The Gestapo
The terror and fear in Nazi Germany were contributed in by many factors, although most was the fear inflicted in by the secret Nazi police the Gestapo. The Gestapo was a mighty force to be reckoned with even with their small numbers. The secret police force the Gestapo was once the most powerful and most dangerous police force in the whole world because they had power outside of their organization with a secret network of information to rely on, they inflicted terror and control upon the citizens, and they were above the law so they could do whatever to the citizens without question and only had to answer to Hitler.
The Gestapo Born The secret organization the Gestapo was originally founded in April of 1933 by Herman Goring.
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The Gestapo's main purpose was to hunt those who were considered a threat to Nazi Germany like Jews, Homosexuals, and Jehovah Witnesses. After war broke out they were to hunt out Jews and get rid of the threat of resistance groups. Gestapo members played their parts in the Holocaust. Gestapo members hunted Jew that possibly escaped the gathering of their race. Gestapo also murdered ‘Prisoners of War' that were protected under the Geneva Convention (a series of treaties on the treatment of civilians, POW's and soldiers who are incapable of fighting. Interrogation methods the Gestapo used were drownings of prisoners in a bathtub filled with ice-cold water; electric shocks applied all over the body, crushing a man's testicles, beatings with rubber nightstick and cowhide whips, and burning flesh with matches or soldering …show more content…
The Gestapo had the power of arrest, interrogation, and incarceration. Stories were told of the things that happened at Albrecht Strasse, a street in Berlin, the capital of Germany, and where the headquarters of the secret police the Gestapo was located. What made the Gestapo so terrifying was that it placed people that weren’t even enemies or thought to be enemies under protective custody in concentration camps and they kept them there as long as they pleased. They were truly a group of evil individuals working for an even more evil system. The fact that the Gestapo were spread out almost everywhere and no one knew exactly who they were there was total fear in the community. As to say they weren't a group to be taken
In the 1930's, Germany was overruled by an a tyrannical regime known as the Nazis. The Nazis believed solely in the racial superiority of Normadic-Germans, and used control over the flow of information through the country to keep these harmful views relevant and accepted. They did this by limiting allowed media intake and censoring any non-propaganda content. Anyone who spoke out against them or their philosophies was captured and killed or tortured. Despite rejecting these intentions, many citizens of Germany were forced to stay quiet for these reasons.
They put the African Americans into the Nazi camp system. In 1937, Gestapo rounded up & sterilized African Americans. The Africans
The beatings and humiliations quickly escalated to bringing large numbers of Jews into the woods to shoot them. In addition to carrying out shootings, the Order Police played a large role in facilitating the deportation of Jews into the concentration camps. The next chapter delves into the specific role the Order Police had in the deportations. It gives a specific example chronicled by Paul Salitter, an Order Police Lieutenant of a time where the Order Police had the task of transporting Jews from Vienna to Sobibór extermination camp. This is the final chapter that gives background knowledge to the reader, at this point the reader should have a level of
From the years 1942-1943, the world saw the ordinary men of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 murder roughly 60% of the Jewish population in Europe. The Nazi’s specifically called a Blitzkrieg against the Jewish community in Poland, leaving only a miniscule amount of Jewish people alive, the majority of which were placed in ghettos. Prior to the Nazi’s rounding up the Jews and forcing them into ghettos, the Nazi’s established the General Government. This establishment took place after the invasion of Poland in 1939 and began with Nazi’s stuffing Jews in rail road cars and dumping the Jews in the General Government, telling them to “get lost”.
On November 14, 1945, the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials began in Germany. They were to be the definitive judgement of the crimes against humanity by the Nazis. In the midst of the trial, it was determined that the SS, along with its associated organizations such as the Sicherheitsdienst (SD--the security and intelligence organization within the SS) and Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo—State Secret Police), was a criminal organization.1 The verdict placed on the SS was as follows:
(source H) The government They were not allowed to interact with Aryans and were instructed to turn Jews in to the SS, Hitler’s private army, if they were breaking any of these laws. This had conflicting effects on the citizens because neighbors who had once been close friends were now ordered to be their enemies. The Nazis were able to dictate who the Germans we friendly with and interacted with on a daily basis. This ultimate control was confusing for the Germans because they were used to being led in war or government situations, however, they were not yet accustomed to having this many restrictions on their personal lives.
Out of the two world wars, World War II is known to be the bloodiest and brutal war. The main reason this is to believed is because to the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the time period where many were persecuted for their beliefs and race. Hitler is who is to blame for the Holocaust, he is the one who organized all the horrific things done to the people who did not fall under his Master Race. Despite the many theories about the purpose of the Holocaust, the real purpose make those who weren’t members of the Master Race fear the Nazi Regime, to force them to obey the Nazi’s without question.
Shortly before the outbreak of war, SS and police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and racial hatred in these camps. To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate later deportation of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps for Jews during the war years. The German authorities also established numerous forced-labor camps, both in the Greater German Reich and in German occupied territory.
Nazi death marches were very deadly and thousands of innocent people died during them. The Nazis had three main priorities when evacuating the prisoners, how far they would walk, how long the prisoners would walk, the environment they would walk in, how many people died and what they did with the dead bodies. First, the Nazis had three main priorities when evacuating the prisoners. The first priority is the Nazis didn’t want to let the prisoners escape to tell the story of how badly they were tortured and all the forced labor they had to achieve.
In Night one of the ways that the Jews were dehumanized was by abuse. There were beatings, “I never felt anything except the lashes of the whip... Only the first really hurt.” (Wiesel, 57) “They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs.
The week following these arrests the Jews were taken to concentration camps and were killed in horrific ways. Many of them ended up being sent to Auschwitz, one of the most well-known death camps. Others were sent to the camps Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande, and their heads were shaved and they were being tested for many things, many died in extremely gruesome ways. By
Jews were carted away into prison or segregated areas by the cartful each day on the streets. Furthermore, Jews were not allowed to do simple actions, such as take pictures or play sports. They were regarded by the government as “subhuman”. The hate grew even stronger on November 19, 1938 when the Nazis destroyed every synagogue or Jewish owned store in Germany. Hitler’s book Mein Kampf became propaganda which allowed him and his National Socialist Party to rise to power.
The Third Reich, referring to Hitler’s reign and Germany being under Nazi rule between the years 1933-1945, is often referred to as a totalitarian state. A totalitarian state is a system of government in which all power is centralized and does not allow any rival authorities, and the state controls every corner of individual lives with absolute power. Nazi Germany has been referred to as an excellent example of this type of government. This essay will analyse five aspects of Nazi Germany to determine whether it truly exhibited the totalitarian style of government.
The first action of implementing terror into society was withdrawing many of the freedoms and rights that the German people had during the Weimar period by utilising their authority and using the SA and Gestapo as the prime enforces of terror. They went from door to door arresting Socialists, Communists, Trade union leaders and other who did not fit the ideas of the Nazi party. The intimidation of the authorities combined with the willingness of the German citizens to prosecute Jewish and Communist to the police brought society in a state of unease and paranoia. Germany was brainwashed by propaganda and terror into thinking that in order to be a “good citizen” you must perform repressive acts and inform authorities of crimes. Although this denunciation was not rare in the modern political systems,the Gestapo played the situation to a much greater scale which controlled more aspects of German life than ever before as the intimidation was severe amongst the population.
Because of the great power that Hitler had, plenty of his political opponents would be commanded to be scared away or executed. An example of his aggression towards his opponents/enemies is the “Night of the Long Knifes”, where 77 political leaders were executed on his orders. Soon the SA (a Nazi paramilitary group) got complete power and allowed to arrest anyone that did something bad and were seen, it made them