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Reich Security Main Office

January 12, 2023

The Reich Security Main Office[a] (German: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as Chef der Deutschen Polizei (Chief of German Police) and Reichsführer-SS, the head of the Nazi Party's Schutzstaffel (SS). The organization's stated duty was to fight all "enemies of the Reich" inside and outside the borders of Nazi Germany.

Reich Security Main Office
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA)
Flag for the Chief of the SiPo and SD
RSHA overview
Formed27 September 1939 (27 September 1939)
Preceding agencies
Dissolved8 May 1945 (8 May 1945)
Type • Secret police
 • Intelligence agency
Jurisdiction German Reich
German-occupied Europe
HeadquartersPrinz-Albrecht-Straße 8, Berlin
52°30′26″N 13°22′57″E / 52.50722°N 13.38250°E / 52.50722; 13.38250
Employees50,648 (February 1944 est.)[1]
Minister responsible
RSHA executives
Parent RSHAMinistry of the Interior (nominally)
Allgemeine SS
Child agencies

Formation and development

Himmler established the RSHA on 27 September 1939. His assumption of control over all security and police forces in Germany was a significant factor in the growth in power of the Nazi state.[2] With the formation of the RSHA, Himmler combined under one roof the Nazi Party's Sicherheitsdienst (SD; SS intelligence service) with the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo; "Security Police"), which was nominally under the Interior Ministry. The SiPo was composed of two sub-departments, the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo; "Secret State Police") and the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo; "Criminal Police").[3] In correspondence, the RSHA was often abbreviated to RSi-H[4] to avoid confusion with the SS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (RuSHA; "SS Race and Settlement Office").

The creation of the RSHA represented the formalization, at the highest level, of the relationship under which the SD served as the intelligence agency for the security police. A similar coordination existed in the local offices, where the Gestapo, criminal police, and SD were formally separate offices. This coordination was carried out by inspectors on the staff of the local higher SS and police leaders. One of the principal functions of the local SD units was to serve as the intelligence agency for the local Gestapo units. In the occupied territories, the formal relationship between local units of the Gestapo, criminal police, and SD was slightly closer.[5]

The RSHA continued to grow at an enormous rate during World War II in Europe.[6] Routine reorganization of the RSHA did not change the tendency for centralization within Nazi Germany, nor did it change the general trend for organizations like the RSHA to develop direct relationships to Adolf Hitler, adhering to Nazi Germany's typical pattern of the leader-follower construct.[7] For the RSHA, centrality within Nazi Germany was pronounced since the organization completed the integration of government and Nazi Party offices as to intelligence gathering and security. Departments like the SD and Gestapo (within the RSHA) were controlled directly by Himmler and his immediate subordinate SS-Obergruppenführer and General of Police Reinhard Heydrich; the two held the power of life and death for nearly every German and were essentially above the law.[8][9]

 
Reinhard Heydrich, the original chief of the RSHA, as an SS-Gruppenführer in August 1940

Heydrich remained the RSHA chief until his assassination in 1942. In January 1943 Himmler delegated the office to SS-Obergruppenführer and General of Police Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who headed the RSHA until the end of the war in Europe.[10] The head of the RSHA was also known as the CSSD or Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (Chief of the Security Police and of the Security Service).[11][12]

Organization

According to British author Gerald Reitlinger, the RSHA "became a typical overblown bureaucracy... The complexity of RSHA was unequalled... with at least a hundred... sub-sub-sections, a modest camouflage of the fact that it handled the progressive extermination which Hitler planned for the ten million Jews of Europe".[13]

Structure

The organization at its simplest was divided into seven offices (Ämter):[14][15]

Leadership

No. Portrait Chief of SiPo and SD Took office Left office Time in office Party
1
 
Heydrich, ReinhardSS-Obergruppenführer
Reinhard Heydrich
(1904–1942)		27 September 19394 June 1942 †2 years, 250 daysNSDAP
–
 
Himmler, HeinrichReichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler
(1900–1945)
Acting		4 June 194230 January 1943240 daysNSDAP
2
 
Kaltenbrunner, ErnstSS-Obergruppenführer
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
(1903–1946)		30 January 194312 May 19452 years, 102 daysNSDAP

