Right from the beginning, the Nazi regime used a terror apparatus with unlimited powers to prop itself up. The Gestapo formed the core of the persecution network but this network was supported by the police and justice system just as much as the Nazi Party and its subdivisions as well as parts of the administration. The willingness of some ‘ethnic comrades’ to denounce others was also an essential basis for the work of the police and Gestapo. At the start of the war, this apparatus was given the additional task of maintaining discipline at the ‘home front’. Civil unrest should never again impair the war effort as it did during World War I; a ‘November Revolution’ should never be repeated.
Hence, the regime took a variety of measures starting in September 1939, which drastically intensified its terrorization of the populace. According to Reinhard Heydrich’s decree on the ‘Principles of Internal State Security during the War’ dated September 3, 1939, every defeatist comment had to be relentlessly pursued. New laws and ordinances were adopted such as the ‘Kriegswirtschaftsverordnung’ (War Economy Ordinance) (September 4, 1939) or the ‘Verordnung gegen Volksschädlinge’ (Ordinance against Human Pests) (September 5, 1939). Whoever was absent from work or accused of ‘dawdling’ there was threatened with a weeks-long imprisonment in a penal camp for forced Laborers.
Radicalized Warfare after the Invasion of the Soviet Union
Another escalation of Nazi terrorization was observed after the invasion of the Soviet Union. For example, the infamous ‘Commissar Order’ was also applied to Soviet POWs in German camps. Anyone considered especially dangerous or ‘intolerable’ was murdered: political commissars, Jews, Communists, members of the intelligentsia, or even sick prisoners. Beginning in September 1941, a Gestapo commando from Munich identified roughly 480 Soviet POWs as ‘intolerable elements’ and separated them out at the Moosburg POW camp. Over 300 of them were executed at the SS shooting range near Dachau Concentration Camp. Subsequently, Captain Karl Meinel, a Wehrmacht officer who believed this action was unlawful, prevented further prisoners from being turned over to the Gestapo. It was only under pressure from the higher SS and police leader SS Senior Group Leader Karl von Eberstein and the Reich Security Main Office that most of the prisoners identified as ‘intolerable elements’ were handed over.
Turning Point of the War in 1942 – Escalation in the Terrorization
One key reason for the increasing repression was the drastic deterioration of the war from the regime’s point of view. The rapid victory on the Eastern Front failed to materialize, ever-higher losses were mourned. Victory became increasingly less probable after the defeat at Stalingrad at the beginning of 1943, yet no one was allowed to express doubt publicly. The Gestapo and police took merciless action against any signs of defeatism. Charges and sentences for ‘undermining military morale’, ‘treachery’ offenses, or violations of the ‘Ordinance against Human Pests’ piled up. Such offenses were tried before the Munich Special Court. Approximately 6,300 people were charged between 1939 and the war’s end; 279 of them were sentenced to death.
The explosive dynamics of Nazi terrorization starting in 1942 were reflected in the number of those executed at the Stadelheim Prison in Munich. It rose sharply and continuously from 1940 to 1944. Of those executed at Stadelheim Prison during World War II, nearly half were foreign nationals, including nearly 200 Poles. This development was despite the circumstances that especially Polish and Soviet forced laborers were no longer placed under normal jurisdiction from November 1942 onwards, but were instead directly under the that of the Gestapo.
The Separation of Prisoners at Munich-Stadelheim Prison – Terrorization of Foreign Forced Laborers
Placing Polish and Soviet forced laborers under the authority of the police can be traced back to an agreement made in September 1942 between the newly named Reich Justice Minister Otto-Georg Thierack and Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police. It was intended to relieve the courts and allow the Eastern European forced laborers to be prosecuted faster. Thierack was also admonished by Hitler that a repetition of the events of 1918 could occur if ‘thugs’ and ’’scoundrels’ were left alive in the prisons (Wachsmann, p. 309). Therefore Himmler and Thierack agreed that certain groups of prisoners in the justice system should be turned over to the Reichsführer SS for ‘Extermination Through Work’ in a concentration camp. Among those affected were Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja, and repeatedly punished ‘habitual offenders’, etc. In January 1943, the prisoners of Munich-Stadelheim were separated out and sent to concentration camps. Jewish prisoners were deported to Auschwitz and immediately murdered there – the number of victims from this operation is still unknown today.
The continuously growing number of foreign forced laborers living in the city was perceived as a political and ‘ethnic-chauvinist’ security risk by the Gestapo and police. Surveilling and disciplining them increasingly defined the day-to-day work of Gestapo officers. But even ordinary police officers monitored the foreign forced laborers. Members of plant security, ‘security officers’ at larger companies, who were selected and trained by Gestapo officers, plant managers, and warehouse managers constituted another part of the closely intermeshed surveillance network. Hundreds of forced laborers were sent to the Moosach (men) and Berg am Laim (women) Penal Camps as well as Dachau Concentration Camp for ‘dawdling at work’, ‘breach of employment contract’, or ‘unauthorized absence from work’ – the exact figures of those affected are also unknown. In serious cases, such as an accusation of sabotage or violent offenses, ‘flying summary courts’ of the Munich Gestapo came into play. Between 1942 and 1945, it executed at least 55 Polish or Soviet forced laborers in Munich and the surrounding area. A judgment was not necessary for this type of ‘special treatment’. The Munich Gestapo merely had to apply for it at the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin by means of a bureaucratic procedure.
Murder and Terror until the Very End
During the final months of the war, the Gestapo tried to prevent the disintegration of the wartime society that had been ground down by bombing raids and destruction through even greater terrorization. For example, five Eastern European forced laborers were hanged for ‘looting’ in the courtyard of the already badly damaged Wittelsbacher Palais during the winter of 1944/1945. On March 29, 1945, the Gestapo referred a construction worker, who had been sent by the ‘Organisation Todt’ (Todt Organization) to perform cleanup work following a bombing raid in Mühldorf and who had pulled a shirt and two bedsheets from the rubble, to the Munich Special Court, which promptly handed down the death sentence. Martial law prevailed in southern Bavaria from February 1945. Summary courts of the Wehrmacht also participated in the crimes during the final phases of the war, during which the supporters of the regime wanted to prevent capitulation by any means necessary.
