Creation of the secret police. Lubyanka - secret political police

Nazi Germany, like any other country, had its own special services involved in intelligence, counterintelligence, monitoring the level of trustworthiness of the population, and identifying subversive elements. Under the conditions of the dominance of fascist ideology, other, hitherto unusual, tasks were added to these tasks. Thus, it was necessary to find not only leaders and members of hostile parties and underground organizations, but also to look for hiding Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. With questions state security was supervised by a special structure - the Gestapo. This unit required special personnel and specific methods.

The origins of the political investigation service

The name of the service came about by chance. The long German name “Geheime Staatspolizei” (“Secret State Police”) was shortened by postal workers for convenience. In the spring of 1933, shortly after the National Socialist Workers' Party came to power, Department 1A was created in Prussia on the initiative of Hermann Goering. The goals of the party body were to conduct secret work to combat political opponents, of whom there were many in the country at that time. The first boss was R. Diss. Heinrich Himmler at that time headed the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior and had nothing to do with the future Gestapo. This did not prevent the Reichsführer SS from gradually concentrating the organs of political investigation in his hands. Goering’s role in Nazi law enforcement became more than modest a year later; he was more concerned with the issues of the German Air Force. He handed over the reins to Heydrich, the chief of the SD service. Over time, all the disparate units created in come under centralized control from Berlin.

Historical facts

Since 1936, the German police and other services responsible for internal security Reich, come under the control of Heinrich Himmler. The criminal and political departments form a single structure. The second department, which is headed by, is engaged in exposing the enemies of the regime, which now includes racially inferior citizens, homosexuals, asocial types and even the most ordinary lazy people who are subject to labor re-education. This structure remained until 1939, until, shortly after the start of the war, the decision was made to form the Gestapo as its fourth department. This unit was headed by the same Muller. The history of the organization ended in 1945. The troops of the victorious countries were looking for the chief of the German intelligence service, but they were never found. By official version, he died during the storming of Berlin by the Soviet Army.

Misconceptions about appearance

In both Soviet and foreign cinema, images of Gestapo fascists are often found. As a rule, they appear in the guise of bestial humanoid creatures, dressed in black uniforms with rolled up sleeves, or sophisticated sadists armed with surgical torture instruments. They address each other using the titles accepted in the SS. This is partly true. SS officers were sometimes (to strengthen) transferred to work in the Gestapo. Photos of Himmler and Müller in full dress could also indicate appearance ordinary employees, but in reality everything was not quite like that. The bulk of the Gestapo men were civilians; they dressed in civilian clothes, in ordinary suits, and preferred to behave as inconspicuously as possible. The service is still secret. Only on special occasions did SS officers wear a formal black or (more often) mouse-gray uniform. The Gestapo was not supplied with its own uniforms.

Who fought the partisans in the occupied lands?

Another mistake often made by directors, or rather, their consultants, lies in the names of the services involved in the fight against the forces of popular resistance. It was easier to generically call them all the same: “Gestapo.” This word is known to the mass audience, in contrast to the Felgendarmerie, GUF and even SD (Sicherheitsdienst), which actually worked in the occupied territories of the USSR and other countries. In the so-called Transnistria, temporarily captured by Romania, the Siguranza acted (by the way, unlike the royal army, quite effectively). All German services that carried out punitive actions and fought against were subordinate to the Abwehr, the Wehrmacht or the SS leadership. They had nothing to do with the RSHA headquarters in Berlin.

Cinema, Gestapo and SS

From a historical perspective, films about the Gestapo are not entirely correct. Sometimes particularly experienced counterintelligence officers from Germany were actually sent to the areas of greatest activity of the resistance forces. But since the occupied territories were not part of the Reich (even special money was printed for them), the area of ​​operation of the secret state police was limited to the borders of Germany as of 1939. The ranks of the employees of this structure corresponded to the police system adopted by the Gestapo. The SS had its own “table of ranks”, different from the army one.

Working methods

As is known, if ordinary person It's a long and painful beating, he confesses. Another question is how valuable and truthful the information he gives will be. A confession obtained through torture may well be a self-incrimination, and from an operational point of view it is meaningless. the main task task assigned to the state secret police was to neutralize the intelligence efforts of the intelligence services Soviet Union, Great Britain, the USA and all other countries hostile to the one established in Germany in 1933. It is difficult to judge how successful the employees of this service were; many aspects of the invisible war still constitute state secret. The practice of world experience in counterintelligence work shows, however, that truthful and valuable data can be obtained using different methods, the main one of which is the belief in the need for voluntary cooperation. The Gestapo also showed diversity in methods. Photos of torture chambers equipped with the most sophisticated devices for suppressing the will and exerting all types of influence on those under investigation (both physical and psychological) make up a significant portion of the materials of the Nuremberg trials, which recognized the majority of executive institutions as criminal (including the Gestapo).

