Free Gestapo by Edward Crankshaw Page B
Authors: Edward Crankshaw
They caught up in their wake millions who should have known better, and few stopped to ask whether an advance towards the promised land led by Goering and Goebbels and organized by Himmler and Heydrich could in cold blood be regarded as desirable. The fathomless German cynicism which separates absolutely political action from private morals was never more manifest than during the spring and summer of 1933. It prepared the way for all that was to come.
By autumn the new police were controlling the levers of a State organization which had been completely transformed. While Rudolf Diels, at the head of the infant Gestapo in Berlin, was conducting the fight for his owncareer in a welter of intrigue and violence, while the Gestapo itself was being used partly as a weapon in this fight, partly as a private weapon by Goering, partly to establish a dark, secret terror over Prussiaâwhich ran parallel with, but much deeper than, the spectacular terror of the S.A.âHimmler and Heydrich waited and planned in Munich.
With Daluege in Berlin they already had a hold on Prussia through their S.S. cohorts, now very much a power in the land, and infiltrating every Government office. And when in October, 1933, the last restraints to the Nazi revolution were finally broken down and Hitler became in effect dictator of the Reich, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to centralize the various police forces in their political aspects on the Himmler machine.
In the next three months this was done, and the German people fearfully watched the rise of a new star in their midstâuntil, in early 1934, Heinrich Himmler had become, step by step, Chief of Political Police throughout the whole of Germany, except in Prussia. Himmlerâs Political Police was modeled on Goeringâs Gestapoâbut with a difference: it was monolithic. It did not have to fight the S.S.âbecause it was the S.S. It could devote itself with single-mindedness to the task of smashing the S.A. and winning for itself the physical power upon which Hitler was to rest. It could devote itself to this task with all the more freedom since in the first year of the revolution the general political opposition had been brokenâlargely by the S.A.
But first Himmler had to conquer Prussia. He could not hope to smash Goering: the most he could do was to use him. Goering, too, wanted to smash the S.A. Thus there existed in the making an excellent arrangement for all. And in April, 1934, Himmler took over the running of the Prussian Gestapo and came with Heydrich to BerlinâHimmler in the Prinz Albrecht Strasse, Heydrich with his S.D. in the Wilhelmstrasse, the two buildings separated from each other by a pleasant garden.
Chapter 8
The End of the S.A.
It was the Army which gave Himmler his supreme opportunity. It was the Army, therefore, the proud, stiff-necked generals, who regarded Hitler as a distasteful necessityâfor it was Hitler alone who could give them a Germany in which they could prosperâwho must accept direct responsibility for the rule of the Gestapo in its final and irresistible form.
Nobody knows precisely what took place at the interviews between Himmler, Goering, and Hitler which preceded the announcement, made on April 10th, 1934, that Himmler was to be Deputy Chief of the Gestapo under Goering. Goering clearly did not give in without a struggle. The Gestapo was his personal creation, and Rudolf Diels his private agent. Without any authority at all beyond that of his own pleasure, he had detached the Gestapo from the Prussian Ministry of the Interior when he became Prime Minister of Prussia and retained it as his own personal preserve. Even when Himmler took over effective control, it was as Goeringâs Deputy. But there were two things which influenced Hitler, and one of them also had a strong appeal to Goering.
The first was that Himmler could show how throughout German security had been brought to a very high pitch of
By autumn the new police were controlling the levers of a State organization which had been completely transformed. While Rudolf Diels, at the head of the infant Gestapo in Berlin, was conducting the fight for his owncareer in a welter of intrigue and violence, while the Gestapo itself was being used partly as a weapon in this fight, partly as a private weapon by Goering, partly to establish a dark, secret terror over Prussiaâwhich ran parallel with, but much deeper than, the spectacular terror of the S.A.âHimmler and Heydrich waited and planned in Munich.
With Daluege in Berlin they already had a hold on Prussia through their S.S. cohorts, now very much a power in the land, and infiltrating every Government office. And when in October, 1933, the last restraints to the Nazi revolution were finally broken down and Hitler became in effect dictator of the Reich, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to centralize the various police forces in their political aspects on the Himmler machine.
In the next three months this was done, and the German people fearfully watched the rise of a new star in their midstâuntil, in early 1934, Heinrich Himmler had become, step by step, Chief of Political Police throughout the whole of Germany, except in Prussia. Himmlerâs Political Police was modeled on Goeringâs Gestapoâbut with a difference: it was monolithic. It did not have to fight the S.S.âbecause it was the S.S. It could devote itself with single-mindedness to the task of smashing the S.A. and winning for itself the physical power upon which Hitler was to rest. It could devote itself to this task with all the more freedom since in the first year of the revolution the general political opposition had been brokenâlargely by the S.A.
But first Himmler had to conquer Prussia. He could not hope to smash Goering: the most he could do was to use him. Goering, too, wanted to smash the S.A. Thus there existed in the making an excellent arrangement for all. And in April, 1934, Himmler took over the running of the Prussian Gestapo and came with Heydrich to BerlinâHimmler in the Prinz Albrecht Strasse, Heydrich with his S.D. in the Wilhelmstrasse, the two buildings separated from each other by a pleasant garden.
Chapter 8
The End of the S.A.
It was the Army which gave Himmler his supreme opportunity. It was the Army, therefore, the proud, stiff-necked generals, who regarded Hitler as a distasteful necessityâfor it was Hitler alone who could give them a Germany in which they could prosperâwho must accept direct responsibility for the rule of the Gestapo in its final and irresistible form.
Nobody knows precisely what took place at the interviews between Himmler, Goering, and Hitler which preceded the announcement, made on April 10th, 1934, that Himmler was to be Deputy Chief of the Gestapo under Goering. Goering clearly did not give in without a struggle. The Gestapo was his personal creation, and Rudolf Diels his private agent. Without any authority at all beyond that of his own pleasure, he had detached the Gestapo from the Prussian Ministry of the Interior when he became Prime Minister of Prussia and retained it as his own personal preserve. Even when Himmler took over effective control, it was as Goeringâs Deputy. But there were two things which influenced Hitler, and one of them also had a strong appeal to Goering.
The first was that Himmler could show how throughout German security had been brought to a very high pitch of