GESTAPO

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• The Gestapo was Nazi Germnay's secret police and is a contraction of the words "Geheime Staatspolizei" or State Secret Police.
• It was formed in April 1933 and headed by Hermann Göring initially and then from 1934 by Heinhich Himmler.
• The Gestapo had the authority to investigate cases of treason, espionage, sabotage and criminal attacks on the Nazi Party and Germany.

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• The basic Gestapo law passed by the government in 1936 gave the Gestapo carte blanche to operate without judicial oversight.
• The Gestapo was specifically exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws.
• A further law passed later in the year gave the Gestapo responsibility for setting up and administering concentration camps.

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• The power of the Gestapo most open to misuse was called Schutzhaft – "protective custody", a euphemism for the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings.
• An oddity of the system was that the prisoner had to sign his own Schutzhaftbefehl, an order declaring that the person had requested imprisonment – presumably out of fear of personal harm (which, in a way, was true)
• In addition, thousands of political prisoners throughout Germany – and from 1941, throughout the occupied territories under the Night and Fog Decree – simply disappeared while in Gestapo custody.

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• The Gestapo also maintained offices at all Nazi concentration camps, held an office on the staff of the SS and Police Leaders, and supplied personnel as needed to formations such as the Einsatzgruppen.
• The Einsatzgruppen were paramilitary death squads which for example in Poland ensured that Jews were rounded up and put in ghettoes, or oversaw killings/massacres.
• In 1997, Cologne transformed the former regional Gestapo headquarters in Cologne—the EL-DE Haus—into a museum to document the Gestapo's actions.

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• 32000 members
• Formed on April 26th 1933
• Formed by the SS officers