The Gestapo: The Role Of Terror And Fear In Nazi Germany

813 Words4 Pages

The Gestapo
The terror and fear in Nazi Germany were contributed in by many factors, although most was the fear inflicted in by the secret Nazi police the Gestapo. The Gestapo was a mighty force to be reckoned with even with their small numbers. The secret police force the Gestapo was once the most powerful and most dangerous police force in the whole world because they had power outside of their organization with a secret network of information to rely on, they inflicted terror and control upon the citizens, and they were above the law so they could do whatever to the citizens without question and only had to answer to Hitler.

The Gestapo Born The secret organization the Gestapo was originally founded in April of 1933 by Herman Goring. …show more content…

The Gestapo's main purpose was to hunt those who were considered a threat to Nazi Germany like Jews, Homosexuals, and Jehovah Witnesses. After war broke out they were to hunt out Jews and get rid of the threat of resistance groups. Gestapo members played their parts in the Holocaust. Gestapo members hunted Jew that possibly escaped the gathering of their race. Gestapo also murdered ‘Prisoners of War' that were protected under the Geneva Convention (a series of treaties on the treatment of civilians, POW's and soldiers who are incapable of fighting. Interrogation methods the Gestapo used were drownings of prisoners in a bathtub filled with ice-cold water; electric shocks applied all over the body, crushing a man's testicles, beatings with rubber nightstick and cowhide whips, and burning flesh with matches or soldering …show more content…

The Gestapo had the power of arrest, interrogation, and incarceration. Stories were told of the things that happened at Albrecht Strasse, a street in Berlin, the capital of Germany, and where the headquarters of the secret police the Gestapo was located. What made the Gestapo so terrifying was that it placed people that weren’t even enemies or thought to be enemies under protective custody in concentration camps and they kept them there as long as they pleased. They were truly a group of evil individuals working for an even more evil system. The fact that the Gestapo were spread out almost everywhere and no one knew exactly who they were there was total fear in the community. As to say they weren't a group to be taken