Role in the Holocaust

RSHA-controlled activities included gathering intelligence, criminal investigation, overseeing foreigners, monitoring public opinion, and Nazi indoctrination. The RSHA was also "the central office for the extra-judicial NS (National Socialist) measures of terror and repression from the beginning of the war until 1945".[22] The list of persecuted people included Jews, Communists, Freemasons, pacifists, and Christian activists.[23] In addition to dealing with identified enemies, the RSHA advocated expansionist policies for the Reich and the Germanization of additional territory through settlement.[24] Generalplan Ost (General Plan East), which was the secret Nazi plan to colonize Central and Eastern Europe exclusively with Germans, displacing inhabitants in the process through genocide and ethnic cleansing in order to obtain sufficient Lebensraum, stemmed from officials in the RSHA, among other Nazi organizations.[25]

In its role as the national and Nazi security service, the RSHA coordinated activities among various agencies with wide-ranging responsibilities within the Reich.[26] According to German historian, Klaus Hildebrand, the RSHA was "particularly concerned with racial matters".[27] Adolf Eichmann stated in 1937 that "the anger of the people expressed in riots [was] the most effective means to rob the Jews of a sense of security".[28] Entry into the Second World War afforded the RSHA the power to act as an intermediary in conquered or occupied territories, which according to Hans Mommsen, lent itself to implementing the extermination of Jewish populations in those places.[29] An order issued by the RSHA on 20 May 1941 to block emigration of any and all Jews attempting to leave Belgium or France as part of the "imminent Final Solution of the Jewish question" demonstrates its complicity for the systematic extermination of Jews.[30] Part of the RSHA's efforts to encourage occupied nations to hand over their Jews included coercing them by assigning Jewish advisory officials.[31] Working with Eichmann's Reich Association of Jews in Germany, they also deliberately deceived Jews still living in Germany and other countries by promising them good living quarters, medical care, and food in Theresienstadt (a concentration camp which was a way station to extermination facilities like Auschwitz) if they turned over their assets to the RSHA through a phony home-purchase plan.[32]

The RSHA oversaw the Einsatzgruppen, death squads that were formed under the direction of Heydrich and operated by the SS. Originally part of the SiPo, in September 1939 the operational control of the Einsatzgruppen was taken over by the RSHA. When the units were re-formed prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the men of the Einsatzgruppen were recruited from the SD, Gestapo, Kripo, Orpo, and Waffen-SS. The units followed the invasion forces of the German Army into Eastern Europe.[33] Not infrequently, commanders of Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando sub-units were also desk officers from the main office of the RSHA.[34] Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen, related agencies, and foreign auxiliary troops co-opted by the Nazis,[b] killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews.[37]

Rosenstrasse protest and RSHA involvement

 
SS guards overseeing Jews being rounded up in March 1943 during the liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto
 
Display on bus stop at the site of Adolf Eichmann's former office in Berlin at Kurfurstenstrasse 115 (now occupied by a hotel building). After the founding of the RSHA in 1939, Eichmann became director of RSHA sub-section (Referat) IV D 4 (Clearing Activities, or Räumungsangelegenheiten) (1940), and, after March 1941, IV B 4 (Jewish Affairs, or Judenreferat). Both offices organized the deportation of Jews. From this position, Eichmann played a central role in transporting over 1.5 million Jews from all over Europe to Nazi killing centers.[38]

As early as 1941, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels began to complain that large numbers of Jews had not been transported out of Germany because of their work in the armaments industry.[39] They were protected from deportation as they were considered to be irreplaceable labourers, and many were also married to Aryan Germans. These Jews believed that these factors ensured their safety. But by late 1942, Hitler and the RSHA were ready to rid Berlin of its remaining German Jews.[40] In September 1942, Hitler decided that these labourers would still be protected, but that they were to be sent out of the country. Meanwhile, Auschwitz administrators were lobbying the government to send them more armaments workers, as they had struck a bargain with the arms producer IG Farben to construct a camp specifically for arms development using slave labour.[41] As a result, the RSHA decreed the Fabrik-Aktion, an initiative to register all Jews working in armaments production. The primary targets of this action were Jews who were married to Aryans.[40]

The RSHA planned to remove all German Jews from Berlin in early 1943 (the deadline to deport these Jews was 28 February 1943, according to a diary entry Goebbels wrote in early February).[42] On 27 February 1943, the RSHA sent plainclothes Gestapo officials to arrest intermarried Jews and charge them with various crimes.[43] Around 2,000 intermarried Jewish men were taken to Rosenstrasse 2–4, where they were held.[44] Goebbels complained that many of the arrests had been "thwarted" by industrialists since some 4,000 Jews were expected to be detained.[45] Angry wives—as "Women of German blood"–began protesting against this action in front of the building on Rosenstrasse where the men were being held.[46] On 6 March, all but 25 of the intermarried Jews were released; the 25 still held were sent to Auschwitz.[47] On 8 March, RSHA head Ernst Kaltenbrunner told Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick that the deportations had been limited to Jews who were not intermarried.[48]

