The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (47 page)

Normally, if information turned up on suspicious behaviour, especially if it pertained to important `opponents' such as Jews, Communists, or Socialists, then the wheels of the police machine moved into motion. As we have seen, right at the highest political and administrative levels in Berlin, the leaders of the country could not make a firm decision about how to deal with the flood of denunciations, even when many turned out to be either carelessly laid or downright false.

From Chapter 5 throughout the rest of the book, the sense conveyed is that there developed a kind of auto-policing, or at least an auto-surveillance system in Nazi Germany. There are hints in the literature, especially on Vichy France, to indicate that a similar pattern developed there as well.'

Chapter 6 examined how the Gestapo went about enforcing anti-Semitic policies designed to separate the Jews from others. In the first instance, the official endeavour was to isolate the Jews socially, but, especially with the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935, efforts increased to ensure that sexual contacts across the ethnic borders ceased. In order to police these intimate spheres of social and sexual life, the Gestapo required the co-operation of citizens who suspected transgressions.

Different degrees of co-operation were evidently required by the Gestapo to enforce different kinds of policies, and the more private spheres were infiltrated with the help of neighbours, friends, acquaintances, or customers in shops and pubs. If the Wurzburg (and Dusseldorf) Gestapo files are any guide, there was little difficulty in attaining information. Not everyone gave up on the Jews and broke off social contacts with them. However, as the ease with which such non-compliance or dissent could be picked up by the regime, helped by vigilant citizens, became clear, bonds of solidarity were either broken or driven underground.

But as Chapter 6 showed, in spite of the massive anti-Semitic campaigns, the deluge of propaganda, and official and semi-official pressures to break off all contacts with the Jews, some people would not comply. The odds against detection were small. Just as care must be taken not to overestimate the numbers of opponents of Nazi anti-Semitism, in fairness it must also be remembered that some people, at great risk, provided aid and assistance, and there were individuals, such as Ilse Totske, who paid with their lives in their effort to help Jews.

Although non-compliance and some resistance to Nazi anti-Semitism show up in the Gestapo files, as Chapter 7 points out, the Gestapo responded to such behaviour by redoubling efforts to obtain compliance through police pressure, including the use of methods that soon brought it a reputation for brutality. When it came to enforcing racial policies designed to isolate the Jews, there can be no doubt that the Gestapo was particularly brutal, and often dispensed with even the semblance of legal procedures. Towards the end of the war, the Gestapo applied even harsher methods to the foreign workers in the country, especially those from Poland. The knowledge spread that anyone could be summoned to police headquarters, mistreated, and held almost indefinitely before being sent to a concentration camp under 'protective custody' orders, and it is not difficult to see how a reputation for ruthlessness and brutality contributed to 'successful' enforcement practices. An examination of the case-files suggests, however, that such methods do not in themselves provide a satisfactory explanation of how the Gestapo was able to carry out its broad mandate. From the very beginning of the regime, it is clear that, brutal or not, the Gestapo's own resources-measured in institutional terms-never allowed it the independence it might have wished to accomplish the tasks assigned to it. In the first instance it had to rely on the collaboration of other police organizations, and organizations such as the SD and other official 'informers'. However, in the sphere of racial policies, especially ones that sought to encroach into the most private areas of social and sexual life, the Gestapo was very much dependent upon the collaboration of individuals in a whole range of official and semi-official organizations and associations. Other people provided information they obtained in their professional capacity, such as medical doctors, nurses, and even priests. In the enforcement of racial policies designed to isolate the Jews, the success of the Gestapo's efforts was especially tied to the readiness of German citizens to provide information on suspected deviations from the new behavioural norms.

The 'successful' enforcement of Nazi anti-Semitism was not dependent on its acceptablity to the population as a whole, nor on its positive reception by them or even their schooled indifference. It mattered not so much whether the activities of Hitler and his henchmen were popular. It certainly was not necessary for Germans to become raucous in their anti-Semitism, let alone violent towards the Jews. It can also be argued that the functioning of the Gestapo could survive popular indifference. The enforcement of Nazi antiSemitic policies required-once the regime set the tone or official 'line' on the 'Jewish question' and could count on enough zealous officials in place to press anti-Semitism home-that a sufficient number of people come forward, for whatever reason, to offer information when they witnessed non-compliant acts of any kind. Nazi anti-Semitic policy would in all likelihood have remained impossible to enforce if this requirement had not been met.'
The rarity of 'oppositional' or 'treasonous' remarks on the issue brought to the attention of the police and court system-even when it came to the open pogroms and terror aimed at the Jews-offers silent or indirect testimony as to the effectiveness of the enforcement of anti-Semitic policies.

Chapter 8 turned to the enforcement of racial policies which were designed to isolate and segregate the Polish foreign workers who, from late 1939, were brought to Germany in increasing numbers to help meet acute labour shortages. The presence in Germany of these foreigners, whom Nazi ideology condemned as a 'racially foreign' peril, posed an enormous problem for a regime determined to prevent all sexual or even friendly relations from developing across the ethnic lines. In order to police these foreigners, several approaches were adopted. Some people were consigned to work-camps, or to specific factories which created special camps right on the premises-even, as at the Volkswagen Works, complete with a special Gestapo post of its own.7
However, enforcing racial policy was much more difficult in respect of the Polish workers in rural areas, such as the district around Wurzburg. It was one thing for the police and Nazi officials to issue strict guide-lines which laid down exactly what was and was not permitted, but how were these guidelines to be policed and the rigid separation of the Poles from the Germans guaranteed? As far as concerns the functioning of the Gestapo there was little or no difference between prosecuting those thought guilty of 'race defilement' when the 'racially foreign' person involved was Jewish, and when a Pole was implicated. The police used the same terminology in both cases.

