#tumblr gestapo | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

whencyclopedia · 4 months ago

Photo

Eyewitness Accounts of the Holocaust

The Holocaust was the murder of 6 million Jewish people by the SS, Gestapo, and other organisations of Nazi Germany and its allies in the years prior to and through the Second World War (1939-45). Innocent men, women, and children were shot in mass executions, or, if not too young or too old, they were sent to labour camps where they worked until they could do so no longer. The ultimate fate of millions was to die in the gas chambers of extermination camps like Auschwitz in occupied Poland.

In this article, accounts are presented by those who witnessed the Holocaust genocide firsthand, both its victims and those involved in its execution who were obliged to give evidence in, for example, the post-war Nuremberg trials of 1945-6.

Unburied Corpses, Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp

Wislon-Oakes - Imperial War Museums (CC BY-NC-SA)

The Nazis & the Jews

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) established himself as the dictator of Nazi Germany in 1933, and he identified Jewish people as the main enemy of the state. Based on dubious and inconsistent racial theory as propounded by such Nazi figures as Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946), Hitler and the Nazi Party began a propaganda campaign against German Jews, which presented them as an inferior race who were holding Germany back from achieving its full economic potential.

Hitler wanted to remove all Jews from German territory, but the first step was to identify who exactly was a Jew. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws loosely identified Jews since even having a single Jewish grandparent placed an individual in that category. A series of 'solutions' to what Hitler called the "Jewish problem" were rolled out, such as encouraging emigration and persecuting Jewish business owners. Jews were then attacked in such pogroms as the Kristallnacht of November 1938. Next, Jews were rounded up and obliged to live in segregated areas such as ghettos in cities or in concentration camps. Jews were deprived of citizenship and other basic rights.

From 1942, the Nazis began what was secretly described as the 'Final Solution', that is the plan to murder all European Jews. Jews were transported to labour camps where they worked on state projects until they died from disease, extreme malnutrition, or physical exhaustion. Other Jews, and those who could no longer work or were too young or too old to work, were transported directly to death camps like the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in occupied Poland where they were killed in gas chambers and their remains were communally cremated. Jews were not the only victims since the Nazis also targeted Romani people, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, homosexuals, political rivals, prisoners of war, and those with physical or mental disabilities, amongst others. In addition, hundreds of thousands more victims were murdered in mass executions in occupied territories during the Second World War by mobile killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen. The Jews made up by far the majority of those killed, and it is estimated that 6 million died in what is today called the Holocaust. The sheer scale of the Nazis' programme means that determining the precise number of victims is not possible.

Arrested Jews, Baden-Baden

Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-86686-0008 (CC BY-SA)

Hugh Greene, a British newspaper journalist, recalls what he saw of the Kristallnacht in 1938:

I was in Berlin at that time and saw some pretty revolting sights – the destruction of Jewish shops, Jews being arrested and led away, the police standing by while the gangs destroyed the shops and even groups of well-dressed women cheering.

(Holmes, 42)

Avraham Aviel, a Polish Jew and survivor of a mass execution, gives the following account of his experience in May 1942:

We were all brought close to the cemetery at a distance of eighty to a hundred metres from a long, deep pit. Once again everybody was made to kneel. There was no possibility of lifting one's head. I sat more or less in the centre of the town people. I looked in front of me and saw the long pit then maybe groups of twenty, thirty people led to the edge of the pit, undressed probably so that they should not take their valuables with them. They were brought to the edge of the pit where they were shot and fell into the pit, one on top of another.

(Holmes, 319)

An anonymous survivor from a ghetto massacre in Lviv, Ukraine, in August 1942 gives the following description of its aftermath:

I went with my mother to the office of the Jewish community regarding an apartment and there in the light breeze, dangled the corpses of the hanged, their faces blue, their heads tilted backward, their tongues blackened and stretched out. Luxury cars raced in from the center of the city, German civilians with their wives and children came to see the sensational spectacle, and, as was their custom, the visitors enthusiastically photographed the scene. Afterwards the Ukrainians and Poles arrived by with greater modesty.

(Fiedländer, 436)

Nazi Classification of Jewish People

VolksVeritas (CC BY-SA)

Rivka Yoselevska, a Polish Jew, describes her experience and that of her family in the Hansovic ghetto massacre in August 1943:

Some of the younger ones I got out naked covered with blood…I was still alive. Where should I go? What should I do?

