NAZI PARTY CONTROL OF GERMANY.
Once the Nazi's had gained power in Germany in 1933, the Leadership Corps set out to rule and maintain this power. All opposition was eliminated, first by re-education in the newly constructed "work camps", better known as "Concentration Camps" (KZ), which sprang up everywhere initially underthe control of the Party's para-military arm, the SA. Until the start of WW2 in September 1939, it was the main deterrant used to 'persuade' citizens that the Nazi Party way was the ONLY way to go.
The SS organisation, through Himmler & Heydrich as part of the Leadership Corps, saw to it that their forces of SD and Gestapo operatives, ruled the lives of Germany's citizens right up until the final days of the war in April 1945.
The system was saturated with Nazi officials, agents and informers from 1933. The Party had divided the country up into Gaus (like States), each with its own leader and deputy. These Gaus were in turn broken down into districts, cells and blocks. The block was the lowest level, but it was also the most important one, for its leader kept a dossier on each of the inhabitants of the fifty or so dwellings that he was responsible for. All of these leaders had a rank which equated roughly to that of the military, and a pay which was scaled accordingly. Schoolteachers aided the system by encouraging their charges to report to them what their parents were discussing at home.
Once war broke out in 1939, the SS claimed the right to order summary executions in defiance of the courts. The legal rights of citizens shrank with each year of the war. The inmates of the KZ's were pressed into slave labor, and others from the occupied countries were forced to work in mines, quarries, factories and on farms. Anyone, whether they were German citizens or not who refused to work were deemed to have committed a crime against defence regulations and/or against the security of the State.
Usually the dreaded "People's Courts" dealt with offenders, but other courts, including military, were also used. The decision of the "People's Court" was always "guilty", and offenders were quickly executed by the Gestapo. It was used mainly where propaganda could profit!
The SS also "did away" with thousands of people which the Gestapo had arrested on the say-so of informers, who had never seen the inside of any court-room. It was all part of the terror regime organised by the Nazi Part Leadership Corps, each member of which had pledged absolute unconditional obedience to Hitler annually.
Many of this Leadership Corps like Hess, Bormann and others, held high SS rank, and although they distrusted each other, they generally worked well together in the name of the Führer! This was fine until the attempt on Hitler's life in the failed "Bomb Plot" of July 20th 1944, when a group of Wehrmacht Officers and high ranking civilians tried to kill their Führer.
After this, the industrialists like Albert Vögler of United Steelworks, and the directors of AEG, Hoesch, Bosch, MAN & DEMAG became a huge problem because many of their workers, many of whom were forced laborers, quickly read their employers' thoughts and then slackened off to an alarming degree. This in turn led to beatings by SS guards if they happened to be the workers' supervisors. This made matters worse.
The SS then resorted to public executions in Germany in an effort to increase production through fear. Such executions had been common in the occupied countries for some time, but after the failed attempt on Hitler's life in July 1944, they became a reality in Germany too!
The SS Organisation was in deep trouble with Hitler from July 1944 on. The "German Defence Front" was collapsing, and the membership was casting about desperately for those that it felt was reponsible for the situation it was now in. Its wrath fell upon "Defeatists" & "Slackers", and it drew its nettighter and tighter.
Himmler set up roving SS Courts Martials*, comprised mainly of young fanatical SS officers and men including Feld Polizei, comprised of men of senior NCO rank, whose sole purpose was to sentence at their discretion, deserters and those who had attempted to surrender, regardless of rank, to be hanged from the nearest lamp-post or tree or shot on the spot.
NOTE:See the pictures (in album 'Unusual pics of WW2'), showing one public hanging by the SS/Gestapo in the Cologne rail station yards in November 1944, and other pictures resulting from SS Roving Courts Martials. * Himmler set up these "Fligende Feld und Standgerichte" (Flying Field Courts Martial), in November 1944, in his capacity as Reichführer-SS und Chef der Deutsche Polizei (Chief of the German Polie), Minister of the Interior & Commander of the Home Army. They were designed to put fear into both military and civilian personnel who harbored any thoughts about desertion or surrender.
Himmler persuaded Bormann to get his Gauleiters to put posters up in every town and village in Germany during the last weeks of 1944. He had also told some senior SS officers, "I give to you the authority to seize every man who turns his back and throw him on a supply waggon. Put your best, most energetic and most brutal officers of your division in charge of these courts. They will soon round up such rabble. They will put anyone who answers back up against a wall".
Suddenly these courts were everywhere to seek out and capture deserters and others from the Wehrmacht, Volksturm and civilians who refused to shoulder arms, and then after issuing summary justice, execute them with a placard hanging around their necks stating "I'm hanging here because I left my unit without permission", or, "I'm a deserter", or "I've made a pact with the Russians".
To the very young SS officers and NCO's placed in charge of these operations, with hardly a medal or decoration among them, rank meant nothing. Privates up to Colonels were shot or hanged without feeling. They were there to carry out Himmler's gruesome orders.
Some 11,700 men and women were executed unecessarily in this manner. Many photographs exist which show evidence of this form of terror.
One brave Corps Commander, Major-General Hans Mummert, of the Munchenberg Division, a Pz Division made up of training and replacement personnel from the Holstein/Clausewitz Pz Division, requested that there be no further visits by these courts in his division, since it contained the most highly decorated men in the Wehrmacht, which did not deserve to be prosecuted by "such youngsters". He warned that he would shoot any SS Courts Martial team members that he came across, "in person"!.
Ian Dixon.
August 1990.