- 2 days ago
For educational purposes
The Nazis converted their country from a flawed democracy to a fascist dictatorship in which the rights of the individual were trampled in the interests of the state.
Institutions and organizations were warped to serve this purpose, none more than the police.
At first, it was the Storm Troopers of the SA, who beat, intimidated, and killed those who opposed the regime.
But something more was needed than simple thuggery and the police were co-opted. The Gestapo, the Secret State Police, was the organization set up to perform this function.
By reputation its network of black-clad officers spread everywhere; yet it was a small organization--at its height in 1941 there were only 8,000 officers.
Program 1 shows the power struggle between the worst of Hitlers henchmen, Himmler and Heydrich on the one hand, and Goering on the other.
And it introduces us to a mysterious figure, Heinrich Muller, a career policeman who became the ice-cold leader of the Gestapo.
The Nazis converted their country from a flawed democracy to a fascist dictatorship in which the rights of the individual were trampled in the interests of the state.
Institutions and organizations were warped to serve this purpose, none more than the police.
At first, it was the Storm Troopers of the SA, who beat, intimidated, and killed those who opposed the regime.
But something more was needed than simple thuggery and the police were co-opted. The Gestapo, the Secret State Police, was the organization set up to perform this function.
By reputation its network of black-clad officers spread everywhere; yet it was a small organization--at its height in 1941 there were only 8,000 officers.
Program 1 shows the power struggle between the worst of Hitlers henchmen, Himmler and Heydrich on the one hand, and Goering on the other.
And it introduces us to a mysterious figure, Heinrich Muller, a career policeman who became the ice-cold leader of the Gestapo.
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LearningTranscript
00:02During the darkest days of the Third Reich, the most ominous sound was a knock at the door after
00:08dark. Everyone who lived under the Nazi yoke lived in fear of the secret organization that
00:13made the nighttime calls. Hitler called it his deadliest weapon. Without it, the Fuhrer's
00:20ambitions could never have been realized. As an instrument of state terror, it has hardly ever
00:26been equaled. Yet until now, its full story has not been told. The organization was called
00:32the Gestapo.
00:46The Gestapo was an organization shot through with contradictions. It appeared to be omniscient,
00:53yet its intelligent success was limited. Its public figureheads were among the most familiar
00:59household names of the Nazi party leadership. But the real architect of its success maintained
01:04a low profile. Even during the height of its terror, few would recognize the sinister genius
01:11that guided the Gestapo. And although its name has exerted a creepy fascination for more than
01:16half a century, the inner workings of the Gestapo have remained shadowy.
01:27But there is evidence. There is insider testimony from the very center of the Gestapo machine.
01:35Double agents and resistance spies add their voices to those of the regime's victims. Many are now dead.
01:41But their words, recorded in diaries and journals, which are dramatized here, live on.
01:53I penetrated the Gestapo as an unpaid part-time assistant to Lieutenant Franz Pühler, Gestapo officer
01:59in charge of espionage and arrests, himself a British agent. And from then on, I had to live
02:05with the ever-present fear of being found out, and subjected to the frightful tortures and death
02:10reserve for secret agents caught by the Gestapo.
02:14Gestapo. The word itself has a special resonance around the world. But how much blood, how much
02:21misery, how much sorrow, but above all, how much cruelty is bound up with it?
02:27The Gestapo has left us another witness. Its own meticulous bureaucracy. In repositories abandoned
02:35by the Third Reich all over Germany, thousands of internal files detail the lives of those who fell
02:41into its agents' hands. Most of the victims did not survive, but some did, and are still alive.
02:53Milo Dor was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942, when he was 19. He was interrogated and tortured
02:59to the point of death. All of this was recorded coolly and in objective detail in his personal file.
03:07Gestapo 4C, Roman number 4C, due to subversive activity.
03:17My God.
03:19Is this the first time you've seen your picture?
03:22It's the first time I've seen the original. It makes me very sad to see all this.
03:29Reminds me of that terrible time.
