Gestapo (redirected from Geheime Staatspolizei)

Gestapo: see secret police.

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Gestapo

 in full Geheime Staatspolizei

(German: “Secret State Police”) Political police of Nazi Germany. It was created by Hermann Goring in 1933 from the political and espionage units of the Prussian police and by Heinrich Himmler from the police of the remaining German states. Himmler was given command in 1934. The Gestapo operated without civil restraints, and its actions were not subject to judicial appeal. Thousands of Jews, leftists, intellectuals, trade unionists, political clergy, and homosexuals disappeared into concentration camps after being arrested by the Gestapo. In World War II the Gestapo suppressed partisan activities in the occupied territories, and a section of the Gestapo under Adolf Eichmann organized the deportation of Jews to the extermination camps in Poland.

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Gestapo

the secret state police in Nazi Germany, noted for its brutal methods of interrogation

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Gestapo

German secret police under Nazi regime. [Ger. History: RHD, 595]

See : Brutality

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Gestapo

Nazi secret police. [Ger. Hist.: Hitler, 453]

See : Evil

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Gestapo

Nazi secret police; executors of “Final Solution.” [Ger. Hist.: Wigoder, 211]

See : Terrorism

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Gestapo

(abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei), secret government police in fascist Germany. The Gestapo was created in April 1933 for the purpose of physically eliminating the political opponents of fascism. It was an instrument of bloody terror in Germany and beyond its borders. Hundreds of thousands of antifascists were killed and bestially tortured by the Gestapo in numerous concentration camps and torture chambers without trial or investigation. In June 1936, Himmler was appointed imperial director of the Gestapo, which had agents in businesses, institutions, organizations, and living quarters. There was even a special division for surveillance of members of the Nazi Party. Beyond Germany’s borders agents of the Gestapo conducted military-political espionage and committed murders and kidnappings of anti-fascist activists. During World War II organs of the Gestapo committed savage reprisals against the peaceful populations of occupied territories, foreign workers, and war prisoners. After the rout of fascist Germany, the Gestapo was abolished and outlawed by Law No. 2 of the Control Council of Germany in 1945. The international military tribunal in Nuremberg recognized the Gestapo as a criminal organization in 1946.

REFERENCES

Niurnbergskii protsess nad glavnymi nemetskimi voennymi prestupnikami: Sb. materialov, vols. 1-7. Moscow, 1957-61.
Trainin, I. P. Mekhanizm nemetsko-fashistskoi diktatury. Tashkent, 1942.
Geiden, K. Istoriia germanskogo fashizma. Moscow-Leningrad, 1935. (Translated from German.)
Winzer, O. 12 let bor’by protiv fashizma i voiny. Moscow, 1956. (Translated from German.)
Bartel, W. Deutschland in der Zeit der faschistischen Diktatur 1933-1945. Berlin, 1956.

V. D. KUL’BAKIN