The Gestapo: A History of Horror by Jacques Delarue

Author:Jacques Delarue [Delarue, Jacques]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2008-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

The R.S.H.A.4 was a gigantic political machine designed to centralize information, to pick up the slightest hostile rumor, and bring it, amplified and explained, to the ear of the grand master of the machine, the Reichsfuehrer S.S. Heinrich Himmler. Inversely the machine was to echo at all levels the slightest whim of the master, to transmit his orders to the farthest corners of the Nazi world, and to ensure their rapid execution.

In practice the R.S.H.A. turned out to be a very clumsy machine. The excessive partitioning imposed by the rules of secrecy took away much of its efficiency. On the other hand, the separation between intelligence and execution, and the fact that the information passed through a series of successive stages before reaching the user, falsified the view of those responsible. The groups charged with establishing syntheses from the mass of information collected at a lower level consisted of bureaucrats with no contact with reality. In their hands the content of the report was progressively stripped of all its most vivid elements. The reports arrived at the top as mere summaries, emptied of all substance: very often they bore no relation to the truth. This ultrabureaucratic conception of police work was the source of numerous errors committed by these organizations, and of the inefficiency of a great number of even the most savage measures.

The complexity of the R.S.H.A. organization called for a special formation of all the agents working within it. A circular from Heydrich issued on May 18, 1940, prescribed the progress of young agents entering the R.S.H.A. The young Nazi, fresh from the S.S. schools, or leaving a university with a law degree, had to do three consecutive stages: four months with the KRIPO, where he learned the scientific elements of police work; three months with the S.D., and three months with the Gestapo. He thus acquired an overall picture of the functions of the active services, and knew what to expect from the neighboring services. He was then transferred, according to his personal aptitudes and the needs of the organization, to one of the seven Amter, i.e., to one of the seven offices into which the R.S.H.A. was divided.

The Gestapo formed Amt IV of the R.S.H.A.

The R.S.H.A. extended its activities to all the occupied or annexed countries. The services installed in these countries were modeled on that of the central organization, reproducing the whole machinery at all levels down to the smallest unit.

It was neither by chance nor because its name was more evocative of power that the Gestapo acquired a notoriety surpassing that of the other organizations of the R.S.H.A.5 The Gestapo was the sole executive instrument of the whole, the pivot of the machine around which the other pieces revolved. It was here that the work of documentation, of synthesizing information, the statistics, the scientific and methodological studies carried out by the other Amter found their raison d’être and their final destination. It was from this administrative head that orders were transformed into a mass

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