(Holmes, 320-1)

The SS lieutenant-colonel Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962), in charge of the Final Solution's transportation requirements, here lies to Jews to make sure they do not create trouble as they are transported by train from a ghetto to the concentration camps:

Jews: You have nothing to worry about. We want only the best for you. You'll leave here shortly and be sent to very fine places indeed. You will work there, your wives will stay at home, and your children will go to school. You will have wonderful lives.

(Bascomb, 6)

The death camps were deliberately located in remote Poland to provide the Final Solution project more secrecy. Rudolf Höss (1901-1947), a camp commandant at Auschwitz, stated:

We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy, but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz.

(Neville, 49)

New Arrivals at Auschwitz

Bernard Walter (Public Domain)

The typical conditions of the train journeys to the camps are described here by Avraham Kochav, an Auschwitz survivor:

There were twenty to twenty-five cars in every train…I heard terrible cries. I saw how people attack other people so as to have a place to stand, how people push each other so that they could stand somewhere or so that they could have air for breathing. It was terribly, terribly stifling. The first to faint were the children, women, old men, they all fell down like flies.

(Holmes, 332)

Zygmunt Klukowski, a Polish hospital director, describes the train journeys for Jewish people sent to the Belzec extermination camp in occupied Poland:

On the way to Belzec the Jews experience many terrible things. They are aware of what will happen to them. Some try to fight back. At the railroad station in Szczebrzeszyn a young woman gave away a gold ring in exchange for a glass of water for her dying child. In Lublin people witnessed small children being thrown through windows of speeding trains. Many people are shot before reaching Belzec.

(Friedländer, 358)

Yaacov Silberstein, a Jewish teenager, describes his arrival at Auschwitz in October 1942:

When we arrived we saw how the Jews were running to the electrified fence. There they stuck. They were tired of life; they could not continue in this fashion.

(Holmes, 330)

Dr Lucie Adelsberger, a prisoner of Auschwitz, describes the processing of new arrivals destined for the labour camps:

We undressed, had our hair cut – no actually our heads were shaved to stubble; then came the showers and finally the tattoos. This was where they confiscated the very last vestiges of our belongings; nothing remained…no written document that could have identified us, no picture, no written message from a loved one. Our past was cut off, erased…

(Cesarini, 656)

Aerial View of Auschwitz

South African Air Force (Public Domain)

Bernd Naumann, a survivor from the Birkenau camp, describes the prevalence of rats in the camp:

They gnawed not only at corpses but also at the seriously sick. I have pictures showing women near death being bitten by rats.

(Neville, 50)

Seweryna Smaglewska, a prisoner in the Birkenau women's camp, describes the living conditions there:

There were no roads, no paths between the blocks. In the depths of these dark dens, in bunks like multi-storied cages, the feeble light of a candle burning here or there flickered over naked, emaciated figures curled up, blue from the cold, bent over a pile of filthy rags, holding their shaved heads in their hands, picking out an insect with their scraggly fingers and smashing it on the edge of the bunk – that is what the barracks looked like in 1942.

(Cesarini, 528)

The SS, which managed the camps, made sure there was a hierarchy amongst the prisoners such as trustees who survived a little longer than the rest by being 'favoured' with certain duties such as burning the bodies in the crematoriums or beating other prisoners. SS Lance Corporal Richard Bock, a guard at Auschwitz-Birkenau, recalls:

A block chief would call out the kapo very fiercely, 'Kapo, come here.' The kapo came over and – boom – he hit the kapo in the face so hard that he fell over…And then he said, 'Kapo, can't you beat them any better than that?' And the kapo ran off and grabbed a club to beat up the prisoner squad quite indiscriminately. 'Kapo, come over here,' he shouted again. The kapo came and he said, 'Finish them off,' and then he went off again and he finished the prisoners off, he beat them to death…a kapo had to beat and club to save his own life.

