Secrect state police, Gestapo, police

Infrastructure of Nazi terror: Schutzstaffel SS, Secrect state police, Gestapo, police

At the beginning of National Socialist rule, the police, Sturmabteilung SA and Schutzstaffel SS focussed their persecution measures on the regime's political opponents. Thousands were locked up in prisons and provisional concentration camps. Later, the Nazi state set up new concentration camps and extended the persecution to Jewish people, Sinti* and Roma*, homosexuals, members of the Jehovah's Witnesses, "antisocials" and others.

In 1934, the Schutzstaffel SS assumed sole responsibility for all concentration camps (KZ) in the German Empire, some of which had previously been under the control of the Sturmabteilung SA ("Storm Detachment"). From 1941, the Schutzstaffel SS was also responsible for the extermination camps in the occupied territories in the east.

The Secrect state police, Gestapo, was responsible for systematically combating actual or perceived political opponents of the Nazi regime. Until 1939, these were mainly communists and social democrats. From 1940, the Secrect state police, Gestapo set up so-called workers' educational camps to discipline initially German, but later mainly foreign workers through imprisonment.

With the founding of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) on 27 September 1939, the Security Police (Geheime Staatspolizei and Reich Criminal Police) and the "Security Service" (intelligence arm of the SS) were merged into one institution. Through this takeover of the entire police force and the concentration camps, the Schutzstaffel SS became the most important pillar of the Nazi regime.

Workers' educational camps

From 1940, the Secrect state police, Gestapo, set up "workers' educational camps" (AEL) to discipline German workers, especially foreign forced labourers. People who had been reported by their employer for "work dawdling", "breach of employment contract" or "resistance", for example, were sent here without the involvement of the justice system. Later, the Secrect state police, Gestapo also imprisoned people in the AEL for other reasons. The Secrect state police, Gestapo also used the workers' educational camps as execution sites.

Imprisonment usually lasted three to eight weeks. The living conditions in the 'workers' educational camps' were similar to those in the concentration camps. The prisoners were treated brutally and forced to do hard labour in industrial plants, on large construction sites or in quarries. Many of them died during their imprisonment. Those who survived and returned to the factories were told about the AEL to instil fear of this punishment in the rest of the workforce.

The "workers' educational camps" were run by the Gestapo offices responsible for the region. Among the first and largest in north-west Germany were the Bremen Secrect state police, Gestapo Farge AEL, the Hanover Secrect state police, Gestapo Liebenau AEL and the Brunswick Secrect state police, Gestapo Salzgitter-Hallendorf AEL (with a camp section for women).

Concentration camps

The concentration camps were an arbitrary instrument of the Schutzstaffel SS under its Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. The first concentration camps were set up in 1933 by the Sturmabteilung SA and Schutzstaffel SS to combat political opponents of National Socialism. In the following years, the system of concentration camps was continuously expanded under the sole direction of the Schutzstaffel SS, and further groups of victims were deported to the camps, especially Jews, but also Sinti* and Roma*, homosexuals, impoverished people, homeless people or people suffering from alcoholism ("antisocials"), people with multiple convictions ("professional criminals") and members of Jehovah's Witnesses.

During the war, persecution was extended to occupied foreign countries, so that non-German prisoners eventually made up the majority. While the Schutzstaffel SS initially focused primarily on fighting the enemy and terror, they soon began to exploit the prisoners' labour in their own economic enterprises. The Schutzstaffel SS ("Protection Squadron") also hired out the concentration camp prisoners as forced labourers to German industrial companies. Hundreds of "external commands" of the large main camps were set up for this purpose from 1942. As part of the systematic murder of European Jews, the Schutzstaffel SS also set up extermination camps east of the Reich's borders.

The Esterwegen concentration camp in Emsland was one of the SS's "model camps" alongside Dachau in the early years of the Nazi regime. Moringen, a concentration camp for women from all over the German Empire between 1933 and 1938, was a "protective custody camp" ("Schutzhaftlager") for young men from 1940 onwards. Most of the concentration camps in Lower Saxony were "external commands" of Neuengamme concentration camp. In 1943, a "detention camp" was set up in Bergen-Belsen for Jews who were offered to the Allies in exchange for Germans abroad. In the final months of the war, Bergen-Belsen became a place of mass death: at least 85,000 prisoners from other concentration camps arrived there by train or on foot - tens of thousands died before and after the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on 15 April 1945.