Gestapo transcript. SS - a fundamentally new type of power structure

The Gestapo led the persecution of dissidents, dissatisfied and opponents of the power of Adolf Hitler, was part of the German Ministry of the Interior. Possessing broad powers, it was the most important tool for pursuing a punitive policy both in Germany itself and in the occupied territories. The Gestapo was engaged in investigating the activities of all forces hostile to the regime, while the activities of the Gestapo were removed from the supervision of administrative courts, in which the actions of state bodies were usually appealed. At the same time, the Gestapo had the right to preventive arrest (German Schutzhaft) - imprisonment or concentration camp without a court decision.

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organizational development

Structure

The organizational structure of the Gestapo changed several times. After its foundation, it was divided into 10 departments: "general"; to carry out arrests; the remaining 9 had the task of monitoring certain political movements. After the Gestapo was reassigned to Himmler and divided into 3 main departments (administration, political police, protection police (German: Abwehrpolizei)), the political police proper continued to adhere to the organizational division according to the functional principle.

When in 1936 there was a merger with the criminal police into the security police, a single Directorate for leadership and personnel was created from the relevant units, which regulated the interests of both police institutions.

During the reorganizations of 1939-1941, some departments of the Gestapo were included in other departments; at the same time, units from other services were included in the IV Department of the RSHA. After the reorganization of March 1941, the almost final structure of the Gestapo was formed, slightly changed in 1944.

Simultaneously with the change in the organizational structure of the Gestapo, the number of employees also changed. If in 1933 50 people served in the secret state police department, then in 1935, after the political police units of the lands were subordinated to the management in Berlin, the number of Gestapo employees was 4,200 people in the central office and in the field. By the end of the war, the number of Gestapo employees exceeded 40,000 people.

In accordance with the organizational plan for March 1941, the IV Department of the RSHA "Research and Combating the Enemy, Department of the Secret State Police" was headed by SS Brigadeführer and Police Major General Heinrich Müller. The "new" Gestapo consisted of an office and five departments:

• Office of Management. The head of the office is SS-Sturmbannführer Pieper. In addition to clerical work, the department was in charge of information and recruitment for management. The office was also in charge of the internal prison of the Gestapo.
• IV A(fight against the enemy): SS Obersturmbannführer and Oberregirungsrat Friedrich Pantsinger
  • IV A 1(Communists, Marxists, secret organizations, war crimes, illegal and enemy propaganda): SS Sturmbannführer and criminal director Josef Vogt, SS Hauptsturmführer Dr. Gunther Knobloch(since August 1941)
  • IV A 2(combating sabotage, counterintelligence, political falsifications): SS Hauptsturmführer Criminal Police Commissioner Horst Kopkow, SS Obersturmführer Bruno Sattler?!(since 1939), SS-Sturmbannführer Kurt Geisler(since summer 1940)
  • IV A 3(reactionaries, oppositionists, monarchists, liberals, emigrants, traitors to the motherland): SS-Sturmbannführer and criminal director Willi Litzenberg
  • IV A 4(Security service, assassination prevention, outdoor surveillance, special assignments, search and prosecution squads): SS-Sturmbannführer and criminal director Franz Schulz
• IV B: (sects): SS-Sturmbannführer Albert Hartl, Oberführer SS Achamer-Piefrader (since February 1944)
  • IV B 1(Political Ecclesiastical/Catholic): SS-Sturmbannführer and Regirungsrat Erich Roth
  • IV B 2(Political Ecclesiastical/Protestant): SS-Sturmbannführer and Regirungsrat Erich Roth
  • IV B 3(other churches, freemasons): Otto-Wilhelm Vandesleben (since December 1942)
  • IV B 4(Jewish question - evacuation of Jews, protection of property (since 1943), deprivation of citizenship (since 1943)): SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann
• IV C: (file cabinet): SS-Obersturmbannführer and Oberregirungsrat Fritz Rank
  • IV C 1(information processing, main file cabinet, inquiry service, monitoring of foreigners, central visa department): Polizeirat Paul Matzke
  • IV C 2(preventive detention): SS-Sturmbannführer, Regirungsrat and Kriminalrat Dr. Emil Berndorff
  • IV C 3(observation of the press and publishing houses): SS-Sturmbannführer, Regirungsrat Dr. Ernst Jahr
  • IV C 4(observation of members of the NSDAP): SS-Sturmbannführer and Kriminalrat Kurt Stage
• IVD(occupied territories): SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr.

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Ss and Sd(abbreviations from the German Schutzstaffeln, `security formations` and Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, `security service of the imperial leader of the SS`), the main repressive and punitive institutions of Nazi Germany, which were in charge of the "final solution" of the Jewish question.

The emergence of SS and SD

The SS arose in 1923 as part of the assault squads (Sturmabteilungen) as a small group of A. Hitler's personal bodyguards. Since 1929, when they were headed by G. Himmler (see National Socialism), they began to form as security units that ensure the safety of the entire Nazi leadership. The SD were created by G. Himmler in 1931 as an internal security service of the Nazi Party, designed to monitor the purity of the party ranks and prevent the penetration of alien and hostile elements into them. The SS became an all-powerful organization of political terror, ready to carry out without fail and effectively any instructions of the Nazi Party, after the establishment of the Nazi regime in Germany in January 1933 and the unification with the SD in March 1934.

Hitler's role in the formation of the SS

The decisive role in the formation of the SS as the main pillar of the Nazi regime was played by A. Hitler, who did not trust the traditional state institutions (including the army, political and criminal police). Hitler believed that even after a total purge of these institutions, they would not be able to become a reliable tool for carrying out the political course he planned.

SS - a fundamentally new type of power structure

The SS were conceived as a fundamentally new type of power structure; their purpose, structure, principles of personnel selection, ideological and psychological attitudes, symbols were supposed to embody the ideals and goals of the Nazi regime and, above all, its racist ideology. The Nazi leaders made the party elite out of the SS, membership in them became a sign of distinction and honor - many millions of Germans considered the SS men the embodiment of strength and courage, knights without fear and reproach, the best sons of the German race. Until 1940, membership in the SS was exclusively voluntary (the massive influx of volunteers did not stop until the last days of the Third Reich), and not every member of the Nazi Party was accepted into their ranks. A member of the SS had to have an impeccable racial origin (documented since at least the end of the 18th century), in addition, an "Aryan" appearance was desirable; members of the SS were required to prove selfless devotion to the Fuhrer and the racial idea, readiness to stop at nothing to carry out any orders from their superiors, good physical data and a stable psyche. The prestige of the SS was so high that many heads of state departments (for example, I. von Ribbentrop, G. Goering and many others), big bankers, industrialists, engineers, scientists, etc., considered it an honor to wear the special SS generals assigned to them and officer ranks (Obergruppenführer - SS General, Standartenführer - Colonel, Obersturmbannführer - Lieutenant Colonel, Sturmbannführer - Major, Sturmführer - Lieutenant, etc.).

SS - service for special assignments

The political course of the Nazi regime was no longer in line with the norms of international law and the entire European Christian cultural tradition, the Nazi leaders increasingly entrusted the SS with such practical actions that no one else was ready to perform.

Growth of the SS and SD

Scale of activity Ss I Sd continuously increased, their numbers grew rapidly - from 280 people in 1929 to 52 thousand in 1933, several hundred thousand in 1939 and about a million by 1945 (including the Waffen SS - the most reliable military formations that took part in the fighting).

Subordination of state structures to the services of the SS and SD

At the same time there was an ever more complete subjugation Ss I Sd state structures responsible for internal and external security (it was not possible to completely subdue only the army). In 1933, the head of the SS G. Himmler also headed the Munich police, in April 1934 - the Gestapo of Prussia, in June 1936 - the entire police system of the Third Reich, and in August 1943 - the Imperial Ministry of the Interior. In parallel with this, the prerogatives of the SD, a kind of elite within the SS, were expanding: in June 1936, the favorite of A. Hitler and G. Himmler, the chief of the SD from the moment it was created, R. Heydrich (see National Socialism) became the head of the security police of the Third Reich. In September 1939, the absorption of state structures by party (including Ss I Sd) ended with the creation of the Imperial Main Security Office (RSHA - Reichssicherheitsshauptamt) headed by Heydrich. The RSHA, which united the Gestapo and the SD under one command, became part of the structure of the Ministry of the Interior, while remaining at the same time one of the most important divisions of the SS (in both capacities it was subordinate to G. Himmler). The functions and powers to eliminate anyone, including potential opponents of the Nazi regime and racial ideology, were transferred to the RSHA, which included persons suspected of high treason (especially vigilance was shown in relation to journalists, some church leaders and former members of banned non-Nazi parties and trade unions), as well as all representatives of the "inferior and inferior" races, and above all Jews. The "final solution" of the Jewish question could not be conceived and carried out without Ss I Sd and the human type formed in them - ideological and therefore ruthless and cold-blooded killers, and often just sadists, for whom the Nazi ideology served as a convenient justification for their criminal inclinations.

SS and SD - organizers and performers of anti-Jewish actions

From the moment the Nazi regime was established in Germany, all anti-Jewish actions were entrusted only to Himmler's department. Ss and Sd directed and controlled the process of ousting Jews from civil, political, economic, cultural and other spheres of life, which began back in 1933. The same punitive bodies monitored the observance of the Nuremberg Laws, which actually deprived the Jews of elementary human rights. The SD and Heydrich were directly instructed to provoke a wave of "spontaneous" Jewish pogroms throughout Germany on November 9, 1938 (see Kristallnacht). Administered Ss I Sd there was also a campaign carried out before the outbreak of World War II to cleanse the entire territory of Greater Germany from the Jewish presence, as the Nazis began to call the united country after the Anschluss of Austria. One of the main organizers of the forced Jewish emigration, which was accompanied by the confiscation of almost all the property of the expelled Jews, was A. Eichmann.

Decision to exterminate European Jewry

Formally, the decision to exterminate all European Jewry was made at the Wannsee Conference in 1942, but immediately after the attack on the Soviet Union, the SS began the total killing of Jews in the occupied territories. Together with the police, they formed special detachments - Einsatzgruppen - to "put things in order" in the rear of the German troops. Each of the Einsatzgruppen was led by senior SS officers.

death camps

The death camps were under the exclusive jurisdiction of the SS: Himmler's department was entrusted with their design, construction, protection, and then ensuring their smooth operation. Scientific and design institutes that were part of the SS system (among them, along with the institute of "racial hygiene", there were also engineering and technological, chemical, biomedical and others), developed the most effective and cheap equipment and chemical means for the rapid killing of people. The RSHA clearly and in an organized way ensured the delivery of Jews from European countries controlled by Nazi Germany to the death camps. After the assassination of R. Heydrich in May 1942 by Czech partisans, the RSHA was headed by E. Kaltenbrunner (a lawyer from Austria, who had led the Austrian SS since 1935; he, in particular, carried out an operation in Lithuania in 1941, during which a group of 18 SS men under his direct command destroyed more than 60 thousand Jews). Specially created in 1934 units of the SS "Dead Head" guarded the death camps. The main administrative and economic department of the SS - WVHA, which was in charge of the camps, developed and established a regime for the maximum rationalization of the death conveyor - first, children, pregnant women, the sick and the elderly were destroyed; the service by prisoners of those operations of the process of killing people, which were abhorred not only by the SS men themselves, but also by their henchmen from the populated occupied countries, was introduced; from the able-bodied prisoners, before their destruction, all the forces were pumped out by slave labor; personal belongings and even the remains of the victims were disposed of (golden crowns, hair, often skin, ashes from crematorium ovens). As a rule, only those doctors and scientists who had officer and sometimes general SS ranks were entrusted with biomedical experiments on concentration camp prisoners, mainly Jews. At the last stage of the war, when the defeat of Nazi Germany became inevitable, it was the SS units that were entrusted with the elimination of the death camps and all traces of Nazi atrocities.

