RSHA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| RSHA Reichssicherheitshauptamt |
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 The RSHA was under the administration of the SS. |
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 Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the RSHA , as a SS-Gruppenführer in August 1940. |
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| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | September 22, 1939 |
| Preceding agency | Gestapo Kriminalpolizei |
| Dissolved | May 8, 1945 |
| Jurisdiction |  GermanyOccupied Europe |
| Headquarters | Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin 52°30′26″N 13°22′57″E / 52.50722°N 13.3825°E |
| Employees | 50,648 c.February 1944 [1] |
| Minister responsible | Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, (1939-1945) |
| Agency executives | SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich 1939-1942, Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD SS-Obergruppenführer Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner 1942-1945, Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD |
| Parent agency | Allgemeine SS |
| Child agencies | Gestapo Sicherheitsdienst Sicherheitspolizei Kriminalpolizei |
The RSHA, or Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office or Reich Security Main Office[2]), was a subordinate organization of the SS. The organization's stated duty was to fight all "enemies of the Reich" inside and outside the borders of Nazi Germany.
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[edit] Formation
The RSHA was created by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler on September 22, 1939 through the merger of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, or Security Service), the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo, Secret State Police), and the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo, Criminal Police).
The first chief of the RSHA was SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich until he was assassinated in 1942: following a British-backed Czech operation. He was replaced by SS-Obergruppenführer Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner who served as the head of the RSHA director for the remainder of World War II. The RSHA acronym for its director was 'CSSD': Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (English: Chief of the Security Police and of the Security Service).
The organization controlled the security service apparatus for the SS and the Nazi Party. Its stated duty was to find and destroy the "enemies" of the Third Reich. Although included within the list of "enemies" were Jews, Romani people and the "racially undesirable" as well as Communists, Freemasons, pacifists and Christian activists.
The RSHA also oversaw the Einsatzgruppen death squads that followed the invasion forces of the German army into Eastern Europe. In its role as the NSDAP's security service, the RSHA coordinated activities among a number of different agencies that had wide-ranging responsibilities within Third Reich.
[edit] Organization
British author, Gerald Reitlinger wrote in his book, The SS: Alibi of a Nation, that the RSHA 'became a typical overblown bureaucracy. . . The complexity of RSHA was unequalled. . . with at least a hundred sub-sub sections'. [3]
The organization. at its simplest, was divided into seven offices (German: Ämter)[[1]]:
- Amt I, Personnel and Organization, headed by SS-Brigadeführer Bruno Streckenbach
- Amt II, Administration, Law, and Finance, headed by SS-Standartenführer Dr. Hans Nockemann.
- Amt III, Inland-SD, headed by SS-Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf, which dealt with ethnic Germans outside of Germany's prewar borders, and matters of culture.
- Amt IV, Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), headed by SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller. SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, one of the main architects of the Holocaust, was head of the Amt IV department called Referat IV B4.
- Amt V, Kriminalpolizei (Kripo), under SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe. This was the Criminal Police, which dealt with non-political serious crimes, such as rape, murder, and arson.
- Amt VI, Ausland-SD, led first by SS-Brigadeführer Heinz Jost, and later by SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg. This was the foreign intelligence service of the SS.
- Amt VII, Written Records, overseen by SS-Brigadeführer Professor Dr. Franz Six. This was responsible for "ideological" tasks, the creation of anti-semitic and anti-masonic propaganda.
Amt IV, the Gestapo, and Amt V, the Kripo, together constituted the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei — Sipo). It was the Sipo that did most of the work in rounding up Jews, Romani People and other people deemed to be enemies of the Reich and deporting them to the concentration and extermination camps in German Occupied Poland and Ukraine.
The RSHA also supplied security forces on an "as needed" basis to local SS and Police Leaders.
[edit] Further reading
- Hilberg, Raul. The destruction of the European Jews, Third Edition, (Yale Univ. Press, 2003, c1961).
- Höhne, Heinz (authoritative work about the history of the SS)
- Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf: Die Geschichte der SS. (original).
- The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS. (Engl. edition of the above).
- Wildt, Michael. Generation of the Unbound: The Leadership Corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2002 (Engl., in original German, Hamburg: 2002). ISBN 9653081624.
[edit] References
- ^ "The Gestapo and German Society". http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j2tIrA9Gwg8C&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=gestapo+total+agents&source=bl&ots=CSM0f0FZoi&sig=Dfxh9mX-nHqaGqDrV4RQLHjuX6w&hl=en&ei=raAlSsrkNsLOjAeUpu3gBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2.
- ^ "Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Vol 20, Day 194". http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/08-03-46.asp. Retrieved on 2009 1 3.
- ^ Gerald Reitlinger (1989). The SS, Alibi of a Nation, 1922-1945. p. 138. ISBN 0306803518. http://books.google.com/books?id=-jWRG5XIeM4C&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=ss+alibi+nation+donnerstag&source=web&ots=2Ux8prVPEO&sig=xTlke0qQDen0HF4fikMEQm-z8AQ&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA138,M1. Retrieved on 2009 1 3.
[edit] External links
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