--- alias: - Geheime Staatspolizei - Secret State Police - Die Geheime Staatspolizei category: Intelligence & Government created: 2026-09-24 end: 1945 location: Berlin, Germany relations: - fn: 2 reverse: true role: Chief of the Security Police start: 1936-06-26 type: head_of with: '[[Reinhard Heydrich]]' - fn: 1 reverse: true role: head of the Gestapo start: 1939 type: head_of with: '[[Heinrich Müller]]' start: 1933 summary: Nazi Germany's political police, centralized under Heinrich Himmler by 1936 and made Office IV of the Reich Security Main Office in 1939, which sent prisoners to concentration camps without trial. tags: - Organization - NaziGermany - SecretPolice - RSHA - ConcentrationCamps - Holocaust - NurembergTrials - WorldWarII updated: 2026-09-24 --- The Gestapo, an abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police), was the political police of [Nazi Germany](/places/nazi-germany/). Its mission was to "investigate and combat all attempts to threaten the state."[^1] ### Formation Under the Weimar Republic most German states, among them Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony, had their own political police, bound by constitutional protections against arbitrary police action and concerned largely with political violence on the extreme right and left, including the Nazi Party and the Communist Party. After [Adolf Hitler](/people/adolf-hitler/) was appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933, the regime used emergency decrees to free the political police from those limits. The most important was the Reichstag Fire Decree of February 28, 1933, which "suspended individual rights and legal protections, such as the right to privacy," so that "police could now read private mail, secretly listen to telephone calls, and search homes without warrants."[^1] The Gestapo was built from "the various political police forces of the several German Federal states which had been unified under the personal leadership of Himmler, with the assistance of Goering," that is, Hermann Göring.[^2] By the end of 1936 the regime "had created a strong, centralized political police force under SS leader [Heinrich Himmler](/people/heinrich-himmler/)."[^1] Himmler was appointed Chief of the German Police in the Ministry of the Interior on June 17, 1936, and by his decree of June 26, 1936, placed the Gestapo and the criminal police (Kripo) together in the Security Police, under the command of Reinhard Heydrich, who already headed the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence agency of the [SS](/organizations/ss/) and, after June 4, 1934, of the whole Nazi Party. The Frontier Police came under Gestapo control in 1937.[^2] A decree of September 27, 1939, united the offices under Heydrich as Chief of the Security Police and SD into the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA), at once a main office of the SS and an office of the Interior Ministry. Of its seven offices, Amt IV was "the head office of the Gestapo," Amt V that of the Criminal Police, and Amts III, VI and VII those of the SD inside Germany, outside Germany, and for ideological research. In November 1939 all officials of the Gestapo and Criminal Police were taken into the SS at equivalent ranks.[^2] Heinrich Müller, a Munich policeman since 1919, became head of the Gestapo in 1939. Other agents came from the SD, "Nazi ideologues with little or no police training."[^1] ### Powers A December 1934 law made criticism of the Nazi Party or regime illegal; a joke about Hitler could be treated as a "malicious attack against the state or the Party" and lead to arrest by the Gestapo, trial before a special court, and a concentration camp. "Most notably, the Gestapo had the power to send people directly to a concentration camp. This was called 'protective custody' (Schutzhaft)." Those so held could not consult a lawyer, appeal, or defend themselves in court, and the Gestapo used protective custody to override court decisions it considered too lenient. "As an institution, the Gestapo was not subject to legal or administrative oversight."[^1] The Gestapo had limited personnel and relied heavily on denunciations from neighbors, colleagues and family members; "there was no widespread surveillance of the German population." Its officers regularly used intimidation and psychological and physical torture in interrogations.[^1] It did not administer the concentration camps, "but, acting through the RSHA, was responsible for the detention of political prisoners in those camps. Gestapo officials were usually responsible for the interrogation of political prisoners at the camps."[^2] ### Persecution of the Jews After the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Gestapo offices set up Jewish departments (Judenreferate) to investigate "race defilement" and to track Jewish emigration, ensuring that emigrants' assets remained behind for the state.[^1] Early on November 10, 1938, Heydrich telegraphed all Gestapo and SD offices with instructions for that night's pogroms, directing them to arrest as many Jews as the prisons could hold, "especially rich ones"; by November 11, 20,000 Jews had been arrested. A section of the Gestapo office of the RSHA under Adolf Eichmann handled Jewish matters, local Gestapo offices organized deportations to the East, and a detachment from Gestapo headquarters arranged the deportation of Jews from the Axis satellite states.[^2] ### War and Occupation In the occupied territories the Gestapo, Kripo and SD formed local units of the Security Police and SD, and in operational areas they were joined into the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos, which "combined brutal measures for the pacification of the civilian population with the wholesale slaughter of Jews." Heydrich ordered incidents fabricated on the Polish-German frontier in 1939 to give Hitler a pretext to attack Poland, with Gestapo and SD personnel involved. The Security Police and SD shot hostages, imprisoned relatives, executed alleged saboteurs without trial, and enforced the "Nacht und Nebel" decrees. Gestapo offices in Germany supervised slave laborers, ran "work training camps," and late in the war arrested workers to supply the SS camps. Einsatzkommandos under local Gestapo direction screened Soviet prisoners of war and killed those classed as "intolerable," and under the "Bullet" decree of March 4, 1944, recaptured prisoners of war were taken secretly to Mauthausen and shot.[^2] ### Judgment The International Military Tribunal found that the Gestapo and SD "were used for purposes which were criminal under the Charter involving the persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labour programme and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war." It named the defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Heydrich's successor as Chief of the Security Police and SD, as having used the organization for these purposes, and declared criminal all executive and administrative officials of Amt IV and all local Gestapo officials, including the Frontier Police, but not persons employed "for purely clerical, stenographic, janitorial or similar unofficial routine tasks."[^2] ### The Müller File Under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998, the National Archives opened the [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/)'s name files on Hitler, Klaus Barbie, Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Müller and Kurt Waldheim on April 27, 2001, together with files on other individuals "with Nazi pasts who were used by the [United States](/places/united-states/), [Soviet Union](/places/soviet-union/), [United Kingdom](/places/united-kingdom/), and other nations as intelligence resources," some of them involved in the [Gehlen Organization](/organizations/gehlen-organization/). The release stated: "The CIA was unable to determine whether Gestapo Chief Heinrich Mueller survived the War, but strong evidence suggests he did not," and "The notion that Heinrich Mueller became an intelligence resource for the United States cannot survive careful scrutiny of the CIA's Mueller file."[^3] [^1]: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Gestapo." Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gestapo [^2]: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg. "Judgment: The Accused Organizations." Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judorg.asp [^3]: National Archives and Records Administration. "Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act Prompts Rare Release of CIA 'Name Files'." Press release nr01-61, April 27, 2001. https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2001/nr01-61