# The Gestapo  ## Metadata - Author: [[Jacques Delarue and Mervyn Savill]] - Full Title: The Gestapo - Category: #books ## Highlights - Every totalitarian regime, whether it claims to be right or left, relies upon a powerful political police force to ruthlessly crush dissent. The existence of an opponent, however weak is incompatible with a totalitarian system. ([Location 102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=102)) - What differentiates the crimes of the Nazis from the others is their methodical organization, their administrative planning, and their relentless execution. ([Location 150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=150)) - The last convoy of Jews sent to the camps left France on August 17, 1944, and the last convoy of Resistance fighters left on the 18th, the day the Gestapo left Paris. ([Location 164](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=164)) - Those who are unaware of the past are condemned to relive it. Let us not forget that it is only by some miracle that humanity avoided total annihilation. ([Location 171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=171)) - It shows what happens when a governmental body ceases to be in the service of the nation, and passes instead into the service of a clan. The ([Location 181](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=181)) - General Ludendorff, Hitler’s former friend, renounced his 1923 accomplice and wrote to Hindenburg: “I must warn you most solemnly that this sinister individual will lead our country into the abyss and our nation to an unprecedented catastrophe. Future generations will curse you in your tomb for having allowed this.” Hindenburg merely sent Ludendorff’s letters to Hitler. ([Location 382](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=382)) - These decrees of public safety abolished most of the constitutional liberties: the freedom of the press, the right to hold meetings, the respect for correspondence, the inviolability of the home, and habeas corpus. Their effect was to deliver the German people to the tender mercies of the Nazi police, which could act without restriction or responsibility, practice secret arrests and perpetual detention without accusation, proof, public audience, or lawyer. No jurisdiction could oppose them, order a release, or demand a re-examination of the files. The Gestapo was to retain these prerogatives until the end of the regime. ([Location 421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=421)) - This vast mass of men, despite its hostility to the newcomers, was incapable of taking the risk which might have saved it and at the same time saved Germany. Like the Social Democrats, the unions elected to wait and bow their heads. ([Location 438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=438)) - On the 23rd Hitler read a perfectly harmless program speech, demanding full powers for four years, recalling that “the majority now held by the government could absolve him from asking for this measure.” These full powers would allow the government to legislate outside the constitution. Its decrees would need neither the signature of the President nor the ratification of the Reichstag. He would also be relieved of the necessity of seeking parliamentary ratification for treaties that he might conclude with foreign powers. Thus parliamentary democracy was erased at a single blow and Germany became legally a dictatorship. ([Location 460](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=460)) - The first step was the Gleichschaltung, the “uniformization,” in other words the total Nazification of Germany, the submission of the people, and the subordination of the State to the all-powerful Party. In other words to destroy, at the outset, all political organizations, to eliminate their leaders by murdering, arresting, or forcing them to flee. ([Location 470](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=470)) - This was quite normal, since between 1925 and 1932 there were more than thirty general elections in Germany. ([Location 645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=645)) - Liberty and honor! How many Germans would soon have plenty of leisure to savor the value of these words in the concentration camps or in the Gestapo jails? ([Location 665](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=665)) - The fact that this semi-official recognition of the S.A. resulted in a redoubling of violence left Goering completely unworried. On the contrary he invited the men who were under his orders to display utter ruthlessness. On the 17th, addressing the Prussian police, he ordained: “No hesitation to shoot in case of need. Every policeman must grasp the fact that inaction is a more serious crime than an error committed in the execution of orders received.” In his orders of February 10 and 17 he recommended: “Each bullet which now leaves the barrel of a policeman’s revolver is my bullet. If you call that a murder, it is I who am the murderer. These are my orders and I give them my full support. I assume the responsibility and I am not afraid.” ([Location 719](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=719)) - the German newspapers at the end of February could write that in six weeks at least twenty-eight thousand persons had been sent to camps and prisons. ([Location 729](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=729)) - On March 23, 1933, Goering opened the first session of the new Reichstag. At this first sitting an amnesty was proclaimed condoning crimes and misdemeanors “committed with patriotic intentions,” in other words by the Nazis. This amnesty was complemented