Did women serve in the organization?

Each intelligence service is strong with its personnel. The higher his qualifications, the better preparation, the more effective the activity. But no number of employees, no matter how well they know applied psychology and methods of underground work are not enough to control the mood and trustworthiness of a population of tens of millions of people. Full-time employees are forced to recruit freelance informants who supply them with necessary information. Most of the male population fascist Germany fought on the fronts. The “informers” were mostly women; the Gestapo took advantage of their natural curiosity and ideas of patriotism inspired by Goebbels’s propaganda. Of course, there were also male freelancers, and recruitment methods did not always involve voluntary cooperation. But, as far as published documents allow us to judge, there were practically no women among the full-time Gestapo employees.

Routine office

So, in the end, we can conclude that the ominous image created by means of post-war art does not fully correspond to historical realities. German Nazi counterintelligence did not break into captured villages, burning their inhabitants, did not guard concentration camps, and did not spy on partisans in occupied cities from Kharkov to Paris. In fact, unremarkable men in gray raincoats or suits walked along German streets, made acquaintances, recruited informants, and sometimes used special cars with direction finders to determine the location of the transmitters of the residencies of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. They did not wear spectacular and ominous uniforms with skulls on the crowns of their caps, and, most likely, most of them did not have the charm of the actor Leonid Bronevoy, whose talent created the famous joke hero Müller throughout the Soviet Union. The Gestapo, like any other intelligence service, was a bureaucratic organization rustling with reports. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, the analysis of surviving card files and archives took a lot of time. It was well spent. These documents became evidence of the inhuman and criminal nature of both Hitler's Nazism and all of his government agencies, including the Gestapo.

History knows many totalitarian regimes that relied entirely on the forces of the secret police when it came to intelligence activities, terror against dissenting citizens and mass executions...

This article presents ten of the most brutal secret police forces that have ever existed in the world. Some of them are probably well known to you, while others you will hear about for the first time.

1. Ministry of State Security of the GDR

GDR Ministry of State Security (or Stasi) – counterintelligence and reconnaissance government agency German Democratic Republic. It was created in February 1950, similar to the Soviet NKGB, with which, by the way, they worked closely during the Cold War.

According to rough estimates, for every 160 residents of East Germany there was one informant working for the GDR Ministry of State Security. Stasi informers were everywhere: in schools, hospitals, industrial enterprises and even among “friendly” neighbors.

Until the early 1970s, agents of the GDR Ministry of State Security practiced only arrests and torture, after which they began to resort to provocations, slander, psychological pressure, phone calls with threats, searches and other methods of dealing with dissident citizens. Many Stasi victims subsequently ended up in mental hospitals or committed suicide.

The GDR Ministry of State Security was disbanded in 1989.

2. Central Department for Combating Banditry

The Central Anti-Banditry Department (CDB) is a secret police and intelligence service created in the Central African Republic in the early 1990s to actively combat the rising wave of crime and looting that was sweeping the country after a series of riots and widespread chaos.

The Central Anti-Gang Squad employed people who were ruthless towards criminals and suspects. They carried out reprisals without trial or investigation, regardless of whether the person was guilty or not.

Most crimes committed by the secret police themselves remained unpunished. One of the methods of torture they practiced during interrogations of suspects was called “Le Café”: they beat a person with batons until he lost his pulse, and then forced him to travel long distances in this state.

3. Bureau for Combating Communist Activities

The Bureau for Combating Communist Activities (BCCA) was created by Mariano Faget, a man who had previously had experience in finding and prosecuting communists, fascists and Nazis in Cuba.

BBKD enjoyed the support of the US Central Intelligence Agency. The peak of his activity came in the 1950s (after the emergence of Fidel Castro’s revolutionary organization “26 July Movement”).

The Bureau for Combating Communist Activities was disbanded in 1959.

4. "Tonton Macoutes"

Haitian Guard "Tonton Macoutes" (volunteers) national security– Milice de Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale) was created by dictator François Duvalier in 1959. Its members were particularly cruel, which is why the people of Haiti considered them not people, but mythological creatures like ghouls who kidnapped and ate bad children for breakfast.