(Holmes, 325)

Luggage of Auschwitz Victims

Jorge Láscar (CC BY)

Those meant for the gas chambers were often unaware of their fate. Bock describes the procedure that he witnessed with a colleague called Holbinger who was responsible for the Zyklon B tins that would produce the lethal gas:

…the new arrivals had to get undressed, and then the order came, 'Prepare for disinfection'. There were enormous piles of clothing…Lots of them hid their children under the clothes and covered them up and then they shouted, 'Get ready' and they all went out, they had to run naked approximately twenty yards from the hall across to Bunker One. There were two doors standing open and they went in there and when a certain number had gone inside they shut the doors. That happened about three times, and every time Holbinger had to go out to his ambulance and they took out a sort of tin – he and one of his block chiefs – and then he climbed up the ladder and at the top there was a round hole and he opened the little round door and held the tin there and shook it and then he shut the little door again. Then a fearful screaming started up and approximately after about ten minutes it slowly went quiet…They opened the door…then a blue haze came out. I looked in and I saw a pyramid. They had all climbed up on top of each other…They were all tangled, they had to tug and pull very hard to disentangle all these people.

(Holmes, 334-5)

Dov Paisikowic, a Russian-Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, was part of the team responsible for taking bodies out of the chambers, removing valuables such as rings and gold teeth, and then taking the corpses to the crematoria. He recalls:

…the doors were suddenly opened to the gas chambers. People, naked people, started falling out. We were all frightened, no one dared ask what it all was. We were immediately taken to the other side of this house and there we saw hell on this earth – large piles of dead people, and people dragging these dead to a long pit, about thirty metres in length and ten metres in width. There was a huge fire there, with tree trunks. On the other side fat was being taken out of this pit with a bucket.

(Holmes, 335)

Thousands of detainees in the camps were subjected to unnecessary and often horrific medical operations and experiments. One of the most infamous SS doctors was Josef Mengele (1911-1979), who performed all kinds of macabre operations at Auschwitz. Mengele was, though, only one part of a large SS medical team, which operated in many different camps. Dr Franz Blaha, a Czech detainee at the Dachau concentration camp, was obliged to work in this area of Nazi terror, specifically performing autopsies. Blaha reported:

From the middle of 1941 to the end of 1942 some 500 operations on healthy prisoners were performed. These were for the instructions of the SS medical students and doctors and included operations on the stomach, gall bladder and throat. These were performed by students and doctors of only two years' training, although they were very dangerous and difficult….Many prisoners died on the operating table and many others from later complications…These persons were never volunteers but were forced to submit to such acts.

(MacDonald, 59)

Auschwitz Bunks

Bookofblue (CC BY-SA)

Hertha Beese, a Berlin housewife and underground resistance worker, recalls that, unlike the general public, the resistance network was more informed about the camps. She states:

We knew that the concentration camps existed. We also knew where they existed, for example Oranienburg just outside Berlin. We sometimes knew which of our friends were there and we also knew of the cruelties in them right from the beginning.

(Holmes, 315)

Anthony Eden (1897-1977), British Foreign Secretary during WWII, notes:

…as the war progressed some horrifying reports began to come out. At first it was very difficult to assess their accuracy and they were so horrible it was hard to believe they could be true.

(Holmes, 314)

Wynford Vaughn-Thomas, a British journalist, recalls the conditions of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany when it was liberated in 1945:

In the huts typhoid, everything, had broken out and you couldn't hear yourself speak for the death rattle. There were people lying on top of each other, sick, vomiting, withered bodies crawling on their hands and knees…It was sealed off in this dark north German plain and you felt you'd reached the cesspit of the human mind.

(Holmes, 337)

Mass Grave, Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp

H. Oakes-Imperial War Museums (Public Domain)

The British Lieutenant Colonel J. A. D. Johnson described what he saw when he arrived at Bergen-Belsen:

The prisoners were a dense mass of emaciated apathetic scarecrows huddled together in wooden huts, and in many cases without beds or blankets, and in some cases without any clothing whatsoever…There were thousands of emaciated corpses in various stages of decomposition lying unburied. Sanitation was to all intents and purposes nonexistent.

(Cesarini, 759)

Hans Stark, Gestapo staff member at Auschwitz, stated, like so many others, that he had merely been following orders:

I took part in the murder of many people…I believed in the Führer, I wanted to serve my people. Today I know that this idea was false. I regret the mistakes of my past, but I cannot undo them.

(Neville, 57)

Rabbi Frankforter, who died in the Holocaust, which Jewish people often call the Shoah or Ha-Shoah in Hebrew, gave this last wish to survivor Yaacov Silberstein:

You are still young and you will remain alive. I have only one request for you that you should never let people forget. Tell everyone what they did to us at this small camp, in Buchenwald. Wherever you go tell this, also to your children so that they should pass it on. To remember and not to forget.