The empire led by Himmler, which existed on the territory of the Third Reich, included the Gestapo, the police, the notorious Einsatzgruppen and various economic enterprises in which the last juices were squeezed out of concentration camp prisoners. The tentacles of this empire penetrated the most diverse spheres of the internal front - the rear of Nazi Germany.

In Germany during the war, under the control of the Reichsführer SS, there were main departments that controlled various aspects of the life of the SS empire. About those who actively invaded the life of military Germany and the occupied territories, in the following chapters of the book will be described in some detail. However, there were other major departments that had a significant impact on the home front rather than on the war zones or territories outside the Third Reich, although ordinary inhabitants may never have suspected their existence.

MAIN OFFICE OF THE SS COURTS

The legal department of the SS was based in Munich, the cradle of National Socialism. He was mainly responsible for the administration and imposition of a special disciplinary code within the SS and supervised the activities of the SS and police courts both in Germany itself and in the occupied territories.

The Main Office of the SS Courts was controlled by SS-Obergruppenführer Franz Breithaupt and was in charge, in addition to its other duties, of investigating disciplinary offenses, as well as preparing and pronouncing convictions in court cases that were instituted against violators of the SS code of honor. This department also oversaw the SS and police prisons.

Although it was within his purview to punish delinquent members of the SS, only a small number of concentration camp employees were accused of corruption (usually theft of jewelry from prisoners immediately after their arrival at the camp).

SS HEAD OFFICE

As the name implies, this department was originally the main department of all SS. As this organization began to grow rapidly, the opinion arose that it worked too hard - so numerous were the new departments created to carry out its duties. Ultimately - when World War II began - the General Directorate lost about 70 percent of its official functions, and thus its overall power and influence was significantly reduced. Under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger, it was responsible for the safety of all personal files of non-combatants and junior SS officers, and, more importantly, from 1941 onwards, for the replenishment of personnel in the Waffen-SS. Berger showed Machiavelli-worthy cunning, starting all sorts of intrigues to replenish his ranks at the expense of the Wehrmacht, and was the main driving force in the formation of detachments of foreign volunteers (see Chapter 6).

SS HEAD OFFICE

From 1942 under the overarching leadership of SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Jüttner, this institution was the main operational headquarters of the SS. By the end of the war, it had 45,000 employees and was responsible for operational control of the Waffen-SS and the rest of the SS. Its new functions, compared to the previous ones, included organization, supply, training, mobilization and staffing.

Reichsfuehrer-SS PERSONAL HQ

The personal headquarters of the Reichsführer SS, located in Berlin, was responsible for all matters that did not fall under the competence of other SS departments. In the rear, their main task was to lead the Lebensborn organization. It was created in 1936 to breed good Aryan offspring by mothers of racially high-grade origin - both married women and singles.

In 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Himmler's order was issued: “All war entails bloodshed. The best are dying. Numerous victories mean the loss of the best forces and blood of the nation. The death of the best is not the worst fate. Worst of all is the absence of children who were not born from parents during the war years. Absolutely independent of civil law and traditional morality, this must now be the duty of all German mothers and girls. They should give birth to children from SS soldiers fighting at the front, and treat this matter with all moral responsibility. In addition, the future of these children will be secured: the official guardians will take under guardianship on behalf of the Reichsführer SS all illegitimate children of Aryan blood whose fathers died in battle ... The head of the RSHA and his apparatus will maintain freedom of action in maintaining documentation relating to the adoption of these children ... Members of the SS must understand this order well and obey it - thus fulfilling a duty of great importance. Ridicule, neglect, misunderstanding will not have any effect on us, because the future is ours.”

Thus, official support was promised to unmarried mothers and illegitimate children, provided they were of Aryan origin.

Himmler thus went far enough in the defense of Aryan blood. In August 1942, he gave the order that the SS family, which had only one surviving son who had reached military age, was recalled from the front and sent home to continue the family line. This was practiced until the very end of the war.

Himmler's fanaticism regarding the Aryan gene pool was not limited to the Reich alone. When the German troops broke the resistance of the armies of the European countries they had conquered, the children who were orphaned during the war years, who were orphaned during the war, were collected and sent to Germany. Thus, in fact, what is called kidnapping, the abduction of children, took place. This even applied to some Polish children, who, being Slavs, were generally seen as unsuitable for Himmler's plans. But be that as it may, they were all sent to Germany, where they were assigned to families selected by the SS leadership.

In accordance with Himmler's plans, these children, having become adults, were to return to their homeland already brought up in a Germanized spirit, in order to form a special Nordic caste in the conquered territories and thus control the "lower" races.

HEADQUARTERS

IMPERIAL SECURITY (RSHA)

By 1940, the main department had lost some of its original functions, but still oversaw the main areas: racial issues, family, resettlement and organization, personnel.

Each SS oberschnitt (territorial division) in military Germany had an RSHA curator officer, and each city an SS family welfare officer. Despite wartime orders regarding the SS and administration, RSHA personnel were still engaged in racial screening of any potential SS member. Thorough checks were carried out just before the Second World War broke out in 1939, the rapid pace of which subsequently made such deep research impossible in many respects. A full investigation of Aryan origin and family tree was conducted only on promising officers and their potential wives. As for the junior officers, it was sufficient for them to declare in writing that they did not have persons of non-Aryan origin in their family. Making more detailed inquiries was postponed until the end of the war. Volunteers of German origin were similarly recruited on the basis of a written application only.

Another main function carried out by this department was the resettlement of Germans in the occupied eastern lands, where the local population was often simply expelled from their homes, and their housing was occupied by German families.

HEISMEYER HEAD OFFICE

The most important influence this department had on the education sector. It controlled the NPEA, the bodies of the political entity of the NSDAP (Nationalpolitish Erziungsanstalten). They were organized in 1933 with the aim of preparing worthy candidates for the highest positions in the SS or the NSDAP. Himmler eventually cleverly took over this body as well, first by offering clothing and equipment, then by promising stipends and funding. In 1936, his efforts were rewarded when SS-Obergruppenführer August Heismeier was appointed Inspector General of this department. Himmler then secured entry into the SS of all NPEA personnel.

By 1940, he took full control of the schools, establishing for the teaching staff similar to the SS uniform and ranks - the SS prefix in addition to the previous ranks, and thus the SS Oberführer became the NPEA Oberführer and so on. NPEA schools were also opened outside the Reich to educate suitable applicants from communities inhabited by the ethnic German Volksdeutsche.

However, the evidence suggests that, despite the importance that Himmler attached to the NPEA, only a small proportion of young Germans went through these schools, and thus the impact of these schools on German life was minimal.

IMPERIAL SECURITY OFFICE

The Reichs Main Security Office, under the command of Heydrich, wielded more weight than any other SS organization.

The Main Directorate of Imperial Security included seven divisions, including the ideological one - the head of SS Obersturmführer Dittel - which was investigating the cases of those people who seemed "ideologically dangerous" to the cause of National Socialism - communists, Jews, pacifists, masons and others. The department dealing with organizational and economic issues was headed by SS Standartenführer Spazil, and the personnel department was headed by SS Oberführer Erlinger.

In addition to them, there were also the Gestapo (state secret police) - the head of the SS Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller; the criminal police department (kripo), headed by SS Gruppenführer Artur Nebe; and an external service (intelligence), headed by SS Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg.

The internal service of the SD was headed by SS Brigadeführer Otto Ohlendorf. Of all the above departments, the internal service of the SD, the Kripo and the Gestapo most actively invaded the lives of the citizens of military Germany. From the very first days of the existence of the Gestapo, which arose thanks to the cares of Hermann Goering, Hitler endowed this organization with extremely broad powers. He publicly announced that he would not tolerate interference from other secret services in matters considered to be the competence of the Gestapo. A large number of members of the Gestapo in the early period of the existence of this organization were former criminal police officers, and many of them were not members of the NSDAP or the SS. Many of these officers had extensive police experience behind them, rather than academic knowledge.

Unlike Gestapo officials, the typical SD officer tended to come from an educated middle-class background, was intelligent, was a loyal member of the NSDAP, and was a member of the SS. The activities of the SD included counterintelligence and the eradication of enemies of the state, but the SD had limited ability to arrest and was often contemptuous of Gestapo rivals. The Gestapo had no restrictions on making arrests and often invaded those areas of life for which the SD was responsible. The relationship between the two organizations was thus far from cordial.

The state secret police - the Gestapo - formed mainly from former employees of the Kripo, already had a ready army of informers in the field, which was steadily growing. For example, each large residential building had its own curator-informant from the Gestapo, who tirelessly monitored the residents, specially ready to inform on the slightest occasion of disloyalty.

Government officials, who were instructed to denounce their colleagues, were especially actively forced to inform. The smallest problem was blown out of proportion and used as an excuse for not using the services of an employee who was considered insufficiently loyal to the existing regime.

Even children were encouraged to whine, so that they would spy on their parents to find out their possible disloyalty to the regime.

When the war broke out in 1939, the Gestapo had 20,000 members, while the SD had only 3,000. The Gestapo had about 50 thousand paid informants, but by 1943 the number of informants reached one hundred thousand. The hostility between the two rival organizations was intensified by the fact that the Gestapo was financed without any restrictions, while the SD had to literally fight to get money from their superiors. In addition, Gestapo employees enjoyed greater pension benefits than SD employees. Significant changes in this regard occurred after the reorganization of the police services of the Third Reich and Heydrich was entrusted with the leadership of the SD, Gestapo and Kripo under the umbrella of the RSHA. Heydrich quickly introduced his people there: the former Kripo officer Heinrich Müller, who headed the Gestapo, and Walter Schellenberg, who became the head of the SD. Once a Kripo officer in Bavaria, Müller pandered to the Nazis when they tried to cover up the death of Hitler's niece Geli Raubal.

When war broke out in 1939, the paranoia of the Nazi state was at its height. Now the Gestapo and SD had to face elements potentially hostile to Nazism in Germany, such as clerical circles - church sermons were carefully studied for criticism of the existing regime. But there were also a huge number of diplomats, businessmen, journalists and ordinary foreign citizens who should have been watched in the most careful way.

