Security Police [SD]
Sicherheitsdienst
The SD was the intelligence service of the 
. Membership in the SD was voluntary, and it had a membership of about 3,000 in 1943-45. The SD was the intelligence service of the during the years preceding the accession of the Nazis to power, though it became a much more important organization promptly thereafter. It had been developed into such a powerful and scientific espionage system under its chief, Reinhard Heydrich, that on 6/9/1934, just a few weeks before the bloody purge of the SA, it was made, by decree of Hess, the sole intelligence and counterintelligence agency of the entire Nazi Party.
The task of the SD, after it became the intelligence service for State and Party, was to obtain secret information concerning the actual and potential enemies of the Nazi leadership so that appropriate action could be taken to destroy or neutralize opposition. To accomplish this task, the SD created an organization of agents and informants operating out of various SD regional offices established throughout the Reich, and later in conjunction with the GESTAPO and Criminal Police throughout the occupied territories. The organization consisted of several hundred full-time agents whose work was supplemented by several thousand part-time informants. The SD investigated the loyalty and reliability of State officials, evaluating them by their complete devotion to Nazi ideology and the Hitler leadership. Behind the scenes, operating secretly, the SD, through its vast network of informants, spied upon the German people in their daily lives, on the streets, in the shops, and even within the sanctity of the churches.
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