Creating the Police State

The SS (Schutzstaffel — 'Protection Squad') was the Nazi regime's most powerful police and ideological institution. First, it was founded in 1925 as Hitler's small personal bodyguard, separate from the SA; Heinrich Himmler became Reichsführer-SS in January 1929 and built it up — members wore black uniforms with the silver Totenkopf (skull) insignia and swore personal loyalty to Hitler. Second, the decisive turning-point was the Night of the Long Knives (30 June 1934) when the SS executed the purge of Röhm and the SA leadership; in return the SS became independent of the SA and the dominant Nazi police organisation. Third, by the late 1930s the SS had several branches: Allgemeine SS (political/police), Death's Head Units (Totenkopfverbände) running the concentration camps under Eicke, the Verfügungstruppe (militarised, future Waffen-SS), the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) intelligence service under Heydrich, and from 1936 the Gestapo. Fourth, by 1939 the SS was effectively a parallel state with its own military, police, courts and economic enterprises — operating beyond normal legal control and forming the core of the wartime SS state that would build the Holocaust.

The People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) was the most notorious of the Nazi-controlled courts. First, it was established in April 1934 after the German Supreme Court had acquitted three of the Reichstag Fire defendants, embarrassing the regime; Hitler ordered a new court to handle treason and political offences. Second, its procedures stripped away normal legal protections: no juries (three judges and two lay assessors chosen for Nazi loyalty), no appeal to higher courts, and defendants were often denied effective legal representation. Third, it conducted show trials with predetermined outcomes — most famously after Roland Freisler became its President in 1942, when it tried the July 1944 conspirators against Hitler in hysterical, theatrical sessions. Fourth, the People's Court passed over 5,000 death sentences by 1945; it was the visible legal face of Nazi terror, demonstrating that the regime could present its political murders as the work of a 'court'. It was complemented by the Special Courts (Sondergerichte) and SS courts — together a parallel legal system serving regime control.

The Nazi concentration camp system grew from chaotic improvisation in early 1933 to a rationalised network of SS-run camps by 1939, housing around 25,000 prisoners and providing the regime with its most physical instrument of terror. The system was the work of the SS under Himmler and the model camp commandant Theodor Eicke. The chaotic first months (1933). The system began with the wave of arrests following the Reichstag Fire Decree (28 February 1933). The first camps were makeshift — set up in old factories, prisons, barracks and warehouses, run by the SA. Conditions were chaotic and brutal; many prisoners died from beatings or arbitrary execution. The most notorious of these early SA-run camps included Oranienburg (near Berlin) and Heuberg (in Württemberg). The Reichstag Fire Decree provided the legal cover; the SA provided the manpower; thousands of communist, social democrat and trade-union activists disappeared into them. Dachau and the SS model (March 1933 onwards). The decisive change came with Dachau, opened on 22 March 1933 near Munich by Himmler in his capacity as Munich Chief of Police. Dachau became the model for the wider SS camp system: barbed-wire perimeters, watchtowers, prisoner uniforms with coloured triangles, SS guard companies, and a brutal disciplinary code. Its commandant was Theodor Eicke, who developed the 'Disciplinary and Punishment Regulations' (October 1933) — codifying the use of beatings, solitary confinement, hanging by the wrists and execution as 'official' punishments. After the Night of the Long Knives (June 1934) the SS took over all camps from the SA; Eicke became Inspector of Concentration Camps and head of the SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head Units). The model was now applied across Germany. Expansion 1933-1939. After 1934 the system was rationalised and expanded: Sachsenhausen (1936, near Berlin), Buchenwald (1937, near Weimar), Mauthausen (1938, in annexed Austria, for the harshest category of prisoner), Flossenbürg (1938, Bavaria), and Ravensbrück (1939, the main camp for women, near Berlin), plus many smaller satellite and labour camps. By 1939 the system held about 25,000 prisoners. Categories of prisoners. Prisoners were classified by coloured triangles on their uniforms: red for political prisoners (the original category — communists, social democrats, churchmen, dissidents), pink for homosexuals, black for 'asocials' (vagrants, alcoholics, the unemployed, Roma), purple for Jehovah's Witnesses (who refused military service or the Nazi oath), green for criminals, and (from 1939) yellow for Jews — often a yellow triangle on top of another colour. The breadth of categories reveals the Nazi state's expanding sense of who its enemies were. Conditions and function. Life in the camps was designed to dehumanise and destroy: forced labour in stone quarries (Mauthausen), brickworks (Sachsenhausen), and road construction; starvation rations; arbitrary punishment, torture and executions; cold, disease and exhaustion killed thousands. The pre-war camps had several functions: terror against opponents (breaking communist and socialist networks); re-education and intimidation (short-term sentences designed to terrify and silence); public deterrent (camps were publicly known and used to discourage dissent); and from 1937 onwards labour exploitation in SS-owned enterprises (quarries, brickworks). Public knowledge. Crucially, the camps were publicly known. They were mentioned in Nazi newspapers, in regime speeches, in everyday conversation. Germans knew people were sent there. The shock was selective — torture and arbitrary brutality were less widely reported — but the existence of the camps was a deliberate part of the regime's deterrent strategy. The 1933 newspaper photographs of prisoners marching into Dachau under SS guard were part of a calculated public-relations effort: showing terror as 're-education through work'. The seed of the SS state. The pre-war camps held around 25,000 prisoners in 1939 — modest compared to the wartime figures (over 700,000 by 1945) but central to building the SS as an institution. The Death's Head Units learned techniques of mass coercion; the SS bureaucracy mastered logistics; commandants like Eicke trained the next generation of camp commanders. When the war began in 1939, the system was ready to expand massively: Auschwitz was founded in June 1940 and would later become the central extermination camp from 1942. The pre-war camps were therefore the seed of the SS state — and ultimately of the Holocaust. The wider point. The camps were the most concrete instrument of Nazi terror. Other institutions (Gestapo, courts) operated on paper or through legal procedures; the camps were physical, visible, and known. They made the threat of opposition material rather than abstract. By making the cost of resistance publicly clear — disappearance into a barbed-wire enclosure run by SS Death's Head Units — they deterred most Germans from any active opposition. They were terror at its most physical, and they worked.

Many Germans denounced others to the Gestapo for three connected reasons. First, denunciations came from genuine ideological belief and approval of the regime. Millions of Germans supported Hitler and the Nazi project; they regarded those who opposed it — communists, social democrats, Jews, religious dissenters — as enemies of the nation. To denounce a neighbour for telling an anti-Hitler joke or hiding a Jew felt like loyalty to the Führer, not betrayal. Goebbels' propaganda had cultivated this view through press, radio, cinema and Nazi rituals; many Germans had internalised the regime's enemies as their own. Second, denunciations were driven by personal motives that had little to do with politics. Robert Gellately's research on Würzburg and Düsseldorf shows that business rivals denounced competitors to take over their shops or customers; neighbours denounced neighbours over disputes about boundaries, noise or property; family members denounced each other in marital disputes or over inheritances; employees and employers used denunciations against each other in workplace conflicts. The regime gave Germans a powerful new weapon for their private quarrels — and many used it. Often the political charge was a pretext for a personal grievance. Third, denunciations were sometimes acts of self-protection or material gain. Germans denounced others to deflect suspicion from themselves (better to be the accuser than the accused); to take over a denounced Jew's business, flat or possessions (especially after 1938); to gain career advantage by appearing politically reliable; or to avoid the risk of being denounced first for not reporting suspicious behaviour. The regime cultivated a culture in which silence about a 'crime' was itself suspicious. Together — ideological belief, private grudges, and self-protection or gain — these reasons explain why ordinary Germans contributed about half of all Gestapo cases through voluntary denunciations. The Gestapo's modest size (~7,000 officers in 1939) made this collaboration essential to its effectiveness. The disturbing implication is that the Nazi police state was sustained not by a vast army of secret agents but by mass voluntary participation by ordinary Germans — a finding that has reshaped how historians understand the regime.

