This represented a radical departure from German tradition, which held that law enforcement was (mostly) a Land (state) and local matter. Göring took over the Gestapo in 1934 and urged Hitler to extend the agency's authority throughout Germany.

Göring outflanked him by removing the Prussian political and intelligence departments from the state interior ministry. In late 1933, the Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick wanted to integrate all the police forces of the German states under his control. Diels was best known as the primary interrogator of Marinus van der Lubbe after the Reichstag fire. Diels was appointed with the title of chief of Abteilung Ia (Department 1a) of the Prussian Secret Police. The first commander of the Gestapo was Rudolf Diels, a protégé of Göring. Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring at the meeting to formally hand over control of the Gestapo (Berlin, 1934) He originally wanted to name it the Secret Police Office ( Geheimes Polizeiamt), but the German initials, 'GPA', were too similar to those of the Soviet State Political Directorate ( Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie, or GPU). On 26 April 1933, Göring merged the two units as the Geheime Staatspolizei, which was abbreviated by a post office clerk for a franking stamp and became known as the 'Gestapo'. Soon afterward, Göring detached the political and intelligence sections from the police and filled their ranks with Nazis. This gave Göring command of the largest police force in Germany. After the war ended, the Gestapo was declared a criminal organisation by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the Nuremberg trials, and several top Gestapo members were sentenced to death.Īfter Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Hermann Göring-future commander of the Luftwaffe and the number two man in the Nazi Party-was named Interior Minister of Prussia. During World War II, the Gestapo played a key role in the Holocaust. Contrary to popular perception, the Gestapo was actually a relatively small organization with limited surveillance capacity despite this the Gestapo proved extremely effective due to the willingness of ordinary Germans to snitch on fellow citizens. Those arrested by the Gestapo were often held without judicial process, and political prisoners throughout Germany-and from 1941, throughout the occupied territories under the Night and Fog Decree ( German: Nacht und Nebel)-simply disappeared while in Gestapo custody. The power of the Gestapo was used to focus upon political opponents, ideological dissenters (clergy and religious organisations), career criminals, the Sinti and Roma population, handicapped persons, homosexuals, and above all, the Jews. The Gestapo committed widespread atrocities during its existence.

It became known as Amt (Dept) 4 of the RSHA and was considered a sister organisation to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD Security Service). From 27 September 1939, it was administered by the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). Instead of being exclusively a Prussian state agency, the Gestapo became a national one as a sub-office of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo Security Police). On 20 April 1934, oversight of the Gestapo passed to the head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), Heinrich Himmler, who was also appointed Chief of German Police by Hitler in 1936. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organisation. 'Secret State Police'), abbreviated Gestapo ( / ɡ ə ˈ s t ɑː p oʊ/ gə- STAH-poh, German: ( listen)), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The Geheime Staatspolizei ( German pronunciation: ( listen) transl.

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