Expanding the System of Terror

Once the war had started, the SS systematically expanded the concentration camp system. The number of people sent to concentration camps increased sharply as of 1939. The establishment of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) at the end of September 1939, thus shortly after the start of the war, produced a kind of “ideological executive branch” in which the “Security Service”, the SS surveillance unit, was amalgamated with the state police into one institution.

This consolidation transferred sovereign functions of the state to the paramilitary party formation of the SS while the police removed itself a good bit from the system of government at the same time. The Secret State Police (or Gestapo for short) not only investigated concrete anti-regime activities or their planning but also took “preventive” action against every subversive view, which, in their eyes, might be acted on at some point in the future.

This gave rise to the legend of the Gestapo’s omnipresence – purposefully propagated by the Nazi regime but more in line with wishful totalitarian thinking than reality – which contributed greatly to its effectiveness. Hitler’s political police was so heavily reliant on denunciations from the populace that a self-policing society can also be spoken of (Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul). Under the leadership of Reinhard Heydrich, the RSHA evolved into the control center for the surveillance, terrorization and murder of millions of people at home and abroad.