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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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of the State to the extent required, it is
the security service of the Reichsführer SS, named by the deputy of the
Fuhrer, whis [sic] as a complement to it will assist it as the intelligence
service of the Nazi mouvement and will thus put a great part of the forces of
the movement which it has mobilized at the disposition of the security of the
Reich." (22) We insist upon
these official explanations of what constituted the SD because, considered by
itself, its activities remained in the background of those of the Gestapo,
which represented the terrifying face of the regime. However, the greater part
of the men who accomplished the most complex and most horrifying task of the
"final solution" within the Gestapo came from the SD.
In June 1936,
Himmler obtained the creation of a unified police for all of the Reich. As of
that time his official title was: Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German
Police attached to the Ministry of the Interior of the Reich. He thus disposed
not only of the Gestapo but also of the civil police and the criminal police.
But the criminal police and the Gestapo became a single office, that of the
security police, where H. Muller was Chief of the Gestapo and Nebe that of the
criminal police. Thus Heydrich presented himself henceforth as Chief of the
Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo) on behalf of the State, and as Chief of the SD on
behalf of the SS.
The SD possessed within the Reich a whole network of
regional and local services which were to gather intelligence on the activities
of the opponents of Nazism. This information was then centralized in the main
bureau (Hauptamt) of the SD in Berlin.
Until the second half of 1935,
that is to say before the "Nuremberg Laws," the activity of the SD was
insignificant, at least in what concerned the service for Jewish affairs. Nor
was the Gestapo at the center of the anti-Jewish policy of the first period.
Neither the exclusion of the Jews from the public sector as a whole, nor from
cultural activities nor from certain professions necessitated by definition the
intervention of the Gestapo. It did intervene, however, in case of violation of
the regulations and was consulted by other authorities. The role of the Gestapo
began to become important for the Jews only in 1938. Adler, historian of the
"final solution" in the Reich, wrote (23):
"Already in 1938, the greater part of the
important procedures and many the less important ones concerning the Jews were
equally within the jurisdiction of the Gestapo which was either working on the
matter or kept informed." As for Jewish affairs in the SD, as
early as the end of 1935, that is to say, following the legislation proclaimed
at Nuremberg in September of the same year, Heydrich gave the order to develop
the service of Jewish affairs of the SD, which was still embryonic. Let us
recall that the service in question bore in the whole of the SD the index
II-112.
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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
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