Policing a Police State

Some weeks ago, I wrote about the Nazi SA and promised to follow up with a discussion of the SS (the Schutzstaffel) and the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei).

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AFTER HITLER CAME TO POWER, Germany became a totalitarian state that used a complex and brutal system of policing to enforce its policies. The SS was soon the lethal head of the entire German police force.

By 1935, an SS officer knocking on the door would strike terror into the heart of any Jewish family.

December 28, 1935

. . . An SS officer was on our front porch. He stood like an apparition dressed in a full, black uniform. The two crooked lightning bolt symbols on his collar glinted in the winter sunlight. He had come to steal Mutti’s piano!

From Edith’s diary, Ashes and Ruins: Love, War, and the Home Front.

Edith’s mother, Clara, also remembers this terrifying visit. She watched in dread as the SS officer ran his fingers over the glossy finish of her beloved grand piano. She remembers how he slapped his riding crop against the leg of his black uniform pants. She would never forget the way he picked up the framed photo of her late husband in two fingers, as if it were trash, and dropped it onto the armchair.

For as long as they remained in Germany, the characters in my novels experience fear whenever they see one of these brutal enforcers. They know that the SS are always harbingers of danger.

The SS was originally established in 1925 to serve as Hitler’s personal bodyguard. By the mid-1930s, they controlled the entire German police apparatus, the concentration camps, and the administration of Nazi racial policy.

The SS was a highly organized paramilitary group that answered only to Hitler. Recruits were screened for racial purity and had to prove their pure Aryan lineage as far back as 1750. This was often difficult but not impossible. German churches kept meticulous birth, marriage, and death records since the 1500s, and from the late 1700s on, German civil authorities also recorded these statistics. Once accepted into the corps, members were indoctrinated until they were ready to do Hitler’s bidding without hesitation or questions.

The SS consisted of several specialized sections. The General SS was responsible for racial policy and policing. Under them, the SS-Totenkopfverbände, known as the “Death’s Head Battalions,” ran the concentration camp system. Their deadly role was evident from the skull and crossbones insignia on their uniform collars. The Gestapo, or Secret Police, created in 1933, was also a sub-division of the General SS.

Besides finding and arresting those suspected of being enemies of the state, the Gestapo’s job was to stamp out all opposition to Hitler and monitor the German people for loyalty to the Nazi ideal. They used surveillance and informants to locate their victims and notoriously employed extrajudicial arrests and brutal interrogation. The Gestapo was feared by everyone, especially after the war began in 1939.

Heinrich Himmler, as head of the SS, controlled not only the Gestapo but also the Kripo police (criminal division) and the regular uniformed police. Thus, in effect, Himmler was the Chief of Police for all of Nazi Germany. Thus, he brought his ruthless attitude to bear on the entire nation.

Under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the SS eventually became the primary engine of the mass murder of Jews, “Gypsies,” and others deemed undesirable, such as homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witness members, mental patients, and the developmentally disabled. Two years into the war, in the last month of 1941, Himmler and his assistant, Reinhard Heydrich, were put in charge of the “Final Solution,” the recently codified Nazi plan to make Europe “Judenfrei” (free of Jews).

Movies and books about the Holocaust have made most of us aware of the role of the General SS, their Death’s Head units, and the Gestapo. What is often forgotten is that not all SS sections were intimately involved in the genocide of Jews.

The SS also included a combat unit, known as the Waffen-SS. These elite military units swore allegiance to Hitler, over and above their loyalty to Germany itself. However, they were soldiers rather than enforcers and murderers. Known as ruthless and tactically skilled on the battlefield, the Waffen-SS fought in France, on the Eastern Front, and in the Battle of the Bulge, mainly in Panzer tank divisions.

“Well, they were real professional soldiers. . . . When I say SS… there is a difference between what they call ‘Waffen-SS’… those were the fighting units in the war. And then there were SS back home who did all the dirty work.“

From an interview with Herman Lang (a Holocaust survivor), 1996

When Clara’s beloved piano was stolen in 1935 by the SS officer, she had no recourse. Surrounded by the Nazi police state, she knew that she and her children could be arrested without any judicial recourse. The slightest resistance would put her at risk of being sent to one of the new concentration camps being constructed around Germany.

Some definitions of a police state:

• Merriam-Webster
• Dictionary of World History, editor, Edmund Wright
• Wikipedia
• EBSCO article by Samuel E. Watson III