National security volunteers reported only to the president of the country. They were tasked with stopping any attempts by the dissatisfied to overthrow the Duvalier regime. The Tonton Macoutes are responsible for thousands of rapes, tortures, kidnappings and executions of innocent people. They burned their victims alive, stoned them to death, and then put their bodies on public display so that no one would ever again have the desire to go against the dictatorial regime. During the reign of Francois Duvalier and his son, more than 60 thousand people were killed.

5. SAVAK

SAVAK - Iranian Ministry of State Security during the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1957-1979). It worked closely with the CIA and dealt with dissidents (mainly communists and Shiites) quickly and mercilessly.

SAVAK members resorted to torture methods such as blows electric shock, pulling out teeth, tearing off nails, dousing them with boiling water and sulfuric acid, keeping them in solitary confinement for a long period of time, sleep deprivation, cauterization with fire and hot iron, and so on.

Iran's Ministry of State Security was disbanded after the revolution ended in 1979. Instead, a new secret police was created - SAVAMA, whose members were even more cruel than their predecessors.

6. Department of State Security

One of the largest and most brutal secret police forces of the Cold War was the Romanian Department of State Security (or Securitate), founded in 1948 with the assistance of the Soviet Union.

Members of the Securitate were given the goal of tracking and spying on Romanian citizens who showed dissent, arresting them, torturing them and executing them. About half a million informants worked for the Department of State Security. Even one word spoken in the wrong place and with the wrong intonation could result in severe punishment. In such conditions it was almost impossible to resist the regime.

Members of the Securitate were directly involved in the suppression of the dissident movement in the late 1960s on behalf of the totalitarian ruler Nicolae Ceausescu.

The Department of State Security was disbanded and reorganized by the Romanian Parliament in 1991.

7. Santebal

The Cambodian secret police, the Santebal, were created during the reign of the Khmer Rouge; Over time, it essentially turned into a fighter squad.

Santebal members are responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of people who ended up in prison camps, of which there were about 150 in Cambodia. The most notorious of these was Tuol Sleng, where approximately 20,000 prisoners were held between 1976 and 1978, of whom only seven survived. Over the course of 11 years, members of Santebal killed more than two million Cambodians to please the Khmer Rouge regime.

8. People's Commissariat Internal Affairs of the USSR

The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR (NKVD) played important role in the creation of camps of the Gulag system, in which about ten million people visited during the entire existence of the organization.

The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR ceased to exist after the death of Joseph Stalin (1953), to whom they were subordinate.

9. Gestapo

The Gestapo, Hitler's secret state police created in 1933, spent thirteen years terrorizing Nazi Germany, acting as the main instrument in the suppression of dissent, as well as the mass extermination of the Jewish population - the Holocaust.

During World War II, the Gestapo was headed by Heinrich Himmler. Under his leadership, the organization transformed from simply a secret police into an intelligence service and body dedicated to finding and prosecuting enemies of the Nazis both among German citizens and those living in the occupied territories.

The Gestapo, along with the SS, played a major role in the adoption of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, which meant the mass extermination of Jews in Europe.

After Germany's defeat in World War II, the Gestapo was recognized as a criminal organization, and many of its members were executed as war criminals.

10. Central Intelligence Agency

The CIA is an agency of the US Federal Government, created on September 18, 1947, which initially does not seem such a terrible organization, because in fact it collects data, but in fact it for the most part The CIA is the bloodiest intelligence agency in the world. The United States has already admitted that in addition to collecting data, the CIA is engaged in torture and has its own secret prisons, and not only on its territory. It is also worth recalling that the United States created Al Qaeda, which then returned the favor to them.

CIA involved:

Towards the overthrow of the legitimate government in Guatemala in 1954 (Operation PBSUCCESS)
- to arm the Afghan Mujahideen in the period from 1979 to 1989 (Operation Cyclone)
- an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro (the failed Bay of Pigs operation)

This is still a small part of what this Agency is involved in, but in essence, it is through the hands of the CIA that the modern world order is governed. It’s just that it’s often done by someone else’s hands.

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The Gestapo is the secret police of the Third Reich. One of the most brutal organizations of Nazi Germany.

The Gestapo has committed many war crimes, both German territory, and in the occupied lands. In just twelve years of its work, the word has become a household name and a synonym for a brutal repressive body.

