Gestapo

“ The Party formations, including the Leadership Corps of the Party, the SD, the SS, the SA, and the infamous Secret State Police, or Gestapo,—all these stand accused before you as criminal organizations; organizations which, as we will prove from their own documents, were recruited only from recklessly devoted Nazis, ready in conviction and temperament to do the most violent of deeds to advance the common program. ”

“ Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. ”

“ MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And if you were to combat successfully the Nazi regime, you had to have manpower which only the Army had; is that right?
GISEVIUS: Yes, only people who could be found in the Army; but at the same time we also attempted to influence certain people in the Police, and we needed all the decent officials in the ministries, and the broad masses of the people altogether.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: But the Wehrmacht was the source of power capable of dealing with the SS and the Gestapo if the generals had been willing? ”

“ It is the Gestapo's eternal job to safeguard the lives of Germans valuable to the Third Reich!"
"Gestapo?" Field Marshal von Staube practically blew up with wrath. "This is a war zone. This is Army Headquarters. It is for the cursed Gestapo to—!"
The German stumbled to a stop, and just sat glaring at Freddy Farmer, and drumming his fingertips on the desk. For a split second Dave almost wanted to laugh out loud. If all this wasn't so deadly serious, it would be funny. The German Army Staff and Himmler's Gestapo were like two tomcats on a back yard fence. ”

“ You ask how the assassin could get the sub-machine gun or the bombs into the hotel? The Gestapo is good, but it is a long way from being perfect. They overlook a great many things. We were in Vienna when Hitler marched in. The Gestapo had been in control of the city for days. But on the very day Hitler came to Vienna my wife borrowed a radio set from Tess Shirer and had the porter carry it into the hotel and up to our room. ”

“ Now turn another page, and you will find a Gestapo report on the monastery, dated 23 January 1941, addressed to your assistant Dellbrügge. I wish you would look where it says, “Oral order of 23 January 1941.” Apparently somebody in your organization, you or your assistants, orally asked the Gestapo to get up a report on this monastery the very day that you wrote to Berlin asking that it be considered as a Hitler School. ”

“ The Gestapo and SD were used for purposes which were criminal under the Charter involving the persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities, and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labor program, and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. ”

“ Now in that connection the direct responsibility of the Gestapo for disciplining forced workers is shown in our exhibit, Document 1573-PS, Exhibit Number USA-498. This is a secret order signed by Müller himself to the regional Gestapo offices on the 18th of June 1941; and I quote from the document from the beginning. It is addressed:
“To all offices of the State Police—to the State Police, attention SS Sturmbannführer R. R. Nosske or deputy at Aachen.
“Subject: Measures to be taken against emigrants and civilian workers who come from the Greater Russian areas and against foreign workers. ”

“ GISEVIUS: Yes, on the same day. The Supreme Court-Martial would be the great danger for the Gestapo. And now the Supreme Court-Martial sat for several hours and was adjourned under dramatic circumstances, for that was the day chosen for the German armies to march into Austria. Even at that time we knew without any doubt why the chairman of that court-martial was so unusually interested in having the troops on that day receive the order to march, not to a goal within but outside the Reich. Not until one week later could the Supreme Court-Martial reconvene, and then Hitler was triumphant. ”

“ All German land, naval and air forces, the SS., SA., SD., and Gestapo, with all their organizations, staffs and institutions, including the General Staff, the Officers' Corps, Reserve Corps, military schools, war veterans' organizations and all other military and semi-military organizations, together with all clubs and associations which serve to keep alive the military tradition in Germany, shall be completely and finally abolished in such manner as permanently to prevent the revival or reorganization of German militarism and Nazism ”

“ The Nazi Leadership Corps consisted of the directors and principal executors of the Nazi Party, which was the force lying behind and dominating the whole German state. The Reichs Cabinet was the facade through which the Nazi Party translated its will into legislative, administrative, and executive acts. The two pillars on which the security of the regime rested were the armed forces, directed and controlled by the General Staff and High Command, and the police forces—the Gestapo, the SA, the SD, and the SS. These organizations exemplify all the evil forces of the Nazi regime. ”

“ LT. LAMBERT: Then, with respect to Bormann’s efforts to reinforce the grip of the Gestapo, I request the Tribunal to notice judicially a Bormann order of 3 September 1935, calling on Party agencies to report to the Gestapo all persons who criticize Nazi institutions or the Nazi Party. This decree appears in the official Party publication Decrees of the Deputy of the Führer, 1937, at Page 190. The English translation is set forth in our Document 3239-PS. I shall summarize the effect of this document shortly. ”

“ Your Lordship will find it at Page 87 of Document Book 11, and it is at Page 60 of the German version.
Now, at Page 87 there is Herr Von Tschirschsky’s own letter to you, in which he says, at the end of the second paragraph: “I am not in a position ... to comply with the Gestapo demand to report to Berlin for interrogation.”
And then he says that—to quote his own words—that he has been influenced only by the “human, understandable desire to live” and then he sends a report, he encloses a report, to you of what had happened to him on 30 June which got him into the bad books of the Gestapo. ”

“ There is always danger of actual sabotage in such cases, ... the Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police has reached an agreement with the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor that all charges of absenteeism against foreign workers shall be dealt with by the Gestapo. ”

“ Other combatants met a similar fate at the hands of other components of the SS. (The execution of allied fliers, of commandos, and paratroopers, and of escaped prisoners of war who were turned over to the SD to be destroyed, is discussed in Section 6 on the Gestapo.) ”