03:37The name, Gestapo, summons up the full horror of the Nazi secret police, although it was
03:44only one of a network of equally ruthless state security agencies. Its image is that of a
03:50flawless, icily efficient machine. By reputation, its network of officers covered every inch of
03:57occupied Europe. Yet it was actually a small organization. In 1941, there were only 8,000
04:04officers to oversee more than 70 million people. The archetypal Gestapo officer is a saturnine
04:10figure in a black leather trench coat. But in fact, most of the Gestapo's employees were
04:15quite ordinary, faceless bureaucrats. How then, did the Gestapo exert such complete control over
04:22the actions of such a large, ever-increasing population, and perhaps, more importantly,
04:26over their fears and worst imaginings? The answer to this question lies in the complex
04:32history of Hitler's governance of the Third Reich. For the Gestapo did not come into being
04:37fully fledged. Its growth was gradual, its progress dictated by the ambitions and rivalries
04:44of its early creators. Yet through all the various developments, it was driven by a single
04:49and simple aim, total social control over the civilian population. The Gestapo's roots lay
04:58in the instability of the years following the First World War. Germany, humiliated by the
05:03Allies, stripped of its power, and forced to pay huge sums in reparations, endured anarchy
05:09and economic ruin. A rudderless government watched fascists and communists fight on the streets
05:15as the local Prussian police force failed dismally to maintain order. Into this maelstrom
05:24whooped Adolf Hitler, promising order, safety and self-respect, and a new dawn for Germany.
05:31With relief, Germany accepted his offer. The Nazi Party made decisive victories in the elections
05:37of January 1933, and Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the Reich.
05:45The German people's response to the political agitation and street violence was one of extreme
05:51disquiet, naturally enough. They were fed up with these incessant brawls between the Nazis
05:57and their opponents, the communists, the Social Democrats. And I think it's true to say that the German
06:03people looked towards a party or a government that would bring order to the streets. And ironically
06:09enough, of course, the party that said they could do this were the Nazis.
06:14Hitler lost no time in fortifying his position. The people had voted for security. What they got was enforcement.
06:22Hitler's ambitions required absolute power. But this was not yet within his grasp. To achieve
06:28it, he had to suppress an active array of opposing political forces. His initial tools were basic
06:34but effective. The SA, or stormtroopers. Under their thug of a leader, Ernst Röhm, the SA had been
06:45Hitler's most loyal supporters during his rise to power. In their paramilitary uniforms, the brown shirts,
06:52and with their trademark arbitrary violence, they relished the unrest that had brought Hitler into office.
06:59Hans Berg Gusevius was a young Prussian lawyer at the time. Later, he would go on to plot from inside
07:05the Nazi regime
07:06to assassinate Hitler.
07:09Without really thinking it through, the party appointed the SA as an auxiliary police force. For fifteen months, Hitler
07:15let them run things. It was only natural they should feel they were the real victors. Before long,
07:22they were leaving the real policemen behind at headquarters, and they roamed the streets alone
07:26in search of enemies of the state.
07:30The SA took possession of the streets of Germany. They adopted a zero-tolerance policy,
07:35the rules of which were crystal clear. The SA's word had the force of law. Any minor infringement,
07:41like failing to salute correctly, was serious enough to result in arrest. Hitler's message was simple.
07:46In the new Germany, all opposition was futile. The policy was crude and shocking, but it worked,
07:53and its uncompromising stance was the foundation of the dictatorship to come.
07:57The Nazi party had already taken control of the newspapers. The Iran repeated scare stories about
08:04the Marxist threat, uncovering alleged plots and fomenting fear of revolution among ordinary citizens.
08:11The SA took this as permission to target any organisation they chose.
08:21That was an experience. It was a really significant experience for me. All of us children,
08:29we were in the Falcons Youth House. That's what we were called. The Socialist Falcons.
08:36And we were attacked on the games afternoon by the SA and the Hitler Youth.
08:44We were just children. But we were chased out. And the grown-up helpers were beaten up. Wretchedly beaten up.
08:58In the evening of the 27th of February, within a month of Hitler coming to power,
09:03the Reichstag, the national parliament and symbol of democracy, was set ablaze.
09:07Amid the outrage, Hitler conveniently blamed the communists, calling them a murderous plague,
09:14and claiming that God had ordained that they'd be beaten down with an iron fist.
09:20Many historians have suggested that it was the SA, in a plan inspired by Hitler himself,
09:26who were the real instigators of the arson attack.
