Democracy Destroyed The First 100 Days of Nazi Rule

Day 87, Wednesday 26 April 1933: Göring's Prussia creates the Secret State Police Office, the Gestapo

Day 87 of 100

Göring’s Prussia creates the Secret State Police Office, the Gestapo

A Prussian law dated 26 April set up the Secret State Police Office (Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt, Gestapa) under Göring as interior minister, separating political policing from the ordinary administration; Rudolf Diels led it. The same day the Social Democrats held a Reich conference in their group’s rooms in the Reichstag building and elected Otto Wels and Hans Vogel as chairmen. Goebbels toured the Ufa film studios at Neubabelsberg, and in Munich Arno Penzias, a future Nobel laureate, was born into a Jewish family.

Studio portrait of a man with dark slicked-back hair in a suit and tie
Rudolf Diels, first head of the Prussian Secret State Police Office, photographed in 1933. For context Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-K0108-0501-008 / CC-BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons

Before 1933 almost every German state had a political police, and in Prussia it sat inside the ordinary police administration. Göring, who ran the Prussian interior ministry and had been Prussian prime minister since 11 April, wanted something else: a secret police detached from the administration and answerable to him. Rudolf Diels, who headed the political department (IA) of the Berlin police headquarters, prepared it. The law dated 26 April 1933 made the new Secret State Police Office a state police authority directly under the interior minister and allowed it to call on every police authority in Prussia for action within its remit. From 29 April it also took over the power to seize printed matter anywhere in Prussia and to ban periodicals appearing in Berlin.

Its weapon was already in place. Under the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February, the police could hold people indefinitely in “protective custody” (Schutzhaft, imprisonment without trial or judicial review). The new office set up its headquarters in the former School of Applied Arts at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8, and from August 1933 it had its own prison in the basement, where many prisoners were interrogated and tortured.

The law of 26 April was a beginning. A second Prussian Gestapo law in November 1933 made it an independent branch of the administration; Heinrich Himmler took over as its inspector in April 1934, with Reinhard Heydrich running it. By January 1934 the Berlin office had 645 officials and employees and the 33 regional state police posts in Prussia 1,025. Historians now stress that it was never all-seeing: in 1937 the city of Essen, with 650,000 inhabitants, had 43 Gestapo officers. It worked through other authorities, party informants and denunciations from the public.

The same day, in the fire-damaged Reichstag building, the Social Democrats held a Reich conference of their party. Otto Wels refused any “intellectual submission” to the new rulers, the conference resolved to keep using the legal possibilities that remained, and the executive stood down so that a new one could be elected. Several of its best-known members, among them Breitscheid and Hilferding, had already gone into exile.

Laws and decrees

Passed Law, Prussian State Ministry Preußische Gesetzsammlung 1933, Nr. 29, S. 122 f.

Gesetz über die Errichtung eines Geheimen Staatspolizeiamts

Law on the establishment of a Secret State Police Office (Gestapa)

Created the Secret State Police Office as a state police authority directly under the Prussian interior minister, empowered to request measures from all police authorities. Press reports of the day added that press seizures for all Prussia and bans on Berlin periodicals would pass to the new office from 29 April; the law itself does not mention them.1,2

Read the full text in German and English

Politics and power

Government, terror and persecution

  1. Terror Berlin

    Secret State Police Office created in Prussia

    The Prussian law establishing a Secret State Police Office made the political police a separate state authority directly subordinate to Göring as Prussian interior minister. It could request police measures from all other police authorities. Rudolf Diels was its head. The local political police departments in the large Prussian cities remained, for the moment, under the provincial administration.1,2

  2. Opposition Berlin, Reichstag building

    SPD conference elects Wels and Vogel

    Delegates from every Social Democratic district except Hessen-Kassel met in Berlin. Otto Wels gave the main speech. The conference resolved that there could be no real socialism without intellectual freedom and civic equality and that the party would hold to its principles while using the legal means still open. The executive resigned and a new one was elected with Wels and Hans Vogel as chairmen; Breitscheid, Crispien, Dittmann and Hilferding had already emigrated.4,5

    Sources disagree. A wire report printed on 28 April put the conference on Thursday 27 April; the historian Erich Matthias, using the party’s own report, established that it met on 26 April.

  3. Opposition Berlin

    Seldte removes Duesterberg from the Stahlhelm leadership

    The Stahlhelm veterans’ league announced that its first leader, the Reich Labour Minister Franz Seldte, had relieved its second leader, Lieutenant-Colonel (retd) Duesterberg, of his post and taken sole command, citing the need for unity of leadership.6

  4. The states Berlin

    Prussian State Council elects Ley president

    The newly constituted Prussian State Council held its opening session after a speech by Göring. It elected the Nazi deputy Ley its president, with two Nazi vice-presidents, and withdrew the old council’s lawsuit at the Leipzig State Court against the dissolution of the municipal assemblies.6

  5. Churches Berlin, Reich Chancellery

    Hitler receives the Catholic bishops’ envoy

    In the afternoon Hitler received Bishop Wilhelm Berning of Osnabrück, representing the bishops’ conference, and the vicar general and cathedral provost Steinmann for talks on pending church questions.7

