The Theory and Practice of Hell (7 page)

Of the members of the SD, Himmler expected all the virtues implicit in his sacred order. They had to be incorruptible and blindly loyal to himself and to their group. They had to be as hard on themselves as they were expected to be on others. Their family life must be above suspicion. In short, what was wanted was the full embodiment, not necessarily with any deep moral roots, of those “ Prussian virtues” that have become notorious throughout German history. This is a code that unquestionably has validity, or at the very least contains elements of real morality. Unfortunately it has always shown a readiness to let itself by misused for the most ignoble social and political purposes. The SD had its own Courts of Honor to watch over its adherence to the true and narrow path. Violators were subject to the swift action of a special “ Flying Squad.” Its death sentences were at that time largely confined to the ranks of the SD.

It was Heydrich and the SD alone that enabled Himmler to establish the power of the SS and to keep that power once it was established. Remember that the early days of Nazi power, from 1932 to 1937, were a welter of intrigue, cross-currents and struggle within the Party. Without the strong network of the upper SD echelons, which extended clear across Germany, the SS could hardly have established its will. During and after the purge of June 30, 1934, the flying squads of the SD worked overtime until their gun barrels and brass knuckles grew hot.

The SD, under Heydrich and his deputy, Dr. Werner Best—after Heydrich’s assassination in Czechoslovakia, under Ernst Kaltenbrunner—was organized into seven (later twelve) administrative districts, which largely coincided with the corps areas of the German army.

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL 9

The vast machine of the SS could never have functioned successfully had it not gained police power and had that power not been completely severed from any constitutional basis, and especially from the judiciary. From the moment of the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Himmler had been out to become chief of the German political police. He succeeded only in Bavaria. Prussia, some two-thirds of Germany, remained Goring’s dominion. On March 4, 1933, Goring had said: “ Mine not to do justice, but to destroy and ex terminate.
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He soon carried his threat into effect. By June 1933, the old political police had become the Gestapo (ab breviated from
Geheime Staatspolizei
, Secret State Police), with headquarters in Berlin’s Prince Albrecht Street.

Chief of the Gestapo at the time was thirty-three-year-old Rudolf Diels, a product of the old Prussian State Police, and a member of neither the Nazi party nor the SA nor the SS. This close confidant of Goring agreed fully with Himmler, however, that the terrorism of the SA must be curbed. Behind the scenes Himmler, together with Heydrich and Dr. Werner Best, who became Heydrich’s deputy late in 1933, worked systematically. By 1934 they succeeded in taking over for the SS one provincial police force after another in Germany. Prussia alone, with its Berlin Gestapo, held out, though there too Heydrich had his SD men in key positions, enabling him, as early as March 1934, to take over the heart of the Gestapo, the so-called Gestapo or central office.

Complete organization of the machine could take place openly only after 1936. Until then Himmler was “ merely” in spector of the Gestapo, under Goring, then Prussian Prime Minister. On February 10, 1936, by “ Reich Law,” the Gestapo was made a “ Supreme Reich Agency.” This made Himmler even nominally independent of Goring. He was now absolute master of the German police.

Himmler at once handed over the Security Police to his closest intimate, Reinhard Heydrich, SD chief and henceforth chief of the Gestapo as well. The Gestapo network was ex tended throughout Germany with the establishment of regional headquarters.

The Gestapo itself was given three main divisions:

Main Division I had jurisdiction over all regional head quarters, all Gestapo administration, all questions of per

10 EUGEN KOGON

sonnel, and the files. It had no head of its own but was directed by the office of Heydrich’s adjutant.

Main Division II comprised political affairs, with such sub divisions as illegal parties and organizations; associations and industrial groups; the church and reaction; freemasonry; sects; the Nazi party; homosexuality. It ordered arrests and made out the notorious Protective Custody Warrants. Its sec tion chiefs reported directly to the chief of the Gestapa.

Main Division III dealt with treason and counter espionage. It had special desks for all the countries of Europe. Its longtime chief was Best, who was also Heydrich’s deputy as chief of the Gestapo.

