The terror machinery did not only killed people outside Germany. At home too,
it worked well and distroyed the lives of thousands of innocents Germans
It would be a terrible mistake to think that German people were better treated
that the people of occupied territories. Even during the war, deportations and
executions of political opponents or people judged as "bad Germans" were
performed and thousands of Germans had to sustain the extreme dureness
of the Nazis, especially the implacable commitment of Heinrich Himmler who
cumulate several offices of high power. The National Socialist terror
apparatus consisted essentially of four complexes:
* the police, controlled by the SS
* the concentration camp system, also controlled by the SS
* the Security Service (SD) of the Reichsführer-SS Himmler
* the criminal justice system for political offenders.
it worked well and distroyed the lives of thousands of innocents Germans
It would be a terrible mistake to think that German people were better treated
that the people of occupied territories. Even during the war, deportations and
executions of political opponents or people judged as "bad Germans" were
performed and thousands of Germans had to sustain the extreme dureness
of the Nazis, especially the implacable commitment of Heinrich Himmler who
cumulate several offices of high power. The National Socialist terror
apparatus consisted essentially of four complexes:
* the police, controlled by the SS
* the concentration camp system, also controlled by the SS
* the Security Service (SD) of the Reichsführer-SS Himmler
* the criminal justice system for political offenders.
| THE STRUCTURE OF THE REICH POLICE Organization at the Reich Level |
| ReichFührer SS and Chief of the Reich Police Heinrich HIMMLER |
| Chief of the Security Police SS GrüpprenFührer Reinhard HEYDRICH |
| Chief of the Order Police Police General Kurt DALUEGE NSDAP member #31981 |
| Security Police Authority |
| Order Police Authority |
| Political Police Authority Reinhard Heydrich ________________ Secret State Police Office (Gestapo) Reinhard Heydrich |
| Criminal Police Investigation Authority Reinard Heydrich _________________ Reich Criminal Investigation Police Office Arthur Nebe |
| Command Center Adolf von Bernhard |
| Municipal Police |
| Gendarmes Rural Police |
| The Nazi police was obedient, well structured and all too powerful under a centralized command |
The main instruments of the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei,
Secret State Police) were "protective custody" and "special
treatment" :
* Protective custody, which was predominantly carried out in a
concentration camp, allowed indeterminate imprisonment without
sentencing
* Special treatment was the term that disguised the
administratively ordered execution of prisoners. It was introduced
at the beginning of the war.
The police were now pursuers of law-breakers, they were judges,
and they were executioners all rolled into one. The justice system
for political offences included all the institutions of criminal
justice, from the local courts to the Supreme Court of the German
Reich. Special institutions were :
* the Sondergerichte (Special Courts), created as early as 1933
* the Volksgerichtshof (People's Court) created in 1934.
Even lenient treatment by the Special Court was no guarantee for
the defendant, however, as Pastor Martin Niemoeller discovered
when he was acquitted of major political charges and sentenced
to time served for minor charges. Leaving the courtroom,
Niemoeller was taken into custody by the Gestapo and taken to a
concentration camp
For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order
of things. Keep in mind that the average non-Jewish German was
pretty much unaffected by the new laws and decrees. As long as a
German citizen kept his head down, worked hard, took care of his
family, sent his children to the public schools and the Hitler Youth
organization, and, most important, didn’t involve himself in
political dissent against the government, a visit by the Gestapo
was very unlikely. However, from 1933 to 1945 civil courts
pronounced 16,650 death sentences, ca. 95% during the war. The
military courts pronounced an additional ca. 25,000 death
sentences. The number of victims of the police justice system is
unknown.
At the beginning of the war, the Gestapo, the criminal
investigation police, and the Security Service were combined into
the Reich Security Main Office. This became the central office for
the war of annihilation. The so-called Senior SS and Police Officers
were assigned to the occupied territories. With a minimum of
bureaucracy they could draw upon all the divisions of the SS and
police and hence became generals of the extermination war and
organizers of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem".