See also

References

Informational notes

  1. ^ The Reichssicherheitshauptamt is variously translated in sources as "Reich Security Main Office", "Reich Main Security Office", "Reich Central Security Main Office", "Reich Security Central Office", "Reich Head Security Office", or "Reich Security Head Office".
  2. ^ Hilberg outlines the participation of non-German auxiliaries assigned to the Order Police and Einsatzgruppen in these killing operations within his work, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945.[35] He also discusses the overall complicity of non-German governments.[36]

Citations

  1. ^ Nachama 2010, p. 358.
  2. ^ Broszat 1981, p. 270.
  3. ^ Longerich 2012, pp. 201, 469, 470.
  4. ^ McNab 2013, p. 41.
  5. ^ Avalon Project–Yale University, Judgement: The Accused Organizations.
  6. ^ Bracher 1970, p. 353.
  7. ^ Williamson 2002, pp. 34, 35.
  8. ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 782.
  9. ^ Shirer 1988, pp. 373, 374.
  10. ^ Rich 1992, p. 49.
  11. ^ Buchheim 1968, p. 173.
  12. ^ a b c d Höhne 2001, p. 256.
  13. ^ Reitlinger 1989, p. 138.
  14. ^ Buchheim 1968, pp. 172–187.
  15. ^ Weale 2012, pp. 140–144.
  16. ^ Weale 2012, p. 85.
  17. ^ Höhne 2001, pp. 256–257.
  18. ^ USHMM, Adolf Eichmann: Key Dates.
  19. ^ a b Höhne 2001, p. 257.
  20. ^ Friedlander 1997, p. 55.
  21. ^ Buchheim 1968, p. 174.
  22. ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 783.
  23. ^ Longerich 2012, p. 470.
  24. ^ Mazower 2008, pp. 204–211.
  25. ^ Dülffer 2009, p. 157.
  26. ^ Jacobsen 1999, p. 86.
  27. ^ Hildebrand 1984, p. 61.
  28. ^ Stoltzfus 2016, p. 118.
  29. ^ Mommsen 2000, p. 193.
  30. ^ Bracher 1970, p. 426.
  31. ^ Bracher 1970, p. 428.
  32. ^ Bracher 1970, p. 427.
  33. ^ Longerich 2010, p. 185.
  34. ^ Burleigh 2000, p. 599.
  35. ^ Hilberg 1992, pp. 87–102.
  36. ^ Hilberg 1992, pp. 75–86.
  37. ^ Rhodes 2002, p. 257.
  38. ^ USHMM, Adolf Eichmann.
  39. ^ Schulle 2009, p. 159.
  40. ^ a b Schulle 2009, p. 160.
  41. ^ Stoltzfus 2016, p. 251.
  42. ^ Stoltzfus 2016, p. 252.
  43. ^ Schulle 2009, pp. 160–161.
  44. ^ Stoltzfus 2016, p. 252, 297.
  45. ^ Schulle 2009, p. 161.
  46. ^ Schulle 2009, p. 164.
  47. ^ Stoltzfus 2016, p. 255–256.
  48. ^ Stoltzfus 2016, p. 258.