The SS was hugely important in the Nazi control of Germany between 1933 and 1939 — it became the dominant police institution after the Night of the Long Knives, ran the concentration camps, controlled the Gestapo from 1936, and operated effectively as a parallel state — but it was not the only or even the most important means of control. Propaganda, popular consent, denunciations, economic recovery and the courts also mattered. The fairest verdict is that the SS was the most important coercive institution, while consent and propaganda were the most important sources of compliance. Both were needed; the SS was decisive at the margins. The case that the SS was decisive. First, the SS became the dominant police institution of the regime. After the Night of the Long Knives (30 June 1934), in which the SS purged the SA leadership including Röhm, the SS was made independent of the SA and grew into a parallel state. Under Himmler (Reichsführer-SS) and Heydrich (deputy and head of SD/Gestapo), it absorbed the Gestapo in 1936 and combined SD, Gestapo and Criminal Police into the RSHA in 1939. By 1939 the SS controlled the regime's coercive apparatus. Second, the SS ran the concentration camp system. The Death's Head Units under Theodor Eicke administered Dachau (March 1933), Sachsenhausen (1936), Buchenwald (1937), Mauthausen (1938) and Ravensbrück (1939); around 25,000 prisoners by 1939. The camps were the most visible and physical instrument of Nazi terror. Without the SS, the camp system would not have existed in its disciplined, expanding form. Third, the SS controlled the Gestapo from 1936. Heydrich's operational control turned the Gestapo into an SS instrument; its powers of 'protective custody' (Schutzhaft) and torture without legal review meant the SS effectively could disappear opponents. Fourth, the SS eliminated the regime's last internal rivals. The Night of the Long Knives eliminated Röhm and the SA threat; murdered Schleicher, Strasser, Edgar Jung and Catholic priests; and demonstrated that even the conservative right could be killed. The SS was Hitler's loyal instrument when no one else could be trusted. Fifth, the SS provided the ideological core of the regime. Himmler built the SS on racial selection — members had to prove Aryan ancestry, marry approved women, and produce 'racially pure' children. The SS became the model of the future Nazi society, the institutional embodiment of regime ideology, and the future engine of the Holocaust. Without the SS, the regime's racial project could not have been carried out. The case that other factors were also crucial. First, propaganda and Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry secured genuine popular support. The Ministry (founded 13 March 1933) controlled press, radio, cinema, art and education; the 1936 Berlin Olympics displayed Nazi Germany as modern and successful; Hitler's foreign-policy triumphs (Rhineland 1936, Anschluss 1938, Munich 1938) generated mass approval. Many Germans backed Hitler not because of SS terror but because they approved of his actions. Second, economic recovery generated consent. Unemployment fell from 6 million in January 1933 to under 1 million by 1938; public-works programmes (autobahns) and rearmament put workers back to work; Strength Through Joy (KdF) leisure activities reached millions. Workers who had hated the Republic in 1932 supported the regime that delivered jobs. Third, denunciations from ordinary Germans were essential to SS/Gestapo effectiveness. About half of all Gestapo cases came from voluntary information; the modest size of the Gestapo (~7,000 officers) would have been ineffective without mass voluntary collaboration. The SS was an instrument of terror, but it could not have operated without consent expressed through denunciation. Fourth, the legal system Nazified itself willingly: judges removed Jewish/political colleagues, swore loyalty to Hitler, and applied law 'in the spirit of National Socialism'. The People's Court (1934) and Special Courts tried political offences. The SS did not work alone; the legal system gave its terror a respectable facade. Fifth, the state apparatus and conservative elite collaborated. Civil servants, churchmen, industrialists and academics largely went along; self-coordination ran ahead of forced coordination. The regime did not have to force compliance from these groups. Sixth, active resistance was rare — the White Rose, Bonhoeffer, the July 1944 plot were tiny exceptions. Most Germans were not waiting to be terrorised into compliance; they were already broadly compliant. Weighing and comparing. The SS was the most important coercive institution of the regime: it absorbed the police, ran the camps, eliminated rivals, embodied ideology and provided the engine that would later build the Holocaust. As an institution it was unmatched in importance among the regime's instruments of control. But it was not the only means of control. Most Germans complied because of consent (propaganda, economic recovery, shared prejudices), not because of direct SS pressure. Denunciations from ordinary Germans were essential to the SS's operational effectiveness. The legal system gave its terror a respectable form. The SS was therefore decisive at the margins — handling those who would not comply voluntarily — while consent handled the majority. The two reinforced each other: the SS made dissent suicidal, while consent meant most Germans had no impulse to dissent in the first place. Overall judgement. The SS was hugely important in the Nazi control of Germany between 1933 and 1939 — perhaps the most important single institutional instrument of the regime. It controlled the police, ran the camps, eliminated rivals and embodied the regime's ideology. In this sense the statement (implicit in the question) that the SS was decisive has real force. But the SS alone did not control Germany. Most Germans were controlled by consent, propaganda, economic recovery and self-policing, not by SS coercion; the SS was needed only at the edges to handle those who would not comply voluntarily. The fairest verdict is that the SS was the most important coercive institution, but consent was the most important source of compliance. The two worked together: terror at the margins gave consent its sting; consent kept the SS's task small enough for its modest manpower to handle. The Nazi state by 1939 was therefore both an SS state and a consenting state — and the disturbing combination of the two was what made it so effective.

