The Gestapo: Control Through Fear

1 90 The Gestapo: Control Through Fear91 Jill LauermanJill Lauerman is a graduate student in the Historyprogram. This paper was written for a seminar inEuropean history with Dr. Dan word Gestapo conjures up images of arrests, strangedisappearances, beatings, concentration camps and above allfear. From 1933 until 1945, the Gestapo established andenforced a reputation of terror among the German reputation helped the Gestapo to effectively carry out Nazipolicies against the Jews and other enemies of the regime, aswell as keeping the rest of the German society in line. TheGestapo will be remembered as one of the most feared groups inthe Nazi regime because of the terror it inflicted on Germansociety. Despite this world view, a topic of interest for historiansis whether or not the techniques used by the Gestapo has any realimpact on society?

2 That is to say, did ordinary Germans changetheir behavior in order to not run afoul of the Gestapo? Afterconsidering various studies, it appears that historians largelyagree that these techniques, especially that of denunciation, heredefined as the act of one individual reporting another s actions tothe Gestapo, succeeded for a brief time in fundamentallychanging the way in which ordinary Germans behaved. In order to begin to Control the population, the Gestapohad to first establish a fearful reputation, consisting ofcontrolling the population Through fear rather than Through civilobedience to law enforcement. The Gestapo, initially a smallpolice unit, grew in power after the absorption of the SA and SSinto one large police unit in 19331 It became the official strongarm of the regime after the Reichstag Fire in February of thatyear.

3 The Emergency Decrees that followed gave the policesystem in Germany the power to circumvent the civil liberties of 1 Edward Crankshaw, Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny (London:Putnam, 1956; reprint, London: Greenhill Books, 1990), 16 (page citations areto the reprint edition).92 German By 1936, the Gestapo became nationalizedand soon developed into the instrument Through which Hitlercould now begin to attack opposition to his regime. After anythreat was crushed or repressed, Hitler could then use theGestapo against both the German and Jewish population. TheGestapo functioned both inside and outside the law because ofthe 1936 Gestapo Laws. As a result they became nearlyindependent of the regime s administrative offices and insteadacted as the instrument of the F hrer s authority.

4 3 With thepowers that both the Reichstag Fire Emergency Decrees and theGestapo Laws gave to the Gestapo, the group was free to beginbuilding its reputation and crushing opposing Gestapo began attacking the first opposition groupsas early as the spring of 1933. These first groups included theCommunists, the trade unions, and other left wing involved or associated with these groups became thetargets of the infant Nazi Secret Police system. Essentially, theGestapo rounded up these individuals and a few became the firstto be sent to what became known as the concentration early attacks on political opposition to the regime built upthe reputation of the Gestapo. Although Robert Gellately, in TheGestapo and German Society, claimed that the Gestapo played aminor role in these round-ups, he did mention the effect of themon the general public.

5 The result usually consisted of making thepublic think twice before speaking out against the regime, forfear that they may get arrested early acts of the SA and the Gestapo were designed,in part, as a demonstration not only of their own growing power,but that of the regime as well. The Gestapo, Through theirincreasingly relentless pursuit of dissidents, made it clear tothe public that to speak against the regime in any capacity meantthat anyone could be the next to disappear into the night. TheGestapo used secretive arrests in order to create an aura ofuncertainty within a community. In doing so, they introduced 2 Robert Gellately, Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing RacialPolicy, 1933-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), Gellately, Gestapo, Gellately, Gestapo, idea that only total compliance with the regime wasacceptable: In the absence of enthusiasm, silence, complianceor apathetic accommodation was to be preferred.

6 5 Word aboutthe treatment of those taken secretly into protective custody bythe Gestapo affected the public by demonstrating that notcooperating with the regime could threaten one s safety. TheGerman population began conforming to Nazi policies when thedisappearances became more than random continue to debate just what kinds of treatmentthose arrested endured. Charges range from absolute sadism tomerely implied threats of harm. Edward Crankshaw, inGestapo: Instrument of Tyranny, maintained that the Gestapoknew no other way than to kill or torture. 6 He asserted thatafter each arrest, the victims initially underwent verbal or mentalabuse, then physical abuse, and finally were shipped off to aconcentration camp where they usually Crankshaw buildshis entire study around the assumption that the Gestapo wasnothing but a large killing machine used by the Nazis to crushany opposition and later to round up the Jewish asserting this claim, Crankshaw exposed the flaw in histheory.

7 He admits that no one can truly know exactly whathappened to each victim once they were taken by the Gestapobecause of the lack of documentary evidence needed to confirmthat torture did indeed take place. Although the records thatCrankshaw examined, primarily oral testimonies given by thosefew who managed to survive their ordeals, make for aconvincing argument, their accounts may not accuratelyrepresent the experiences of the Gellately contradicted Crankshaw s theories onthis subject. In his book, Gellately included torture as a methodused by the Gestapo in order to Control the population. Hementioned that several of those who had been repeatedly arrestedby the Gestapo committed suicide to avoid yet another also described some of the other methods the Gestapoused in order to extract confessions.

8 These include blackmail, 5 Gellately, Gestapo, Crankshaw, Crankshaw, , intimidation, and extortion, to name a few. Despitethese statements, Gellately asserted that many Gestapo officesserved merely as paper-pushing centers or as collection housesfor the extensive files gathered on individuals. He maintainedthat the Gestapo retained their Control over the populace not byreputation alone, but by instilling enough fear about havingsuspicion aroused that few dared to question the also noted that the Gestapo was not a large group as issometimes stated, instead they relied on the population as theirmain source of a result, many Germans felt pressured toaccommodate the regime no matter what circumstance theyfound themselves in.

9 This fear often caused one individual todenounce another in order to turn suspicion away from their ownactions. An example of this comes out of Bernt Engelmann smemoirs, when a man caught reading a seditious newspaperplaces the blame on another man for supposedly obtaining thepaper in the first place. He had the choice to risk being caught .. or to denounce the other man. He chose the lesser of twoevils. 8 Engelmann decried the fact that society had changed soradically that an individual could turn in a possibly innocent manin order to deflect suspicion from himself. All of this occurredin response to the terror that the Gestapo held over evaluated behavioral changes in individuals tosupport his theory that Gestapo practices inspired significantsocial cooperation with the regime.

10 To support this, he notedchanges in some individuals behavior when dealing with Jewishfriends, relatives or co-workers. Gellately stated that someindividuals slowly curtailed their encounters with Jews whileothers simply ceased all contact. Many of these relationshipshad been going on for years and with the arrival of the Gestapoand their reputation for ruthlessness, many of these relationshipscame to abrupt ends, often without explanation from theGermans involved. Other ordinary Germans chose to commitsuicide rather than have to decide between ending suchrelationships or risking harassment or imprisonment at the hands 8 Bernt Engelmann, In Hitler s Germany: Daily Life in the ThirdReich, trans. Krishna Winston (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), the Gestapo.