Bibliography

  • Bracher, Karl Dietrich (1970). The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism. New York: Praeger. ASIN B001JZ4T16.
  • Broszat, Martin (1981). The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich. Harlow: Longmans. ISBN 978-0582489974.
  • Buchheim, Hans (1968). "The SS – Instrument of Domination". In Krausnik, Helmut; Buchheim, Hans; Broszat, Martin; Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf (eds.). Anatomy of the SS State. New York: Walker and Company. ISBN 978-0-00211-026-6.
  • Burleigh, Michael (2000). The Third Reich: A New History. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 978-0-80909-325-0.
  • Dülffer, Jost (2009). Nazi Germany 1933–1945: Faith and Annihilation. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0-34061-393-1.
  • Friedlander, Henry (1997). The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Univ of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807846759.
  • Hilberg, Raul (1992). Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945. New York: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-8419-0910-5.
  • Hildebrand, Klaus (1984). The Third Reich. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-0494-3033-5.
  • Höhne, Heinz (2001). The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 978-0-14139-012-3.
  • Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf (1999). "The Structure of Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933–1945". In Christian Leitz (ed.). The Third Reich: The Essential Readings. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-0-63120-700-9.
  • Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280436-5.
  • Longerich, Peter (2012). Heinrich Himmler: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959232-6.
  • Mazower, Mark (2008). Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe. New York; Toronto: Penguin. ISBN 978-1-59420-188-2.
  • McNab, Chris (2013). Hitler's Elite: The SS 1939–45. Osprey. ISBN 978-1-78200-088-4.
  • Mommsen, Hans (2000). "Cumulative Radicalization and Self-Destruction of the Nazi Regime". In Neil Gregor (ed.). Nazism. Oxford Readers. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19289-281-2.
  • Nachama, Andreas (2010). Topography of Terror: Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office on Wilhelm-and Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse – A Documentation. Berlin: Stiftung Topographie des Terrors. ISBN 978-3-94177-207-6.
  • Reitlinger, Gerald (1989). The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306803512.
  • Rhodes, Richard (2002). Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-375-70822-7.
  • Rich, Norman (1992). Hitler's War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi State, and the Course of Expansion. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 978-0393008029.
  • Schulle, Diana (2009). "The Rosenstrasse Protest". In Beate Meyer; Hermann Simon; Chana Schütz (eds.). Jews in Nazi Berlin: From Kristallnacht to Liberation. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-22652-157-2.
  • Shirer, William L. (1988) [1961]. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Ballantine Books.
  • Stoltzfus, Nathan (2016). Hitler's Compromises: Coercion and Consensus in Nazi Germany. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-21750-6.
  • Weale, Adrian (2012). Army of Evil: A History of the SS. New York: Caliber Printing. ISBN 978-0451237910.
  • Williamson, David G. (2002). The Third Reich (3rd ed.). London: Longman. ISBN 978-0582368835.
  • Zentner, Christian; Bedürftig, Friedemann (1991). The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York: MacMillan Publishing. ISBN 0-02-897500-6.
Online
  • Avalon Project–Yale University. "Judgement: The Accused Organizations". Retrieved 14 November 2018.
  • USHMM. "Adolf Eichmann". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14 November 2018.
  • USHMM. "Adolf Eichmann: Key Dates". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14 November 2018.

Further reading

  • Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. New York: Penguin, 2005.
  • Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin, 2006.
  • Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich at War. New York: Penguin, 2009 [2008].
  • Office of US Chief of Counsel For Prosecution of Axis Criminality, ed. (1946). Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.
  • Wildt, Michael (2002). Generation of the Unbound: The Leadership Corps of the Reich Security Main Office, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. ISBN 965-308-162-4.
  • Wildt, Michael (2010). An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Williams, Max (2001). Reinhard Heydrich: The Biography. Vol. 1 Road To War. Church Stretton: Ulric Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9537577-5-6.
  • Williams, Max (2003). Reinhard Heydrich: The Biography. Vol. 2 Enigma. Church Stretton: Ulric Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9537577-6-3.


