Transcript The Nazi Police State

The Nazi Police State
www.educationforum.co.uk
Key Questions
1. How was the Nazi police State organised?
2. How effective was the Nazi police state in
establishing conformity 1933-39
3. How much opposition was there to the Nazis
1933-39
Hitler’s Concept of Law
• Hitler did not believe in ‘the rule of law’ in any
recognisable way
• For Hitler a legitimacy (the right to rule) came
from the fuhrerprincip and nowhere else
• Hitler expressed ‘the will of the people’ His word
was literally law
• From the Enabling Act onwards Germans lost
their legal rights (e.g. The right to a fair trail,
equality before the law, right to free expression)
• In Hitler’s Germany people could be arrested,
imprisoned, executed without charge or trial
Nazi ideas on Criminality
• For the Nazis crime was defined by reference to
Nazi ideology.
• Those outside the ‘Peoples Community’ were by
definition criminals
RACIALLY – non Aryans – Slavs, Jews, black people,
gypsies
IDELOGICALLY – Marxists, socialists, liberals –
placed into camps for ‘re-education’
MORALLY – criminals, homosexuals, alcoholics,
mentally ill, dug abusers – seen as a threat to
racial purity
The Institutions of the Nazi Police
State
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The Peoples Court
The SS
The Concentration Camps
The SD
The Gestapo
Informers and block leaders
The Peoples Court
• The Nazis kept, but nazified, the existing criminal
courts and added a new Peoples Court for
political offences
• Headed by the infamous Roland Freisler there
were no juries or defendants in the people’s
court, just charges, abuse, humiliation and
sentencing
• Between 1934-39 3400 communists and socialists
were processed by the People’s Court – the usual
sentence was execution by axe
The police in Nazi Germany
• The following Police organisations existed in 1933:
The SS – controlled by Himmler
The SD – an intelligence gathering wing of the SS
The SA – inititially controlled by Rohm – SA maintained
police powers throughout
The Gestapo (secret state police) – headed by Goring
Gradually the SS took more and more controlled. In 1936
Himmler given control of SS, SD and Gestapo and by
1939 Himmler and the SS controlled all state police
organisations
The SS (Schutzstaffel)
Role
1. Personal bodyguard for Hitler
2. Controlled state police organisation in 3rd Reich
3. Camps – SS controlled the concentration camps
4. Ideology – SS seen as ideological role model for Germans
– racially pure and unquestioningly obedient
5. Military – Waffen SS (armed) had its own army divisions
6. Government – SS charged with administering occupied
and conquered territories
7. Economic – SS ran a number of business enterprises based
on the slave labour of concentration camp inmates
Concentration Camps
• The original concentration camps were prison camps
not extermination camps (these came after 1942)
• A network of camps emerged 1933-36 including;
Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen,
Ravensbruck (women only)
• The original purpose was for political prisoners to be re
educated. By 1936 political opposition had been largely
crushed and the camps started to be used for
‘undesirables’, asocials, homosexuals, gypsies, non
Aryans with a view to ‘purifying the race’
• This change in purpose saw a marked increase in
brutality and murders in the camps
SD (Sicherheitsdienst)
• The SD was the internal security service in
Nazi Germany led by Reinhardt Heydrich
• Its role was to investigate claims that the Nazi
party itself or its institutions had been
infiltrated by enemies
• The SD also spent a great deal of time
monitoring public opinion and investigating
who had voted ‘no’ in the plebiscites
• The SD was manned by committed volunteers
The Gestapo (State Secret Police)
• German people were terrified by the Gestapo believing them to be
everywhere – workplace, pub, club, residential block etc.
• The reality was rather different – only 20,000 officers for whole of
Germany
• The Gestapo however had a deserved reputation for brutality
• They relied on informers for information – party members were
encouraged to spy on their neighbours Hitler Youth were
encouraged to squeal on their parents. Every residential block had a
‘Block leader’ who reported suspicious activity to the Gestapo
• In some ways the German people could be seen as practising ‘self
surveillance’
Reading Pages 100-111 AQA
1.
Why is it difficult to assess the degree of conformity in Nazi
Germany in the 1930’s?
2. Why is it difficult to define what constituted resistance?
3. Why were the SPD and KPD divided?
4. Describe SPD resistance and assess its extent
5. Describe KPD resistance and assess its extent
6. Give examples of worker resistance to the Nazis in the 1930’s
7. To what extent did protestants and Catholics resist the Nazis in the
1930’s
8. What youth opposition was there to the Nazis in the 1930’s
9. What was the 1938 plot against Hitler?
10. Why was there so little effective opposition to the Nazis in the
1930’s