The Reich Criminal Police Office was under Nebe, a professional police official who became a high SS officer. Even under the Weimar Republic, when he had been with the Prussian State Police, Nebe had been a Nazi. He became Goring’s confidential police expert, but later served Heydrich and Himmler. During the war he began working with the op position. Among other things, the Reich Criminal Police Of fice applied the entire protective custody policy to actual or suspected criminals.

As early as March 1933, Goring had proclaimed: “ Right is that which serves the German people.” Under cover of this slogan he had “ liberated” the Prussian Political Police from its “ dependence” on the prosecutors’ offices. Later Dr. Wer ner Best formally created the “ legal” basis for this and similar acts. As chief of the Gestapo Legal Division, he became a member of the newly created Academy of German Law. There he proclaimed and jammed through a juridical variant of Goring’s tenet: “ Right is that which serves the State.”

Once this principle had been accepted, the arbitrary exercise of the police power by those who had gained control of its machinery became “ legal.” The introduction of the so-called Protective Custody Warrants, likewise a proposal by Best, in stantly accepted by Heydrich, put an end to all judicial review of arrests. It was tantamount to suspension of the right of habeas corpus. The way was now open to the liquidation of all opponents of the Nazi regime.

Under the Weimar Republic the German police had three partially overlapping branches. There was, first of all, the

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL 11

Security Police, charged with the responsibility for main taining order and security throughout the country. Next there was the Administrative Police, which embraced traffic, in dustry, public health and the like. Finally, there was the Criminal Police.

Himmler left only the Administrative Police to the Ministry of the Interior. Everything else was reorganized into the new Reich Main Security Office which replaced the SD Main Of

fice in Berlin as the highest administrative organ of the SD. Henceforth three divisions of the Reich Main Security Office belonged exclusively to the SD:

Office III: Domestic Intelligence.

Office VI: Foreign Intelligence (to which the Military Counter-Intelligence Service was added in 1944).

Office VII: Files and Research.

Each of these offices had numerous sub-divisions and branches throughout Germany and abroad. There were ex tensive undercover organizations with telephone cables and call numbers of their own, and with dummy representatives known by harmless designations.

SD fieldmen only rarely knew each other’s identity or their SD rating. They were divided into five classes:

V-men (
Vertrauensleute
), men who were trusted. A-men, agents.

Z-men (
Zubringer
), informants.

H-men (
Helfershelfer
), secondary informants, as a rule men who acted from highly questionable motives.

U-men (
Unzuverlassige
), unreliables, who were altogether corrupt and had to be constantly watched.

Day by day, year after year, this far-flung intelligence net

work supplied a mass of individual reports from every sphere of life—the Party, the government, industry, high society, the private lives of ordinary citizens. Each report reached the cen tral office, which kept one copy in its secret files, sending two copies to the chief of the SD administrative district concerned. One of these copies was kept in a file to which only this of ficial and his deputy had access; the other in a place known to him alone.

The inner circle of the SD was known only to the higherups. Members of the broad outside organization seldom knew each other’s identities. In the second half of 1934 and in early 1935

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EUGEN
KOGON

no less than 155 SS leaders were murdered by a secret group that called itself “ Rohm’s Avengers” —and so identified itself on slips of paper found pinned to each body. After that, the requirements for anonymity within the SD were sharply tightened. The number of members ran into the tens of thousands. Reliable estimates mention 100,OCX) to 120,000 up to the outbreak of the war, counting the whole army of agents, informers and stool pigeons. For the war period itself the figure is set at about twice that much.

They were everywhere—these indefatigable and fanatical mercenaries of the SS plot—in or near the top of every com mand and agency of any importance, whether public or private, tirelessly carrying out the orders of Heydrich, Kaltenbrunner, Himmler and Hitler.

All authoritative positions within the Reich Main Security Office were filled with SD men from the top ranks of the SS leadership. As the Third Reich expanded across Europe and as the German police machine became better organized and more dependable, most of these high officials took on big jobs abroad, positions involving the exercise of terror on a huge scale.

The evolutionary process within the Security Service and the Gestapo proceeded according to the same social and psychological scheme that prevailed with all the SS cadres. Not infrequently their chieftains selected for leading positions precisely those men who had already come into conflict with the law, or they deliberately involved them in such conflicts, to provide a “ sound foundation” for loyalty in social degradation, to cut off any retreat.