The Nazis did not abolish the German legal system — they took it over and remade it as an instrument of regime control. Between 1933 and 1939 the judiciary was Nazified, parallel courts were created, racial law was codified, and increasingly the system was bypassed altogether by Gestapo arrest. The legal facade remained, but the substance was now Nazi power. Nazifying the judiciary (April 1933). The first decisive step was the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (7 April 1933), which removed Jewish judges, lawyers and court officials from their posts, along with political opponents (communists, social democrats). In some districts around 30% of judges lost their jobs. Replacements were Nazi sympathisers or judges willing to take the new oath of personal loyalty to Hitler. Lawyers' organisations. The independent legal profession was destroyed. The German Lawyers' Front (Bund Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Juristen) trained lawyers in Nazi ideology; the Reichsanwaltskammer (Reich Lawyers' Chamber) regulated all legal practice; Jewish lawyers were banned from practice (with limited exceptions until 1938, then completely). Lawyers were instructed that defending political opponents of the regime was 'un-German'. Instructing the courts. Judges were instructed to apply law 'in the spirit of National Socialism' — meaning where the law was unclear, they should rule in favour of the regime. This produced a remarkable judicial pliancy: judges enforced increasingly extreme Nazi laws (anti-Jewish, anti-communist, anti-religious) as if they were ordinary statutes. The 'spirit of National Socialism' formula gave Nazi ideology priority over written law. The People's Court (April 1934). The most notorious new institution was the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof), set up in April 1934 after the German Supreme Court had acquitted three of the Reichstag Fire defendants — an embarrassment that Hitler decided would not be repeated. Features: tried treason and political offences; three judges and two lay assessors chosen for Nazi loyalty; no juries; no appeal; show trials with predetermined outcomes; defendants often denied effective legal representation. After Roland Freisler became its President in 1942, trials became hysterical theatre, most famously of the July 1944 conspirators. By 1945 the People's Court had passed over 5,000 death sentences. Special Courts (Sondergerichte). Alongside the People's Court were the Special Courts — set up in 1933 to try political offences quickly. They operated without juries, without appeal, and with summary procedures. By 1939 they had handled tens of thousands of cases. Nuremberg Laws (15 September 1935). The Nuremberg Laws — the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour — codified racial persecution in law. Jews were stripped of German citizenship and reduced to 'subjects'; marriage and sexual relations between Jews and 'Aryans' were criminalised. The legal system enforced these laws rigorously; their codification marked the beginning of legalised racial persecution that would culminate in the Holocaust. SS courts. The SS, increasingly a parallel state, established its own courts for SS members, operating outside the regular system. SS personnel were tried under SS law, not state law — meaning the regime's racial elite was effectively immune from normal legal control. Bypassing the law: Gestapo arrest. Increasingly large parts of repression occurred entirely outside the legal system. The Gestapo had the power of 'protective custody' (Schutzhaft) — arrest without charge or trial and dispatch to a concentration camp; from 1936 the courts could not review Gestapo decisions. Many of the regime's victims (communists, social democrats, Jehovah's Witnesses) never appeared before any court — they were simply taken into custody and disappeared into the camp system. The pliancy of judges. The most disturbing feature of the Nazi legal takeover was that most German judges complied willingly. Their reasons varied: career protection, conservative-nationalist sympathy with the destruction of the left, anti-Semitic prejudice, sheer fear. There was no organised judicial resistance. The result was that Nazi rule could be presented as 'legal'. The 'legal revolution' worked because judges enforced it. Only a handful of judges resigned in protest; many actively volunteered enthusiasm. The combined effect. By 1939 the German legal system had been transformed: Jewish and political judges removed; Nazi loyalty oaths imposed; People's Court and Special Courts created; Nuremberg Laws enforced; SS courts parallel to state courts; large parts of repression handled outside the legal system altogether by Gestapo arrest. Yet the appearance of legality remained: courts existed, judges sat, trials were held, sentences were passed, laws were promulgated. This appearance was crucial — it gave the regime its 'legal revolution' propaganda, allowed the state apparatus to function without crisis of conscience, and permitted international recognition. The wider point. The Nazi takeover of the courts demonstrates the regime's most distinctive technique: not abolishing institutions but capturing them. By removing 'unreliable' personnel, imposing oaths, creating parallel courts and bypassing the system through Gestapo arrest, the Nazis turned the legal system into an instrument of regime control while preserving the appearance of law. Hitler had used the law to destroy the law. The disturbing result was a dictatorship that could claim legality even as it became one of the most lawless regimes in modern history.