The beginning of the war was marked by great propaganda successes of the secret services. In 1939, the communist Georg Elser, a watchmaker by profession, planted a bomb in the Munich pub "Bürgerbrau-Keller". Hidden behind a wooden wall paneling, it was supposed to explode and kill Hitler during his speech to the veterans of the Nazi movement. Unfortunately for Elser, Hitler left the pub ahead of schedule, and although the bomb did go off, he was no longer in the room. A network of Gestapo agents immediately identified the intruder, and soon they were hunting him all over the country. Elser was captured while trying to cross the Swiss border. The assassination attempt on Hitler's life was presented to the German people as a conspiracy inspired by the British, and its failure as proof that fate itself was on Hitler's side. Elzer was kept under so-called "protective protection" and was never brought to trial. He was executed in April 1945 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

In 1940, the SD carried out another operation. Posing as members of an anti-Nazi resistance group, the SD agents made contact with the British, openly expressing their desire to probe the terms of the peace negotiations immediately after Hitler was deposed. British intelligence officers Captain Best and Major Stevens were lured into a trap - to meet in the Dutch town of Venloo on the Dutch-German border. SD agents, led by Alfred Naujoks, crossed the border, stormed the meeting place, and forcibly removed British intelligence officers to Germany.

The German people were once again presented with evidence of a British plot to provoke popular indignation and overthrow the Hitler regime. In addition to everything, Hitler had the opportunity to play the Dutch card - to use the normal excuse to attack Holland. Hitler's opponents in Germany were somewhat intimidated by the success of the secret services. In any case, during the first two or three years of the war, when the victorious actions of the German army were not in doubt, and food shortages had not yet become chronic, there were no real grounds for public discontent and, accordingly, conditions for the emergence of a strong anti-Hitler opposition. As the war dragged on, and the lack of food became more and more felt by the civilian population, popular discontent intensified.

The secret services were well aware of the decline in public morality, but were unable to effectively counter it, and had no choice but to keep a close eye on manifestations of defeatism and public discontent. In any case, however strange it may seem, only a tiny fraction of these feelings were addressed personally to Hitler - the majority of the population still retained faith in the Fuhrer.

As head of the apparently successful Reich Security Office (RSHA), Heydrich's position in Hitler's eyes was extremely high. Located to the east of Germany, the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, which was actually part of Czechoslovakia, was ruled by the Reich Protector Konstantin von Neurath, an old-school diplomat whom Hitler viewed as a man who was too soft on the enslaved Czechs.

His deputy, SS Gruppenführer Karl Frank, was eager to take the post of Reich Protector and used every opportunity to undermine von Neurath's authority. But be that as it may, when Hitler removed Neurath from this post, it was Heydrich who was appointed acting Reich Protector.

Heydrich was extremely flattered by this new, important appointment for him, remaining as before the head of the RSHA. To everyone's surprise, Heydrich's attitude towards the Czechs was absolutely atypical for him. Instead of a cruel attitude, Heydrich chose the policy of carrots and sticks. As a gingerbread, the supply of a sufficient amount of food and quite decent treatment of the Czechs, provided that they were hardworking and good behavior, was used.

The whip meant the most severe possible prison sentence for any person who helped the Czech resistance movement or saboteur - this also applied to any German found guilty of activities contrary to the interests of the Reich. Thus, Heydrich seemed to many Czechs a just, albeit cruel ruler, and the actions of the resistance movement decreased. The Czech government in exile was alarmed by the situation. The interests of the Allies and the propaganda carried out by them would have received better practical reinforcement if the Czech population could be pushed to actively resist the Nazi invaders.

The British and the Czechoslovak government-in-exile decided to execute Heydrich, knowing that the inevitable retribution that would fall on the Czechs would certainly turn their anger against the Germans. In May 1942, a group of Czech emigrant soldiers, with the help of the British, was parachuted into Czechoslovakia. On May 27, Heydrich, on his way to his residence in an open car, was attacked by these paratroopers. During the ensuing firefight, a grenade was thrown, which exploded in a car next to Heydrich, who was seriously wounded. On June 4, he died in the hospital.

Hitler's reaction was completely predictable. A thousand Czechs were arrested, and the village of Lidice, falsely accused of being terrorists, was completely destroyed on his orders. The terrorists themselves were betrayed by a traitor, and their secret hideout in one of Prague's churches was surrounded. After a short siege, the Czech paratroopers realized the futility of further resistance and committed suicide. Heydrich received a state funeral, and an entire Waffen-SS regiment was named after him.

Lidice was razed to the ground and the name of this village was removed from the maps. As head of the RSHA, Heydrich was replaced by the Austrian Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Juris Doctor, SS Obergruppenführer and Police General.

In Germany, criticism of the ruling regime began to be expressed more openly. For some time, the bishop of the city of Münster was an opponent of Nazism. His sermons, which contained serious criticism of Nazism, left no one in doubt about his true convictions. It is worth noting, however, that he was not subjected to any reprisals, perhaps due to his high position.

Huber, professor of philosophy at the University of Munich, a staunch anti-Nazi, supported the bishop's critical position and, based on his sermons, wrote a leaflet, copied it and began to secretly distribute it at the university. These leaflets fell into the hands of many like-minded students, and the result was a resistance movement group. This group, which called itself the "White Rose", limited itself to passive resistance, which manifested itself in the distribution of anti-fascist leaflets.

The news of the growing dissatisfaction of the students reached Gauleiter Paul Geisler, who decided to personally address the students with a speech.

He scolded them for their moral decline and lack of devotion to Hitler, frightened the young men with conscription into the army, and offered the students to use future citizens of the Reich as mothers, hinting that he would not mind helping them in this.

The students were infuriated by Geisler's speech, and they attacked him and his guards with viciousness. Street riots began, signs such as “Down with Hitler!” began to appear on the walls of houses.

The authorities did not have hard evidence against specific students, but they continued to keep the university under constant surveillance. In the end, a Gestapo agent, who worked at the university as a cleaner, tracked down two students - brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, who were throwing leaflets from the balcony, and immediately gave them up. The young men were promptly arrested and brought before a court headed by the Nazi judge Roland Freisler. Scholli's brother and sister, as well as another student named Christoph Probst, were found guilty and sentenced to death by decapitation. The sentences were carried out without delay. The remaining members of the White Rose, including Professor Huber, were soon arrested and executed. Despite such setbacks, the Resistance continued to grow in strength, and the SD and the Gestapo were forced to be constantly on the alert in order to stop the slightest manifestations of dissent and opposition.

By the end of 1943, the RSHA realized that there was a powerful anti-Hitler opposition in the ranks of the Wehrmacht, but could not seem to find evidence against many specific individuals. Those suspicious, who were nevertheless identified, were not touched, perhaps in the hope that tireless surveillance of their movements and contacts would lead the SD and the Gestapo to their leaders.

Secret service units had to act with caution and discretion because the SS courts had no jurisdiction over Wehrmacht employees; and since the military courts were reluctant to use the methods of the Gestapo when interrogating soldiers suspected of disloyalty, confessions from the latter were rare. The SD and the Gestapo were waiting for a favorable opportunity.

When the defeat in the war became obvious, the loyalty of the senior officers of the Wehrmacht gave a strong crack. Many of them for some time favored actions against the regime, especially if it concerned the removal of the Führer himself, but could not count on the support of society as long as Hitler's adventures continued to bring victory.

By mid-1944, the time was ripe for action. A training military operation was developed, code-named "Valkyrie", in accordance with which parts of the Wehrmacht were to occupy Berlin to protect the city from a hypothetical uprising of workers who were forcibly deported to Germany in Germany, runaway prisoners and others. The conspirators were sure that in the event of the removal of Hitler, troops loyal to them, under the pretext of carrying out this military operation, could easily capture Berlin and remove the Nazi government. The head of military intelligence - the Abwehr, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris knew about the conspiracy, but kept silent about it. A staunch National Socialist, he disapproved of the regime's costs. Although Canaris lived next door to Heydrich and often associated with him, the latter was eager to take the post of Canaris, and therefore these two competing secret services - the RSHA and the Abwehr - had a mutual distrust of each other.

The main task of the conspirators was to break through the tight ring of Hitler's personal guard. A plan was devised, according to which an army staff officer was to plant a bomb at Hitler's headquarters in Rastenburg in order to destroy Hitler with its explosion. A volunteer was found in the person of Colonel Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, an aristocrat, a war hero who lost an eye, a hand and two fingers on his surviving hand in military operations in North Africa. He was considered an absolutely devoted soldier and therefore did not inspire any suspicions in the Nazis.

Senior general staff officers in Berlin, including Generals Hans Oster, Ludwig Beck and Friedrich Olbricht, agreed to the plot and received support from other senior field commanders stationed in occupied Europe, who were to take on the SS and end the secret services on the ground. General Fromm in Berlin knew about the conspiracy and promised support, but in fact he was too scared to give the conspirators any guarantees on his part.

Some of the highest German military leaders were also involved in the plot, including two field marshals - von Witzleben and von Kluge - as well as a large number of senior generals. Field Marshal Rommel knew about the conspiracy, but did not take an active part in it (on July 17, he was seriously injured when his car was strafed by Allied aircraft). However, mere knowledge of the conspiracy subsequently proved to be enough to decide his fate.

On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg arrived in Rastenburg at the order of the headquarters to attend a military conference at which Hitler was to speak. He left the briefcase with the bomb hidden in it under the table and left the premises under the pretense of an urgent phone call. Unfortunately, one of the officers present at the meeting inadvertently moved the briefcase behind the massive oak table leg. The bomb exploded at the scheduled time, and Stauffenberg, hearing the explosion, believed that Hitler was dead and hurried to leave. He didn't know that the sturdy table had saved Hitler from death. Despite the severe shell shock, the Fuhrer remained virtually unharmed.

As it turned out, it was the stupidity of the conspirators that made impossible the hope of wresting power over Germany from the hands of the Nazis. Having received a signal from Stauffenberg that Hitler was dead, they neglected the need to seize all means of communication, including radio stations. The Berlin Guards Regiment, put under arms under the Valkyrie plan and confident that a rebellion had begun, went to seize government buildings, including the office of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Due to the mistake of the conspirators who failed to cut the connection, Goebbels managed to make a direct telephone call to Hitler himself. When Colonel Roemer of the elite Grossdeutchland (Grossdeutschland) division arrived to defend the building, Goebbels put him on the telephone for direct communication with Hitler, who promptly promoted him and ordered the mutiny to be crushed.

General Fromm, seeing that the plot was not destined to succeed, preferred to save his own skin and ordered the arrest and immediate execution of the other conspirators after a court-martial. Olbricht, Stauffenberg and some others were shot on the spot. Fromm thus hoped to eliminate those who could testify that he knew about the conspiracy.

Himmler suspected Fromm's true motives and seconded a whole group of RSHA officers to prevent further executions.