09:28Whatever the truth, this emotive event was most opportune for Hitler.
09:33It enabled him to demand a state of emergency, which was declared the following day
09:38by the ailing and spineless Reich's president, Paul von Hindenburg.
09:42Civil rights were suspended, and the German people lost their final protection from tyranny.
09:47It had taken only weeks for Hitler to achieve the crucial move that would make the Gestapo possible,
09:53in that, under the state of emergency, anyone could be arrested at any time and held indefinitely, without charge.
10:01The SA played a pivotal role, but it was too blunt an instrument for what Hitler had in mind for
10:06the future.
10:07He needed something much more refined, and in the coming months he would discover the way to create it.
10:18In 1933, Germany had voted Hitler and the Nazi party into power,
10:23and allowed all civil rights to be suspended.
10:27Hitler was working on his master plan for the Third Reich,
10:30but meanwhile, the auxiliary police, the brown-shirted SA, were in control of the streets.
10:36They made so many arrests that they ran out of jails in which to put their prisoners.
10:41At this time arose the bunkers, the terrible private jails of the SA.
10:47Taking away unfortunate victims became a customary right of the SA.
10:52The sort of violence that went on in our cities is almost beyond belief.
10:57These so-called wild camps were improvised prisons.
11:01In Oranienburg, for example, a disused brewery was commandeered.
11:05While the propaganda films showed the place as a disciplined and civilised re-education centre,
11:11complete with morning exercise, the truth was horribly different.
11:15900 people were crammed in here at the mercy of the SA,
11:18who tortured and killed them with a completely free hand.
11:23Everyone had their turn, of course.
11:26The Red Front, the Social Democrats, anyone who wasn't a fascist, and the Jews.
11:33The SA's anti-Semitic campaign had gained momentum steadily since Hitler's takeover.
11:39Joseph Goebbels, his propaganda minister, legitimised it by announcing punitive measures
11:44against all Jewish businesses in Germany.
11:46Today morning, at 10 o'clock, the Pagot has begun.
11:52He will continue until the midnight hour.
11:58He will see you with a deadly weapon,
12:05but also with an imponisive mannestucht.
12:14The SA needed no further encouragement.
12:17Their behaviour became even more outrageous.
12:19And it was the Jews who bore the brunt of their violence and intimidation.
12:23Even Hitler supporters were shocked, and abroad, there was widespread moral outrage.
12:30So Hitler reined the SA in.
12:33They had played their part.
12:35The civilian police force returned to the streets of Berlin.
12:41The Führer was working on a more ambitious plan.
12:44He had seen the stormtroopers' effectiveness in demolishing opposition,
12:48but he was also aware of their decadent self-indulgence,
12:51their corrupt leadership, and their lack of discipline.
12:53This was not the image of fascism he wanted to project to the world.
12:58He knew exactly what he did want.
13:00Something that could take the nervous anxiety created by the SA and refine it.
13:05A secret political police force to serve the Führer, party, and Reich.
13:10He called it the Geheimen Staatspolizei.
13:13The secret state police.
13:15But it would come to be known by its abbreviation.
13:18A word that became synonymous with fear.
13:20The Gestapo.
13:23Hitler already had security and surveillance units in place as a matter of standard policy.
13:29But the Gestapo was to be something different.
13:31It was to be a secret, but a very well-known secret.
13:36The new force established its headquarters in Prince Albrechtstrasse in Berlin.
13:42At first it had jurisdiction only in the large eastern German province of Prussia,
13:46and there were just 200 officers, all highly educated careerists.
13:51To lead them, Hitler chose Hermann Goering,
13:53who was among the most ambitious and vainglorious of his inner circle.
13:59Goering guarded his executive power over the police force in Prussia very closely.
14:04The Gestapo was his pampered child,
14:06and he knew only too well that he'd held the key to his power.
14:10The Führer enjoyed reading his spicy and highly dramatized secret reports.
14:16Goering's brief was direct, to root out opposition wherever it lay.
14:21But the Nazis' chief enemies, communists, social democrats, trade unionists and clergy,
14:27had by then gone underground.
14:29Finding them would require the skill of highly trained men.
14:33Goering made sure the new force realized that theirs was a different sort of police work,
14:38and that they were not employed to pursue common criminals.
