Gestapo Was No Ordinary Political Police

Every country has political police – security service that protects the nation in question from internal and external threats to its political system (spies, terrorists, violent radicals, rebels, etc.).

The USA has FBI; Great Britain has MI-5; present-day Germany has BfV (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) … and the Third Reich had Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei – Secret State Police).

However, Gestapo (officially created on April 26, 1933) was no ordinary political police – it was fundamentally different from all of the above (and from its counterparts in “democratic” countries at the time). Different in two key aspects.

The first key aspect was that all of the above worked reactively – just as any other police force. In other words, it sprang into action only after a political crime has been committed – or a conspiracy to commit one was denounced or discovered (usually by a domestic intelligence service such as Inland-SD in Nazi Germany).

Gestapo worked (or at least tried to work) proactively – preventing the crime from happening or a conspiracy to commit one from ever taking shape. Using its own informers or resources of sister agency (Inland-SD) they discovered dangerous political opponents and (thanks to Reichstag Fire Decree) neutralized them.

Neutralized either by placing them – indefinitely – in preventive custody in one of Nazi concentration camps… or by murdering them (usually in a KL as well). From the modern “democratic” and “liberal” perspective it was (obviously) a highly criminal way to do state security business… however, it actually made sense. Made sense because it prevented harm (sometimes substantial) to the nation in question.

The second fundamental difference is forever associated with RSHA Referat IV B4 and its genuinely diabolical head Adolf Eichmann. Contrary to a popular misconception, Gestapo Chief Heinrich M;ller (one of the attendees of Wannsee Conference) was tasked by his superiors only with supporting Eichmann in the “final solution to the Jewish question” (he played no active role in the Holocaust).

Contrary to another popular misconception, Eichmann played only a limited (although a large-scale) role in the Holocaust. Apart from putting together the Wannsee Conference, he and his Referat IV B4 was responsible for “Jewish affairs and evacuation” in German-occupied Europe

And specifically for the deportation of Jews from outside Poland to concentration or extermination camps (mostly Auschwitz). Within Poland, the liquidation of the ghettos and transport of Jews was handled by the SS and local police departments.

The sub-department was a natural successor to the Central Office for Jewish Emigration which had initially been established by Eichmann in Vienna in August 1938. On 24 January 1939, the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration was established in Berlin by Hermann G;ring with Reinhard Heydrich as chief.

It was charged with the task of using all available means to prompt Jews to emigrate, and for establishing a Jewish organization that would incorporate all of German Jewry and co-ordinate emigration from the Jewish side. An office was subsequently opened in Prague.

RSHA IV B4 managed the categorization of Jews, the imposition of anti-Jewish legislation in the country concerned, the eventual removal of Jews from that country, and their deportation to a killing center to the the gas chamber. Unit IV B4 was also in charge of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, which oversaw all Jewish organizations.

Jews were carried to the camps in freight trains that had to be booked and paid for. The Deutsche Reichsbahn charged a one-way fare for the deportees and a return fare for the guards. The RSHA was billed for trains carrying Jews.

Contrary to another widespread misconception, Referat IV B4 was based not in RSHA headquarters, but in the mansion on Kurf;rstenstra;e 115/116, Berlin. The building was the former club and residential building of the Jewish Brotherhood (no surprise here) and was managed by Eichmann’s adjutant Rudolf Jaenisch.

Consequently, it is obvious that creation of Gestapo became another key step on the Road to Holocaust – and a very heavy in the “stack of slabs” that eight years later triggered the “Holocaust Avalanche” that murdered four million Jews.