Summary Of The Gestapo

The Gestapo (Geheime Staats Polizei, or Secret State Police) was the Nazis' most productive instrument of dread. Its government agents were ubiquitous, its casualties subject to torment and mass extradition to the concentration camps. It appears to be a remarkable, that others conscious qualities could be unearthed from people who were associated with such an abhorrent group, yet that is one accomplishment of Frank McDonough's well researched book.

In the weeks before Nazi Germany’s impending doom, Hitler’s regime destroyed all kinds of incriminating evidence that the Allies might use in the inevitable court proceedings against the Nazi elite. Some of the records not destroyed by the Nazi were destroyed in the air raids by the allies, including

I personally found that despite his claim to portray himself as a myth-buster, I found this claim to be lacking and in most cases he was just translating the official

The author selects examples to provide a general on how the organisation operated, in maintaining law and order and to a great extent bullying citizens and groups such as the Catholics, communists, the Jews and other groups which the Nazi’s found as not suitable to live among the Volksgemeinschaft.

McDonough has the knack for picking the complex stories and, for example, when he writes about the policing process aimed at the banned KDP (Communists), he finds a vast groups of people, among them some who joined the Nazi movements or joined the Armed forces. Against his expectations, the dreaded Gestapo was somewhat gentle with some diehard Communists, and yet showed no mercy to others. The Gestapo ruthlessly pursued these and all the other “enemies of the states” with guided information from those who knew the victims, with shockingly accusation being levelled against them from their own family