Origin

Gestapo is a secret political police. Since ancient times secret service security existed in all powerful powers with authoritarian systems. The Kaiser's Germany had an imperial secret police that hunted down the enemies of the Reich, both internal and external. After the defeat in the First World War it ceased to exist.

The Nazis planned to create a secret repressive apparatus long before they came to power. After the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler went to prison. In less than a year, his minions managed to partially recreate the SA assault troops. After this it was created special organization, which followed participants in the National Socialist movement. Many future members of the SS entered it. As the Nazis rose in political system Germany, activities secret society expanded. The first surveillance of the leaders of the communist and anti-fascist movements began.

Creation

Gestapo East Prussia was the first prototype of the future secret police. In the thirty-third year, Hermann Goering created the first small department. The employees were recruited from SA stormtroopers. The department was part of the new police force and was called political. Initially, the secret police only monitored Hitler's political opponents. Their powers were not much different from the police. They could only monitor, spread rumors and so on. It has not yet reached the point of mass arrests and murders.

Himmler really liked the idea of ​​​​creating the Gestapo. This led to the expansion of the organization. Departments are created throughout Germany with a center in Berlin. Police reform begins. During the Weimar Republic, Germany was effectively a confederal state with broad autonomy for all regions. Law enforcement agencies were directly subordinate local authorities. Now a centralized police department was being created. And Heinrich Himmler actually concentrated power over all political departments in his hands.

New order

Already in the fall of thirty-three, the Gestapo became an important support of the Nazi regime. By Goering's decree, the organization leaves the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Work is underway to infiltrate agents into all other organizations of the new regime. The word "Gestapo" itself is short for German name"Secret State Police". Some historians believe that the name was initially colloquial, and only later received official status.

In 1934, another reorganization of the Gestapo took place. Goering became increasingly interested in the development of the Luftwaffe. Therefore, the secret police becomes the sphere of interest of Himmler, and Heydrich is appointed direct manager. Political departments are closely intertwined with the created SS assault troops. The departments of Prussia and the rest of Germany report directly to Berlin.

Change of leadership

Two years later, Himmler becomes the sole head of all services of the Ministry of the Interior. The Reichsfuehrer further strengthens the independence of the secret police. If earlier these were small departments that acted secretly, then by 1936 there were already hundreds of employees in every city. In the summer of the same year, the Gestapo and the police merged.

From now on they represent a single whole. The functions of the repressive apparatus are assigned to the second department, which is headed by Muller. The Gestapo begins an active fight against opponents of the regime. The main goal become communists, socialists, and trade union activists. The police also begin to participate in the repression of Jews. And at the end of the thirty-sixth, parasites and socially inactive elements are added to this list.

New reorganization

In 1939, the Gestapo department united all other Reich security services under its command. The police were now completely subordinate to Himmler. Miller headed the Fourth State Security Directorate. It was engaged in the search for internal enemies and punitive actions against them.

Gestapo militants were directly involved in the Holocaust and other crimes of the Nazi regime. After the outbreak of World War II, the former SD branches came under the jurisdiction of the department.

The Gestapo is also sent to the occupied territories. It now also serves as a counterintelligence agency. The first branches of the Gestapo open in Poland and divided Czechoslovakia. This increases pressure on the local population. The political police are searching for resistance members, Jews and other elements undesirable to the regime.

Methods and principles of operation

The Gestapo was the political police subordinate to Himmler. After the reorganization, the fourth department left the jurisdiction of the courts. Administrative law no longer applied to him. This decision was an excellent help for the Gestapo to use the most cruel methods without fear. If a citizen was arrested by the police, he or his relatives could appeal to the administrative court to appeal this decision. Also, in order to make an arrest, the police had to press charges.

All these norms did not apply to the Gestapo. Service officers had a presumption of rightness and could detain any person without giving a reason.

By 1939, the Gestapo had become one of the pillars on which Nazi power rested. Along with SS units, the police carried out terror against the population throughout the territory controlled by the Reich. The fourth department could, without a court decision, send a person to a concentration camp, many of which were guarded by them. Also, the Gestapo did not hesitate in their interrogation methods. Torture, humiliation, and so on were used on a massive scale. In the occupied territories, Gestapo Sonder commands took part in genocide and acts of terror against civilians. Inhumane conditions of detention for prisoners of war were used.