In other places, the actions of the conspirators were more successful. In Paris, 1,200 SS and Gestapo officers were rounded up and placed in the Fresnay military prison. But, nevertheless, here, too, the conspirators made a mistake and forgot about the vital telephone connection with Berlin, and the RSHA soon learned about the fate of their Paris colleagues. Upon learning that Hitler was still alive, Kluge immediately made a 180-degree turn and betrayed his fellow conspirators. But this did not serve him well, because Himmler knew his true role in the conspiracy. Although hard evidence of his guilt was not difficult to obtain, Hitler did not want Germany to send one of its main military leaders to trial - for treason. Himmler sent a message to SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop to look into the matter, and the latter faithfully shot von Kluge in feigned suicide.

Meanwhile, the threat of military force persuaded General von Stülpnagel in Paris to release captured SS and Gestapo men from prison. Surprisingly, Stulpnagel after that sat down to drink champagne with the chief of the Paris Gestapo, as if nothing had happened, both were clearly interested in not taking dirty linen out of the hut - Stulpnagel because he was involved in a conspiracy, and the Gestapo man out of embarrassment for not exposing in time the traitors who made their conspiratorial nest in Paris.

Himmler was ready to unleash a wave of reprisals against those suspected of participating in the conspiracy with a force never seen before, rooting out once and for all all those who were not absolutely loyal to Hitler. As a result of the purge that followed, 16 generals and two field marshals fell into disgrace. A wave of arrests swept across Germany, and anyone who knew anything about the suspects himself fell under suspicion. Even the most insignificant attitude to the conspiracy was enough for the SD and the Gestapo to find a person guilty. A series of show trials were arranged, with Judge Roland Freisler acting as chief prosecutor. The verdict could have only one option: defamation, insults, guilty verdict and death. But this was not the honorable death of a soldier from a volley of firing squads, most often the victims in the Plötzensee prison were hung from meat hooks on thin hemp ropes to make sure of the slow, agonizing strangulation that was filmed for Hitler's pleasure.

A special commission of four hundred Gestapo investigators was created with the aim of finally eliminating the last conspirators. A net was literally thrown over the entire Reich. Of course, the RSHA took advantage of this excuse to settle old personal scores. Whistleblowing flourished everywhere as everyone involved in the conspiracy tried desperately to hide their guilt by denouncing others. The head of the SD, Walter Schellenberg, now took advantage of the opportunity to oppose Admiral Canaris and the Abwehr. There was evidence that the admiral knew about the impending conspiracy. He was arrested and kept - initially, at least - under a fairly civilized house arrest. However, everything soon changed - he was thrown into the cellars of the sinister Gestapo, whose headquarters were located on Berlin's Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. Although Canaris was not subjected to physical torture, he experienced severe psychological pressure before he was thrown into the Flossenburg concentration camp, where, a few days before his release by the anti-Hitler coalition troops, he was executed by order of Himmler.

A large number of old accounts have been settled these days. Hans von Dohnanyi, an official expert of the Abwehr, once helped to expose the Gestapo plot, as a result of which General Blomberg fell into disgrace in 1938. Now came the hour of reckoning on the part of the Gestapo, as evidence of Dohnanyi's involvement in the conspiracy was discovered and his close ties to the conspirators were revealed. He was arrested and subjected to the usual brutal methods of interrogation practiced by the Gestapo. Knowing that he could not stand such harsh treatment, Dohnanyi arranged for his wife to smuggle diphtheria bacilli into the prison during a visit permitted by the Gestapo, in the hope that the severe illness that would soon follow would save him from further torture.

The Gestapo responded by throwing him into the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where Dohnanyi was held until April 1945. When the end of the war was not far off, he was condemned by an open court, which issued an inevitable sentence, to death by hanging. By this time, he was already so ill that he was brought to the noose on a stretcher.

By the end of 1944, when the Gestapo and the SD had virtually unlimited power in Germany, Hitler's paranoia knew no bounds. The civilian population lived in fear that the slightest hint of defeatism in a thoughtless conversation could end in a midnight terrible knock on the door and arrest.

The most sinister of all secret Nazi organs were, of course, the notorious Einsatzgruppen, which were run by the RSHA. In history, few such organizations could rival them in their terrible reputation for committing atrocities. The Einsatzgruppen owe their origin to the specially created security service and Gestapo agents who worked closely with the Austrian police to arrest anti-Nazi elements in Austria after its annexation by Germany in 1938. The process was subsequently perfected during the invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, when two Einsatzstaff were set up to carry out similar activities.

When Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, each of the five German armies that attacked that country had a special Einsatzgruppen attached to it (the sixth was stationed at Posen (Poznan)). Einsatzgruppe I was assigned to the 14th Army, Einsatzgruppe II to the 10th, III to the 8th, IV to the 4th Army, and V to the 3rd. Einsatzgruppe VI was also stationed in Posen. Each Einsatzgruppe consisted of Einsatzkommandos of 100 men. Throughout the combat zone and in areas immediately behind the front line, the Einsatzkommandos fell under the control of the Wehrmacht. In the rearguard areas, however, the Wehrmacht did not have sufficient power to interfere in the affairs of the Einsatzkommandos. As far as the military knew, the task of the Einsatzkommandos was to suppress any anti-German elements in the rear and arrest suspicious persons in order to prevent acts of sabotage. In fact, the task that Himmler charged these detachments with was the complete extermination of the Polish intelligentsia. He understood that when the best minds of Poland and its most likely leaders were eliminated, the Polish people would turn into a slave race under the Nazis. In areas controlled by units of the Wehrmacht, the Einsatzkommandos had to act quite loyally to the Poles, but in the rear, their hands were completely untied and they openly pursued a policy of mass extermination of the civilian population.

After the Einsatzgruppen had destroyed their main victims, they turned their unbridled fury against the Polish Jews, the consequences of which were simply terrible.

After the victory over Poland, the occupied territories were divided into areas controlled by the Wehrmacht. Senior army commanders despised the behavior of Himmler's death squads in the highest degree. The Einsatzgruppe von Woyrsch, led by the brutal SS-Obergruppenführer Udo von Woyrsch, had the darkest reputation, and had already terrified the Jewish population of Upper Silesia. By the end of September 1939, the Wehrmacht was so indignant at the brutal actions of the von Woyrsch youths that the commander of Army Group South, General von Rundstedt, demanded an immediate end to the persecution of the Jews, insisting that the Wehrmacht would no longer tolerate the presence of the SS. Hitler responded by liquidating the military administration and establishing Gauleiter posts to exercise direct Nazi rule in Poland he occupied. Gauleiter Forster was appointed to West Prussia, Gauleiter Greiser to Posen, renamed the Wathegau, Gauleiter Wagner to the newly formed Silesia and Upper Silesia, and Hans Frank was appointed to rule over the remainder of Poland, officially called the General Government.

Once under the control of the Gauleiters, the occupied territories again fell into the power of the Einsatz groups, now transformed into stationary Gesta-poleiststellen and SD "abschnitte" (regional headquarters), responsible in each area for the local security service.

The Wehrmacht, however, still did not admit defeat in the confrontation with the Einsatzgruppen in Poland. The enraged General von Rundstedt resigned and was replaced by General Johannes von Blaskowitz, a more brutal and determined man. The rapid expansion of Himmler's program of extermination of civilians eventually forced Blaskowitz into action.

He prepared many reports about the atrocities perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppen and sent them to Hitler, emphasizing once again the disgust of the army for these deeds. Hitler was angered by Blaskowitz's meddling in non-military affairs. Blaskowitz did not give up and continued to deliver even more critical reports. By February 1940, things had taken such a turn that Blaskowitz began to openly express in reports his disgust and even hatred - feelings that prevailed among the military in relation to the actions of the Ein-Satzgruppen, stating that every soldier "experienced a deep disgust" for these crimes. It is said that even at Hitler's headquarters, army officers refused to shake hands with the leaders of the SS.

Gauleiter Frank then approached Hitler and personally asked him to remove Blaskowitz. Hitler willingly went forward, and soon the "dissident" Blaskowitz and his headquarters were removed from the occupied territory in order to once again begin preparations for the upcoming military campaign in the West. Himmler's death squads again had a free hand to once again start sowing death and destruction in the occupied General Government, where they expelled local Poles and Jews from their homes, which were then populated by racially suitable Volksdeutsche settlers. Although the actions of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland were monstrous, the worst of times came after Hitler unleashed his military might on his recent ally, the Soviet Union, in mid-1941. Four Einsatzgruppen were formed: group "A" for operations in the territory occupied by the army group "North", group "B" - in the territory of operations of the army group "Center", and groups "C" and "D" - in the territory occupied by the group armies of the South. Later, four more Einsatzgruppen "E", "G" and "H", as well as the Einsatzgruppe "Croatia" were formed.

As the German armies moved deeper into Russia, they were followed by the Einsatzgruppen, who had orders to kill anyone who had the misfortune to fall into one of the categories of their proscription lists, which included political commissars, NKVD agents, anti-fascist ethnic Germans, partisans and their accomplices, Jews, rebels and other "undesirable elements". The last category was a universal trap that effectively gave the Einsatzgruppen the right to execute anyone. In many cases, the Einsatzgruppen were able to use anti-Semitic members of the local population to help persecute and kill Jews. In the areas occupied by the Germans, detective police and the command structure of the ordnungspolizei (order police) were established, similar to those that already existed in Poland. Even before the invasion of the Soviet Union, it was decided that the Ein Zatzgruppen would fall under the jurisdiction of the Wehrmacht only when it concerned movement, living conditions and stocks of rationed products. In all other respects, the Wehrmacht could only ban the actions of the Einsatzgruppen if they actually interfered with the conduct of military operations. In other words, the Einsatzgruppen were once again given free rein.

The head of the RSHA, SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich, sent his subordinates into battle with the words: “Communist Party functionaries and activists, Jews, gypsies, saboteurs and spies must be regarded as persons who, by their very existence, threaten the security of the troops and are thus subject to immediate destruction.”

Some of these Einsatzgruppen were so close to the fighting units that they very often entered the captured cities and villages at the same time as the German military units and immediately began their sinister work.

The Einsatzkommandos quickly put deceit, as well as brute force, to their service in the decisive extermination of the Jews. For example, Einsatzgruppe C, having entered Minsk, distributed leaflets obliging the Jewish community to inform all its members about resettlement to a new place. 30,000 unsuspecting civilians responded to this call, were taken away from the city and executed.

During the first war winter in the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen massacred about half a million Jews. Einsatzgruppe A alone killed almost a quarter of a million people, B about 45,500, C 95,000, D 92,000. managed to elude the Einsatzkommandos. As a result of all this, a real marathon of death began, the participants of which competed in who outdid whom in the number of murders committed.

The fighting units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, which in most cases were met by the local population as liberators, were soon horrified to find that these once friendly locals began to deliberately go over to the side of the partisans, and their friendly feelings turned into hatred caused by the atrocities of the Einsatzkommandos.