January 12, 2023
reich, security, main, office, german, reichssicherheitshauptamt, rsha, organization, under, heinrich, himmler, dual, capacity, chef, deutschen, polizei, chief, german, police, reichsführer, head, nazi, party, schutzstaffel, organization, stated, duty, fight, . The Reich Security Main Office a German Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as Chef der Deutschen Polizei Chief of German Police and Reichsfuhrer SS the head of the Nazi Party s Schutzstaffel SS The organization s stated duty was to fight all enemies of the Reich inside and outside the borders of Nazi Germany Reich Security Main OfficeReichssicherheitshauptamt RSHA Flag for the Chief of the SiPo and SDRSHA overviewFormed27 September 1939 27 September 1939 Preceding agenciesSicherheitspolizei SiPo Sicherheitsdienst SD Dissolved8 May 1945 8 May 1945 Type Secret police Intelligence agencyJurisdiction German Reich German occupied EuropeHeadquartersPrinz Albrecht Strasse 8 Berlin52 30 26 N 13 22 57 E 52 50722 N 13 38250 E 52 50722 13 38250Employees50 648 February 1944 est 1 Minister responsibleHeinrich Himmler 1939 1945 RSHA executivesReinhard Heydrich 1939 1942 Chief of SiPo and SDHeinrich Himmler 1942 1943 Acting Chief of SiPo and SDErnst Kaltenbrunner 1943 1945 Chief of SiPo and SDHeinrich Muller April May 1945 Director of the GestapoParent RSHAMinistry of the Interior nominally Allgemeine SSChild agenciesGestapoSicherheitsdienst SD Sicherheitspolizei SiPo Kriminalpolizei Kripo Contents 1 Formation and development 2 Organization 2 1 Structure 2 2 Leadership 3 Role in the Holocaust 4 Rosenstrasse protest and RSHA involvement 5 See also 6 ReferencesFormation and development EditHimmler established the RSHA on 27 September 1939 His assumption of control over all security and police forces in Germany was a significant factor in the growth in power of the Nazi state 2 With the formation of the RSHA Himmler combined under one roof the Nazi Party s Sicherheitsdienst SD SS intelligence service with the Sicherheitspolizei SiPo Security Police which was nominally under the Interior Ministry The SiPo was composed of two sub departments the Geheime Staatspolizei Gestapo Secret State Police and the Kriminalpolizei Kripo Criminal Police 3 In correspondence the RSHA was often abbreviated to RSi H 4 to avoid confusion with the SS Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt RuSHA SS Race and Settlement Office The creation of the RSHA represented the formalization at the highest level of the relationship under which the SD served as the intelligence agency for the security police A similar coordination existed in the local offices where the Gestapo criminal police and SD were formally separate offices This coordination was carried out by inspectors on the staff of the local higher SS and police leaders One of the principal functions of the local SD units was to serve as the intelligence agency for the local Gestapo units In the occupied territories the formal relationship between local units of the Gestapo criminal police and SD was slightly closer 5 The RSHA continued to grow at an enormous rate during World War II in Europe 6 Routine reorganization of the RSHA did not change the tendency for centralization within Nazi Germany nor did it change the general trend for organizations like the RSHA to develop direct relationships to Adolf Hitler adhering to Nazi Germany s typical pattern of the leader follower construct 7 For the RSHA centrality within Nazi Germany was pronounced since the organization completed the integration of government and Nazi Party offices as to intelligence gathering and security Departments like the SD and Gestapo within the RSHA were controlled directly by Himmler and his immediate subordinate SS Obergruppenfuhrer and General of Police Reinhard Heydrich the two held the power of life and death for nearly every German and were essentially above the law 8 9 Reinhard Heydrich the original chief of the RSHA as an SS Gruppenfuhrer in August 1940 Heydrich remained the RSHA chief until his assassination in 1942 In January 1943 Himmler delegated the office to SS Obergruppenfuhrer and General of Police Ernst Kaltenbrunner who headed the RSHA until the end of the war in Europe 10 The head of the RSHA was also known as the CSSD or Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD Chief of the Security Police and of the Security Service 11 12 Organization EditAccording to British author Gerald Reitlinger the RSHA became a typical overblown bureaucracy The complexity of RSHA was unequalled with at least a hundred sub sub sections a modest camouflage of the fact that it handled the progressive extermination which Hitler planned for the ten million Jews of Europe 13 Structure Edit The organization at its simplest was divided into seven offices Amter 14 15 Amt I Administration and Legal originally headed by SS Gruppenfuhrer Dr Werner Best 12 In 1940 he was succeeded by SS Brigadefuhrer