Various departments

The Gestapo uniform was more reminiscent of the Wehrmacht than the police: black trousers, high leather boots, a black jacket, cap and raincoat. There were several departments, each with its own classification. Section A was engaged in the fight against external enemy. He targeted communists, socialists and other groups or individuals who professed left-wing views.

It also included a subdepartment for combating enemy propaganda, opposition-minded monarchists, liberals and other unreliable elements.

Department B specialized in various sects and religious organizations. Church leaders who opposed the Nazi regime were persecuted. First of all, Catholics, Protestants, and radical communities were under surveillance. Baptists and Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted. Department B was also responsible for the deportation of Jews.

Occupied lands

Section D worked in the occupied territories. The first branch was stationed in the former Czechoslovakia. The second was tracking people from enemy states. The fourth subdepartment dealt with repression in the occupied territories of Western and Central Europe. But the most brutal was the fifth, who worked in the East - in Poland and the Soviet Union.

Other departments were engaged in espionage and information gathering. The Gestapo had a wide network of informants. IN literally every citizen of the Reich was under close surveillance. The police scrupulously collected information about marital status, preferences, ancestors, even rumors and denunciations of neighbors were recorded.

International Tribunal

After the fall of the Reich, the Gestapo also ceased its work. Photos of the main figures of the secret police then spread throughout all the newspapers of the world. The Nuremberg trials ruled that all members of the fourth department were war criminals.

Higher ranks received long prison sentences, and many were executed. Muller was never caught. According to one version, he died in early May after taking an ampoule of potassium; according to another, he fled to Latin America.

At the beginning of 2017, a scandal occurred with the new Gestapo. Kaliningrad to German period was the location of the central department of East Prussia. Google service Maps returned the old name to the building, which now houses the Russian FSB. After the reaction of Internet users, the error was corrected.

The Secret State Police (Geheime Staatspolizei) was created by Prussian Interior Minister Hermann Goering on April 26, 1933. Initially, it was a small department of the Prussian police, designed to monitor politically unreliable citizens. Goering put his relative Rudolf Diels at the head of this department. However, Heinrich Himmler soon drew attention to the new organ.

By 1934, similar units had already been created throughout Germany, partially merged with the SS and de facto transferred to the subordination of SD chief Reinhard Heydrich. Diels with new police leadership common language Have not found. In April 1934 he retired from the Gestapo and served in various administrative positions and in Nuremberg trials participated as not an accused, but a witness, defending his criminal patron Goering. In 1957, the first chief of the secret police died in a hunting accident.

The name “Gestapo” itself arose under Diels. According to him, in this way the long name of the police service was shortened at the post office.

In 1936, Himmler officially took charge of all law enforcement system The Third Reich, creating a unified “security police”, which included the Gestapo and criminal police, headed by Heydrich at the same time as the SD. The political branch (the Gestapo itself) in new structure It was directed by Heinrich Müller, known to every Russian from the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring”. At this time, the Gestapo became an instrument of terror against oppositionists and Jews.

• Gestapo officers record data on incoming prisoners
• The Library of Congress

In 1939, the Gestapo became part of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security, receiving the status of the IV Directorate of the RSHA.

Emergency powers

“The Gestapo received a wide range of tools to put pressure on society,” historian and writer Konstantin Zalessky noted in an interview with RT.

According to the expert, the secret state police had no right to interfere only in the affairs of the party and, up to a certain point, the army. However, after the revelation of the plot against Adolf Hitler, the immunity from the Wehrmacht was lifted.

The Gestapo was a rather small body. In 1937, in his central office and 54 regional offices Only 6.5 thousand employees served, while the number of Gestapo officers at the peak of the power of the secret state police in 1944 is estimated at 20-30 thousand staff members.

“The forms and methods of work of the Gestapo were illegal from the point of view of a civilized society. We are talking about preventive arrests and imprisonment of people who have not committed any crime in concentration camps, as well as physical influence, torture,” said Zalessky.

However, according to the historian, the special services also resorted to similar measures in other totalitarian states. However, the Gestapo achieved in its work the highest level effectiveness in protecting the interests of the regime, effectively preventing the emergence of a single civil conspiracy against Hitler and completely destroying the opposition. The idea of ​​overthrowing or killing the Fuhrer arose from time to time only among the military - and then only until the Gestapo received permission to spy on Wehrmacht employees.

“The Gestapo was able to achieve this effect through the large-scale development of the institution of denunciation in Germany. Moreover, the informers did not even work for money, but on a voluntary, free basis. The Gestapo carefully studied all signals received by the police, including anonymous ones, which is completely atypical for special services,” Zalessky emphasized.

