Gestapo

The (acronym of Geheime Staatspolizei; "secret state police") was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Under the overall administration of the SS, it was administrated by the RSHA and was considered a dual organization of the Sicherheitsdienst and also a suboffice of the Sicherheitspolizei.

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The Gestapo was established on April 26, 1933, in Prussia, from the existing organization of the Prussian Secret Police. The Gestapo was first simply a branch of the Prussian Police, known as "Department 1A of the Prussian State Police".

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Its first commander was Rudolf Diels who recruited members from professional police departments and ran the Gestapo as a federal police agency, comparable to several modern examples such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Gestapo's role as a political police force was only established after Hermann G?ring was appointed to succeed Diels as the Gestapo Commander, in 1934. It was G?ring was invented the term "Gestapo" (at first called Gestapa) and urged the the Nazi government to expand Gestapo power out of Prussia to encompass all of Germany. To this, G?ring was mostly successful except in Bavaria, where Heinrich Himmler (head of the SS), served as the Bavarian Police President and used local SS units as a policial police force.

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Secret police: :This article is about the definition of the term 'secret police'. For an actual list of such organizations, see list of secret police organizations....

Nazi Germany: Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian ideology of the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi Party, with the F?hrer Adolf Hitler as dictator....