Bruno Streckenbach In April 1944 Erich Ehrlinger took over as department chief Amt II Ideological Investigation headed by SS Brigadefuhrer Professor Franz Six 12 Amt III Spheres of German Life or the Inland SD headed by SS Gruppenfuhrer Otto Ohlendorf was the SS information gathering service for inside Germany 12 It also dealt with ethnic Germans outside of Germany s prewar borders and matters of culture Amt IV Suppression of Opposition This was the Geheime Staatspolizei better known by the sobriquet Gestapo 16 It was headed by SS Gruppenfuhrer Heinrich Muller 17 SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann one of the main architects of the Holocaust was head of the Amt IV sub department called Referat IV B4 18 Amt V Suppression of Crime Kriminalpolizei Kripo originally led by SS Gruppenfuhrer Arthur Nebe 19 and later by SS Oberfuhrer Friedrich Panzinger 20 This was the Criminal Police which dealt with serious non political crimes such as rape murder and arson Amt V was also known as the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt Reich Criminal Police Department or RKPA Amt VI Foreign Intelligence Service or Ausland SD originally led by SS Brigadefuhrer Heinz Jost 19 and later by SS Brigadefuhrer Walter Schellenberg Amt VII Ideological Research and Evaluation was a reconstitution of Amt II overseen by SS Brigadefuhrer Professor Dr Franz Six 21 Later it was headed by SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Paul Dittel It was responsible for the creation of anti semitic anti masonic propaganda the sounding of public opinion and monitoring of Nazi indoctrination by the public Leadership Edit No Portrait Chief of SiPo and SD Took office Left office Time in office Party1 Heydrich Reinhard SS ObergruppenfuhrerReinhard Heydrich 1904 1942 27 September 19394 June 1942 2 years 250 daysNSDAP Himmler Heinrich Reichsfuhrer SSHeinrich Himmler 1900 1945 Acting4 June 194230 January 1943240 daysNSDAP2 Kaltenbrunner Ernst SS ObergruppenfuhrerErnst Kaltenbrunner 1903 1946 30 January 194312 May 19452 years 102 daysNSDAPRole in the Holocaust EditRSHA controlled activities included gathering intelligence criminal investigation overseeing foreigners monitoring public opinion and Nazi indoctrination The RSHA was also the central office for the extra judicial NS National Socialist measures of terror and repression from the beginning of the war until 1945 22 The list of persecuted people included Jews Communists Freemasons pacifists and Christian activists 23 In addition to dealing with identified enemies the RSHA advocated expansionist policies for the Reich and the Germanization of additional territory through settlement 24 Generalplan Ost General Plan East which was the secret Nazi plan to colonize Central and Eastern Europe exclusively with Germans displacing inhabitants in the process through genocide and ethnic cleansing in order to obtain sufficient Lebensraum stemmed from officials in the RSHA among other Nazi organizations 25 In its role as the national and Nazi security service the RSHA coordinated activities among various agencies with wide ranging responsibilities within the Reich 26 According to German historian Klaus Hildebrand the RSHA was particularly concerned with racial matters 27 Adolf Eichmann stated in 1937 that the anger of the people expressed in riots was the most effective means to rob the Jews of a sense of security 28 Entry into the Second World War afforded the RSHA the power to act as an intermediary in conquered or occupied territories which according to Hans Mommsen lent itself to implementing the extermination of Jewish populations in those places 29 An order issued by the RSHA on 20 May 1941 to block emigration of any and all Jews attempting to leave Belgium or France as part of the imminent Final Solution of the Jewish question demonstrates its complicity for the systematic extermination of Jews 30 Part of the RSHA s efforts to encourage occupied nations to hand over their Jews included coercing them by assigning Jewish advisory officials 31 Working with Eichmann s Reich Association of Jews in Germany they also deliberately deceived Jews still living in Germany and other countries by promising them good living quarters medical care and food in Theresienstadt a concentration camp which was a way station to extermination facilities like Auschwitz if they turned over their assets to the RSHA through a phony home purchase plan 32 The RSHA oversaw the Einsatzgruppen death squads that were formed under the direction of Heydrich and operated by the SS Originally part of the SiPo in September 1939 the operational control of the Einsatzgruppen was taken over by the RSHA When the units were re formed prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 the men of the Einsatzgruppen were recruited from the SD Gestapo Kripo Orpo and Waffen SS The units followed the invasion forces of the German Army into Eastern Europe 33 Not infrequently