on June 23 by a law annulling the sentences pronounced against National Socialists during the years of the struggle for power. ([Location 736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=736)) - This was at the same time an assurance for the future, but from now onward Goering wanted things to take place with strict legality, which signified that murder would now only be committed on orders. ([Location 740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=740)) - Their source lay in the race for position, honors, and profits, distributed not by reason or merit, capacity, or the moral value of the individual, but by reason of temporary favor, the momentary supremacy of a clan or a powerful friend. ([Location 827](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=827)) - The burning of the Reichstag and the Leipzig trial had brought the Nazi world, its methods and men, into the fierce glare of the spotlight. The whole world had learned their techniques, assessed their morality, realizing that they were murderers of the very worst type. It would have been easy to draw the correct conclusions. But that would have demanded action. It was easier to close one’s eyes and to let the killers continue with their careers. ([Location 1071](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1071)) - And Roepke could write several years later: “The world catastrophe today is the colossal price that the world has to pay because it turned a deaf ear to all the alarm signals which, from 1930 to 1939, announced in ever more vehement tones the hell which the satanic powers of National Socialism had unleashed firstly on Germany itself and then on the rest of the world. The horrors of this war are precisely those which the world tolerated in Germany, by going so far as to maintain normal relations with the Nazis, and organizing with them festivals and international congresses.” ([Location 1075](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1075)) - At the worst moments of the Nazi oppression, when his concentration camps became gigantic crushing mills, he put up posters bearing the inscription: “One path leads to liberty. Its milestones are called obedience, application, honesty, sobriety, cleanliness, a spirit of sacrifice, order, discipline, and love of country.” These posters were not the fruits of cynicism, but the subconscious projection of lessons received from his father, the Bavarian schoolteacher, still valid despite the bloody tide unleashed by his son, perverted as he was by the heady ferment of the Nazi ideology. ([Location 1157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1157)) - Himmler was without doubt the only top Nazi official whose duties did not make him wealthy, although he was all-powerful, and corruption reigned at the very highest levels of the Party machine. His fundamental honesty made him despise Goering who, during the war, engaged in all manner of traffic thanks to his exalted position in the administration of the State and the Party. ([Location 1324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1324)) - His romanticism dictated his great admiration for one of the German emperors, Henry I, known as the Fowler or the Saxon. He admired this sovereign’s order of chivalry which had enabled him to found new towns, to expel the Danes, conquer the Hungarians, and subject the Slavs and the Wends. This model, and the interest he took in racial questions, were of capital importance in the organization of the S.S. Thus the swearing in of the young S.S. men took place at midnight, by the light of torches, in Brunswick Cathedral before the coffin containing the bones of Henry the Fowler. ([Location 1335](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1335)) - And finally: “After centuries of crocodile tears shed over the defense of the poor and the humiliated, the moment has come when we must decide to defend the strong against the weak.... Natural instinct orders all living beings not only to conquer their enemies but to exterminate them. In the old days the conqueror had the prerogative of exterminating whole races and peoples.” One day soon Himmler would start to follow this advice to the letter. ([Location 1360](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1360)) - Since the triumph of Christianity and the start of its influence in the building of societies, all forms of social organization had admitted that men had identical rights and duties. This fraternity, this equality, originating from a divine creation common to them all, subsisted in lay societies and resulted a priori in the declaration of the rights of man. Marxism, which rejects the Deity, preserves the same principles. ([Location 1389](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1389)) - National Socialism, on the other hand, is based on the revolutionary affirmation of the inequality of man. It postulates that men are deeply differentiated, not by their knowledge, their strength, their acquired qualities, but by the fact of their origin. ([Location 1392](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1392)) - The S.S.