Mar 10, 2021 · The Gestapo was Nazi Germany’s infamous political police force. It enforced Nazism’s radical impulses and perpetrated crimes against targeted groups. Learn more

The Geheime Staatspolizei (German for Secret State Police, abbreviated “Gestapo”) was the secret police of Nazi Germany, and its main tool of oppression and destruction, which persecuted Germans, opponents of the regime, and Jews.

To this end, the Gestapo was "a vital component both in Nazi repression and the Holocaust." [ 143 ] Once the German armies advanced into enemy territory, they were accompanied by Einsatzgruppen staffed by officers from the Gestapo and Kripo, who usually operated in the rear areas to administer and police the occupied land. [ 144 ]

Jan 13, 2025 · Gestapo, the political police of Nazi Germany. It ruthlessly eliminated opposition to the Nazis within Germany and its occupied territories and, in partnership with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD; ‘Security Service’), was responsible for the roundup of Jews throughout Europe for deportation to extermination camps.

Jan 27, 2025 · The Gestapo's Purpose. The Gestapo sought out those officially identified as enemies of the Third Reich within Greater Germany. These 'enemies' included Jewish people as loosely identified by the 1935 Nuremberg laws, Romani people, freemasons, communists, habitual criminals, homosexuals, and those with physical or mental disabilities, Other targets included those who used their position to ...

The main organs of the police state were the SS , the SA , the Gestapo and the SD . The Gestapo was the state’s secret police, established on 27 April 1933, and placed under the direction of Heinrich Himmler by 1934. The Gestapo carried out widespread surveillance of society in Germany and in Nazi-occupied states.

The Nazi regime expanded the powers of the Security Police, giving them the authority to imprison people without trials. The use of “protective custody” gave the Gestapo the ability to jail anyone they suspected was a threat to national security. Within months of the Nazi rise to power, tens of thousands of people were detained under such ...

Jan 30, 2025 · Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) was the head of the Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) organisation.One of the most powerful individuals in Nazi Germany, Himmler built up the SS from a small paramilitary unit to a vast organisation, which included armoured divisions, the Gestapo secret police, the Einsatzgruppen extermination squads, and the Death's Head units, which were responsible for the Holocaust, that ...

May 8, 2018 · The Gestapo, as well as its parent organization, the SS, aided the Einsatsgruppen, or mobile killing units, responsible for the massacre of nearly one million Jews during the Holocaust. Gestapo and SS members also tracked down refugees in hiding and policed ghettos and concentration camps.

'Gestapo' refers to the secret political police force initially of Prussia and later of the Reich, which played a crucial role in terrorizing and suppressing political opponents, Jews, and other minorities during the National Socialist regime.