commanders of Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando sub units were also desk officers from the main office of the RSHA 34 Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen related agencies and foreign auxiliary troops co opted by the Nazis b killed more than two million people including 1 3 million Jews 37 Rosenstrasse protest and RSHA involvement Edit SS guards overseeing Jews being rounded up in March 1943 during the liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto Display on bus stop at the site of Adolf Eichmann s former office in Berlin at Kurfurstenstrasse 115 now occupied by a hotel building After the founding of the RSHA in 1939 Eichmann became director of RSHA sub section Referat IV D 4 Clearing Activities or Raumungsangelegenheiten 1940 and after March 1941 IV B 4 Jewish Affairs or Judenreferat Both offices organized the deportation of Jews From this position Eichmann played a central role in transporting over 1 5 million Jews from all over Europe to Nazi killing centers 38 As early as 1941 Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels began to complain that large numbers of Jews had not been transported out of Germany because of their work in the armaments industry 39 They were protected from deportation as they were considered to be irreplaceable labourers and many were also married to Aryan Germans These Jews believed that these factors ensured their safety But by late 1942 Hitler and the RSHA were ready to rid Berlin of its remaining German Jews 40 In September 1942 Hitler decided that these labourers would still be protected but that they were to be sent out of the country Meanwhile Auschwitz administrators were lobbying the government to send them more armaments workers as they had struck a bargain with the arms producer IG Farben to construct a camp specifically for arms development using slave labour 41 As a result the RSHA decreed the Fabrik Aktion an initiative to register all Jews working in armaments production The primary targets of this action were Jews who were married to Aryans 40 The RSHA planned to remove all German Jews from Berlin in early 1943 the deadline to deport these Jews was 28 February 1943 according to a diary entry Goebbels wrote in early February 42 On 27 February 1943 the RSHA sent plainclothes Gestapo officials to arrest intermarried Jews and charge them with various crimes 43 Around 2 000 intermarried Jewish men were taken to Rosenstrasse 2 4 where they were held 44 Goebbels complained that many of the arrests had been thwarted by industrialists since some 4 000 Jews were expected to be detained 45 Angry wives as Women of German blood began protesting against this action in front of the building on Rosenstrasse where the men were being held 46 On 6 March all but 25 of the intermarried Jews were released the 25 still held were sent to Auschwitz 47 On 8 March RSHA head Ernst Kaltenbrunner told Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick that the deportations had been limited to Jews who were not intermarried 48 See also EditGlossary of Nazi Germany List of SS personnel OVRA Fascist Italy s secret police similar to the Gestapo SS Wirtschafts Verwaltungshauptamt WVHA the economic amp administrative department of the SS Red Orchestra RSHA operations against a wartime Soviet espionage ring References EditInformational notes The Reichssicherheitshauptamt is variously translated in sources as Reich Security Main Office Reich Main Security Office Reich Central Security Main Office Reich Security Central Office Reich Head Security Office or Reich Security Head Office Hilberg outlines the participation of non German auxiliaries assigned to the Order Police and Einsatzgruppen in these killing operations within his work Perpetrators Victims Bystanders The Jewish Catastrophe 1933 1945 35 He also discusses the overall complicity of non German governments 36 Citations Nachama 2010 p 358 Broszat 1981 p 270 Longerich 2012 pp 201 469 470 McNab 2013 p 41 Avalon Project Yale University Judgement The Accused Organizations Bracher 1970 p 353 Williamson 2002 pp 34 35 Zentner amp Bedurftig 1991 p 782 Shirer 1988 pp 373 374 Rich 1992 p 49 Buchheim 1968 p 173 a b c d Hohne 2001 p 256 Reitlinger 1989 p 138 Buchheim 1968 pp 172 187 Weale 2012 pp 140 144 Weale 2012 p 85 Hohne 2001 pp 256 257 USHMM Adolf Eichmann Key Dates a b Hohne 2001 p 257 Friedlander 1997 p 55 Buchheim 1968 p 174 Zentner amp Bedurftig 1991 p 783 Longerich 2012 p 470 Mazower 2008 pp 204 211 Dulffer 2009 p 157 Jacobsen 1999 p 86 Hildebrand 1984 p 61 Stoltzfus 2016 p 118 Mommsen 2000 p 193 Bracher 1970 p 426 Bracher 1970 p 428 Bracher 1970 p 427 Longerich 2010 p 185 Burleigh 2000 p 599 Hilberg 1992 pp 87 102 Hilberg 1992 pp 75 86 Rhodes 2002 p 257 USHMM Adolf Eichmann Schulle 2009 p 159 a b Schulle 2009 p 160 Stoltzfus 2016 p 251 Stoltzfus 2016 p 252 Schulle 2009 pp 160 161 Stoltzfus 2016 p 252 297 Schulle 2009 p 161 Schulle 2009 p 164 Stoltzfus 