Gestapo

The {{Audio|De-Gestapo.ogg|Gestapo}} (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.

Gestapo counterintelligence

The Polish government in exile in London during World War II received sensitive military information about Nazi Germany from agents and informants throughout Europe. Some of the Polish information about the movement of German police and SS units to the East during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the fall of 1941 was similar to information British intelligence secretly got through intercepting and decoding German police and SS messages sent by radio telegraphy.

Related Topics:
Polish government in exile - London - World War II - Soviet Union - Radio telegraphy

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Gestapo officials later discovered some of what the Polish underground had leaked to London, and they appraised Polish intelligence as a very serious threat to German security, seeking to root out Polish agents and informants.

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After Germany conquered Poland in the fall of 1939, Gestapo officials believed that they had neutralized Polish intelligence activities. In 1942, however, they uncovered a cache of Polish intelligence documents in Prague and were surprised to see that Polish agents and informants had been gathering detailed military information and smuggling it out to London, via Budapest and Istanbul. The Poles identified had tracked German military trains to the Eastern front and identified four Order Police (Ordnungspolizei) battalions sent to conquered areas of the Soviet Union in October 1941. In addition, another seventeen such battalions were stationed in Poland, according to Polish information.

Related Topics:
1939 - 1942 - Prague - Budapest - Istanbul - Order Police

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Historians have established that such police battalions participated in the first phase of the Holocaust, shooting Jews in large numbers and burying them in mass graves.

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Polish agents also gathered detailed information about the morale of German soldiers in the East. After uncovering a sample of the information the Poles had reported, Gestapo officials concluded that Polish intelligence activity represented a very serious danger to Germany. As late as June 6, 1944, Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, concerned about the leakage of information to the allied forces, set up a special unit called Sonderkommando Jerzy, designed to root out the Polish intelligence network in western and southwestern Europe.

Related Topics:
June 6 - 1944 - Heinrich Müller - Sonderkommando Jerzy

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