Secret State Police Office Karlsruhe

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Secret State Police Office Karlsruhe (Gestapa Karlsruhe) was the state police institution in Baden , which was proclaimed by the State Criminal Police Act of August 22, 1933. The Secret State Police Office was initially conceived as part of the State Criminal Police Office, but soon broke out of this institutional grip as an independent organ of the Secret State Police (Gestapo).

Reason

After the states of the German Reich had rejected the Reich Criminal Law of July 21, 1922 ( RGBl. I, p. 593, 1922), the Baden Minister of the Interior regulated the establishment of a state police office in Baden by decree of December 2, 1922. It was officially subordinate to the Baden Minister of the Interior. Organizationally, the headquarters of the State Police Office was assigned to the Karlsruhe Police Directorate. This directorate was renamed on February 4, 1932 in Police Headquarters Karlsruhe.

Nazi seizure of power by the police in Baden

On March 8, 1933, the Minister of the Interior appointed Wilhelm Frick Robert Wagner to Reich Commissioner for bathing. A day later, Wagner had around 3,000 SA and SS units march in front of the Baden Ministry of the Interior on Karlsruhe's Schlossplatz . The interior minister of Baden, Karl Pflaumer , who was newly appointed by Wagner , thus also became personnel officer for the Baden police and security service. He immediately initiated a wave of layoffs at the management level of the police in Karlsruhe. Hanns Ludin was appointed provisional police chief in Karlsruhe, replacing Karl Haußer (1880–1960). The chief of the regulatory police , Major Erich Blankenhorn was replaced by Wagner's favorite Major Franz Vaterrodt.

Furthermore, the head of the gendarmerie Rudolf Jung, the technical director of the Karlsruhe police Julius Krauth and the director of the police school Julius La Fontaine lost their posts. On March 30, the police officers continued to be dismissed, the reason being that they no longer had the necessary qualifications . At the level of commissioners and sergeants, however, only those who had actively campaigned against the representatives of the NSDAP were dismissed . The majority of the police officers were left in the police force by the new Nazi leadership. At the same time as the political cleansing of the management level, the police at the team and subordinate level were quickly nazified by newly hired SA and SS men.

Effects of the Nazi organization

With Wagner's order of March 28, the first changes to the organizational restructuring of the State Police Office came into effect. The Ordnungspolizei was renamed the Schutzpolizei. The state police office became the state criminal police office. The Secret State Police Office emerged from Department N, which among others had the task of a police intelligence collection point. On April 18, 1933, Wagner issued a sovereign ordinance (Badisches Gesetz- und Verordnungsblatt 1933, pp. 69 and 141) that the Baden criminal police lose their organizational special position, which had existed since July 17, 1879, on August 1 and September 1, 1933, respectively would.

After some deliberations on the organization and competencies, the State Ministry promulgated the Law on the State Criminal Police (Landeskriminalpolizeigesetz) of August 22, 1933. An ordinance on the Secret State Police Office of August 26, 1933 regulated the detailed organization and areas of responsibility. It turned out that a double designation was planned, resulting from the designation of the State Criminal Police Office - Secret State Police Office . The regulation according to § 1 of this ordinance provided that the State Criminal Police Office, as the Secret State Police Office, should perform tasks of the political police in Baden. In § 2 the A tasks of the Secret State Police Office were specified:

For the entire Baden state territory, the office was to perform tasks as a news collection point for the political police. These messages should be recorded quickly and reliably , as far as political processes and events for the existence of the state and state security were affected or public security and order were endangered. In particular, subversive or subversive activities should be researched and combated. Among them was listed:

  • treasonous or treasonous aspirations
  • Betrayal or spying on military secrets
  • political violence
  • Crimes and offenses against the law against the criminal and public dangerous use of explosives

Furthermore, the office was instructed to carry out persecution measures within the framework of the emergency ordinance of the Reich President of February 18, 1933, as provided for in the Ordinance of the Reich President for the Protection of the German People and the Ordinance of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State ("Reichstag Fire Ordinance "). Thus the office of the political police passed over to an instrument of the Nazi dictatorship with which the basic constitutional rights of the citizens were systematically eliminated.

The Gestapo split off from the criminal police

This dual nature of the new institution soon broke up, however. Wagner had soothingly downplayed such a development in a conversation with the Baden Minister of Justice on July 24, 1933, when he appointed ex-public prosecutor and district court counselor Paul Werner to head the state criminal police office. But on October 1st, Karl Berckmüller was appointed head of the Secret State Police Office (Gestapa). With this appointment a de facto decoupling of the Gestapa from the specialist and service operations of the State Criminal Police Office occurred. With his new skills, Berckmüller set himself apart from the previous organization. From April 1933 he ordered that the official name z. B. to change letterheads from Badisches Landeskriminalpolizeiamt - Secret State Police Office to Secret State Police Office .

The official separation of the criminal police and the Gestapo also occurred when the Secret State Police Office moved from the premises of the police headquarters on the market square in Karlsruhe to Gartenstrasse 25 in the Villa Reiss for spatial reasons . With the decision of the State Ministry of July 10, 1935, Berckmüller was also given official supervision and authority over the officials and employees of the Gestapo Karlsruhe after his interventions. However, in the opinion of the Baden Minister of the Interior, it should not give an official breakdown under service law and procedural law.

This regulation also had more far-reaching consequences, albeit not at all administrative levels. The Baden Ministry of the Interior was in charge of the Kislau and Ankenbuck concentration camps . A special feature of this Baden construction arose on December 18, 1933, when Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler arrived in Karlsruhe. At that time, Wagner had appointed him Political Police Commander in Baden .

Branch offices

At the time of the ordinance of August 26, 1933, 14 branch offices were subordinate to the Gestapo in Karlsruhe. Organizationally, however, these were still tied to the state criminal police. The final separation of these organizational units only came about when the police in the entire Nazi regime were centrally reorganized under service law. The branch offices were in Heidelberg, Constance, Freiburg, Lörrach, Mosbach, Mannheim, Villingen, Waldshut, Pforzheim and Offenburg. The district offices of Rastatt, Kehl, Bruchsal and Lahr acted as further enforcement bodies. Other organs still existed at the police headquarters of Baden-Baden.

With Himmler's decree of August 28, 1936, the names of the political police departments in the federal states were standardized. With effect from October 1, 1936, the Karlsruhe State Police Office was renamed the Karlsruhe State Police Headquarters. As part of the financial administration, the Gestapo in Baden was assigned to the German Reich on April 1, 1937.

literature

  • Jörg Schadt, Persecution and Resistance under National Socialism in Baden - The Situation Reports of the Gestapo and the Attorney General Karlsruhe 1933–1940 , Stuttgart 1976.
  • Michael Stolle, Die Geheime Staatspolizei in Baden - Personnel, Organization, Effect and Aftermath of a Regional Prosecution Authority in the Third Reich , Konstanz 2001.