The Himmler's SS (21 page)

Security Police storming a suspect's house in Warsaw, November 1939. Note the ‘Pol', i.e. ‘Polizei', prefix on the registration plate of their vehicle.

NCOs of the Sipo uncovering a cache of hidden weapons in Warsaw, November 1939.

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ESTAPO

When the Gestapo was established by Göring in 1933, it had thirty-five members with a budget of 1 million Reichsmarks. Two years later, its membership had risen to over 600 and its budget exceeded 40 million Reichsmarks. As the political police of the Reich, the Gestapo was responsible for gathering information on all subversive individuals and organisations, carrying out plain-clothes surveillance operations and raids, and effecting arrests on a grand scale. It also decided who was to be interned in concentration camps. At its Berlin headquarters, the known enemies of the régime, from Jehovah's Witnesses to fanatical anti-Nazis, were categorised into one of the following three groups:

While the SD simply amassed intelligence, the Gestapo had real power to act on the information contained in its files. It was the Gestapo which organised the ‘dawn raids' and the infamous ‘three o'clock knock'. The SD and Gestapo inevitably expended a great deal of energy competing with one another until their amalgamation under the RSHA.

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RIPO

The Kripo comprised regular police detectives who carried out standard criminal investigation work. Like the Gestapo, they operated in civilian clothes before being ordered to wear the SD uniform during the war. Their main duties were the investigation of serious statutory offences and common law crimes such as murder, rape, fraud and arson, and the interrogation of suspects. They attended at break-ins, took fingerprints, collected material evidence and prepared relevant reports. The Kripo was the most stable and professional of all the security police forces, and was a favoured recruiting ground for the Reichssicherheitsdienst or RSD (not to be confused with the SD), an élite force which provided small bodyguard detachments for Himmler and leading Nazis. Its commander was SS-Brigadeführer Hans Rattenhuber.

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RSHA

In October 1936, Inspectors of Security Police (Inspekteur der Sicherheitspolizei or IdS) were appointed in each SS Oberabschnitt to improve co-ordination between the SD, the Gestapo and the Kripo. Liaison and interdepartmental co-operation improved thereafter, and on 27 September 1939 the Sipo and SD were brought together to form adjacent departments of a single, all-embracing SS Hauptamt, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA. Once again, a governmental or state office, the Chief of the Security Police, and a Nazi party office, the Chief of the Security Service, were merged into a single post, Chief of the Security Police and Security Service (Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, or CSSD). Needless to say, the first CSSD was SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. The RSHA (often abbreviated to ‘RSi-H' in SS correspondence to avoid confusion with RuSHA) was divided into seven departments, or ämter, as follows:

A Security Police Hauptscharführer, c. 1941. The blank right collar patch is clearly evident, as are the military-style shoulder straps which gave way to police versions in January 1942. This official may well have been a member of one of the Einsatzkommandos responsible for rounding up potential partisans following the invasion of Poland and Russia. His kindly countenance belies the unspeakable atrocities in which he may have been involved.

Sipo and SD officers who participated in a course at the Italian Colonial Police School in Rome from 9 to 16 January 1941 are saluted by the Italian Colonial Minister, Teruzzi.

The activities of the RSHA were extremely varied, ranging from the defamation of Tukachevsky and other Soviet generals, which led to Stalin's purge of the Russian officer corps, to the liberation of Mussolini by Skorzeny's commandos. They encompassed anti-terrorist operations, assassinations, control of foreigners in Germany, and the collation of political files seized from the police forces of the occupied countries. When the Gestapo took over the administration of the Customs Service from the Reich Ministry of Finance, border controls and the combatting of smuggling also came under the jurisdiction of the RSHA. As CSSD, Heydrich controlled one of the most complex and allembracing security police systems the world had ever seen, and in 1940 his standing on an international level was recognised with his nomination to the post of President of Interpol.

A surprisingly high percentage of senior SS officers were attached to the RSHA, since the very nature of its work and the expertise required for many of its operations necessitated that it should be a ‘top heavy' organisation so far as rank was concerned. Taking into account every section of the SS, including the vast Waffen-SS, almost a quarter of all officers holding the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer in 1944 (i.e. 714 out of 3,006 or 23.8 per cent) worked with the RSHA. Corresponding figures for higher ranks were as follows:

These statistics are remarkable, and serve to indicate the size and extent of the security police network in 1944, for they show that no less than one-fifth of all SS majors and colonels at that time were Sipo or SD men. Ultimately, there were some 65,000 junior security police officials stationed across Europe and Russia, fed by over 100,000 local informers.

Kurt Daluege accompanies Lina Heydrich at her husband's funeral. Karl Hermann Frank stands saluting at the right, beside the puppet President of Bohemia and Moravia, Dr Emil Hácha.