Nazi Germany and Gestapo
Gestapo: Terror in the Police Station The police have been looked down ac a protectorate service in countries for centuries. Some might say that they have been known for being heroes in society, but others could beg to differ. The Gestapo is a perfect example of a police station gone wrong. The Gestapo was put in to effect a little after the first quarter of the 20th century. The Nazis were coming to power in England, and were being lead by Adolf Hitler. Hitler appointed Himmler as the leader of the police. Himmler was very messed up in the head, and was so caught up with believing the insane racial prejudice that Hitler was portraying, that he truly thought what he was doing was right. Himmler joined the SS in the late 1920’s, and quickly moved his way up the ranks in the SS. He went from a deputy chief all the way to the leader of the SS in a short five years. The SS went from only having 280 members to having 52,000 in a matter of 7 years. This was all during the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party. The SS was made up of all Nazis that were very loyal to the Fuhrer. A year or two after Himmler and the SS were up an running on full cylinders, Himmler and Heydrich made a deal with Goring about combining the Prussian police with the German. When this merge accrued, it put Heydrich in charge of the Gestapo, and Himmler in charge of all the police divisions. In less then a decade, Himmler went from having no power at all, to ruling an army of police men. When Himmler got all of this power, this is when his sick mind took over and helped try to wipe the Jewish race off of the face of the Earth. Then the Nazis took power in Germany, the court systems and way that the arrested got treated drastically changed. In most societies at this time, a person being tried for a crime would be given a lawyer or a trial with a jury or something along the lines of having a judge. The Nazis wiped that out of effect. “Law courts, and due process of the law, defense
Cited: Staatspolizei, Geheime Secret State Police Dawidowicz, Lucy The War Against the Jews Ebenstein The Nazi State http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Gestapo.html http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERgestapo.htm http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-gestapo.htm