Decree on the appointment of a chief of the German police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior
The decree on the appointment of a chief of the German police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior of June 17, 1936 , announced in the Reichsgesetzblatt 1936 I, p. 487/488, provided the legal basis for the institutional bracketing of the NSDAP party office Reichsführer SS with that of the new established state office of a chief of the German police and was thus the temporary high point of the already well advanced merging of the SS apparatus with the police of the Weimar Republic to an instrument of total and arbitrary leadership power.
background
According to Art. 9 RV , the Reich Minister of the Interior only had general supervisory and legislative needs ("If there is a need to issue uniform regulations, the Reich has legislation on [...] the protection of public order and security .") And Reich executive powers (Art. 48 RV). The actual police sovereignty lay with the countries, which were also responsible for organization, deployment and service law. As a result of the process of political harmonization and the increasing, centralistically motivated shifting of competencies to the Reich ("Verreichisierung"), which the National Socialists pursued, Reich commissioners were also appointed to exercise the powers of the police in the federal states (see State Commissioner and Gauleiter Wagner in the Free State of Bavaria ). The conclusion of these efforts was the law on the rebuilding of the Reich of January 30, 1934, in the course of which the sovereign rights of the states and thus also the control over their police structures were transferred to the Reich. On November 1, 1934, the Reich Ministry of the Interior was also merged with the Prussian Ministry of the Interior.
The protracted negotiations between Reichsführer SS Himmler and Heydrich (Chief SD ), which were conducted extremely persistently due to disputes over competencies , and which called for the most extensive detachment of the police structures and their integration into the SS, as well as Minister Frick and his State Secretary Pfundtner , who called for the unconditional maintenance of the connection of the police to the internal administration and the preservation of the existing disciplinary and normative order, on the other hand, came to an end with the signing of the final compromise draft by Hitler .
Regulations and implications
The decree formed the state-sanctioned and functional-institutional basis for a further amalgamation of SS and police , which until then had only progressed in terms of personnel ( real union , instead of just personal union ) and led to a concentration of police power and responsibilities in one hand at the top of the empire, which the fathers of the Weimar constitution never intended (anti-federalist principle).
Himmler, who rose to the rank of State Secretary through the decree and was on an equal footing with the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and the Navy, succeeded in expanding his position further in the Reich Ministry of the Interior through several circulars. His originally intended position as representative of the minister for the police department was expanded in his absence to a general permanent deputy position with ministerial rights of disposal. Incidentally, Himmler's “personal and immediate” submission to the ministers was only of a formal nature, because as Reichsführer SS he was only accountable to Hitler.
When Himmler himself became Minister of the Interior on August 25, 1943, he dropped the addition “in the Reich Ministry of the Interior” in his official title.
literature
- Hans Buchheim, Martin Broszat , Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Helmut Krausnick: Anatomy of the SS state. dtv, 7th edition 1999, ISBN 3-423-30145-7 .