ABSTRACT
G eh e im e S ta a tsp o liz e i (G esta po ) The Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) or Secret State Police originated in Prussia. In April 1933, Hermann Goring (q.v.) established it in his capac ity as head of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. The Gestapo, however, was not created from scratch. He used the political police of the Weimar period as the basis for his new, Nazi-oriented Prus sian political police. According to Robert Gellately, there was no real purge of the Weimar political police after 1933. A certain degree of “cleansing” occurred in some, though not all, areas of the country. Holdover policemen from the Weimar period were no more humane in their treatment of prisoners than the Nazi recruits to the Gestapo. They “acted with the greatest brutality . . . against the ever-increasing numbers of people who were declared opponents and criminals.”
