and extent of State terror in Nazi Germany, it is important to acknowledge that there was a strong base of support for the regime. Through the use of propaganda, and through Gleischaltung, the regime was able to gain acceptance from the majority of people. The Nazi SS police system was presented as an instrument to protect the majority against the corrupting influence of minorities. The terms ‘People’s Court’ and ‘popular justice’ portrayed repression and persecution as something that reflected the will of the people. To a large extent this propaganda appears to have been effective. The Gestapo, with its limited resources, could not have instilled fear and suspicion to the extent that it achieved without the cooperation of many ordinary citizens.
On the whole, there was very little active opposition and there was evidence of Hitler’s increasing popularity. Life in Nazi Germany became depoliticised; there was no open and free debate about the regime or its policies. Historians generally agree that there was widespread acceptance of the regime and most Germans subscribed to the view that the Third Reich was preferable to the disorder of the final Weimar Republic years. Nevertheless, various individuals and groups did, from time to time, try to resist Nazi attempts to ‘coordinate’ them into the volksgemeinschaft
How was Political resistance in general?
The parties of the left - the SPD and the KPD - were expected to mount the stiffest resistance to Hitler. Indeed, Hitler himself feared that the unions, which were linked to SPD, would stage a general strike to thwart the Nazi takeover in 1933, just as they had in 1920 to defeat the Kapp Putsch. In the event, the left did not pose a serious threat to the Nazi regime, partly because it was bitterly divided, with the KPD attacking the SPD as ‘social-fascists’.
How did the SPD try to oppose the regime?
By the end of 1933, thousands of SPD activists had been murdered or placed into ‘preventative custody’ and the SPD leadership had fled into exile.
Gradually, the SPD adapted to the changed conditions in Germany. Organised in exile by Ernst Schumacher from a base in Prague, the party established small, secret cells of supporters in factories. There were also some city-based groups such as the Berlin Red Patrol. Propaganda pamphlets were smuggled across the border from Czechoslovakia. The constant fear of exposure and arrest by the Gestapo limited the scope of these illegal activities. The priority for those involved was to survive and be prepared for a future collapse of the regime rather than to mount a serious challenge.
How did the KPD try to oppose the regime?
With its background in revolutionary politics, the KPD was much better prepared than the SPD for engaging in underground activity. The KPD was, however, devastated by the wave of repression unleashed upon communists in Germany after Hitler came to power. It was the first party to be banned and its leader Ernst Thälman, was arrested at an early age. About 10% of the KPD’s membership was killed by the Nazis during 1933. Nevertheless, the KPD established an underground network in some German industrial centres. Revolutionary unions were set up in Berlin and Hamburg to recruit members and publish newspapers. All these networks were, however, broken up by the Gestapo.
Secret communist activity was not completely eradicated by the Gestapo in 1934-35. Factory cells were established and contact between members was confined to word of mouth to reduce discovery. As with the SPD, however, the priority of communist cells was very much on survival since the party had ceased to exist and no serious challenge to the regime was possible.
How did workers try to oppose the regime?
Before 1933, the German working class was the largest and most unionised workforce in Europe. The largest unions in Germany were linked to the SPD and had been consistently opposed to the Nazi Party. After January 1933, however, union resistance crumbled surprisingly quickly. The ideology of class conflict had sustained the trade union movement before 1933. After the Nazis came to power, the trade unions were absorbed into the DAF (German Labour Front) and Nazi propaganda emphasised the importance of national as opposed to class solidarity.
Taking strike action was very risky but strikes did occur. In September 1935, 37 strikes were reported in Rhineland-Westphalia, Silesia and Württemberg. In the whole of 1937, a total of 250 strikes were recorded. Most of these strikes were reactions to poor working conditions or low wages. Significantly, there was increased strike activity in 1935-36 at a time when there was widespread discontent over food prices.
Of the 25,000 workers who participated in strikes in 1935, 4000 spent short periods in prison. After a 17-minute strike at the Opel car factory in 1936, seven ringleaders were arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned.