—and in particular the Gestapo—were the executors of this aggressive Nazi racial policy. Their rules, those famous rules, in which Himmler tried to revive the traditions of chivalry, were elementary. First and foremost there was the famous oath sworn by the young candidate in a theatrical setting: “I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, Fuehrer and Chancellor of the Reich, fidelity and valiance. I solemnly pledge to you and to those you have given me as leaders, obedience until death, with the aid of God.” This oath was nothing more than a commitment to blind obedience which would “oblige” the S.S. to commit the most monstrous crimes without the least hesitation. ([Location 1397](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1397)) - “My honor is my loyalty,” was the proud device of the S.S.; it was merely a repetition of the oath of obedience; the loyalty was solely to be understood as an obligation toward the Fuehrer, his leaders, and S.S. comrades, but not to any rule of traditional morality. The “honor” of the S.S. man, of which such a fuss was to be made in the pamphlets and speeches of the movement, would actually force him to murder women, children, and old people. It was in the name of this strange honor that children arriving at Auschwitz were torn from the arms of their mothers and sent to the gas chambers, or on days when there were too many, in order to save time, they were flung alive into trenches full of burning petrol. ([Location 1402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1402)) - These future “lords,” these S.S. men, had special rights. When they took the vow they received the S.S. dagger. Its purpose, they were told, was to avenge their honor by washing out the insult in blood each time they considered this “honor” had been impeached. In 1935 a decree issued by Himmler specified this right—even this duty—and a court decision added that the S.S. were “free to use their arms even if the enemy could be repulsed by other means.” The right to murder with complete impunity was an S.S. prerogative. ([Location 1424](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1424)) - Himmler’s system achieved its apotheosis with the creation of the Lebensborn—the fountain of life—a sort of human stud farm where young girls selected for their perfect Nordic traits could, free from all conjugal bonds, procreate with S.S. men also chosen according to the same criteria. The children born of these unions were fruits of a planned eugenics and belonged to the State, and their education was insured in special schools. In theory they were destined to form the first generation of pure Nazis, fashioned in the ovum. The collapse of the regime did not allow the Nazis to pursue this experiment any further. Nevertheless, fifty thousand children were born in these stud farms. Their average intellectual standard is in actual fact grossly below the average; they show a percentage of mental deficients four or five times higher than the normal. The Nazi eugenists were unaware of what the psychologists of the “decadent” countries and “degenerate” races know: ideology and biology cannot replace maternal love. ([Location 1463](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1463)) - If the S.S. could consider the success of their recruiting drives as approval of their methods, it must be recognized that the absence of international reactions could only confirm them in their good conscience. The refugees continued to cry in the wilderness; although the crimes committed daily in Germany could no longer be ignored, no civilized country dreamed for a moment of breaking off relations with the murderers. The ambassadors continued with the same dignity to shake hands still dripping with innocent blood and to give banquets in honor of the executioners. New trade treaties were signed. France invited Nazi Germany to the International Fair of 1937 and, worst of all, the U.S.S.R. in 1939 signed a non-aggression pact with the very men who had tortured to death thousands of Communists, and who kept many thousands still incarcerated in the camps. ([Location 1495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1495)) - Such a recruitment was potentially limited, and the Nazis realized that, in order to insure a constant stream of “suitable elements,” the Praetorian Guard of tomorrow had to be fashioned from infancy. The great reservoir from which the S.S. and the Gestapo could draw was the Hitler Youth Movement. Each April 20, on the Fuehrer’s birthday, children who were reaching the age of ten that year were admitted into the Deutsches Jung volk. A ceremony combined with Hitler’s birthday celebrations had as sole object the captivation of their minds. They remained in this group until the age of thirteen, spending a year in one of the four sections designed to lead them progressively to the Hitler Jugend, which would prepare them more directly for the Army, or the Party formations. ([Location 1503](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1503)) - In 1936 a law made membership of the H.J. compulsory for all children. Thus from the age of ten, the young German was subjected to a continual obsessive barrage of Nazi propaganda and ideology. From this tender age when the personality is easy to mold, the Fuehrer-prinzip was implanted in young brains as absolute dogma. A little later began the training which would allow a human being to be reduced to a state of total subordination. This “culture,” alien to man, this dehumanization, provided an excellent grounding in the Hitlerian creed. In order that a handful of professional murderers might reign over a whole nation and impose its methods upon it, man had to be perverted from infancy. Oradour, the Warsaw Ghetto, the mass executions in the East and in Auschwitz were not German crimes but Nazi crimes. It is certain that the same methods applied to any race would have produced the same results. If the German people was a malleable clay, it is because their traditional militarization had inculcated the strictest habits of discipline, a deformation often quoted officially as an example in most of the “undisciplined” countries with a shade of regret. Most of