wayweird

Geheimstaatpolizei?

What the hell is that? Looks German to me. Hang on, I’ll Google it.

Here it is. Yep, it’s German alright.

Geheimstaatpolizei is one of those ten mile long German words that translate into three or four English words.  In this case the English words are “Secret State Police”. The Germans must have thought Geheimstaatpolizei was a pretty big mouthful too, so they usually referred to it as the Gestapo. (Geheime Staats Polizei - get it?).

Oh! Oh!  The Gestapo! Anyone who has ever watched one of those old black and white World War II movies (or even Indiana Jones) knows about Hitler’s dreaded secret police.

I was curious because I just learned that on this date in 1936 the Gestapo became a law unto itself. On February 10, 1936, the Nazi Reichstag passed the ‘Gestapo Law’ which included the following paragraph: “Neither the instructions nor the affairs of the Gestapo will be open to review by the administrative courts.”

This meant the Gestapo was now above the law and there could be no legal appeal regarding anything it did. From this point forward it was totally possible for anyone to be arrested, interrogated and sent to a concentration camp for incarceration or summary execution, without any outside legal procedure.

Surprisingly, the Gestapo was a fairly small organization when you consider the impact it had on German society. At its zenith it retained only about 40,000 employees, including office personnel and the plain-clothes agents. What made the Gestapo so effective was its use of regular citizens as spies and informants who reported to a relatively small band of Gestapo agents. Those Nazis agents really knew how to network.

The problem for the average citizen was that no one ever knew for sure just who those informants were. Was the grocery clerk reporting to the secret police? Or was it the old lady across the street? Maybe a quiet co-worker at the next desk was an informant. Maybe it was even your child’s playmate.

The result was paranoia - fear ruled the day. Most people realized the requirement for self-censorship and usually refused to talk politics, unless they had something positive to say about the administration.

Anyone foolish enough to say something risky or tell an anti-Nazi joke (you know the type - people like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Mark Levine) in mixed company might get a knock on the door in the middle of the night or a tap on the shoulder while walking along the street. Then they disappeared.

Letters were also sent out demanding an appearance at No. 8 Prinz Albrecht Strasse, the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, to answer a few questions. (You know - something like an IRS audit.)  You had to go and…you usually had to stay.

Pedestrians strolling outside the Gestapo prison center in Berlin (the Columbia-Haus) reported that they could hear screaming coming from inside.

From the first day Hitler took power, the constant fear of arrest and indefinite confinement in the camps stripped the German people of their personal freedom and left them as subdued and reliably obedient subjects.

But even that was not enough. The Nazis wanted total control. They wanted the people to get their minds right. And so, in the same manner as they had eradicated their hated political enemies, they began a campaign to purge hated “unGerman” ideas. That effort started in May 1933 with book burnings.

So that’s your history lesson for the day.

Now you can just shake your heads and go about your business thinking, “Silly Germans. How did they end up like that? We’d never have secret police or burn books here. We’re safe in the USA!”

Well, if you don’t count pressure to conform to politically correct behavior on college campuses you might be right. If you don’t count laws against “hate” speech you might be right. If the push to eliminate conservative talk radio through the Fairness Doctrine comes to naught you may be right.

And if you forget the fact that the Internal Revenue’s Special Services Staff  has been known to target individuals with no known tax problems for audit simply because of their political activities you can rest easy.

I’m sure there were a lot of Germans who comforted themselves that way as well.

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