14:55But Goering soon encountered competition from Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich,
15:01two rising stars in the Nazi hierarchy who were casting covetous eyes over the new organization.
15:07Himmler had been at Hitler's side since the early days in Munich, capital of Bavaria,
15:12where the Nazi movement had been born a decade previously.
15:16There he led the SS, Hitler's personal security service.
15:20Under his authority, the SS had expanded, extending its reach over the entire Bavarian state police force.
15:28Unsurprisingly, Himmler was taking a close interest in the development of the Gestapo,
15:33as was his fellow SS leader, Reinhard Heydrich, a clever and ambitious young Nazi officer.
15:47Heidrich was the hidden pivot around which the Nazi regime revolved.
15:52The development of a whole nation was guided by his forceful character.
15:57Heidrich was, in fact, the puppet master of the Third Reich.
16:04Himmler and Heydrich had recruited a third person for their team.
16:07A trained professional they trusted implicitly, an experienced, dedicated policeman.
16:12Heinrich Muller was destined to have a profound influence on the future of the Gestapo.
16:19Heidrich Muller joined the Munich political police as his first job,
16:22and he made a name for himself as a very effective surveyor of the communists.
16:27He, in many respects, fitted the mould.
16:30He was ambitious, he was ruthless, he was committed, he was obedient.
16:36And although he wasn't a Nazi before 1933,
16:40Heidrich and Himmler were very clear that this is the sort of person whose experience they needed.
16:46Muller was unlike his immediate bosses.
16:49He wasn't vain and rejected the trappings of power in favour of total, focused professionalism.
16:56Any form of conversation with him was almost impossible.
16:59It consisted on his part almost entirely of coldly phrased questions and was largely an interrogation.
17:06He once said to me,
17:08One really ought to drive all the intellectuals into a coal mine, then blow it up.
17:15Even as the fledgling Gestapo was establishing itself in Berlin,
17:19the SS Triumvirate in Munich embarked on a new scheme that was breathtakingly despotic.
17:25Building on the idea of the bunkers, they were setting up a camp near Munich in a suburb called Dachau.
17:31Here, the SS planned to concentrate all those persons deemed arbitrarily to be enemies of the Nazi state.
17:40By the summer of 1933, the scheme had taken off in style.
17:4326,000 people of left-wing views, trades unionists and intellectuals, artists and priests had been interned in camps across
17:52Germany,
17:53several thousand of them in Dachau.
17:56Hannah Proll was a member of a resistance group.
17:58Several of her friends were arrested for their political activities in 1933 and taken to Dachau.
18:08The communist, Leonard Hausmann, was in the workers' home.
18:15I told him about the posters on the billboards, that Hitler is now Chancellor of the Reich.
18:25He then packed a few things and left his office.
18:30He didn't run away, he simply left the office.
18:38And when they arrested him, that was in March 1933,
18:45they took him to Dachau, where he was shot on the 17th of May.
19:05Presented to the outside world through the international press, Dachau was described as a rest camp.
19:11The truth soon became obvious.
19:21We heard that Dachau was not a re-education camp, as they had always told us.
19:30You went in without any trial and didn't know how long you'd stay or whether you'd ever come out alive.
19:44And we heard that people were tortured there, and beaten, and you could also die there.
19:55The inmates of the concentration camps were officially held in what was called protective custody.
20:03Protective custody in the Third Reich, meant a knock on the door at three or four o'clock in the
20:08morning by the Gestapo,
20:10being bundled off without packing any supplies or clothes, without even saying goodbye to one's loved ones,
20:16and being taken to a concentration camp, where immediately there would be a process almost of dehumanisation.
20:26I was taken into protective custody. They protected society from us, as it were, the other way round.
20:33And they didn't need any proof or anything. They could send you to a camp, an extermination camp, without anything.
20:40They didn't need anything to do it.
20:45In the concentration camps, the SS had created the ultimate containment and punishment for all dissenters.
20:52In Berlin, the Gestapo was setting up a super-efficient machine for detecting them.
20:57For the power-hungry Himmler and Heydrich, the enticing prospect of gaining control over both organisations was proving irresistible.