The behavior of the punishers was so disgusting that they themselves began to suffer nervous breakdowns, as their minds rebelled against the vileness of the crimes they committed. Some of them committed suicide, many could control their own feelings only with the help of alcohol. Himmler reacted to this only with calls to show firmness and temper his character in order to fulfill his difficult tasks.

Einsatzgruppen were also involved in the fight against the partisans. Himmler did his best to hide the true nature of these troops behind the explanation that they were doing an important job, protecting the rear from partisan raids. Nevertheless, things took such a bad turn that even the Gauleiter began to express his displeasure at the excesses that took place in the occupied territories. The punishers did not spare anyone - not a single one of the Jews, whose skills were vital to the defense of Germany. As a result, the economy of the occupied territories suffered enormous damage. At some point, even the well-known anti-Semite Wilhelm Kube, the Gauleiter of Belarus, opposed the prospect of deporting German Jews from the territory of the Reich to the territory under his jurisdiction for executions. Cuba, obviously, had no doubts about the mass extermination of Soviet Jews, but the fate of German Jews - after all, some of them served in the German army during the First World War and were even awarded - still worried him, and he took such German Jews under their personal protection. In this Cuba was not alone. Several other Gauleiters, "following his example, began to rescue 'their' Jews. Kube even leaked information about planned SD actions in Jewish-populated territories, allowing potential victims to escape.

Unfortunately for the Jews, and to Himmler's great joy, Kube was killed by a bomb planted by his Russian maid, who was an agent of the partisans. Since that time, however, the activities of the mobile Einsatzgruppen began to take on an increasingly orderly character. This was facilitated by the fact that the implementation of the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was entrusted to stationary death factories - concentration camps.

It is interesting to note that although the personnel of Himmler's death squads were referred to as the Einsatzgruppen of the detective police and the SD, it is known that three percent of their composition were members of the SD. In order to distinguish the members of the Einsatzkommandos from other military and police units, they were ordered to wear the gray SD field uniforms. In fact, 35% of them belonged to the SS, 20% to the police, 10% to the Gestapo and 5% to the Kripo. It should, however, be said that a close examination of several photographs that have survived from those years, you can see the Einsatzkommandos at work - the people who carried out the executions are dressed in what resembles a convoy military uniform. Thus, army personnel could well have been involved in these killings.

Another, though not very numerous, Heydrich's detachment was the Stab RFSS. This elite unit, under the jurisdiction of the detective police, served senior Nazi functionaries, including Hitler, providing them with personal bodyguards. Hitler's security detachment - "SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" - became a front-line unit and therefore the round-the-clock security of Hitler and his headquarters passed to the RSHA, although some of the security personnel belonged to the "Leibstandarte". Responsibility for the Fuhrer's personal safety was entrusted to SS Brigadeführer Hans Rattenhuber, who remained with Hitler in the bunker until his death, after which it was the members of Rattenhuber's team who made an attempt to cremate Hitler's body.

Responsibility for the safety of Hitler during his travels, his visits to various headquarters, and in all other cases where a potential threat to his life could arise, was assigned to the Führer Begleitkommando, to which individual employees of the Leibstandarte were transferred. Although Hitler kept a retinue of loyal SS guards close to him until the very end of his life, the day-to-day responsibility for guarding headquarters and escorting him on all his journeys was ultimately assigned to the Führer Begleitbrigade, an elite unit of the Wehrmacht, which, like the Leibstandarte ", subsequently turned into a combat division that fought on the front line.

The State Secret Police ("Geheime Staatspolizei") - the Gestapo - was one of the most sinister police organizations in the 1930s and 40s. A favorite subject of ridicule in post-war satire and television comedy, the sinister figure wrapped in a leather cloak was by no means humorous in Germany or in the occupied countries of Europe during the Third Reich.

In its original form, the Gestapo was the state secret police of Prussia alone. Created by Hermann Göring and based in Berlin, the Gestapo was for some time a mote in the eye of the SS. Led at the very beginning by Arthur Nebe, Gestapo agents arrested those members of the SS who repeatedly exceeded their official powers. But in the end, the Gestapo fell under the heel of a man whose name became synonymous with the name of the organization under his control - the Gestapo - SS Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, popularly known as the "Gestapo-Müller", who became a zealous persecutor of the enemies of the Third Reich.

The task of the Gestapo was to hunt down subversive elements and had nothing to do with the fight against "ordinary" crime, leaving that to the care of the Kripos.

After a brief period of conflict between the two main state secret services, the Gestapo and the SD began to work closely with each other. The SD, as a rule, was engaged in collecting information about subversive activities, while the task of the Gestapo was directly to arrest the enemies of the Nazi regime. Junior officers of the Gestapo could use the power given to them for preventive arrest, which could last up to seven days, while the Gestapo - the ministry of the state secret police - could demand the placement of their victims in a concentration camp for an indefinite period.

Like most other secret organizations, the composition of the Gestapo was heterogeneous - among them were academicians who preferred to use the extraordinary strength of mind, cunning and persuasion, combined with a special psychological technique to obtain the desired information and confession from the interrogated, and cruel scoundrels who were more than happy with the opportunity to use almost medieval methods of torture. Some of the most prominent representatives of German society who fell into the clutches of the Gestapo were lucky enough to get interrogated by the former, while many other victims were taken by the latter.

The Gestapo was also heavily represented in the occupied territories. In France alone, there was a huge headquarters of the Gestapo and 17 regional offices that were engaged in identifying members of the Resistance movement and arresting members of the Jewish community. A Gestapo curator was assigned to each concentration camp.

The basis of the criminal police (kripo) were professional German detectives. They wore ordinary civilian clothes and were mainly involved in investigating high-profile criminal offenses such as murder, rape and arson. They were not a political force like the Gestapo, but they collaborated with the Gestapo, since such criminal cases inevitably arose, where both criminal and political motives intersected. There was also such a form of interaction between two services, when

Kripo officers served under the Gestapo, moved from one organization to another, or simply received an order to join the investigation of cases conducted by the Gestapo.

In times of war, there is obviously a fertile ground for crime, when the obscuration and destruction caused by the bombings gives the criminals the opportunity to do their dirty deeds with impunity.

In any state during the war years, economic crimes flourish, inextricably linked with the functioning of the inevitably emerging black market. Therefore, during the war years, the Kripo had a lot of business, but these policemen did not have much influence on the lives of average law-abiding Germans.

In the paranoid atmosphere of wartime Germany, plainclothes policemen were most likely to inspire fear when they were almost certainly mistaken for the Gestapo and treated with the same degree of fear and disgust with which the Gestapo was perceived.

This branch of the SS - the Office of Economics and Management - was formed in March 1942 under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl. Later, five main sections emerged from it: finance and law, supply and administration, industry and construction, concentration camps and economics.

The Office of Economics and Administration was responsible for overseeing the above five SS divisions. In addition, all units of the SS "Dead Head", including concentration camps, were also under the jurisdiction of the Department of Economics and Management. Since 1941, they came under the authority of the Waffen-SS in order to simplify matters related to administration and supply. At the beginning of 1944, when the administrative command of the Order Police (ORPO) was put out of action by the bombing of the Allied aircraft, it was taken under its leading wing by the same Department of Economics and Management.

Funding for the Waffen-SS as a whole was complicated by the fact that they were considered a state body and thus received money from the Reich Ministry of Finance, which exercised control over their budget. As for the SS, they were doomed to remain an organ of the NSDAP, where their main sponsor was the treasurer of the Nazi party Xavier Schwarz, a man quite generous.

Thus, the most improbable situation arose when the budget of the Waffen-SS division involved in the fighting at the front was strictly controlled, while the Allgemeine-SS, whose role in the functioning of the German war machine was less significant, experienced practically no financial difficulties.

Formed mainly for anti-partisan struggle and the extermination of Jews, as well as political prisoners, they consisted of men over the age of 45, youth of pre-conscription age and wounded war veterans no longer fit for the front.

Himmler also created a large number of auxiliary police units from among the "native population" - Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Poles - to surround the Jews in the occupied territories. The people depicted in the picture, oddly enough, are dressed in uniforms with combat insignia. The Office of Economics and Administration oversaw the SS School, which trained its own administrative apparatus, and was responsible for maintaining its own supply chain in contact with the Main Office of the SS Administration (the operational headquarters of all SS). The main department of management was responsible for the supply of weapons and ammunition, and the Department of Economics and Management was responsible for food supplies, uniforms and personal equipment.

Already before the start of the war, the SS began to create industrial enterprises. Initially, their sizes were insignificant, like the porcelain manufactory of Allah or the factory for the production of mineral water. However, when the armies of the Third Reich invaded Europe, Himmler had at his disposal not only numerous enterprises that could be used, but also an almost unlimited opportunity to obtain free labor from the countries enslaved by Germany.

The interests of the SS were in no way limited to enterprises that produced products important for the defense industry. They also covered agriculture and forestry, fish farms - all this fell under the control of the SS, driven by Himmler's thirst for power. But this still does not mean that the average German citizen was necessarily aware of the growing influence of the SS on German economic life. In fact, the SS empire often went to great lengths to hide its ownership of certain firms, as the party elite did not approve of the growing power and influence of the SS.

In Germany itself, SS control over production was rapidly increasing. By 1945, over 500 different types of businesses were under the control of the SS, including even most of the soft drink industries. At least one of today's popular soft drinks began to be produced in Third Reich-era Germany by a company that thrived under wartime conditions.

The rise of the porcelain factory in Allach, near Munich, is one of the most interesting examples of the forays which the SS made into the world of commerce and art.

It was established in 1935 as a small private enterprise. Himmler's associates, who knew about his passion for Aryan mysticism and his intention to impose his own model of German culture on the German nation, saw a very cunning act in the creation of a porcelain manufactory. And this was true, since Germany was famous all over the world for the quality of its porcelain. Manufactories in Meissen and Dresden have long had an excellent reputation in Europe.

With their own porcelain factory, the SS could produce pieces that reflected their own conception of typical German art. It may seem surprising, but against the backdrop of ideologized Nazi "art", the products produced at the Allach factory were indeed of excellent quality. Finely crafted, finely crafted, and superbly glazed, Allah's china could stand up to comparison with the world's finest examples.

The headquarters of the Reichsführer SS had a department that oversaw the affairs of art and architecture. It was headed by SS-Obersturmbannführer Professor Diebitsch, who himself was, to a certain extent, a man of art. In 1936, this department took over the Allach factory.

The SS men went all over Germany in search of artists of the highest qualification to work in Allah. Only a few of them dared to refuse an invitation to work with the Reichsführer SS, and soon such virtuoso porcelain masters as Professor Theodor Karner and Professor Fichter from the State Porcelain Factory in Dresden began work at the factory in Allach. SS-Obersturmbannführer Professor Diebitsch was also involved in this activity and dealt with production issues himself, performing the duties of a factory manager.