“ DR. MERKEL: Who created and instituted the Gestapo in the individual Länder?
OHLENDORF: I cannot give you an answer to this question.
DR. MERKEL: Do you know whether before 1933, in the area which then constituted the Reich, there had existed a similar institution, a political police force?
OHLENDORF: Yes, that existed, as far as I remember, at Police headquarters in Berlin, for instance; and I believe it was Department IA. At any rate political police organizations did exist.
DR. MERKEL: Do you know anything about the sphere of activities of this organization which existed before 1933? ”

“ This plan provided that “the SD follow, if possible, immediately after the leading troops, and take upon themselves the duties similar to their tasks in Germany . . . .”
Gestapo officials were assigned to co-operate with the SD in certain operations. Special agents were to be trained beforehand to prevent sabotage, and these agents were to be notified “before the attack in due time . . . in order to give them the possibility to hide themselves, avoid arrest and deportation . . . At the beginning, guerrilla or partisan warfare is to be expected, therefore weapons are necessary . ”

“ They acted, little conscious of such function on their part, as an immense volunteer Police Force, stationed everywhere, united, disciplined, feudally regimented, ready for action; strong Teutonic men; who on the whole proved effective men, and drilled this wild Teutonic people into unity and peaceable co-operation better than others could have done! ”

“ Penitential days are coming for the German Empire and for the German people. For these acts of horror are the acts of the people: man by man, regiment by regiment, half a million average Germans, peasants and clerks, stamped down through Belgium and Northern France, using the incendiary pellet and [180] the bayonet. In the words of the manifesto, signed by the 93 Wise Men of Germany, referring to the German army, "Sie kennt keine zuchtlose Grausamkeit": it doesn't know such a thing as undisciplined cruelty. ”

“ The admitting of these German troops excited strong suspicions in the breast of every friend to freedom, and every lover of the Constitution; and their being employed in such a service as that of superintending the flogging of Englishmen, was a most disgusting and revolting sight, which was contemplated with feelings of the utmost abhorrence by every man who had the least regard for the honour of his country or the character of his countrymen. ”

“ Why do you always talk of fighting? You have conquered the State, and if something does not please you, then just make a law and regulate it differently? Why must you always talk of fighting? For you have every power! Over what do you fight? Outer-politically? You have the Wehrmacht—it will wage the fight if it is required. ”

“ Still another evil, and one which of late has been much ventilated in Germany, is the abuse of power by officers and non-commissioned officers towards their subordinates. There has [xxiii] always been too much of this in the German army, and it would carry us too far afield to trace here the causes. In itself it seems a strange anomaly that in an army which calls itself by the proud term of a “nation in arms,” and whose membership is recruited from every stratum of society, there should be such wholesale maltreatment of the privates by their superior officers. ”

“ Today, we stand in the midst of the most decisive battle for our Volk. You yourselves are not only future officers in the German Wehrmacht, but also part of this great instrument of leadership and the entire German Volk-this German Volksgemeinschaft. You must completely identify yourselves mentally with the ideas which move this Volk today. Its hopes for the future must be your own. ”

“ I refuse the use of officials and Reich-Employees of the General Commissarate in the rear areas. The men who work for me have not been classified as essential, after all in order to fight the partisans actively in the place of the Armed Forces and the Police. ”

“ From regular bands of mercenaries came standing armies and that oppressive military system of modern Europe which has weighed so heavily upon the laboring classes and retarded the moral, the intellectual, and the industrial development of society. All the great wars of modern Europe, till the wars of the French Revolution, had been carried on in a large measure by mercenary troops, among which the Germans were perhaps the foremost for aptitude to arms, power of endurance, cruelty, rapacity, and, as long as they were regularly paid, for fidelity to their banner. ”

“ Our battalion of National Guards was one of the last to accept the orders of the Commune, and as it must be known in Versailles as well as in Paris, that this quarter is thoroughly loyal, we need fear no trouble. We are going back there with the news, for we can see nothing here, and if a battalion of Communists came along beaten, they would be as likely as not to vent their fury on all whom they see by their appearance and dress are likely to sympathize with the troops. ”

“ Having joined the partnership, the General Staff and High Command group planned and carried through manifold acts of aggression which turned Europe into a charnel-house, and caused the Armed Forces to be used for foul practices foully executed of terror, pillage, murder and wholesale slaughter. Let no one be heard to say that the military uniform shall be their cloak, or that they may find sanctuary by pleading membership in the profession to which they are an eternal disgrace. ”

“ This Regency at once proceeded to pass a Militia law, which was actually in all due force sent to all the Governments of Germany.
They, the very enemies of the Assembly, were ordered to levy forces in its defence! Then there was created—on paper, of course—an army for the defence of the National Assembly. Divisions, brigades, regiments, batteries, everything was regulated and ordained. Nothing was wanted but reality, for that army, of course, was never called into existence. ”

“ If the entire corps is actually an order which lives according to these laws and realizes that one part cannot exist without the other—you are unimaginable without the General SS, and the latter is not imaginable without you. ”

“ All at once, however, I perceived on our left a large square, where about a hundred men of the Laval National Guard were being exercised. They saw us appear with our escort, they saw the crowd which followed us, and they heard the cries, "Spies! German spies!" Forthwith, with that disregard for discipline which among the French was so characteristic of the period, they broke their ranks and ran towards us.
We were only able to take a few more steps. In vain did the Gendarmes try to force a way through the excited mob. We were surrounded by angry, scowling, vociferating men. ”