21:08The relationship between Hitler's henchmen and the newly created Nazi Germany was that of a constant power struggle on perpetually
21:16shifting ground.
21:17Hitler's technique for controlling his deputies was to encourage rivalry between them, thus fanning their insecurities by shifting favourites.
21:26The result was a combustible mixture of paranoia plot and counter-plot.
21:33Gradually, Himmler mounted his challenge to take over the Gestapo.
21:37He had already taken control of local political police forces throughout the country, and the SD, the intelligence branch of
21:43the SS he formed in 1932,
21:45which was now ruled by Heydrich and dedicated to rooting out traitors in the Nazi ranks, had raised its profile
21:52and increased its activities.
21:55Early in 1934, Himmler boarded a train to Berlin with his underlings, Heydrich and Müller.
22:02Hitler, impressed both by Himmler's concentration camps and his political skills, abandoned Goering and switched his favour to his dear
22:09Heinrich.
22:10He decreed that all Germany's police services spearheaded by the Gestapo should be unified under Himmler's personal control.
22:20Hitler transferred the Gestapo officially from Goering to Himmler in Berlin.
22:26Heydrich became head of the Gestapo office, with the highly efficient Müller as his deputy.
22:32Goering wasn't cast out completely.
22:35Within months, he was appointed head of the newly constructed Nazi air force.
22:38From that moment on, Germany's entire political police force was controlled from Berlin.
22:44On paper, the Gestapo remained a local force, but in reality, all German regional secret police forces obeyed Gestapo authority.
22:55The structure of the security forces, never straightforward, remained fluid and slippery.
23:01The SS under Himmler retained an overarching role responsible for numerous departments,
23:07including administration, finance, foreign intelligence, the regular criminal police and the SD.
23:14Müller took over the running of the Gestapo.
23:16It was the perfect job for him, as his zeal was equaled only by his obsession with efficiency.
23:22Soon he had things running in the smooth way he wanted.
23:27The Gestapo brief was clear and unambiguous.
23:30It was to be the agency that cleansed Germany of all political, social, racial and cultural impurity.
23:36If its methods came into conflict with existing statutes, the Gestapo's decision would be upheld.
23:43Each person who passed through Gestapo hands was photographed, fingerprinted and given a file card with personal details,
23:50recorded along with the supposed crime, details of the interrogation and the action taken as a result.
23:59These card indexes form the basis of the Gestapo's power.
24:05Have a look. In this box is this index and look right here, under L. You must be in this
24:10box.
24:12Let's go to the table and see if your file is really in here.
24:16In the Vienna archives, 50,000 original dossiers hold the details of communists, trade unionists and churchmen,
24:23all potential members of opposition groups in the area. Among them was Hans Landauer.
24:31So, here's your card, look. Here's your name, single, birthplace, a physical description, 180 tall, pale, thin.
24:42And here, you see these numbers refer to other documents that the Gestapo have on you.
24:48Here's your personal Gestapo file, where the actual documents were, and your charge sheet.
24:57The files resemble those of any large bureaucratic organization. The language is formal, and there are boxes for each item
25:05of information.
25:06The official appearance of the documents attempts to legitimize the despicable actions they so conscientiously record.
25:17We were completely open to them. They could do what they wanted with us. No justice, no law, or anything.
25:32It was an institution that paid no heed to anything.
25:39The new security supremos appeared in public frequently, with the exception of Mueller, who persistently stayed out of sight.
25:47They gave the impression of total self-confidence, but in reality, the problems were not quite over.
25:53There still existed a serious threat to their ambitions.
25:56Despite removal from the streets, the brown-shirted SA, the stormtroopers, had not gone away.
26:02And neither had their leader, Ernst Wilhelm.
26:05He was a member of the old-school, old-fighter Nazi generation, if you like.
26:12His contribution was crucial to the Nazi seizure of power.
26:15But once the Nazis had seized power, there was a problem. What did one do with the SA?
26:20Following the wild rampages of 1933, the SA were muzzled by Hitler.
26:26But Rome was still determined to strike out and complete his own German revolution.
26:31In Rome's eyes, the Nazi party owed its entire success to his brown-shirts.
26:36And they deserved to have control over police and military as their reward.
26:41The SA, the group of Berlin, is a group of people.