In addition to fine pieces of porcelain, the factory also produced more prosaic items, such as ordinary, everyday items, such as pottery. The Allach manufactory soon outgrew its small production area. It was decided to move production to a new temporary production site in Dachau, next to the concentration camp. In fact, many of his prisoners were used as labor in this new factory. There does not seem to be any written record of the conditions under which they worked, but although those were undoubtedly extremely harsh, they were still better than the conditions in the concentration camp itself.

While production continued in Dachau, the main plant in Allach was expanded and modernized, and in 1940 the production of ceramics was resumed here, leaving Dachau as the base for the production of artistic porcelain. In fact, it was assumed that all such factories would be significantly expanded, and exhibition salons were organized in Berlin and other large German cities. However, the war intervened in these grandiose plans.

Both Hitler and Himmler took a great personal interest in Allach porcelain production. A significant part of the production of this plant was left for the headquarters of the Reichsführer SS. It was mainly used by him as personal gifts for the main dignitaries of the Reich and for rewarding worthy officers and soldiers of the SS.

For example, SS Sturmbannführer Willy Klemt was presented with a porcelain statuette "Knight with a Sword" - a work of art of rare beauty - as a reward for his impeccable performance as an officer of Himmler's personal headquarters.

Of all the attributes of Hitler's Third Reich, SS porcelain from Allah is the most desirable for collectors, and surviving original examples of it today sell at extremely high prices. And although some of Allah's creations, such as, for example, a figurine of an SS officer on horseback or a standard bearer, are clearly of Nazi origin, most of the production has nothing to do with politics. For example, sculptures in the national costumes of Bavarian peasants were produced here along with equestrian figurines of Frederick the Great or elegant images of the inhabitants of forests and fields, ranging from hounds to deer in the Bambi style. These figurines are easy to identify, since they all bear the brand name of the Allakhov manufactory on the base, and only the crossed “SS” runes allow us to guess the sinister origin of these lovely porcelain figurines.

Himmler was well aware that he had in his hands the most valuable wealth, namely hundreds of thousands of concentration camp prisoners who were able to work for the good of the industrial empire. He even ordered a careful selection of prisoners whose labor skills would certainly be useful, and ordered a slightly increase in rations for them and soften the conditions of their detention. One can only argue about what the real effect of such orders was, since, even according to the most rough estimates, about five hundred thousand "free slaves" died from exhausting labor and malnutrition. In the face of concentration camp prisoners, Himmler received not only inexhaustible resources of the labor force, but also representatives of all the professions he required. In some cases, the entire production cycle, from the extraction of raw materials to the production and marketing of finished products, was provided under the direct control of the SS. Of course, this did not go unnoticed, and many top party functionaries would like to put an end to this practice. However, when the government introduced restrictions that clearly stipulated who had the right to own this or that concern, in order to avoid being absorbed by the SS empire, Paul, as if nothing had happened, established a holding company as a front, and as a result, many firms and firms, on paper, remaining in the hands of ordinary German entrepreneurs and industrialists, in fact, were under the control of businessmen from the SS.

When the war broke out in September 1939, the SS had four main concerns - Deutsche Erd und Steinwerke GmbH, which owned 14 quarries, Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke, which owned all the factories and equipment of the concentration camp network, Deutsche Verzuhanstalt für Ernerung und Verpfegung ", engaged in the supply of food and research work in this area - by the way, it was one of Himmler's favorite brainchildren - and, finally, the Gesellschaft für Textile und Lederfervertung, which used forced labor to restore and repair worn uniforms, which were then transferred again army.

In wartime, at the helm of the "SS economy" were often those who had no direct relation to the Nazis, those who were least interested in the casuistry of National Socialism or Himmler's racial theories. Among these people can be called Dr. Hans Goberg. He was not a member of the Nazi Party or the SS. He was a typical capitalist-exploiter who gladly jumped at the opportunity presented to him to use work in the economic division of the SS for his own selfish purposes.

Himmler had a great interest in ancient Germanic myths, and therefore almost all SS insignia were based on the symbols of the ancient Germans. The castle of the Reichsführer SS in Wewelsburg was a temple typical of Nordic mythology, in which there was even a Round Table in the spirit of the legends about King Arthur, at which especially trusted "knights" were supposed to sit. Not surprisingly, swords and daggers became the most important components of this symbolism. No wonder the SS were among the first organizations to be honored to have their own daggers - however, then, in 1938, it was more of a decorative weapon with a wide, pointed blade, which was decorated with the famous SS motto "My honor is loyalty." The blade was complemented by a handle and a black scabbard. The design was based on the so-called Holbein dagger, of the same shape and proportions - this masterpiece of high art got its name from the design on the scabbard, which reproduced the painting "Dance of Death" by Holbein, the court painter of the English king Henry VIII. In 1938, in addition to the dagger, a sword appeared - this time the cold steel of the police served as the basis. Its sleek, straight blade was complemented by a black wooden hilt adorned with SS runes.

The production of edged weapons was an important article of the German economy - moreover, the unexpected boom in this industry made it possible to bring cutlery factories out of stagnation. Handing cold steel in recognition of someone's merits (swords, daggers, bayonets, etc. with dedicatory inscriptions) is an old tradition, and the Nazi elite, especially Himmler, were its zealous successors. Very soon, special premium models of the SS dagger and sword appeared. At first, the gift version was distinguished by the fact that on the back of the blade there was an engraving in honor of one or another event, or in separate, especially outstanding cases - such as, for example, on the blade handed by Himmler to himself - a dedicatory inscription: “With a sense of cordial camaraderie . G. Himmler.

Soon, beautiful, hand-made Damascus blades, decorated with gilded inscriptions, began to be produced.

This type of blade was especially popular in the 18th century. Beautiful in their cold sheen, they were also extremely expensive, since they were handmade, their cost was 25-30 times higher than the cost of an ordinary blade, and therefore only a few could afford such a luxury.

Damascus blades are truly love, multiplied by perseverance and sweat, but by the 1930s the art of their manufacture was about to disappear, supplanted by modern methods that made it possible to imitate Damascus, which also led to a sharp decrease in costs. Apparently, in Germany then there were only about half a dozen gunsmiths who owned the secrets of making real Damascus blades. All of them were masters of the highest class, but Paul Müller was considered the best of the best.

Himmler vowed that he would not allow this ancient craft to be lost, and instructed Müller to organize a special school in Dachau, and on the most generous terms. Starting in 1939, with 10 apprentices at his disposal, Müller made award weapons there - swords and daggers, which were then presented to those who, in the opinion of the Reichsführer SS, were worthy of such an honor - both officers and soldiers.

In the process of making a Damascus blade, several hundred of the thinnest strips of steel of various qualities are forged layer by layer, and therefore, if a white-hot blade is dipped in oil, a bizarre pattern will appear on its surface. It was a lengthy process that required enormous physical effort and the highest skill - akin to what was invented by the great Japanese masters who made the famous samurai swords.

Officers of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler ordered a special gift sword for their commander, Josef "Sepp" Dietrich, engraved with the names of each of them. Hitler presented a commemorative weapon to the SS officers who took part in the solemn ceremony of welcoming the Duke of Windsor in 1936, who visited the Fuhrer in his mountain residence Berchtesgaden. The blades were adorned with the signature “Obersalzberg. 1936" - evidence of Hitler's respectful attitude towards the duke. “That's with whom I could conclude a treaty of friendship with England,” he once remarked later.

Muller and his small team did not sit without orders. True, the war also affected them - apprentices, one after another, were called up to serve in the army, and in the end Muller was left in splendid isolation and for the last two years he worked practically without assistants. He survived the war and at its end still continued to forge Damascus blades until 1971, leaving his favorite business shortly before his death. True, he managed to convey the secrets of his skill to Robert Kürten.

As already mentioned, very often this or that production controlled by the SS was officially considered the property of some individual or a holding company in order to hide the real owner. That is why considerable efforts were made to ensure that in the eyes of society, the government, and even those who worked there, these firms and firms had nothing to do with the SS. However, in the overwhelming majority of cases, this was nothing more than another way to obtain additional financial profit from the SS empire, which had already crushed everything that was possible.

The scope of activity becomes especially evident when we consider as a whole the Service Group "W" (Industrial Directorate) and the Service Group "D", which was in charge of concentration camps.

With their barbaric methods, the SS managed to intimidate and suppress the huge mass of unpaid labor, contained in some 26 official camps, so that the number of guards was required at the minimum, especially when compared with the many thousands of those whom they guarded. Repeat offenders, who were also sent to these camps, often surpassed the guards and

therefore, they were used to “put things in order” in the barracks as overseers who kept the rest of the prisoners in an iron fist.

An ordinary prisoner of a concentration camp, who possessed certain labor skills, had a higher chance of staying alive during the initial "selection" through which everyone who arrived here went through, and then had to work until the seventh sweat every day, regardless of the weather or health conditions, often in the most inhuman conditions. Given the high incidence of disease, poor rations and extremely cruel treatment, it is not surprising that the death rate here was extremely high. However, this was of little concern to Oswald Pohl, since it seemed that there would never be a limit to fresh replenishment. (After the end of the war, Paul was sentenced to death in 1947, and although it took almost four years to file appeals and rehearings, in 1951, Paul was nevertheless hanged in the Landsberg prison).

Kammler's Service Group C also had at its disposal about 175,000 slaves employed in various construction jobs, often these workers were engaged in the processing of raw materials mined in the quarries of their own comrades in misfortune - almost a gift to the SS, except for the colossal loss of human lives. Kammler was not one of those who made a career in the ranks of the SS - he was a former civil servant whom Himmler persuaded to take over the leadership of this very specific economic department.

I must say that in this proposal Kammler saw for himself the prospects for the realization of personal ambitions, the opportunity to strengthen his own influence.

So, in fact, he was driven exclusively by his own ambitious plans - that's the only reason he undertook the implementation of a grandiose program for the construction of new factories and plants, including underground ones, and even participated in the V-2 projects. Kammler, who by 1944 had already become an SS Gruppenführer, cared least of all how many human lives he would put on the altar of his personal ambitions. By the end of the war, he had grown from a minor civil servant to a senior SS officer, answerable only to Himmler himself, and all this at the cost of countless human lives - the lives of dumb slaves, which were supplied to him in abundance by Service Group "D".

The history and deeds of the police in military uniform, the so-called Orpo (Order Police), or "Ordnungs-polizei", are most closely intertwined with the history of the SS - it was not for nothing that the rogue Himmler managed to pull off his plan and nominally be considered the head of the German police - "Chef der deutschen Polizei ".

The vast majority of the German police were professionals - regular police officers who did not care who was the disturber of public order - a Nazi thug who was unbridled or an opponent of Hitler - the arrest expected both. Until Himmler took the reins of the police into his own hands in 1936, she gave him more than once a headache. Himmler appointed the former head of the Berlin SS, Kurt Deluge, as head of the Orpo as a separate SS unit, and the latter made every effort to expel all politically unreliable people from the police. After he purged the police of those who did not particularly sympathize with Nazism, he found that in doing so he lost a large number of experienced professional police officers, and this greatly weakened the police. Orpo was now charged with re-employment of those who had been fired from the police, however, after the fired had passed a period of so-called "retraining". There is no doubt that a significant number of policemen remained ambivalent towards the Nazis.

