The Gestapo: The Myth and Reality of Hitler's Secret Police

by Frank McDonough

Overview

Written with access to previously unpublished records, this is the fullest and most definitive account available on Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo. The book illustrates how, despite its material constraints, this group was able to extend its reach widely and quickly by manipulating and colluding with the general public during World War II, making ordinary German citizens complicit in the rendition of their associates, friends, colleagues, and neighbors. Though it was a powerful institution, it was not an all-powerful institution, and McDonough also relates the fascinating and underreported accounts of a cross-section of ordinary and extraordinary people who opposed the Nazi regime and its oppressive governance.

The Gestapo will provide a chilling new doorway into the everyday life of the Third Reich and give powerful testimony from the victims of Nazi terror, while also challenging popular myths about the Gestapo and its inner workings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781510714656
Publisher:	Skyhorse
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Professor Frank McDonough is an internationally renowned expert on the Third Reich. He studied history at Balliol College, Oxford and gained a PhD from Lancaster University. He is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including The Origins of the First and Second World Wars and Hitler, Chamberlain and Appeasement. He has appeared on several TV and radio programs on the BBC, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and the History Channel. He currently lives in Liverpool, England.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Becoming the Gestapo 11

Chapter 2 Gestapo Men and Methods 43

Chapter 3 Policing Religious Faith 60

Chapter 4 Hunting the Communists 93

Chapter 5 Denounce Thy Neighbour 130

Chapter 6 The Racial War against the 'Social Outsiders' 160

Chapter 7 Persecuting the Jews 191

Chapter 8 The Gestapo on Trial 224

Notes 253

Glossary of German Terms and Organisations 272

Sources and Bibliography 274

List of Illustrations 296

Acknowledgments 298

Index 301

Editorial Reviews

2016-12-07
A new look at Hitler's secret state police as a smaller crack force than is widely known, relying on the work of German citizen informers. A historian specializing in World War II and the Third Reich, McDonough (Sophie Scholl: Heroine of the German Resistance, 2009, etc.) offers a nuanced study of the Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo, which by 1939 had merged the various police forces for Nazi Germany and was empowered with rooting out subversive and "anti-social" elements. The author reminds us that the galvanizing force in the initial creation of the Gestapo was Hitler's need to suppress forces of communism in the government, and four key figures would achieve control over all of the security services: Hermann Göring and Rudolf Diels in Prussia and Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich in Bavaria. McDonough delineates how the "Night of the Long Knives" of June 30, 1934, brutally eliminated any opposition to the Gestapo, including the murder of Ernst Röhm, leader of the storm troopers. Under the directorship of Heinrich Müller, the Gestapo proceeded with lethal efficiency, enlisting for its officers the most educated men, such as law graduates, and offering quick promotion of young people, which "gave the regime its energetic radicalism." The rank-and-file members were lower-class career policemen and not necessarily avid members of the Nazi Party. After sketching the makeup of the organization, the author then delves into the victims of the secret police force who posed a danger to the state and its increasingly draconian racial laws. The victims included religious objectors, mostly Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses (Protestants and Evangelicals tended to be pro-Nazi); communists, who had been the passionate voice of the German industrial working class in the Weimar era; "social outsiders" such as criminals and homosexuals; and such "racial enemies" as Gypsies and Jews. McDonough devotes an entire chilling chapter to the makeup of the informers, who were mostly middle- and upper-class citizens. A well-researched book that clarifies many misconceptions.

Kirkus Reviews

In this thoroughly researched and elegantly written book, Frank McDonough confronts decades of myth-making to uncover the complex realities of Hitler's notorious secret police. The Gestapo is as surprising as it is illuminating, and it sets a new standard for this vitally important subject.” — Roger Moorhouse, best-selling author of Berlin at War

“A new look at Hitler's secret state police as a smaller crack force than is widely known . . . a nuanced study of the Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo . . . A well-researched book that clarifies many misconceptions"—Kirkus

From the Publisher