26:45Yes!
26:47That it was the service of every single state as it was the only one.
26:54If today, another German is the opposite.
27:02The situation was complicated by the fact that Rome was one of the very few men who were on familiar
27:08personal terms with Hitler.
27:10He was the Führer's chief of staff, and in public at least, Hitler supported Rome in his aspirations.
27:36Rome was convinced he could transform his undisciplined squadrons into cadres for the army of the future.
27:44His idea was simple and logical.
27:47The sooner he took advantage of the first upsurge after the seizure of power to hack through the jungle of
27:53laws and the mazes of foreign policy,
27:55the sooner his revolutionary army would become the German army of the future.
28:00Rome was becoming a problem.
28:03Hitler, adopting his usual technique of divide and rule, set up his other henchmen to topple the troublesome Ernst Rome.
28:10The behal rowdies of the SA were beyond the pale.
28:13They represented the most extreme, violent and fanatical elements of the Nazi movement in those days.
28:22Rome's activities in setting up a private militia may have constituted a threat to the state, but this was only
28:29a pretext.
28:31In the ambitious Himmler and the still more ambitious Heydrich, Hitler had willing executioners, each of whom seized the opportunity
28:42to build up his own power.
28:44On the 27th of June, 1934, at a covert meeting in Prince Albrechtstrasse, Heydrich announced that intelligence confirms that the
28:53SA under Rome is planning a coup.
28:56This was a deliberate lie.
29:01Heydrich and Mueller coordinated a so-called counter-operation from Gestapo HQ.
29:07Heydrich prepared a list, signed off by Hitler, of those who were to be shot.
29:19Within days, the newsreels were trumpeting their success.
29:23Ninety internal opponents, including Ernst Rome, had been liquidated in the purge, which became known as the Night of the
29:30Long Knives.
29:31The police paraded in triumph before Hitler, who saluted them from the window of his office.
29:45The SA had been obliterated.
29:48With that threat removed, Himmler's security services had gained unbounded power.
29:54The Gestapo was ready to move forward.
29:56Nothing and nobody could stop it.
30:03After the assassination of Ernst Rome, Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich and Mueller were in complete control of Germany's security.
30:11The country's political police forces, under the orders of the Gestapo, were already well on their way to suppressing all
30:18opposition.
30:19Mueller had made a study of the notorious Soviet secret police.
30:23Under his direction, the Gestapo began to establish its own trademark methods.
30:28These were all designed to spread suspicion and anxiety.
30:33Johann Schwert was part of what little opposition remained.
30:36He printed and distributed anti-Nazi leaflets and raised funds for the Republican cause in Spain.
30:45I had hardly got into the flat when two armed men appeared outside the door.
30:50I was taken directly from the flat to prison.
30:56Police prison.
30:58They knew so much about me because they'd already interrogated people.
31:04That's when they began to hit me in the face.
31:08I was beaten up in the first hour.
31:11It's a terrible thing when you don't know when you're hauled from your cell what's going to happen to you.
31:21I had a thick sweater on when I was arrested.
31:26I kept it on day and night as protection.
31:33Because I knew that whenever I was taken below, I'd be beaten.
31:42It went on for days.
31:46Day and night.
31:47Day and night.
31:51Johann Schwert passed through 14 prisons before his eventual release in 1945, ten years later.
31:57Five of those years were spent in solitary confinement, interrupted only by Gestapo interrogations.
32:04Yet Schwert is one of the lucky ones.
32:07Few of the Gestapo's victims survived.
32:10In the propaganda, however, Gestapo officers were shown as guardians of the people, there to serve.
32:18Posters portrayed the Gestapo as friend and helper, protecting society from the dark forces that threatened it.
32:25They even featured as benign characters in comics and children's games.
32:35It was all part of Muller's carefully conceived strategy, designed to create a specific image of the Gestapo in the
32:42public mind.
32:43That image was of an all-powerful body, able to destroy its enemies at will.
32:48The classic Gestapo, knock on the door, sudden, swift and anonymous, underline the illusion of total control.
32:57To reinforce this fiction, Muller encouraged the belief that the Gestapo was everywhere.
33:07Propaganda stories were also planted in the newspapers to strike fear into potential opponents.