(Holmes, 339)

#History #ConcentrationCamp #FinalSolution #Genocide

182 notes · View notes

beanytuesday · 1 year ago

Text

GUE CHAPTER 4: LIVING DEAD

[But first: a brief message from the creator, which would have appeared BEFORE the comic, if I didn't just barely slide in under tumblrs 30 image limit]

Hello Everyone,

I was in the process of inking this comic when I suffered my debilitating hand injury, which set me back nearly a year. Even before I injured myself, I never intended for GUE 4 to take this long— and so in the interest of expediting it’s release, I took some shortcuts in the inking process through the use of generative AI.

Hah! Just kidding. But now it sounds less bad to say that I did save time by using modified pencilwork in place of inks, and the result is an end product that is decidedly a little rough.

I promise, nobody is upset about this as much as I am; I really wanted to present everyone with a perfect end product. But creative stuff like this has a half-life, and as much as I am proud of my work on GUE 4, I am ready to move on and get to work on other projects. (Maybe even… GUE 5? )

If it makes you feel better, just pretend that I’m the Thief And The Cobbler guy, and that GUE 4 is merely an unfinished masterwork pieced together after my untimely death at the hands of Disney gestapo. (Or whatever actually happened to him-- It’s funnier if I don’t look it up. Haha. Parody. Don’t sue me Disney)

And please, don’t freak out when you get to page 5. I started using a new drafting method while working on this comic, and I promise the art gets cleaner quickly. In fact, I think an adapted version of the rough inking method I used here can actually be used to in the future for faster turnaround, without sacrificing quality. Many exciting adventures await.

My deepest thanks for your support. Please enjoy GUE part 4.

883 notes · View notes

dcdreamblog · 9 months ago

Note

As someone with WW2 expertise, maybe you can clear something up for me. What was the deal with Baroness Paula von Gunther? I've read differing accounts of her activities during the war and her relationship with Wonder Woman. Can you help me out?

I can give it my best shot! However this comes with a couple of disclaimers. 1. As far as my records indicate because of circumstances at the end of the story, Baroness Von Gunther is probably still ALIVE. Not that I think she has an interest in speaking for posterity just know that should she ever have the inclination her own word could contradict everything I am about to say 2. Certain folks on Tumblr are not gonna like this story because the lesson to take from it is that ANYONE can change and should be given the opportunity which is a philosophical stance the Amazons and Wonder Woman specifically STILL come under fire for. Records on Von Gunther's very early life are scarce but it can be inferred that she was born near the end of WWI in modern day Austria to a family of minor nobility. Noble enough to be stripped of their titles after the collapse of Austria-Hungary but not sitting on enough land to bounce back. She was married young to a slightly higher minor noble named Gottfried Von Gunther. Given later circumstances we can assume their marriage was not exactly a whirlwind romance but it DID create one of the monster important parts of Baroness Von Gunther's life: Her daughter Gerta

(Personal Photo of Paula and Gerta circa 1937~. One thing of note is that this was torn from a larger photograph, which presumably included Gottfried somewhere which speaks to Paula's relationship with the man) It was in 1938, during the Nazi annexation of Austria that the Von Gunther family was target by the Nazi Gestapo. Seeking the family's remaining wealth Gottfried was killed in Nazi captivity and Gerta was taken hostage. Paula connections in the fashion and beauty industries built during her time as a bachelorette in the early 30s were leveraged to allow her position as a spy and saboteur. It was in this position and under the codename "Uberfraulien" (That is under the original meaning of "codename" in that it was used to refer to her in coded Nazi messages, not an intentional moniker) that Baroness Von Gunther would cross paths with Wonder Woman, the newly arrived Hippolyta of Themyscira