In the future, Deluge made attempts to politicize the police, encouraging members of the SS to pursue a career in the Orpo - the police of order. To a certain extent, this had an effect and contributed to the influx of new personnel - young and more politically literate. Old, experienced policemen now served side by side with young, brash Nazi fanatics, who were strongly encouraged to watch for the slightest sign of political unreliability among their older colleagues, with the result that mutual distrust inevitably arose.

As the police were filled with more and more young Nazis, their commitment to the ideals of the NSDAP became stronger and stronger. When the war began, a huge number of these young policemen were called up for military service. Thus, police duties in the rear again fell largely on the shoulders of the old guard of detectives, many of whom were precisely the type of people Himmler sought to get rid of.

Between 1940 and 1942 about 30 police regiments were created. These regiments, formed along the front line, were subdivided into battalions of 500 men and equipped with small arms. They were used primarily for anti-partisan operations in the occupied territories, although they sometimes had to engage in battle with the armed forces of the enemy on the front line. One example of this is the Battle of Kholm, in Russia, in which the police units took part along with the German troops, counteracting the superior forces of the Soviet Army. On July 1, 1942, a special "shield" award was established - for the selfless defense of a section of the front line by the army and police forces in the period January-May 1942.

Some, but by no means all, of the soldiers of these police regiments were members of the SS or the NSDAP, fanatically devoted to Himmler, the titled head of the SS and police. They were sometimes used to assist the Einsatzgruppen in extermination of the Jews in the occupied territories and earned a bad reputation for their atrocities.

By 1943, Deluget's department of Orpo controlled not only the regular police, but also auxiliary units, such as the railway police, fire departments, postal police, and partly the rescue organization. In addition to everything, the SS took control of all local police units in the occupied territories.

In February 1943, the police detachments were renamed SS police regiments in order to demarcate themselves from the German police detachments and foreign auxiliary formations created from among the local population in the countries occupied by the Germans.

A large number of people in these countries were anti-communist in spirit and willingly offered their services to the Germans to protect their native places from the Soviet partisan detachments moving in the rear of the German troops. The number of volunteers was simply staggering. From among the so-called Volksdeutsche, 12 regiments were formed in Poland, 26 in Estonia. 64 battalions were created in Latvia and Lithuania, numbering 28 thousand people, in Ukraine an amazing number of volunteers was found - 70 thousand people, amounting to 71 battalions. In the Balkans, 15,000 Croats and 10,000 Serbs voluntarily entered the police units. Even in Albania, a sufficient number of volunteers were recruited to create two police battalions.

The behavior of some of these auxiliary formations towards their compatriots was the same, and in other cases exceeded in its cruelty the behavior of the Einsatzgruppen. For example, during the Wehrmacht invasion of Poland, the local Volksdeutsche formed their own self-defense militia (Selbstschutz) - after all, the statements about the atrocities of the Poles in the pre-war period against ethnic Germans were in no way caused solely by Nazi propaganda and had real grounds . The Wehrmacht initially took over the training and equipping of these detachments, but Hitler ordered their reorganization under the control of the Main Department of the Orpo.

Many of these Volksdeutsche were fanatical Nazis who wanted to settle old scores with the Poles who had previously bullied them. These detachments often showed a desire to assist the Einsatz teams in carrying out inhuman goals. Their behavior was so brutal that at least one Gauleiter demanded that they be disbanded after a civil administration had been established locally.

The same thing happened when Germany invaded the territory of the Soviet Union. The Wehrmacht created auxiliary volunteer formations with the sole purpose of "hunting" along with the Einsatzgruppen for partisans and Jews in the rear. In November 1941, Himmler gave the order to reorganize all auxiliary units into police units, referred to as "Schutzmannschaften". The reorganization, however, was only partial - some parts remained in the Ordnungspolizei, while others came under the direct control of the SS. The action of these parts was varied. Their undoubted effectiveness was that they instilled fear in the civilian population, but their actions could not be compared with the actions of the Soviet partisans,

Although compulsory service in the ranks of the Hitler Youth for young men at the age of 17 was officially announced six months before the outbreak of World War II, it was only from September 1941 that membership in the Nazi youth organization became mandatory for young people of both sexes from the age of 10. The SS showed great interest in the activities of the Hitler Youth, seeing in it a potential source of reserve for replenishing its ranks with the best representatives of German youth.

The Hitler Youth actually created its own elite formation - the "Hitler Youth Strafen-dist" - a patrol service that was responsible for guarding the rallies and demonstrations of the Hitler Youth in the same way as the SS guarded the events of the NSDAP. The young people who belonged to this organization wore patches on the cuffs of their uniforms, similar to those worn by the SS. By the end of 1938, the training and equipment of this organization were in the hands of the SS. These youths from the Hitler Youth were heavily stuffed with the doctrines of Nazism, preaching extreme right and anti-Semitic views and the exclusivity of National Socialism. Many of them were spiritually quite ready to join the SS.

Both the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS were given the responsibility for the initial military training of members of the Hitler Youth, which meant three weeks of training courses in special camps set up throughout Germany. Upon completion of these courses, recruiters from the SS often tried to persuade the young men to volunteer for the ranks of the Waffen-SS, thus ensuring their almost one hundred percent conscription into the army by cunning.

The SS also included the Hitler Youth Landist organization, which prepared specially selected young people for voluntary assistance in agriculture in the eastern provinces, with their subsequent transformation into the so-called "Werbauers", intended, according to Himmler's plans, to protect the occupied lands. (The "Verbauers" meant armed Bauer farmers, of course, of "Nordic origin".)

As the war dragged on and military losses made it necessary to lower the age limit for conscription, more and more young people went straight from the Hitler Youth to the ranks of the Wehrmacht. In 1943, the recruitment of such young people into the ranks of the SS also reached its peak. Himmler and Reichsugendführer Arthur Akoman decided to take advantage of Hitler's agreement that volunteers aged 17 (which was 3 years below the normal draft age) could be admitted to military service. It was decided that a Waffen-SS division should be created from among the volunteers of the Hitler Youth. For this purpose, a training camp was set up in the Belgian town of Beverloo. Only the best candidates were to be accepted into this division, distinguished by a sufficient degree of National Socialist zeal and reckless devotion to the Fuhrer. In practice, this was confirmed by the transfer to it of the best personnel from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, who formed the backbone of this division. About a thousand of the best Leibstandarte soldiers were sent to it, who formed the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitler Youth. A smaller number of experienced soldiers from other SS divisions were also sent to this new formation, including several Wehrmacht officers, one of whom was Major Gerhard Hein, awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, from the army's 209th Chasseur Regiment. Hein took over as head of the camp's initial military training of the Hitler Youth with the rank of SS Obersturmbannführer.

The division saw action in Normandy and earned a reputation as a fearless military unit for fanaticism and selfless bravery. By the time the division was able to break out of the Falaise pocket in August 1944, only 600 veterans remained in it from the original composition. She was understaffed and participated in the offensive in the Ardennes, in battles in Hungary and Austria.

The young grenadiers from the Hitler Youth division showed a suicidal contempt for danger, although this did not make much sense - the almost complete superiority of the allied forces in the air and prevailing on the ground made all their efforts ineffective.

In the last battles of the war, when there were no more combat-ready men left in the rear, only the youngest and oldest Germans were in the ranks of the military militia - the Volkssturm. On the Eastern Front, which was bursting at all seams, the boys from the Hitler Youth lost their lives in senseless attempts to stop the inexorable advance of the Red Army, which was already standing at the gates of Berlin. Together with their compatriots from the Hitler Youth division, who were slightly older than them, individual youths from the Volkssturm in the last days of the war often performed feats of great military prowess (one of Hitler's last public actions was his personal congratulations to the members of the Hitler Youth defending the capital of the Reich) .

Despite the fact that a large number of members of the Hitler Youth saw in their organization nothing more than the equivalent of a Boy Scout organization, and understood that attempts to impose Nazi ideology on them were not very active, there is no doubt that many of them died under influenced by the worst Nazi dogmas. The level of their fanatical devotion to the Fuhrer and the fatherland was so great that they were ready to give their lives without hesitation, full of pride in being soldiers of the Waffen-SS.

When the Second World War began in 1939, the "Dead Head" formation consisted of five regiments: Shtandart-I "Dead Head", stationed initially in the Dachau concentration camp; Standard-N "Brandenburg", located in Buchenwald; Shtandart-Sh "Thuringia" - in Sachsenhausen; Standard-IV "Ostmark" - in Mauthausen, and the newly formed Standard-V "Dietrich Eckhardt". These regiments were under the authority of the SS Headquarters and received comprehensive support in the form of medical care, communications and transport.

In October 1939, in the Dachau concentration camp, temporarily freed from prisoners for this purpose, the formation of the “Dead Head” division began, headed by the inspector of concentration camps and SS units Theodor Eicke. From the first four regiments, as well as a significant number of police reinforcements, the "Dead Head" division and several infantry and cavalry units of the same name were created.

Subsequently, the guards of the concentration camps were formed from among the elderly reservists who were not fit to be sent to the front, and the young soldiers of the "Dead Head" who had not yet reached military age.

Usually the hierarchical chain of command of a concentration camp began with a commandant in rank ranging from SS-Sturmbannführer to SS-Standartenführer. The commandant was primarily responsible for the operation of the camp. Day-to-day affairs, however, usually fell to his aide-de-camp. The next in this hierarchy was the commander of the so-called "Department of Protective Arrest" - the Schutzhaftlagerführer, who often shared his office with a full-time representative of the Gestapo, a senior non-combatant officer, usually with the rank of SS Hauptscharführer, held the post of report of the Fuhrer, who was in charge of regular, held three times a day roll call.

In each camp block, the prisoners were led by overseers appointed from among themselves, called kapos, they were chosen most often from among criminal elements, and not from political prisoners, Jews or other prisoners.

In addition to this, some of the administrative posts in the camp were usually held by prisoners with the necessary skills. The guards reporting to the duty officer usually resided outside the camp area.

In April 1941, in accordance with a major reorganization aimed at clearly defining which parts of the SS fit the definition of the Waffen-SS, the entire concentration camp security system was included in them. The guards were issued standard Waffen-SS field gray uniforms, military insignia and standard Waffen-SS passbooks. Becoming part of the Waffen-SS, the camps fell under the jurisdiction of the SS Headquarters. This situation continued until 1942.

Since now the camps began to be regularly supplied with free labor, their management passed to the Department of Economics. SS-Obergruppenführer Pohl, head of the Economics Office, was horrified by the conditions and the high mortality rate in the camps. But on his part, this was by no means a manifestation of humanity. He saw the prisoners as a valuable labor force and knew that to achieve greater efficiency from their labor is possible only if they are kept in better conditions and better fed. His protests, however, had little effect. The RSHA saw the camps as a way of punishing and forcibly re-educating the enemies of the Reich - and nothing more. It was absolutely not interested in the well-being of the prisoners of the camps, especially the Jews, in fact, it was interested in the exact opposite. Heydrich did everything possible to counteract Pohl's attempts to improve the "working" life of prisoners, especially Jews.

