Die badischen Revier- und Gendarmeriebeamten im „Dritten Reich“ (English shop)

Tägliche Praxis im Bereich des Landeskommissärs Freiburg und NS-Ideologie

Preview

Extract, PDF (66 KB)
Table of Contents, PDF (24 KB)

This regional-historical study of the everyday practice of Baden’s precinct police and gendarmerie officers during the Nazi era demonstrates, through individual examples, that they too, as part of the dictatorial regime, became not merely an instrument but the very core of the völkisch “prerogative state” (Maßnahmenstaat).

The precinct and gendarmerie officers, some of whom had already been socialised in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, were, alongside the Security Police, on the one hand guarantors of the National Socialist seizure of power and of the consolidation of Nazi rule – for example during the waves of arrests of Nazi opponents following Hitler’s assumption of power, or on the occasion of the deportation of the Jews of Baden and the Palatinate to Gurs on 22 October 1940.

They had been obliged to behave loyally towards the regime, among other things, by the “Ten Principles for the Police” of 1935.

On the other hand, in their profession they were each dependent on their immediate superior with regard to their social and financial security, and, through the police service community, were ultimately also integrated into the ‘Volksgemeinschaft’.