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The Nazi Party in Power - State Terror

The Nazis employed all forms of terrorism. To quell opposition, they approved of espionage, lies, and chicanery in order to ruin every opponent or would-be opponent who might in the future become dangerous. They cast such fear over the Germans that they tremble at the mere shadow of a Nazi.

Following the Reichstag fire of February 1933, a state of emergency was declared on a permanent basis. It allowed the police to take political prisoners into "protective custody." The first concentration camp was opened in Germany, at Dachau, for political opponents of the Nazi regime. Herman Goering initiated a new secret police to root out opponents of the Nazi regime in Bavaria. In April 1933, it was named the Gestapo (Secret Police Office). Other political police were organized throughout Germany. They were gradually centralized under Heinrich Himmler and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich. In June 1936 Himmler was appointed Chief of German Police, with extraordinary powers. In September 1939 the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) was established to bring together the whole security apparatus of the State and the Nazi Party.

The Nazis immediately began to implement their vision of a new Germany - one that placed "Aryans" at the top of the hierarchy of races and ranked Jews, Gypsies, and blacks as racial inferiors. Under the July 1933 "Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Defects," physicians sterilized against their will an unknown number of Gypsies, part-Gypsies, and Gypsies in mixed marriages. Similarly, under the "Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals" of November 1933, the police arrested many Gypsies along with others the Nazis viewed as "asocials" - prostitutes, beggars, chronic alcoholics, and homeless vagrants - and imprisoned them in concentration camps.

Between 1933 and 1939 well over 200,000 Germans were imprisoned for political crimes. In the latter year over 150,000 Germans were in "protective custody" without trial. Already in 1936 The intelligent traveler's guide to Germany spoke of "camps to which German citizens are sent without trial for indefinite detention, where they are forced to endure every degree of privation and cruelty that sadistically minded keepers can invent.... the Oranienburg near Berlin; Dachau (Bavaria), Heuber (Upper Baden), Kieslau (near Bruchsal, Baden), Rastatt (Baden), Bad Durrheim (Baden), Pfalz, Muhlheim (Rhine), Hohenstein (Saxony), Ortenstein (Zwickau, Saxony), Zittau (Saxony), Ohrduf (Thuringia), Sonnenburg (Prussia), Sennelager (Paderborn), Esterwegen (Westphalia), Wilsede (Luneberger Heide), Konigstein (Saxony)."

In any consideration of the crushing of opposition, the massacre of the 30th June, 1934, must not be forgotten. It has become known as the " Roehm Purge " or " the blood bath ", and revealed the methods which Hitler and his immediate associates, including the defendant Goering, were ready to employ to strike down all opposition and consolidate their power. On that day Roehm, the Chief of Staff of the SA since 1931, was murdered by Hitler's orders, and the " Old Guard " of the SA was massacred without trial and without warning. The opportunity was taken to murder a large number of people who at one time or another had opposed Hitler.

The ostensible ground for the murder of Roehm was that he was plotting to overthrow Hitler, and the defendant Goering gave evidence that knowledge of such a plot had come to his ears. Whether this was so or not it is not necessary to determine. On July 3rd the Cabinet approved Hitler's action and described it as " legitimate self-defence by the State."

Shortly afterwards Hindenburg died, and Hitler became both Reich President and Chancellor. At the Nazi-dominated plebiscite, which followed, 38 million Germans expressed their approval, and with the Reichswehr taking the oath of allegiance to the Fuehrer, full power was now in Hitler's hands.

Germany had accepted the Dictatorship with all its methods of terror, and its cynical and open denial of the rule of law.

The “Nacht und Nebel” (“night and fog”) principle, which meant complete blackout about the fate of the victim, illustrates just one of the terror techniques practiced by the Nazis. In the execution of Hitler's decree of " Night and Fog" (Nacht und Nebel), civilians of occupied territories who had been accused of crimes of resistance against occupying forces were spirited away for secret trial by certain Special Courts of the Justice Ministry within the Reich, in the course of which the victims' whereabouts, trial, and subsequent disposition were kept completely secret, thus serving the dual purpose of terrorising the victims' relatives and associates and barring recourse to any evidence, witnesses, or counsel for defence.

Persons placed in Politische Schutzhaft (Political Custody) were those considered to be enemies of the State or otherwise undesirable, but who cannot be convicted of any crime. By means of the Notverordnung des Reichsprisidenten zum. Schutz von Volk und Staat (Emergency Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State) of 28 Feb 1933, the basic laws of the Weimar Constitution and, specifically, the right of personal freedom were suspended. The suspension of this right, along with an order of the Reich Minister of the Interior dated 25 Jan 1938, form the basis of Politische Schutzhaft.

A decree of 7 Dec 1941 (Keitel Erlass) outlined the procedure for handling individuals committing acts against the Reich or the Occupying Forces. Offences dealt with under this decree are sabotage, espionage, communist intrigues, activities which create unrest, giving aid to the enemy or unauthorised posssion of weapons, and the death penalty was decreed for all non-German civilians charged with any of these crimes. Speed in dealing with the offenders was stressed. throughout the decree and the offenders were punished in the occupied territory only if the death penalty could be meted out without delay. If this could not be done within one week of apprehension, the accused was transferred to Germany proper. Offenders brought to the Reich were, in many instances committed to Konzentrationslager [Concentration Camps - (officially abbreviated to KL but popularly referred to as KZ], where they were known as NN-Haftlinge (Nacht und Nebel) inmates.

The number of KLs in Germany has been estimated at various times during 1941, 1942 and 1943 to total Prom about fifteen to seventy-five, although, a total of more then a hundred camp sites has been reported. The capacity of KLs in Germany was thought to be about 500,000. A report, dated October 1943, concerning the camps in Poland, spoke of the existence of 109 camps in that country.

Unconfirmed reports estimated the number of Germans who had been inmates at various times during the years 1933 to 1944 to be between 750,000 and 1,300,000. Records showed that the camp at WATZWEILER had at one time housed approximately 25,000 inmates. The number of KL inmates in Germany proper at the end of the War was generally estimated to total between 300,000 and 500,000. Of this number, a high percentage were "pure" Germans, as defined by Nazi law.

"They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist," said Pastor Martin Niemoller, a former U-boat commander who had once briefly supported the Nazis but eventually spent four years in Dachau. "Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up."