When a resident of Germany or any of the countries occupied by the Reich became a victim of a Gestapo informer, he further fate was terrible.

According to the research of French historian and Resistance member Jacques Delarue, detainees were hung by their outstretched arms, beaten with fists, sticks and whips, their nails were pulled out, their teeth were sawed off, they were given electric shocks, the skin of their soles was cut, and they were forced to walk on salt. To quickly obtain the necessary information, the heads of the detainees were immersed in cold water until they began to choke. Having repeated this torture several times, the Gestapo brought people to their senses with hot coffee or cognac and persuaded them to cooperate.

As of 1941, the Gestapo included units involved in the suppression of the opposition (both left and right), counterintelligence, control over religious life Reich and means mass media, resettlement and extermination of Jews, interaction with foreign political investigation. During the war, border guard and customs control departments were created within the Gestapo.

Eastern front

"The Gestapo took Active participation in the mass murder of Jews and in the implementation master plan"Ost", which provided for the destruction and resettlement of most of Eastern Europe Slavic population“,” military historian Yuri Knutov told RT.

The Nazis did not create a regular Gestapo structure, similar to the one that existed in the Reich, in the occupied territories of the USSR. Instead, in the rear of the Wehrmacht, there were special units - Einsatzgruppen, about 10% of the personnel (mostly leadership) of which were Gestapo employees, and the remaining 90% were collaborators from the Schutzmannschaft (auxiliary battalions). security police), representatives of the Security Service (SD), Waffen SS and criminal police.

The Einsatzgruppen, interacting with the Abwehr (German military intelligence) and army units, were engaged in the mass extermination of Jews, communists, people dissatisfied with the occupation, and simply those whom the Nazis considered necessary to kill in order to intimidate the population.

In exactly one night from July 12 to July 13, 1942 Ukrainian nationalists under the leadership of SS and Gestapo officers, 5 thousand Jews were exterminated. In total, the Einsatzgruppen personally and through the hands of collaborators from the auxiliary police subordinated to them during punitive operations and measures to liquidate Jewish ghettos killed in Eastern Europe several million people.

• Members of the Einsatzgruppe shoot Jews near Ivangorod ( Ukrainian SSR), 1942
• Historical Archives in Warsaw

In addition, the secret field police (Geheime Feldpolizei), which was initially confined to military intelligence and counterintelligence, but in January 1942 reassigned to the Gestapo. The soldiers of the Red Army tried not to even take its employees prisoner.

The fate of the executioners

According to the verdict Nuremberg Tribunal The Gestapo, SD and SS were recognized as organizations used for criminal purposes. However, not all Gestapo executioners suffered the deserved punishment.

“Many criminals managed to escape punishment. Most often they imitated death, imitated funerals. It was decided, at the initiative of the allies represented by England, France and the United States, that if a person was considered dead, he would not be prosecuted or tried. Therefore, such people went unpunished,” said Yuri Knutov.

In 2014, The New York Times reported that in the years cold war at least a thousand former employees of Hitler's intelligence services (including the Gestapo) in the United States were not brought to justice for their crimes.

Until 1960, he was safely hiding in Latin America head of the Gestapo department IV B 4 Adolf Eichmann, who was responsible for the massacres Jews - the so-called final decision Jewish question. Only 15 years after the end of World War II, Eichmann was captured in Argentina by a group of Israeli intelligence agents, taken to Jerusalem and executed by court order in 1962.

• Head of Gestapo IV B 4 Adolf Eichmann
• globallookpress.com
• World History Archive

To this day, it is not entirely clear what happened to Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller. He disappeared in Berlin on May 1, 1945. According to indirect evidence, Mueller committed suicide. The body of a man similar to him in a general's uniform was allegedly discovered in August 1945.

The remains, which could have belonged to the Gestapo chief, were for some reason repeatedly reburied, and now it is impossible to say for sure whether it was Müller or just a person similar to him.

Rumors repeatedly surfaced in the media about the discovery of the head of the IV Directorate of the RSHA either in the USA or in the USSR, but they were all refuted.

“The Gestapo structure itself effectively fulfilled the tasks that the political leadership of the Third Reich set for it. It was a special service aimed not at protecting law and order, but at performing punitive functions and suppressing any opposition activity. Criminal secret police criminal regime“, summarized Konstantin Zalessky.