But why did the NSDAP machinery became the machinery of terror
? It is simple. The "Führer" (leader) and the "Volksgemeinschaft"
(national community) were the central myths of the Third Reich. In
Hitler's world view, the Germans were a biological group of
people, bound together and unified through the "bluterbe", the
common bloodlines of their forefathers. In order to achieve this
inner unity - politically as well as socially - class distinctions, social
rank, and group interests were to be shed and the rights of the
individual subordinated to the interests of the community and
nation. The Volksgemeinschaft ideology was based on the
supposedly "revolutionary and modern" racial doctrine.
These ideas held that the Germans were the leading people of the
"Aryan race", to be respected as the most superior race on earth.
Hitler considered the Volksgemeinschaft to be a community with a
common history and destiny. It was also a meritocracy, an
achievement-oriented society in the service of its imperialistic
goals. Only those who belonged to it were to have a share in
social and economic progress. Those who could not satisfy the
racial, political, and moral norms as well as the performance
criteria -and those who opoosed those ideas- were expelled,
segregated or murdered. It makes a lot of people : political and
religious opponents, emigrants, "habitual criminals", Jehovah's
Witnesses, homosexuals, "asocial elements" ("tramps",
"malingerers" and others considered to be social ballast), those
with hereditary illnesses, "race defilers", Gypsies, Jews
Secret State Police) were "protective custody" and "special
treatment" :
* Protective custody, which was predominantly carried out in a
concentration camp, allowed indeterminate imprisonment without
sentencing
* Special treatment was the term that disguised the
administratively ordered execution of prisoners. It was introduced
at the beginning of the war.
The police were now pursuers of law-breakers, they were judges,
and they were executioners all rolled into one. The justice system
for political offences included all the institutions of criminal
justice, from the local courts to the Supreme Court of the German
Reich. Special institutions were :
* the Sondergerichte (Special Courts), created as early as 1933
* the Volksgerichtshof (People's Court) created in 1934.
Even lenient treatment by the Special Court was no guarantee for
the defendant, however, as Pastor Martin Niemoeller discovered
when he was acquitted of major political charges and sentenced
to time served for minor charges. Leaving the courtroom,
Niemoeller was taken into custody by the Gestapo and taken to a
concentration camp
For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order
of things. Keep in mind that the average non-Jewish German was
pretty much unaffected by the new laws and decrees. As long as a
German citizen kept his head down, worked hard, took care of his
family, sent his children to the public schools and the Hitler Youth
organization, and, most important, didn’t involve himself in
political dissent against the government, a visit by the Gestapo
was very unlikely. However, from 1933 to 1945 civil courts
pronounced 16,650 death sentences, ca. 95% during the war. The
military courts pronounced an additional ca. 25,000 death
sentences. The number of victims of the police justice system is
unknown.
At the beginning of the war, the Gestapo, the criminal
investigation police, and the Security Service were combined into
the Reich Security Main Office. This became the central office for
the war of annihilation. The so-called Senior SS and Police Officers
were assigned to the occupied territories. With a minimum of
bureaucracy they could draw upon all the divisions of the SS and
police and hence became generals of the extermination war and
organizers of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem".
But why did the NSDAP machinery became the machinery of terror
? It is simple. The "Führer" (leader) and the "Volksgemeinschaft"
(national community) were the central myths of the Third Reich. In
Hitler's world view, the Germans were a biological group of
people, bound together and unified through the "bluterbe", the
common bloodlines of their forefathers. In order to achieve this
inner unity - politically as well as socially - class distinctions, social
rank, and group interests were to be shed and the rights of the
individual subordinated to the interests of the community and
nation. The Volksgemeinschaft ideology was based on the
supposedly "revolutionary and modern" racial doctrine.
These ideas held that the Germans were the leading people of the
"Aryan race", to be respected as the most superior race on earth.
