1. What roles were played under the Nazi Regime by the SS and Gestapo?

Essentially, both these organisations were used as the Nazi regimes organs of repression.
The SS was originally Hitlers personal bodyguard. However, after Hitlers accession to
power, it was authorised as auxiliary police. The organisation directed its energies against all
enemies of Nazism Jews, Communists, and dissenters of the Fuhrers will, later taking
responsibility for the concentration and extermination camps. The Gestapo on the other
hand was originally the Prussian secret police. In 1933 SS Leader Himmler was appointed as
the head of the Gestapo, so it came under SS control. From 1936 it became the most
important security agent of the state, able to decide for itself what the law was.

2. What was the connection between the Gestapo and SS?

Both these organisations fostered its image as an all-powerful body that brought dread to
the enemies of the regime. The Gestapo was the secret police that hunted down enemies of
the Reich, while the SS were the brain-child of Himmler, a specially trained division of the
military which participated in everything from invasions to crimes against Jews. They were
both eventually headed by Himmler, although the Gestapo existed before him.

3. Why did the SS become so powerful?

In 1929 the SS only had 280 members, but by the late 1930s it had become a vast
organisation, a virtual state within a state. The loyalty and brutal efficiency of the SS on the
Night of the Long Knives had its rewards, for it then became an independent organisation
within the party. On Hitlers accession to power, the SS was authorised to act as auxiliary
police. It used the Emergency Power Decree of February 1933 (which remained
permanently in force) to take suspects into private custody. The fact that there were
decrees passed in favour of SS domination elevated their position of power as a Nazi
instrument of terror. The weakening of the SA also led to the emergence of the SS as the
chief police arm of the Nazi Party. By 1939 there were 240, 000 members organised into
various divisions.
4. Were the Gestapo the all-powerful agent of a terror state?
In the traditional image, the Gestapo was seen as the totalitarian police state. Although this
view was cultivated by Gestapo itself, it also gave the majority of German people an excuse
for their passivity and broad acceptance of the regime by their fear for the all-powerful
Gestapo.
However, the reality of repression in Nazi Germany was far more complex considerable
research suggests that the might of the Gestapo was in fact much weaker and its power
rested upon popular consent more than on terror. A major weakness of the Gestapo that
proves its inefficiency as a terror-inducing organisation is the fact that it lacked the
personnel effectively to enact central directives. At its peak, the Gestapo had only 30, 000
officers for the whole country. This meant in practice that large cities like Frankfurt or
Hamburg, with about half a million people, were policed by 40 50 agents. Lacking top
agents, the Gestapo coped by over-relying on the work of Kripo instead. In addition, most of
these were office workers and not field agents. The Gestapo officials were increasingly
bogged down in paperwork due to a highly bureaucratic system. Its activities were directed
more towards ordinary Germans although Hitler realised there were many amongst the elite
who were not committed to the regime. Hence, although the Gestapo concentrated on
repressing specific enemies the political left, Jews, and to a lesser extent, religious groups
and asocials, it did have its limitations as a repressive machine.

5. What evidence is there that the Gestapo were not alien institutions
imposed upon the German people?
The Gestapo did not impose a climate of terror among ordinary Germans. Instead it
concentrated its surveillance and repression on specific enemies of the state. However, the
meagre resources that the association possessed was greatly enhanced by co-operation and
support from the general public in Germany. Studies have revealed that over half, and in
some cases over 80% of Gestapo investigations stemmed from denunciations. This could
suggest that to the vast majority of the German people, the Gestapo was not an instrument
of terror but an organisation that facilitates the will of the people to rid political and racial
enemies of the state. Professor Gellately (in Gestapo and German Society, 1990) has shown
convincingly that most denunciations were inspired partly by political factors and mainly by
personal ones. The flood of denunciations contributed to the radicalisation of Gestapos
actions, increasingly leading to arbitrary arrest, preventive custody and torture. Hate, greed
and spite propagated the accusations more than Nazi faith. However, one could also argue
that these were the fundamental emotions Nazism fuelled in its followers, thus proving that
the support for the regime must not be underestimated in studying the mechanisms of
terror during the Third Reich.