The Nazi Police State

The knock at the door

On the night of 27 February 1933 the Reichstag burned. The next morning Hitler had President Hindenburg sign a decree suspending the civil liberties of every German, and within a month the first concentration camp had opened in a disused factory outside Munich. Six years later a secret police of roughly twenty thousand officers was watching a nation of sixty-six million. It could not have done so alone, and the question of how it managed is the question this whole topic turns on: did the Nazis rule by terror, or did ordinary Germans do a great deal of the watching themselves? This module covers the four instruments, the SS, the Gestapo, the camps and the courts, with the dates and numbers behind each, and then the source and interpretation questions that Paper 3 builds on them.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with the moment it mattered, because a bare definition earns nothing on this paper.

Building the police state, in order

Put these six steps in the order they happened.

• Hindenburg signs the decree suspending personal liberty, free speech and the privacy of the post
• Dachau opens in a former munitions factory near Munich
• Goering founds the Gestapo for Prussia
• The SS murders the SA leadership on the Night of the Long Knives and becomes independent
• The People's Court hears its first treason cases
• Himmler is made Chief of the German Police, with every police force in the country under him

Question 1: inference from a source

From the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State, 28 February 1933, translated for this module. Tap the TWO clauses that made protective custody and house raids legal.

• Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice.
• Restrictions on personal liberty are therefore permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed,
• as are restrictions on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, and on the rights of assembly and association,
• and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications,
• and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations and restrictions on property.

Two bodies, one master

By 1936 both answered to Himmler, but they did different jobs and students confuse them every year.

How a small police watched a large country

A Gestapo office typically covered a district of several hundred thousand people with a few dozen officers. Historian Robert Gellately went through the surviving files for Wuerzburg and found that more than half of all investigations began the same way. Which way?

• With a tip-off from a member of the public: a neighbour, a colleague, a relative or a block warden reporting something they had heard.
• With a report from an undercover Gestapo agent placed in a workplace.
• With a letter intercepted at the post office.
• With intelligence from the SD, the security service of the SS.

Bending the law

Select the THREE statements that describe how the Nazis controlled the legal system.

• Judges were expected to join the National Socialist League for the Maintenance of Law, and from 1934 swore loyalty to Hitler as every civil servant did.
• The People's Court tried treason from 1934 with no jury and no right of appeal.
• Special Courts set up in March 1933 tried political offences quickly, with the defence limited and no appeal.
• Treason trials were decided by juries of ordinary citizens.
• A convicted person could appeal to the Reichstag.
• The ordinary courts stayed fully independent of the government.

Terror or consent? The debate behind the interpretation questions

Question 3 on this paper gives you two interpretations and asks how they differ, why, and how far you agree. The two below were written for this module to show the shape of the argument; the exam will print real historians. Interpretation 1. The Nazis held Germany through fear. The Gestapo could arrest without charge, the camps held people without release dates, the courts had been purged, and the killings of June 1934 showed that the regime would murder its own. Ordinary Germans conformed because the alternative was Dachau. Interpretation 2. The Gestapo was far too small to watch a nation, and it did not try. It waited for Germans to report one another, and they did: in the surviving files for Wuerzburg more than half of all cases began with a denunciation by a member of the public. The police state worked because a great many people were willing to make it work. Both are true as far as they go, and the top-level answer says why: they are built on different evidence. The first rests on what the regime could do; the second on what the files show it actually did.

Inside the machine

Four people in the police state, 1936. At each step choose the option that shows how the system actually worked, not the one you would like to be true.

• You are a block warden, responsible for about forty households. A woman on your stair says at the door that the rearmament is making bread dearer. What does your job require?
• You are a Gestapo officer. A letter arrives, unsigned, accusing a shopkeeper of listening to foreign radio. Your district has thirty officers for four hundred thousand people. What happens next?
• You are a judge on a Special Court. A printer is charged with producing a communist leaflet. His lawyer asks for time to call witnesses. What does the court do?
• You are a trade unionist taken into protective custody in March 1933 and sent to Dachau. Your family asks the court when you will be released. What is the answer?

From cause to consequence

Because the decree of February _____ suspended personal liberty, the police could hold people without charge, which is why the camps filled within weeks of Dachau opening in _____. Because the SS did the killing on 30 June _____, it won independence from the SA and, from June 1936, control of every police force through _____. Because most Gestapo files began with a _____, a force of twenty thousand could reach into every street.

Why the Gestapo needed informers

By 1939 the Gestapo had about 20,000 officers to watch a population of about 66 million. How many people was that for every Gestapo officer?

Question 3(b): the main difference

Question 3(b) asks: What is the main difference between the two interpretations on the callout card? Explain your answer using both. Which answer would score all four marks?

• Interpretation 1 argues that the regime controlled Germans through fear of the Gestapo and the camps, whereas Interpretation 2 argues that control depended on Germans informing on one another, since the Gestapo was too small to act alone.
• Interpretation 1 talks about the Gestapo, the camps and the courts. Interpretation 2 talks about Wuerzburg.
• I agree with Interpretation 2 because the evidence about denunciations is very convincing.
• Both interpretations agree that the police state was very effective.

A 12-mark paragraph, marked

Question 2: Explain why there was little open opposition to the Nazi regime in the years 1933 to 1939. One reason for the lack of open opposition was the system of denunciation on which the Gestapo relied. The Gestapo itself was small, about twenty thousand officers for a country of sixty-six million, and it could not have watched every street. It did not have to. Block wardens, each responsible for a group of households, reported grumbling upwards, and the files show that most investigations began with a report from a member of the public. This meant that a German who criticised the regime could not know who was listening, so the safest course was silence even in private. The fear was of the neighbour as much as of the police, which is why so few people spoke out even where the Gestapo had no presence at all. What earned the marks: a cause named in the first sentence; specific support (the twenty thousand, the block wardens, the files); the link phrase this meant that, turning the evidence into an explanation of silence; and a final sentence that returns to the words of the question. Two more paragraphs, on the camps and on the courts, and the answer reaches the top level.

Write the 12-mark answer

Explain why there was little open opposition to the Nazi regime in the years 1933 to 1939. You may use the following in your answer: the Gestapo; the concentration camps. You must also use information of your own.

• Support that counts: a date, a name, a number or a decree
• Causes of your own: the courts, denunciation, the SS after June 1934, or propaganda from the sibling module

Question 3(d): how far do you agree?

Question 3(d) asks how far you agree with Interpretation 2, that the police state worked because ordinary Germans were willing to make it work. Which piece of evidence gives that interpretation its strongest support?

• The Gestapo files: with more than half of Wuerzburg cases opened on a public denunciation and only a few dozen officers per district, the watching was largely done by Germans on Germans.
• Dachau opened within a month of the Reichstag Fire and six camps were running by 1939.
• Every judge and civil servant swore an oath to Hitler in 1934.
• The SS grew from 280 men in 1929 to more than 50,000 by 1933.