After the Nazis seized power in Bavaria, Reich Commissioner Ritter von Epp immediately appointed a new government. Regional Leader (Gauleiter) Adolf Wagner became Interior Minister, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler was appointed Chief of the Munich Police, and Reinhard Heydrich, Head of the Security Service of the SS, was named Head of the Political Department of the police. This allowed the Nazis to set what proved to be a decisive course for the development of the Nazi police state controlled and permeated by the SS, which would ensure their control over the long term.
The Bavarian Political Police
The Nazis understood the great importance of the Political Police and their extensive records. Himmler therefore had himself appointed ‘Political Police Commander of Bavaria’ by Interior Minister Wagner. He separated the Political Department from the Police Headquarters and immediately renamed it the Bavarian Political Police (later: Secret State Police, Gestapo). The personnel was nearly entirely retained, but the number of employees also gradually increased from new hires and reassignments. The BPP’s move to Wittelsbacher Palais in October 1933 also outwardly demonstrated the autonomy of the authority. Wittelsbacher Palais soon became synonymous with the feared terror of the Gestapo. After the Nazi takeover, there were very few personnel changes with the exception of leadership at the Munich Police Headquarters. All managerial posts were filled with politically reliable officials. Even Himmler’s successor as Chief of the Munich Police, SA Senior Group Leader August Schneidhuber, continued this staffing policy.
Members of the Storm Battalion (SA), SS, and ‘Steel Helmet’, a veteran’s organization, were declared auxiliary police in order to preclude resistance from the outset, such as a general strike like during the Kapp Putsch in 1920. They supported the police during the mass arrests that began immediately and did so with great brutality. Humiliating and mistreating their victims, they settled ‘old scores’ from the ‘period of struggle’. Political opponents were taken into ‘protective custody’. This meant that opponents did not have to be brought before a judge, did not receive any legal counsel, and the duration of their imprisonment was unlimited. The legal justification for ‘protective custody’ was the ‘Reichstag Fire Decree’ from February 28, 1933, that suspended all basic constitutional rights. As the prisons were overfilled after just a few days, on March 20, 1933, Himmler announced the establishment of a concentration camp at the gates of the city. It was explicitly intended for functionaries of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and the ‘Reichsbanner’, which formed the large majority of those imprisoned. Before long, however, other opponents of the regime were also sent there.
Dachau Concentration Camp – A Model for the Reich
Dachau Concentration Camp was one of the first and largest concentration camps in the Third Reich. At first, it was guarded by the Bavarian state police, which, in Himmler’s opinion, treated the inmates too leniently. On his orders, the SS assumed responsibility for guarding the concentration camp in May, thereby putting it completely under his control. This immediately heralded the terrorization of the defenseless inmates; the first murders soon occurred in April and their investigations by the public prosecutor’s office were prevented by Himmler. Initially, the organizational triangle: SS – Gestapo – concentration camp only existed in Bavaria; however, this setup became the model for the concentration camp system in the entire Reich. Most importantly, Dachau served as the central training center for SS guard units. Many concentration camp commandants in the Third Reich began their careers at Dachau Concentration Camp.
The Police of the ‘Capital of the Movement’ as a Career Springboard
For Himmler and Heydrich, leaders of the SS, their posts in Munich were a tremendous step forward in their rise to becoming the central architects of the Nazi terror apparatus: Himmler gradually became Political Police Commander in all German states, finally even in Prussia. In 1936, he won the struggle for power against Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick and became Chief of the entire German police force. In April 1934, Heydrich took over the Secret State Police (Gestapo) in Berlin and later became head of the Gestapo headquarters (1936) and the Reich Security Main Office (1939).
The precondition for the meteoric rise of the SS was the overthrow of the SA. By the spring of 1934, it had become a major center of power with approximately 4.5 million members. Some of its leaders were unsatisfied with the outcome of the takeover and strove for a ‘second revolution’. In order to weaken the SA and ensure the goodwill of the Reichswehr, Hitler had the SA leadership arrested on June 30, 1934, for the alleged intention of staging a coup. Himmler and Heydrich played a central role in these arrests. Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders such as the Chief of the Munich Police August Schneidhuber were shot. At least 90 people fell victim to the so-called Röhm Affair also known as Night of the Long Knives, including opponents of the regime.
Numerous Gestapo agents from Munich, who had all begun their careers in the Munich Police Headquarters, followed Heydrich to Berlin and occupied high positions in the Nazi terror apparatus. There were long-standing Nazi sympathizers among them such as Josef Meisinger and Reinhard Flesch, but also conservative Catholic officials like Franz Josef Huber and Heinrich Müller, who even became head of the entire Gestapo.
Police in the Nazi State
The nature of the police fundamentally changed in the Nazi state. Individuals were no longer protected from attacks by third parties. The police were now tasked with the protection of the national-socialist ‘people’s community’, from which various groups were gradually excluded for political, social, or racial reasons. In the name of racist-ethnic-chauvinist general prevention, the police received new instruments for ’preventative crime-fighting’ and were even allowed to detain suspects and those previously convicted in police custody and send them to concentration camps.
The Gestapo was the driving force behind the fight against the ‘enemies of the people’. Still, right from the beginning, the rest of the police forces were involved as informants and auxiliary forces in the persecution of regime dissidents and those considered to be such. The Nazis sought to centralize the entire police apparatus (‘Verreichlichung’ (creating one single Reich)). This was intended to ensure both the uniform ideological outlook of the police and the fusion envisaged by Himmler of the police with ‘his’ SS into a ‘state security force’. This fusion progressed particularly quickly between the Gestapo and Criminal Investigation Department, from 1936 they were consolidated into the ‘Security Police’, but this was never completely achieved. All heads of the Gestapo in Munich and all heads of the Criminal Investigation Department from 1936 were members of the SS, as were three of five chiefs of police.