(File Photo from Von Gunther's OSS records circa 1942.) In her espionage career Baroness Von Gunther unlocked a previously unknown skill in all things scientific and was the creator of many disquieting devices. Robots, mind control, etc. She was captured, imprisoned and even sentenced to death multiple times but with Gerta's safety back home dependent upon her activity she always escaped. It wasn't until war's end when she formulated a plan to invade Paradise Island itself that she was captured for good. And that Hippolyta in her Wonder Woman guise was able to reunite her with Gerta, rescued from Nazi captivity in occupied Vienna. It was after this rescue and behind closed doors she was made an offer that would be controversial today and was considered treasonous at the time. Serve out her "sentence" on Paradise Island with interest in reform rather than being handed over to the US for execution as an enemy agent. America ERUPTED at the news. Hippolyta was branded a security risk, stripped of most of her earned credentials. Only the All Star Squadron and the Justice Society refused any orders to purge her membership outright by simply not responding to them at all. And that's where the story has stood for the last...79 years and counting? Paula and Gerta Von Gunther were taken in as adopted Amazons and have been there ever since, far from the public eye. The only modern information we have on them is when some fucking asshole college leftist shouted an accusation at Diana after she intervened during unrest at Harvard University. The transcript of said response is better than I could write so this is from the lips of the Amazon herself Student (after being asked to disperse as the protest on campus was creating a risk of violence): "We don't take orders from people who shelter Nazis!" Diana (Pausing and turning to face the student directly): "One of the things of Man's World I might truly never understand is your insistence on punishment. Paula Von Gunther is a sister of mine. She has harmed no one in lifetimes, every moment since spent in contemplation and the care of others. If six decades of reform is not enough to sate your lust for retribution than the crime lies with you, not her."

#dc #dcu #dc comics #dc universe #superhero #comics #wonder woman #diana prince #diana of themyscira #queen hippolyta #hippolyta #paula von gunther #uberfrauline #tw unreality #unreality #ask blog #ask game #asks open #send asks

24 notes · View notes

cursedreverie1945 · 3 months ago

Text

I tend not to do a whole lot with the high ranking or well known nazis, except Heydrich.

However, I figured I would do Ernst Kaltenbrunner because I don't see a whole lot of him on Tumblr.

Kaltenbrunner, was a coward and a dedicated nazi. I also believe he wasn't the brightest of bulbs.

Anyway, enough of that. Let's get on to this bag.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner was an Austrian, high-ranking SS official during the Nazi era, and major perpetrator of the Holocaust. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and a brief period under Heinrich Himmler, Kaltenbrunner was the third Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), which included the offices of Gestapo, Kripo and SD, from January 1943 until the end of World War II in Europe.

Kaltenbrunner joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and the SS in 1931, and by 1935 he was considered a leader of the Austrian SS. In 1938, he assisted in the Anschluss and was given command of the SS and police force in Austria. In January 1943, Kaltenbrunner was appointed chief of the RSHA, succeeding Reinhard Heydrich, who was assassinated in May 1942.

A committed antisemite, Kaltenbrunner played a pivotal role in orchestrating the Holocaust and Nazi genocide intensified under his leadership. He oversaw the coordination of security and law enforcement agencies involved in widespread extermination, the suppression of resistance movements in occupied territories, extensive arrests, deportations, and executions. He was the highest-ranking member of the SS to face trial (Himmler having died of suicide in May 1945) at the Nuremberg trials, where he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Kaltenbrunner was sentenced to death, and was executed by hanging on 16 October 1946.

It was said that even Himmler feared him, as Kaltenbrunner was an intimidating figure with 1.94m (6'4½") in height, facial scars, and volatile temper. Kaltenbrunner was also a longtime friend of Otto Skorzeny and recommended him for many secret missions, allowing Skorzeny to become one of Hitler's favourite agents.

Kaltenbrunner also allegedly headed Operation Long Jump, an alleged plan to assassinate Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943.

However, what made him more interesting was after WWII.

After a standoff and being arrested by US troops, Kaltenbrunner claimed to be a doctor and offered a false name. However, upon their arrival back to town his last mistress, Countess Gisela von Westarp, and the wife (Iris) of his adjutant Arthur Scheidler chanced to spot the men being led away; the ladies called out to both men and embraced them. This action resulted in their identification and arrest by U.S. troops. Oops?

During the initial stages of the Nuremberg trials, Kaltenbrunner was absent because of two episodes of subarachnoid hemorrhage, which required several weeks of recovery time. After his health improved, the tribunal denied his request for pardon.

When he was released from a military hospital he pleaded not guilty to the charges of the indictment against him. Kaltenbrunner said all decrees and legal documents that bore his signature were "rubber-stamped" and filed by his adjutant(s). He also said Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller had illegally affixed his signature to numerous documents in question.

I mentioned he was a coward, right? OK, good.

Kaltenbrunner argued in his defence that his position as RSHA chief existed only theoretically and said he was only active in matters of espionage and intelligence. He maintained that Himmler, as his superior, was the person culpable for the atrocities committed during his tenure as chief of the RSHA.