There were also less overt, but nonetheless effective, means by which workers could express their dissatisfaction. Absenteeism was often a reaction against the pressure to work longer hours. The regime was so concerned about the level of absenteeism in 1938 that new labour regulations were introduced, laying down severe penalties for ‘slackers’. In 1938, for example, the Gestapo arrested 114 workers at a munitions plant in Gleiwitz for absenteeism and slow working. Another tactic by some workers was to deliberately damage their machinery. Again the regime was concerned to enough make ‘sabotage’ a criminal offence and there were an increasing number of prosecutions in 1938-39.
How was resistance by the Churches in general?
The churches retained some organisational autonomy. This placed the Churches in a powerful position. The influence of the pastor or the priest in many communities was at least important as that as that of the Nazi party. On the other hand, the churches were well aware that, in a sustained conflict with the regime, they would be the losers. The Churches’ leaderships needed to protect their organisations if they were to survive at all, and this led them into making compromises. There were inevitably, however, issues in which the Churches were not prepared to compromise; at times, Protestants and Catholics felt it necessary to draw a line under Nazi efforts to force them into conformity and this led them into resistance. The response of the Christian Churches to the Nazi regime, therefore, was both complex and fluid, and varied not only over time but even from one priest or pastor to another.
How did the Protestant churches oppose the regime?
The establishment of the Pastors’ Emergency League in 1933 and its development into the Confessional Church in 1934 were, in themselves, acts of resistance. This was led by pastors who were not members of the Nazi Party and who came largely from academic backgrounds. Their refusal to accept being part of a ‘coordinated’ Reich Church was due to three main factors:
- They were tough to protect the independence of the Protestant church from the Nazi regime.
- They were revisiting the attempt to impose the Aryan paragraph on the Church. This involved purging from the church any pastor who has converted from Judaism.
- They were trying to defend orthodox Lutheran theology, which was based purely on the Bible.
During 1934, there was a growing struggle between the Confessional Church and the Nazi regime. Pastors spoke out against the ‘Nazified Christ’ from their pulpits. Many Churches refused to display swastika flags. When two Confessional Church bishops were arrested, there mass demonstrations in their support. The Nazi regime responded with increased repression. Dissenting pastors had their salaries stopped, they were banned from teaching in schools and many were arrested. By the end of 1937, over 700 pastors had been imprisoned.
The Nazi regime failed to silence the confessional church, but for its part, the confessional church did not form full opposition to the regime. The majority of its members professed their loyalty to Hitler and the Third Reich. Much of their energies were expended in fighting the bitter internal struggle against the official Reich Church, with the result that the Protestant Churches became rather inward looking. Although individual pastors risked their lives and liberty in speaking out against the barbarities of the regime, the Churches as a whole remained silent. There was no sustained defence of human rights and no official condemnation of atrocities, issues on which the churches might have been expected to give a moral lead.
How did the Roman Catholic Church oppose the regime?
The Catholic Church was in a stronger position to regain its independence than the Protestant Church. This was because the Catholic Church was more united, more centralised and had more of a tradition of independence from the State. Nevertheless, the Catholic leadership in both Rome and Germany tried to come to terms with the Nazi regime. It was when the privileges granted to the Catholic Church in the concordat of 1933 came under attack that the Church found it itself increasingly at odds with the regime. In 1937, the pope issued the papal encyclical “With Burning Grief” against the background of mounting pressure on the Catholic Church in Germany. It condemned the Nazi hatred upon the Church. The document was smuggled into Germany, secretly printed and distributed by messengers on bicycle or on foot and read our from almost every church pulpit in March 1937. This was the only time that the Catholic Church placed itself in open conflict with the regime.
Charges against priests for ‘abuse of the pulpit’ became regular occurrences. Again there was some resistance. The arrest of one priest led to noisy public demonstrations at his trial. Intimidation and harassment of priests, however, had the desired effect. A local government official reported in 1937 that the clergy were beginning to show ‘cautious restraint’.
The Church did not move beyond a narrow defence of its independence to a wider opposition to Nazism and Catholic resistance was therefore partial, convulsive and ineffective.