Hitler considered the Volksgemeinschaft to be a community with a
common history and destiny. It was also a meritocracy, an
achievement-oriented society in the service of its imperialistic
goals. Only those who belonged to it were to have a share in
social and economic progress. Those who could not satisfy the
racial, political, and moral norms as well as the performance
criteria -and those who opoosed those ideas- were expelled,
segregated or murdered. It makes a lot of people : political and
religious opponents, emigrants, "habitual criminals", Jehovah's
Witnesses, homosexuals, "asocial elements" ("tramps",
"malingerers" and others considered to be social ballast), those
with hereditary illnesses, "race defilers", Gypsies, Jews
| Big rallies like this one in Munich in 1933 were the best way to inspire awe, respect and terror to theGerman public |
| Roland Freisler, a fanatic Nazi who served well his masters, was named president of the People's Court in 1942. He transformed it into an instrument of Nazi terror. Under Freisler's leadership, the court condemned thousands of Germans for opposition to the Third Reich. His hatred culminated during the Trial of the plotters of the July 1944 attempt against Hitler's life. He was eventually killed in his own tribunal during an Allied Bombing. |
The German Jews had been oppressed and persecuted since the
"Seizure of Power". The state had stripped them of their rights,
organizations had expelled them, they were meeting with increasing
contempt in their daily lives. Steps taken against them by the state,
daily terror, and the loss of their property through "Aryanization"
drove them into isolation and poverty. The "Nuremberg Laws" (1935)
isolated them further and made them second-class citizens. The
persecution of the Jews in the pre-war period reaches its climax in
the pogrom of the Reichskristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass).
However, Sinti and Roma also suffered under the deprivation of
rights and isolation, even in some cases being confined in camps.
Eventually it is interesting to note that the number of death
sentences pronounced by the Reich increased regularly with the
years and culminated during the War as if the Hitler's machine was
demonstrating its incapacity to provide to the German people what
it was committed to do, ie happiness and security.
But how is it that the German people showed little sign of resistance
to the rise of the Fuehrer and did not try to revolt more against the
on-coming oppression ? This question refers to Martin Luther, who
was the first to say that “even against the most unjust ruler the
people have never a right to revolt”. A doctrine of the Reformer
which had most disastrous consequences as from it springs the evil
and dangerous slave-mentality of the Germans. Kant, to give merely
one example, takes up the very idea —not to be found in any other
philosopher in any other country— when he says:
“Resistance on the part of the people to the supreme legislative
power of the State is in no case legitimate. There is no right of
sedition and still less of rebellion belonging to the people. Least of
all, when the supreme power is embodied in an individual monarch
is there any justification, under the pretext of his abuse of power,
for seizing his person or taking away his life. It is the duty of the
people to bear any abuse of the supreme power, even though it
should be considered unbearable.” (Kant: “Philosophy of Law”).
Amen.
The Nazi regime was nothing else than a monstruous scam based on
the ideas of lunatics or nuts. It was the triumph of madness and
sadism.
"Seizure of Power". The state had stripped them of their rights,
organizations had expelled them, they were meeting with increasing
contempt in their daily lives. Steps taken against them by the state,
daily terror, and the loss of their property through "Aryanization"
drove them into isolation and poverty. The "Nuremberg Laws" (1935)
isolated them further and made them second-class citizens. The
persecution of the Jews in the pre-war period reaches its climax in
the pogrom of the Reichskristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass).
However, Sinti and Roma also suffered under the deprivation of
rights and isolation, even in some cases being confined in camps.
Eventually it is interesting to note that the number of death
sentences pronounced by the Reich increased regularly with the
years and culminated during the War as if the Hitler's machine was
demonstrating its incapacity to provide to the German people what
it was committed to do, ie happiness and security.
But how is it that the German people showed little sign of resistance
to the rise of the Fuehrer and did not try to revolt more against the
on-coming oppression ? This question refers to Martin Luther, who
was the first to say that “even against the most unjust ruler the
people have never a right to revolt”. A doctrine of the Reformer
which had most disastrous consequences as from it springs the evil
and dangerous slave-mentality of the Germans. Kant, to give merely
one example, takes up the very idea —not to be found in any other
philosopher in any other country— when he says:
“Resistance on the part of the people to the supreme legislative
power of the State is in no case legitimate. There is no right of
sedition and still less of rebellion belonging to the people. Least of
all, when the supreme power is embodied in an individual monarch
is there any justification, under the pretext of his abuse of power,
for seizing his person or taking away his life. It is the duty of the
people to bear any abuse of the supreme power, even though it
should be considered unbearable.” (Kant: “Philosophy of Law”).
Amen.
The Nazi regime was nothing else than a monstruous scam based on
the ideas of lunatics or nuts. It was the triumph of madness and
sadism.
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| Poster listing the badges ("patches") of the concentration camp prisoners (1940/41) |
THE MACHINERY OF TERROR MADE IN THE IIIrd REICH
| Bluterbe |
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