Between 1941 and 1944, the number of concentration camps increased rapidly and soon reached 20 official plus about 150 "unofficial" forced labor camps. The first concentration camp, Dachau, appeared in March 1933, the last, in Mittelbau, in October 1944. From the earliest days of the concentration camp system, the treatment of prisoners was extremely harsh. The first commandant of Dachau, SS-Oberführer Gilmar Weckerle, was accused of complicity in the murder of several prisoners, and since this could contribute to enemy propaganda, it infuriated Himmler. And although the level of violence and cruelty common to Weckerle softened under his successor Eick, this improvement was very small. According to the Nazis, the punishment was applied only when the prisoner was accused of a specific misconduct, but in fact some of the charges were far-fetched and the punishment did not correspond at all to the severity of the “crime”. Initially, the prisoners had at least a faint hope of being released. Some of them were granted freedom when, for example, they were recognized by the administration as appropriately "reformed", or on some special occasion, like Hitler's birthday, when petty offenders were granted amnesty. Before being released, however, the prisoners were required to sign papers stating that they were well treated and not to disclose the true conditions of the concentration camps.

For the most part, the first prisoners of the concentration camps were political opponents of the National Socialists - communists, socialists, pacifists and others. Later, most of those doomed to stay in captivity began to be victims of Hitler's racial persecution: Jews, gypsies, Slavs and other unfortunate people who were considered "undesirable" elements. The Gestapo IVB4, led by the "Jewish expert" Adolf Eichmann, scoured Europe in search of Jews to be deported in order to carry out their "resettlement" to the east, Einsatzkommandos combed the occupied territories of Eastern Europe, seeking to outdo each other in the number of "liquidated Jews, and proudly notified their master every time a new territory was declared "free of Jews."

The numbers were so great that even the selfless efforts of Heydrich's death squads were not enough to cope with this number of victims, despite the terrifying ingenuity of individual executioners. New concentration camps have sprung up in Poland, worthy of the name of death factories. In the so-called "fernichtungslagern" - "extermination camps" - in Belsen, Sobibor, Majdanek and Treblinka, for example, almost no attempt was made to establish any kind of SS-controlled production, since it was not even assumed that the prisoners would live long enough to produce any or products.

In camps like Auschwitz (Auschwitz), the destruction facilities functioned in parallel with industrial enterprises; after the last ounce of strength was squeezed out of the prisoners, they were to be destroyed along with the sick and the elderly. It was believed that of the people who got into Auschwitz, 80% died.

When the young guards from the "Dead Head" units reached military age, they were taken into the ranks of the Wehrmacht or they volunteered for the Waffen-SS. Reservists or those who were no longer fit for service at the front came to their places. Thus, the rotation of the camp staff was carried out. In May 1944, Himmler gave the order to transfer 10,000 reservists to the security units of the concentration camps. Soldiers were transferred here even from the Luftwaffe (Air Force) and the Kriegsmarine (Navy).

Often, less than a quarter of the camp guards were Germans, the rest were recruited mainly from among the auxiliary volunteer detachments from the occupied territories, especially from Ukraine. They showed the same brutality as the SS guards, and the atrocities recalled by the surviving prisoners often refer to the actions of Ukrainian guards, who were distinguished by violent anti-Semitism. In 1943, SS Gruppenfuehrer Odilo Globocnik received the go-ahead from Himmler to form a camp guard unit from Russian volunteers. These people were trained in Travniki, near Lublin, and acquired a well-deserved reputation as executioners for their barbaric behavior.

In addition to being used as free labor in concentration camp production or working in private enterprises, those who were able to work were also used in extremely dangerous work, disarming bombs and clearing bombed-out buildings.

Mention should also be made of the women guards who were appointed to guard the prisoners in the women's concentration camps. The recruitment of women for these positions began as early as 1937. They "undertook practice" in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp, and many of them earned a reputation as sadistic fanatics, not inferior in cruelty to male guards.

The Gestapo is the secret police of the Third Reich. One of the most brutal organizations in Nazi Germany. On account of the Gestapo, there are many war crimes both on German territory and in the occupied lands. In just twelve years of its work, the word has become a household name and a synonym for a brutal repressive body.

Origin

Creation

New order

Change of leadership

New reorganization

Methods and principles of work

Various departments

Occupied lands

International Tribunal

The Gestapo is the secret police of the Third Reich. One of the most brutal organizations in Nazi Germany.

On account of the Gestapo, there are many war crimes both on German territory and in the occupied lands. In just twelve years of its work, the word has become a household name and a synonym for a brutal repressive body.

Origin

The Gestapo is the secret political police. Since ancient times, a secret security service has existed in all powerful powers with an authoritarian system. Imperial Germany had an imperial secret police that hunted down the enemies of the Reich, both internal and external. After the defeat in the First World War, it ceased to exist.

The Nazis conceived the creation of a secret repressive apparatus long before they came to power. After the failure of the Beer Putsch, Hitler went to prison. In less than a year, his henchmen managed to partially recreate the SA assault squads. After that, a special organization was created to monitor the participants in the National Socialist movement. Many future members of the SS entered it. As the rise of the Nazis in the political system of Germany, the activities of the secret society expanded. The first shadowing of the leaders of the communist and anti-fascist movement began.

Creation

The Gestapo of East Prussia was the first prototype of the future secret police. In the thirty-third year, Hermann Goering created the first small department. The staff were recruited from SA stormtroopers. The department was part of the new police force and was named political. Initially, the secret police monitored only Hitler's political opponents. Their powers were not much different from those of the police. They could only follow, spread rumors and so on. Mass arrests and killings have not yet reached.

Himmler really liked the idea of ​​​​creating the Gestapo. This led to the expansion of the organization. Departments are created throughout Germany with a center in Berlin. Police reform begins. During the Weimar Republic, Germany was effectively a confederal state with broad autonomy for all regions. Law enforcement agencies were directly subordinate to local authorities. Now a centralized police administration was being created. And Heinrich Himmler actually concentrated power over all political departments in his hands.

New order

Already in the autumn of thirty-third, the Gestapo becomes an important pillar of the Nazi regime. By Goering's decree, the organization is removed from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Work is underway to introduce agents to all other organizations of the new regime. The word "Gestapo" itself is an abbreviation for the German name "Secret State Police". Some historians believe that the name was originally colloquial, and only then received official status.

In 1934, another reorganization of the Gestapo takes place. Goering became increasingly interested in the development of the Luftwaffe. Therefore, the secret police became the sphere of Himmler's interests, and Heydrich was appointed the direct manager. Political departments are closely intertwined with the created SS assault detachments. The departments of Prussia and the rest of Germany report directly to Berlin.

Change of leadership

Two years later, Himmler becomes the sole head of all services of the Ministry of the Interior. The Reichsfuehrer further strengthens the independence of the secret police. If earlier these were small departments that operated secretly, then by 1936 there were already hundreds of employees in each city. In the summer of that year, the Gestapo and the police merged.

From now on, they are one and the same. The functions of the repressive apparatus are assigned to the second department, which is headed by Muller. The Gestapo begins an active struggle against the opponents of the regime. The main target is the communists, socialists, trade union activists. Also, the police begin to participate in the repression of the Jews. And at the end of the thirty-sixth, parasites and socially inactive elements are added to this list.

New reorganization

The Gestapo in 1939 united under its command all the other security services of the Reich. The police were now completely subordinate to Himmler. Miller, on the other hand, was in charge of the fourth directorate of state security. It was engaged in the search for internal enemies and punitive actions against them.

Gestapo fighters are directly involved in the Holocaust and other crimes of the Nazi regime. After the outbreak of World War II, the former branches of the SD come under the jurisdiction of the department.

The Gestapo is also sent to the occupied territories. Now it also serves as a counterintelligence agency. In Poland and divided Czechoslovakia, the first branches of the Gestapo open. This increases the pressure on the local population. The political police is looking for resistance members, Jews and other elements objectionable to the regime.

Methods and principles of work

The Gestapo was a political police force subordinate to Himmler. After the reorganization, the fourth department left the jurisdiction of the courts. Administrative law no longer applied to him. This decision was a great help for the Gestapo to use the most cruel methods without fear. If a citizen of the police was arrested, he or his relatives could apply to the administrative court with an appeal against this decision. Also, to arrest the police had to press charges.

All these norms did not apply to the Gestapo. The employees of the service had a presumption of rightness and could detain any person without explaining the reason.

By 1939, the Gestapo had become one of the pillars on which Nazi power rested. Along with the SS units, the police organized terror against the population throughout the territory controlled by the Reich. The fourth department could, without a court decision, send a person to a concentration camp, many of which were guarded by them. Also, the Gestapo did not constrain themselves in the methods of interrogation. Torture, humiliation and so on were massively used. In the occupied territories, the Gestapo Sonder teams took part in genocide and acts of terror against the civilian population. Inhuman conditions were used for keeping prisoners of war.

Various departments

The Gestapo uniform looked more like Wehrmacht clothing than police: black pants, high leather boots, a black tunic, a cap and a raincoat. There were several departments, each with its own classification. Department A was engaged in the fight against an external enemy. Under his gun were communists, socialists and other groups or individuals who professed leftist views.

It also included a sub-department of combating enemy propaganda, with opposition-minded monarchists, liberals and other unreliable elements.

Section B specialized in various sects and religious organizations. Church leaders opposed to the Nazi regime were persecuted. First of all, Catholics, Protestants, and radical communities were under surveillance. Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted. Department B was also responsible for the deportation of Jews.

Occupied lands

Department D worked in the occupied territories. The first branch was stationed in the former Czechoslovakia. The second was engaged in tracking people from enemy states. The fourth subdivision dealt with repressions in the occupied territories of Western and Central Europe. But the most cruel was the fifth, who worked in the East - in Poland and the Soviet Union.

Other departments were engaged in espionage and information gathering. The Gestapo had a wide network of informers. Literally every citizen of the Reich was under close surveillance. The police scrupulously collected information about marital status, preferences, ancestors, even rumors and denunciations of neighbors were recorded.

International Tribunal

After the fall of the Reich, the Gestapo also stopped its work. Photos of the main figures of the secret police then flew around all the newspapers of the world. The Nuremberg Trials ruled that all members of the Fourth Section were war criminals.

The highest ranks received long terms of imprisonment, many were executed. Mueller was never caught. According to one version, he died in early May, having taken an ampoule of potassium, according to another, he fled to Latin America.

At the beginning of 2017, there was a scandal with the new Gestapo. Kaliningrad in the German period was the location of the central department of East Prussia. The Google Maps service returned the old name to the building, which now houses the FSB of Russia. After the reaction of Internet users, the error was fixed.