  6. Persecution Berlin

    Former Lord Mayor Böß arrested

    On the strength of the investigation so far, the Berlin police president ordered the provisional arrest of Böß, the former Lord Mayor of Berlin.7

Everyday life

What else was happening in Germany

  1. Film Potsdam-Babelsberg

    Goebbels at the Ufa studios

    Goebbels toured the Ufa studios at Neubabelsberg and spoke to the Nazi factory cell organisation (NSBO) of the studio, the Ufa head office and its Tempelhof works. The “national revolution”, he said, would not disrupt German film-making, but its precondition was absolute alignment with the ideas of the new state. He announced that a national prize for the best German film would be founded on 1 May.8

  2. Education Berlin

    Eduard Spranger asks to give up his chair

    It became known in Berlin that the philosopher and educationist Eduard Spranger had asked the Prussian culture minister to release him from the duties of his chair of philosophy and education at Berlin University.7

  3. Births and deaths Munich

    Arno Penzias born in Munich

    Arno Penzias was born in Munich into a Jewish family. In 1939, aged six, he and his younger brother were put on a train to England; the family reached New York in January 1940. In 1978 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation.9

Voices

There must be no intellectual submission or conformity for us. … No system of government has ever lasted for ever.

Otto Wels, chairman of the Social Democratic Party Main speech to the SPD’s Reich conference in Berlin, 26 April 1933, as recorded in the party chronicle Translated by this site.4

In Berlin today

A long gravel-covered site with a walkway; on the right, old brick cellar walls under a canopy below a concrete wall, with large buildings behind
The Topography of Terror site in November 2013: on the left the documentation centre, on the right the excavated basement walls of the Gestapo headquarters beneath a surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall. Arild Vågen / CC BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Topography of Terror (former Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8)

Niederkirchnerstraße 8, 10963 Berlin-Kreuzberg

Then
The Secret State Police Office created by the Prussian law of 26 April 1933 set up its headquarters in the former School of Applied Arts at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8, with a house prison in the basement from August 1933.3
Today
The site is the Topography of Terror documentation centre, whose permanent exhibition documents the Gestapo, the SS and the Reich Security Main Office in Wilhelmstraße and Prinz-Albrecht-Straße.

Open in OpenStreetMap

A large neo-Renaissance building with a columned portico and a glass dome, seen across a lawn
The west front of the Reichstag building with Norman Foster’s glass dome, photographed in March 2014. Ansgar Koreng / CC BY-SA 3.0 (DE). CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons

Reichstag building

Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin

Then
Two months after the fire that destroyed its plenary chamber, the SPD held its Reich conference in its parliamentary group’s rooms here on 26 April 1933 and elected Wels and Vogel as chairmen.5,10
Today
Rebuilt by Norman Foster with a new dome, the Reichstag building has been the seat of the German Bundestag since 19 April 1999; traces of the 1933 fire and the war were left visible.

Open in OpenStreetMap

More pictures

The bombed-out shell of a large stone building with empty window openings
The former School of Applied Arts at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8, headquarters of the Gestapo from 1933, as a war ruin in June 1949. The building was later demolished. For context Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S85918 / Funck, Heinz / CC-BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons
A long low modern building with a grey metal screen facade surrounded by gravel
The Topography of Terror documentation centre on the site of the former Gestapo headquarters, photographed in 2022. For context Josef Streichholz / CC BY-SA 4.0. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sources

  1. Das Vollzugsorgan des nationalsozialistischen Polizeisystems. Zur Geschichte der Gestapo. Teil 1: Entstehung und Konsolidierung Hartmut Rübner, Sozial.Geschichte Online 31 (2022), DuEPublico, Universität Duisburg-Essen, pp. 19–24 and notes 25–33
  2. LeMO: Gestapo Deutsches Historisches Museum
  3. Geschichte des Ortes vor 1945 Stiftung Topographie des Terrors
  4. Chronik der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, Band 2: Stichtag 26. April 1933 Franz Osterroth and Dieter Schuster; electronic edition, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Library
  5. Der Untergang der alten Sozialdemokratie 1933 Erich Matthias, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 4 (1956), Heft 3, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, pp. 269–270 and note 61
  6. Marbacher Zeitung (Bottwartal-Bote), 27 April 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 1, "Rücktritt Düsterbergs"; p. 2, "Wahlen im preußischen Staatsrat" (both Berlin, 26 April)
  7. Laupheimer Verkündiger, 27 April 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 2, "Der Bischof von Osnabrück beim Reichskanzler"; p. 3, items on Spranger and Böß (all Berlin, 26 April)
  8. Marbacher Zeitung (Bottwartal-Bote), 28 April 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 3, "Ein Nationalpreis für den besten deutschen Film"
  9. Arno Penzias: Biographical; Facts Nobel Prize Outreach (nobelprize.org)
  10. 19. April 1999: Bundestag bezieht das umgebaute Reichstagsgebäude Deutscher Bundestag

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