That the regime was able to elicit co-operation from the population in policing the foreigners, not only in Lower Franconia but across the country, is suggested by the rapidly expanding numbers of Poles (and other foreign workers) brought to Gestapo attention and registered in arrest statistics. No reliable figures of Gestapo arrests from 1933 to 1945 appear to have survived. There are indications in the fragmentary and flawed statistics on its arrests during the war years which suggest that a major transformation took place in its activities. It may well be, as Reinhard Mann's figures for Dusseldorf make clear, that after 1941 the absolute number of new Gestapo cases declined.'
However, national figures for several war years show that the Gestapo began to devote increasing energy to controlling the army of foreign workers,
whose relative importance to the Gestapo increased dramatically.'
In order to supervise these workers and segregate them from the German population, especially when they were employed outside camps, the police were to a large extent dependent upon the provisions of information from attentive citizens, and in the first years of the programme apparently had no difficulty in obtaining it. While not all those arrested were informed upon by a civiliana supervisor or Labour Front official in a camp, or a Nazi Party official detailed to watch them, could readily call upon the Gestapo-local studies suggest that a substantial proportion probably resulted from tip-offs from the public. It is also clear from fragmentary evidence that the Gestapo continued to make special efforts (not without some success) to recruit informers inside even the smallest clusters of foreign workers scattered around the country."

In short, the bulk of the Gestapo's efforts soon went into dealing with the new 'racially foreign' threat inside the country. The police continued to uncover various kinds of German 'opposition', but in relative terms such arrests represented a declining percentage of the Gestapo's work-load. In all likelihood opposition, (broadly defined) dissent, and (criminalized) malicious gossip were growing, so it is plausible to suggest that a large part of the reason for the failure to turn up more cases of these `crimes' is that citizens were becoming less inclined to inform. Evidently, in the district around Wurzburg the people grew increasingly unwilling to inform on delinquent Poles or Germans, especially from 1944; in 1945 Gestapo files which pertain to the racial persecution of the Poles disappear completely. No doubt, as Chapter 8 indicated, there were numerous factors which contributed to the silence. As the war was literally brought home to Germany the Gestapo grew more ruthless than ever, and there are scattered indications from elsewhere in the country that it began to dispense with even the semblance of regulations, to cease recording its activities, and to shoot large numbers of foreign workers who might otherwise be able to testify about witnessed misdeeds in the threatened post-war trials."

IT seems appropriate to end with a brief word about the fate of Gestapo officials and key Nazi leaders in Wurzburg after the war. The following letter, here translated in full, summarizes most of what happened. It may not typify all the trials, but shows that most of the accused were able to exonerate themselves. Gestapo members charged with participation in the deportations of Jews from Germany got off because it could not be proven that they knew what went on in the extermination camps in Poland: those held responsible for killing foreign workers in Germany were also exonerated, as these acts 'took place because of an infringement of prescribed rules and regulations (e.g. insulting or physically attacking German superiors or employers, indulging in illicit sexual intercourse with German women etc.'.'
The letter was sent to me in response to an inquiry I made on 15 August 1988 to the Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen (Central Office of Land Judicial Authorities) in Ludwigsburg.

Dear Professor.

Proceedings (i Is 1/48) were carried out by the Wurzburg public prosecutor's office against former members of the Gestapo post Wurzburg. Subject of the proceedings was the participation of the accused in the deportations of the Jews from Franconia (among other places to Riga, Trawniki [Travnik], Izbica, Theresienstadt [Terezin], and Auschwitz [Oswigcim]).

The proceedings against those members of the Gestapo post in Wurzburg to which your inquiry referred, had the following results:

In regard to the accused Karl Bauer, Ernst Gramowski. Oswald Gundelach, and Michael Volkl, proceedings were suspended.

Charges were preferred by the Wurzburg public prosecutor's office before the criminal division of the Wurzburg superior court (KLs 63/48 of the Wurzburg superior court) against the accused Georg Baumann, Stefan Goss, Helmut Heisig, Franz Keil, Georg Krapp, Friedrich Krau[3, Hans Laub, Balthasar Lutz, August Possinger, Franz Schaffer, Hans Schilling, Georg Stolz, Georg Vogel, Franz Wittmann, and Josef Zwingmann. In these criminal proceedings before the Wurzburg superior court the accused Helmut Heisig, August Possinger, and Franz Wittmann were exonerated in the judgment of 3o April 1949.

The remaining accused were sentenced by the criminal division of the Wurzburg superior court for criminally abetting the crime of false imprisonment as follows:

The accused Bauer and Lutz each to a gaol term of 6 months, the accused Baumann, Krapp, and Zwingmann each to a goal term of 9 months, the accused Vogel to a gaol term of 1o months, the accused Goss, Laub, Schaffer, and Schilling each to a gaol term of i r months, and the accused Keil, Krauss, and Stolz each to a gaol term of i year and 2 months.

There was an appeal on the basis of further denials by the convicted accused.

On the basis of an appeal launched by the convicted, the judgment of the criminal division of the Wurzburg superior court on 3o April 1949 was overturned by the decision of the Bavarian supreme court on 15 November 1950. The matter was sent back by the Bavarian supreme court for further discussion and decision to the appeal court at the Nuremberg-Furth superior court. In the trial 213 Ks 1/51 of the appeal court at the Nuremberg-Furth superior court, all of the convicted in the Wurzburg trial were exonerated, with the exception of Krauss, who in the mean time had died.