ABSTRACT
Strange as it might seem, the Secret State Police of Nazi Germany appears to have enjoyed a rather positive image among large numbers of ordinary Germans during the years of the Third Reich. Taken, rather unfortunately, out of context for reasons of drawing interest to the interview as it was, the quote does indeed express what great numbers of ordinary Germans thought about the Gestapo and Nazi terror while they lived in Nazi Germany. The author entitles 'Germans under Nazi Terror', based on the Dutch translation of his interview with him that was published in the February 2000 issue of a Dutch popular history magazine, the comment was placed prominently in half-inch-high red letters as the lead-in. For an American this is particularly difficult to fathom as the word Geheim in the acronym Gestapo alone, let alone Staatspolizei, conjures up sinister images of surreptitious spying that send shivers up the spine.