33:12The reports described a constant stream of arrests.
33:16In effect, they were lengthy advertisements for Gestapo power.
33:24We talked about how the Gestapo watched people, and ensured that no one said anything bad about the regime.
33:38The great strength of the Gestapo was the publicity, or more specifically the propaganda surrounding it, the mis-surrounding it,
33:49that the Gestapo were here, there and everywhere.
33:52So that any German, when making a comment that was going to be mildly, even adverse to the regime, would
34:00look over his shoulder.
34:01And it was known as the German look, the Deutsche Blick.
34:04In fact, the Gestapo's knowledge was less comprehensive than its carefully crafted image of omniscience implied.
34:11But the accumulation of information was nevertheless much greater than could be expected of such a small group of officers.
34:18How was this achieved?
34:22The answer lies in these files.
34:25Meticulously maintained, they record millions of pieces of personal information.
34:30Most of the information was given to the Gestapo by informers.
34:34It was the German people who did much of the Gestapo's work.
34:38The officers were employed largely to analyze and collate the data that was brought in.
34:47I said, what's up with you?
34:49A tailor about 50 years old.
34:51My daughter has denounced me and my wife.
34:54She wanted to marry an SS man, and the parents didn't want her to.
34:57So she went to the Gestapo, and the parents were arrested.
35:03It wasn't only personal issues that got reported.
35:06There were a lot of people that were quite happy to inform on their neighbors if they were making adverse
35:11comments about the Hitler regime.
35:13Some people informed in the sincere belief that Germany's future was more important than the fate of individuals.
35:21Others did it out of envy or revenge.
35:24Still more informed to save themselves or their families from the knock on the door.
35:28For it was known that the Gestapo's suspicion led to the concentration camps.
35:33An officer's word was all that was required.
35:36And it soon became common knowledge that the Gestapo equated mercy with weakness,
35:42and regarded weakness as fatal to the regime.
35:47It was terrible to be arrested.
35:50It meant death.
35:53We were always hearing, so-and-so has disappeared.
35:59Officially, you weren't permitted to talk about it.
36:03But amongst ourselves, we did.
36:06And we knew just what it meant.
36:13There was a terrible feeling of being defenseless and humiliated.
36:18Inhumanity.
36:20Inhumanity.
36:22How can such an idiot get into the position of torturing another human being?
36:31It was a threat.
36:35It was really the epitome of what the Nazi regime was.
36:39You could say you felt it like the fist of the Nazis.
36:45Over time, the Gestapo's reputation became rooted in the fabric of society.
36:50And opposition was almost completely eradicated.
36:55By the late 1930s, the Gestapo had purged Germany of all visible resistance.
37:01This was the moment when its leaders felt ready to fulfil the nation's true destiny
37:06and shape the future of the Thousand-Year Reich.
37:11Heidrich put the Gestapo's new task into words.
37:16The police of the National Socialist State will now above all fulfil the task of rebuilding
37:20the people's society from the ground up, according to the precepts of the political leadership.
37:27The Nazi ideal was the Volksgemeinschaft, the people's society.
37:32This society was to be based on equality, unity and social harmony.
37:36But it was only for those who qualified.
37:39Membership demanded absolute conformity.
37:42The Gestapo's task was to draw up lists of those whose actions made them unfit for the society of the
37:48master race.
37:49Crimes that warranted inclusion on the lists were many and varied.
37:54The Gestapo was not expected to round up those names on the lists.
37:59There were simply too many of them, and the task was delegated to local police forces.
38:11One major group targeted by the lists was the Jews.
38:15Soon, the discrimination against the entire race was made legal.
38:20On the 15th of September, 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were enacted and published.
38:41Discrimination against the Jews, henceforth, had an official basis, the racial laws.
38:47They were very popular.
38:56You weren't allowed to mix with Jews.
38:59I even saw how someone was brought out, a woman, who had had a Jewish boyfriend.
39:06And she had to wear a sign saying,
39:08I'm a great swine, I go with Jews.
39:13A new kind of pseudoscience entered the curriculum.
39:18I was a so-called first-degree half-breed, and Hitler hated them especially,
39:24because the Nuremberg Laws said,
39:26I couldn't marry one of those so-called Aryans,
39:28but I could marry another half-breed,
39:31because a resulting offspring would be a cretin,
39:34and the child could then be murdered straight away.