the rank and file of the S.S. who set fire to… ([Location 1511](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1511)) - In a speech in November 1935 Hitler proclaimed his intentions with regard to German youth: “When an opponent declares, ‘I don’t want to be on your side, and you won’t make me,’ I reply calmly, ‘Your child already belongs to me. A nation lives eternally. Who are you? You will pass on, but your descendants are already in… ([Location 1521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1521)) - Here again, according to Nazi custom, we find a duplication of functions. As head of the Gestapo, Heydrich acted as a state official but as chief of the S.D., a Party organization, he was one of the important figures in the N.S.D.A.P. and could use the private organizations of the Party. This made him doubly superior to most of the officials and members of the Party under his command. It was a convenient situation, for those who might entertain some scruples of conscience with regard to certain revolting practices, and who might have been tempted to report the matter to the law, were now more sensitive to the secrecy enforced in the name of the Party than to administrative interdictions. ([Location 1555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1555)) - What all these men pursued—officials or members of the N.S.D.A.P. services—was the realization of the political plans of the Party, of the Fuehrer. It was the accomplishment of his inspired predictions: the building of the thousand-year Reich which he had announced for many years and, in the course of time, the overthrow of the foundations of human societies, the disruption of world equilibrium, the advent of a race of Herrenvolk, and the colonization of the world. The Party became the repository of these sacred principles, the instrument for propagating this ideology. To sum up, the State was the Party. ([Location 1561](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1561)) - A less terrible threat, however, than that which Himmler had hung like a sword of Damocles over the heads of the S.S.: “The man who is untrue to us, even if only in thought, will be expelled from the S.S. and we shall see that he disappears from the world of the living.” ([Location 1567](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1567)) - The American Judge Advocate, General Thomas J. Dodd, said at Nuremberg: “In no Nazi cell or block could a secret remain unknown to them. The switching on of a radio, the disapproval of a frown, the inviolate secrets between priest and penitent, the ancient confidence between father and son, even the sacred confidences of marriage, were their stock in trade. Their business was to know.” Nothing was to escape the Gestapo. ([Location 1625](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1625)) - Incidentally, these translators performed a police work which was to swell the Gestapo files. All information relating to political émigrés published in the world press, including, notices of marriages, births, and deaths, announcement of meetings, conferences, commercial advertisements, etc., were translated and entered on the émigrés’ dossiers. ([Location 1699](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1699)) - This quest for information, this exploitation, this systematic distortion of all human activities for inquisitorial ends, give some idea of the stifling universe of National Socialism which, within a few months, transformed Germany into a formidable prison. ([Location 1704](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1704)) - Remarkably intelligent, hard working, capable, and well disciplined, this young officer could have had a brilliant career but for one dreadful flaw. Heydrich was a sex maniac whose case history would have delighted a psychiatrist. ([Location 1755](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1755)) - When, despite all precautions, the most alarming rumors were current in Germany of the atrocities suffered by the unfortunates who fell into the clutches of the Gestapo, those whose consciences rebelled and who expressed their indignation were neutralized by invoking “the patriotic duty of silence.” According to Nazi criteria, it was not the torturer and the murderer who caused their country irrevocable harm; on the contrary, those who denounced them must be considered as traitors and chastised as such. ([Location 1876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1876)) - As for those whom some fortuitous event roused in spite of themselves from this passivity, they were content to deplore the excesses committed by irresponsible subordinates. “Ah, if only Hitler knew!” was doubtless the exclamation most often heard during those years. ([Location 1885](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=1885)) - He forgot that he had committed the crime of speaking disparagingly in private of Himmler, whom he referred to by the name invented by Otto Strasser, “the black Jesuit.” This had long since been recorded in the Gestapo files. The hour of retribution had arrived. ([Location 2162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=2162)) - The following day, August 2, as soon as the death of the President had been announced, Hitler swore in members of the Reichswehr. The oath committed them personally to Adolf Hitler: “I swear before God to obey without reservation, Adolf Hitler, Fuehrer of the Reich, supreme chief of the Wehrmacht, and I pledge myself as a courageous soldier always to observe this oath, even at the risk of my life.” ([Location 2310](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004ULLMTI&location=2310))