Gestapo

The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning in April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police. From September 1939 forward it was administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) ("Reich Main Security Office") and was considered a sister organization of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) ("Security Service") and also a suboffice of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) ("security police").

Gestapo in In the Presence of Mine Enemies

The Gestapo remained a feared branch of Germany's Justice Ministry in 2010.

Gestapo in The War That Came Early

In 1938, just after the Second World War began in Europe, officers of the Gestapo confronted American tourist Peggy Druce for patronizing Rothstein's kosher butcher shop in Berlin, in violation of the Nuremberg Race Laws. Upon seeing that she was from a neutral country, they left her alone, but brutalized poor Rothstein instead.

In 1943, the Gestapo arrested Eberhard Nehring, an electrician's mate of the submarine U-30, after intercepting a seditious letter, written by him to his hometown of Münster, regarding the recent civil unrest there.

Gestapo in Worldwar

The duties of the Gestapo included inspecting the bloodlines of supposedly solid Reich citizens for tainted genetics. In 1962, officers of the Gestapo focused on the family of Reich Rocket Force Colonel Johannes Drucker, whose wife Käthe was accused having a Jewish grandmother. RRF supreme commander General Walter Dornberger pulled strings, and made the Gestapo leave the family alone, but Colonel Drucker's chances of promotion were severely curtailed.