39:38That's what we were told, and I just sat there and thought,
39:41this can't be happening.
39:45The teacher said something like,
39:48I've remembered it my whole life.
39:51He said, in this school year, we're going to look at racial studies,
39:56and I can tell you right now that Löwenberg belongs to an inferior race.
40:04That's all that he said,
40:06and I went home bawling my eyes out.
40:16The Nazi hierarchy worried not an iota
40:19about the effect of their legislation on children.
40:21They were more concerned with increasing their own power base.
40:26Himmler was now so popular with Hitler
40:28that he was appointed head of all the German police,
40:31which meant effectively that the police force
40:33became an arm of the Gestapo power,
40:36not the other way round.
40:37The Gestapo's tentacles were creeping further
40:40around the heart of German society.
40:46So effective were the Gestapo officers
40:49in carrying out their domestic duties
40:51that by the end of the 30s,
40:52they were ready and poised
40:54to spread their influence even further.
40:57And Hitler had a fresh role for them.
41:00He intended to expand the Third Reich,
41:03and the newly conquered territories would need to be pacified.
41:07He assigned the Gestapo the task of dismantling resistance abroad.
41:13Heydrich prepared the plans.
41:14The Gestapo was assigned to accompany the armed forces of the Wehrmacht
41:19on their first moves abroad
41:21into the territory of Germany's friendliest neighbours.
41:23Muller told his most trusted officers
41:26to draw up secret lists of all the individuals likely to cause trouble.
41:31They would be arrested and removed
41:33as soon as the military movement began.
41:36Austria, in March 1938,
41:38was the first country to be annexed.
41:57While the crowd celebrated,
42:00the Gestapo was already at work.
42:04All I know is, on the first night,
42:07they arrested the former authorities
42:08from between 1934 and 1938,
42:11and everyone on the left.
42:13Communists, social democrats,
42:16and liberals alike.
42:21A few months later,
42:22the Nazi army marched unopposed
42:25into the Sudetenland,
42:26the German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia.
42:29Like Austria, it was seen as home territory,
42:32despite being a part of a sovereign nation,
42:35and its annexation was largely uneventful.
42:38Here, too, the Gestapo arrived
42:40with its lists at the ready.
42:42The nocturnal knocks at the door commenced,
42:44and people began to disappear.
42:50Then, on to Prague.
42:52The Sudetenland having fallen,
42:54it was an easy matter
42:56to take the Czech capital as well.
42:58Hitler had expanded the Reich
43:00virtually unopposed,
43:02and while the Gestapo cleansed
43:03the new territories
43:04of every hint of opposition,
43:06his popularity in Germany
43:08rose to an all-time high.
43:13In Berlin,
43:14there was little hope or expectation
43:16that Hitler would halt
43:17his aggression in Prague.
43:19Goebbels' propaganda machine
43:21began to hint at war
43:22with Western Europe.
43:23And at Gestapo HQ,
43:26the plans had already been laid.
43:29Heydrich Muller
43:30and a small band
43:30of trusted Gestapo officers
43:32were preparing
43:33Operation Tannenberg.
43:35It was a ruthless, brutal scheme,
43:37deliberately intended
43:38to deceive both the German public
43:40and the world at large.
43:42The Gestapo had been entrusted
43:44with masterminding a plan
43:46that was to throw Europe
43:47and ultimately the whole world
43:49into war.
43:50Its power had grown immense.
43:52By the start of the war,
43:54the Gestapo is at the centre
43:56of a huge terror apparatus
43:58which has arms stretching
44:00into every part
44:01of German society.
44:03It had effectively crushed the left.
44:06It was well on the way
44:08to enacting its vision
44:10of a German people's community
44:12in which internal aliens
44:14would be eradicated
44:16and it was perfectly placed
44:18to police German society
44:20once war broke out.
44:22It was a historic moment.
44:24Muller and his Gestapo
44:26were poised to add millions
44:27more names
44:28to their lists of ruined lives
44:30and they were more than ready
44:32for the challenges
44:32that lay ahead.
44:53The Gestapo
44:55You
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