Kaltenbrunner also asserted that he had no knowledge of the Final Solution before 1943 and went on to claim that he protested against the ill-treatment of the Jews to Himmler and Hitler. Further denials from Kaltenbrunner included statements that he knew nothing of the Commissar Order and that he never visited Mauthausen concentration camp, despite documentation of his visit. At one point, Kaltenbrunner went so far as to avow that he was responsible for bringing the Final Solution to an end. In response to his denials, people in the courtroom laughed.

There are pictures of him at one or more of the camps, for the record.

Kaltenbrunner was executed on 16 October 1946, around 1:15 am, in Nuremberg. His body, like those of the other nine executed men and that of Hermann Göring, was cremated at the Eastern Cemetery in Munich and the ashes were scattered in a tributary of the River Isa.

There are a few changing stories about the man, such as the facial scars. I've seen it reported as scars from mensur fencing and others saying it was from a car accident. There is also the combination of the two. Also, that he said it was from fencing but that was a lie and they were from a car accident. Who knows. Like with most history from the 20th century and earlier, there is always a certain part that is somewhat suspect.

You can always tell how committed a person is to their "religion" by how well they stand up for it in the face of defeat. Cowards.

Pictured left Kaltenbrunner before Nuremberg and the right is during the Nuremberg trials. Link below the pics is in English and it's part of Kaltenbrunner's interrogation.

youtube

#wwii era #ww2 history #ww2 germany #wwii #ww2 #wwii germany #3rd reich #reichblr #ernst kaltenbrunner #Kaltenbrunner #nuremburg trials #Youtube

10 notes · View notes

zionistgirlie · 4 months ago

Text

Dear Americans:

YOU!!! ARE NOT!!!! BEING!!!! OPPRESSED!!!!! STFU.

Having a president you didn't vote for does not make you oppressed. You're not in WWII. You're not "fighting fascists". Shut up already.

Your fear is blown past proportion by the fear mongers on the left. Your life isn't in danger, and even if it were, posting annoying shit on tumblr does not make you any less prone to it. You think your new government is the Gestapo. NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU, CHELSEA. My G-D.

#jewblr #stfu #rants #ישראבלר

12 notes · View notes

relda1941 · 7 days ago

Note

Hello. Comrade. This might be first time we meet. How are you? I hope I don't bother you if you being busy. Can we get to know each other and become friends? Thank you

Ofc comrade, im good, i hope you are too. Also hopefully your acc doesn’t get caught by the gestapos and ban it, tumblr is very tiring sometimes. :(

#reichblr #reich fandom

5 notes · View notes

whencyclopedia · 4 months ago

Photo

Gestapo

The Gestapo was the secret political police organisation of Nazi Germany. Created in 1933, the Gestapo became one of the most feared instruments of state terror, its members having few or no legal restrictions to their actions. The Gestapo arrested, interrogated, assaulted, imprisoned, and executed hundreds of thousands of people across Europe ranging from Jewish civilians to Allied prisoners of war.

Origins & Structure

The Gestapo was the organisation that Hermann Göring (1893-1946) formed to replace the Prussian political police in 1933. The name Gestapo, coined in 1933 by a clerk, derives from Geheime Staatspolizei (GEheime STAatsPOlizei), meaning state secret police. With Göring still as the figurehead, the first administrative chief of the Gestapo was Rudolf Diels (1900-1957), a civil servant who actually ran the organisation. In 1934, when the Prussian state became fully integrated into wider Germany, the head of the Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) paramilitary organisation Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) took over from Göring in terms of having overall responsibility for the Gestapo. The jostling for power within the complex web of Nazi state organisations continued when, in 1936, Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942), Himmler's deputy, brought the Gestapo into his wider security police organisation known as Sipo (Sicherheitspolizei). In September 1939, a new organisation was formed with Heydrich at its head, the Reich Security Main Office or RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt). The RSHA included the criminal police or Kriminalpolizei (Kripo), the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) intelligence agency, the Gestapo, and a department for foreign intelligence. With the RSHA's integration into the SS, Heydrich became the third most powerful Nazi after the Führer Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and Heydrich's immediate superior Himmler.