2016 p 255 256 Stoltzfus 2016 p 258 Bibliography Bracher Karl Dietrich 1970 The German Dictatorship The Origins Structure and Effects of National Socialism New York Praeger ASIN B001JZ4T16 Broszat Martin 1981 The Hitler State The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich Harlow Longmans ISBN 978 0582489974 Buchheim Hans 1968 The SS Instrument of Domination In Krausnik Helmut Buchheim Hans Broszat Martin Jacobsen Hans Adolf eds Anatomy of the SS State New York Walker and Company ISBN 978 0 00211 026 6 Burleigh Michael 2000 The Third Reich A New History New York Hill and Wang ISBN 978 0 80909 325 0 Dulffer Jost 2009 Nazi Germany 1933 1945 Faith and Annihilation London Bloomsbury ISBN 978 0 34061 393 1 Friedlander Henry 1997 The Origins of Nazi Genocide From Euthanasia to the Final Solution Univ of North Carolina Press ISBN 978 0807846759 Hilberg Raul 1992 Perpetrators Victims Bystanders The Jewish Catastrophe 1933 1945 New York Harper Collins ISBN 0 8419 0910 5 Hildebrand Klaus 1984 The Third Reich London and New York Routledge ISBN 0 0494 3033 5 Hohne Heinz 2001 The Order of the Death s Head The Story of Hitler s SS New York Penguin Press ISBN 978 0 14139 012 3 Jacobsen Hans Adolf 1999 The Structure of Nazi Foreign Policy 1933 1945 In Christian Leitz ed The Third Reich The Essential Readings Oxford Blackwell Publishing ISBN 978 0 63120 700 9 Longerich Peter 2010 Holocaust The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Oxford New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 280436 5 Longerich Peter 2012 Heinrich Himmler A Life Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 959232 6 Mazower Mark 2008 Hitler s Empire How the Nazis Ruled Europe New York Toronto Penguin ISBN 978 1 59420 188 2 McNab Chris 2013 Hitler s Elite The SS 1939 45 Osprey ISBN 978 1 78200 088 4 Mommsen Hans 2000 Cumulative Radicalization and Self Destruction of the Nazi Regime In Neil Gregor ed Nazism Oxford Readers Oxford New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19289 281 2 Nachama Andreas 2010 Topography of Terror Gestapo SS and Reich Security Main Office on Wilhelm and Prinz Albrecht Strasse A Documentation Berlin Stiftung Topographie des Terrors ISBN 978 3 94177 207 6 Reitlinger Gerald 1989 The SS Alibi of a Nation 1922 1945 New York Da Capo Press ISBN 978 0306803512 Rhodes Richard 2002 Masters of Death The SS Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust New York Vintage Books ISBN 0 375 70822 7 Rich Norman 1992 Hitler s War Aims Ideology the Nazi State and the Course of Expansion New York W W Norton amp Co ISBN 978 0393008029 Schulle Diana 2009 The Rosenstrasse Protest In Beate Meyer Hermann Simon Chana Schutz eds Jews in Nazi Berlin From Kristallnacht to Liberation Chicago and London The University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 22652 157 2 Shirer William L 1988 1961 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich New York Ballantine Books Stoltzfus Nathan 2016 Hitler s Compromises Coercion and Consensus in Nazi Germany New Haven and London Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 21750 6 Weale Adrian 2012 Army of Evil A History of the SS New York Caliber Printing ISBN 978 0451237910 Williamson David G 2002 The Third Reich 3rd ed London Longman ISBN 978 0582368835 Zentner Christian Bedurftig Friedemann 1991 The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich New York MacMillan Publishing ISBN 0 02 897500 6 Online dd Avalon Project Yale University Judgement The Accused Organizations Retrieved 14 November 2018 USHMM Adolf Eichmann United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Holocaust Encyclopedia Retrieved 14 November 2018 USHMM Adolf Eichmann Key Dates United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Holocaust Encyclopedia Retrieved 14 November 2018 Further reading Evans Richard J The Coming of the Third Reich New York Penguin 2005 Evans Richard J The Third Reich in Power New York Penguin 2006 Evans Richard J The Third Reich at War New York Penguin 2009 2008 Office of US Chief of Counsel For Prosecution of Axis Criminality ed 1946 Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Washington DC US Government Printing Office Vol 1 and Vol 2 Wildt Michael 2002 Generation of the Unbound The Leadership Corps of the Reich Security Main Office Jerusalem Yad Vashem ISBN 965 308 162 4 Wildt Michael 2010 An Uncompromising Generation The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office Madison WI University of Wisconsin Press Williams Max 2001 Reinhard Heydrich The Biography Vol 1 Road To War Church Stretton Ulric Publishing ISBN 978 0 9537577 5 6 Williams Max 2003 Reinhard Heydrich The Biography Vol 2 Enigma Church Stretton Ulric Publishing ISBN 978 0 9537577 6 3 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Reich Security Main Office amp oldid 1126515157, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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