Following Hitler's desire that everyone watched everyone else, the Gestapo ultimately became Department IV of the SS and was also a part of the Reich Interior Ministry. As time went on, the distinction between the functions of the Gestapo and SS became increasingly blurred and overlapping, especially as Himmler steadily replaced veteran police officers inside the Gestapo with SS members personally loyal to him. Department IV was further subdivided into sections. Section IV-A was responsible for dealing with communists, liberals, and saboteurs; it also carried out assassinations. Section IV-B dealt with Jews, Catholics, Protestants, and Freemasons. The head of the Gestapo department from 1939 was Heinrich Müller (b. 1901), a man with long experience in policing and citizen surveillance. The organisation's administrative headquarters and notorious main prison were located at 8 Prinz Albrechtstrasse in Berlin.

Heinrich Himmler, 1938

Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R99621 (CC BY-SA)

Hitler gave the RSHA three main roles: policing and repressing enemies of Nazism, gathering intelligence, and eliminating those people identified by the Nazis as being racially inferior. In none of these roles was the RSHA limited by any legal restrictions. Heydrich's ultimate objective was to have what he described as "total and permanent police supervision of everyone" (Stone, 164), and with the RSHA, he certainly had the tools to achieve this aim. When Heydrich was assassinated by the Czech Resistance in May 1942, Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903-1946) took over as the new permanent head of the RSHA.

#History #Gestapo #NaziGermany #SecondWorldWar

36 notes · View notes

exterminate-flatscan-terrorists · 3 months ago

Text

A disgusting Pro Tonky fanboi is back and been VOMITTING Pro Tonky garbage on comments in random AO3 authors who DARES to criticize a fictional billionare GESTAPO Allegory.

This fvcking psycho is obviously some of yall are familiar with, used to be called "trainssupesandhuntresses", this unhinged Pro Tony Stark fanboi. his name in ao3 is "ThwipsQuipsAndHuntsman" , 🙄 wow... totally not obvious that its you bruh. very creative. And also, he VOMITS the same m0ronic talking points. This fvcking looser psycho is OBSESSED.

This fvcking looser apparently havent moved on, o my fvcking god. Its so hilarious how fvcking MISERABLE this looser is. The fvcking looser is still defending MCUTony Stark, a character that looked at the Sokovia Accords with all its Civil rights violations and Championed it. And in the comics, legit hunted down, imprisoned and murdered SuperHumans who refused to sign the Registration Acts, ya know, an Allegory for the Nuremberg Laws? Yah, this UNHINGED fanboi is still being the insufferable psycho , VOMITTING Pro Tony Garbage in random AO3 authors. Its hilarious. How MISERABLE do you have to be to waste hours DEFENDING an Allegory for SS GESTAPO Jew Hunters?

Pro Tony Fanbois d!ck sucking a fictional billionare who CHAMPIONED the WORST Registration Act in Marvel history. But i havent seen them spout their Pro Autoritsrian, Pro Registration Act BS in any XMen page. buncha cowards.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62392864?show_comments=true&view_full_work=true#comments

below are some ofhis past m0ronic statements that i could remember, The majority of Protony VOMIT he vomitted were in comment sections of a lot of Tonky critic posts, i cant remember all of them unfortunately. He kept repeating m0ronic statements and refuses to see how hypocritical it is , like the braindead "durrrrr, he just FiCtion, why you mad" REPETEADLY in every fvcking comment section FOR YEARS and have ZERO SELF AWARENESS about the hypocrisy of what hes doing. And then kept saying sht like "Im not really a fan" meanwhile, again, he repeatedly Vomits Pro Tonky VOMIT on other peoples post, and on his Tumblr page.

https://www.tumblr.com/exterminate-flatscan-terrorists/734797691336409088/since-trainsfuckface-just-keep-repeating-himself?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/tonystarkisadouchebag/716679109148835840/i-think-the-idea-of-having-a-character-hate-blog?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/exterminate-flatscan-terrorists/731235980750782464/trains-supes-and-huntresses?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/exterminate-flatscan-terrorists/736868883156353024/aaaaand-we-got-yet-another-person-trainshit4brains?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/exterminate-flatscan-terrorists/734800820529479680/aaaaand-we-got-yet-another-person-trainshit4brains?source=share

#anti tony stark #anti tony stans #anti tony stark fans #fuck tony stark fans #fuck tony stark #trainssupesandhuntresses or ThwipsQuipsAndHuntsman psycho is still VOMITTING Pro Tony Stark garbage in 2025 #trainssupesandhuntresses #ThwipsQuipsAndHuntsman #The Pro Tonky Chew Toy is back

4 notes · View notes