The Reichsführer-SS and his empire The Secret State Police The Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS The Reich Security Main Office

 

The Secret State Police One of the first aims of the Nazi state was to establish a powerful political police. In Prussia, on April 26, 1933, Prime Minister Hermann Göring set up the "Secret State Police Office". Separated from the general police force and re-established as an independent agency, the Secret State Police was soon removed from the Ministry for Home Affairs and made directly answerable to the Prime Minister.

As of May 1933, the Secret State Police Office was located at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8. The establishment of State Police branch offices throughout the Prussian government districts was directed from here.

 

Having gradually taken charge of almost all of the political police forces in the non-Prussian states, in April 1934, Heinrich Himmler became "Inspector" and thus the de facto head of the Secret State Police. He appointed Reinhard Heydrich head of the Secret State Police in Berlin. Following his appointment as "Chief of the German Police" on June 17, 1936, Himmler re-organised the entire police force. The Security Police Main Office now comprised the Gestapo and the Criminal Investigation Division (Head: Reinhard Heydrich); the Order Police comprised the municipal, rural and local police forces (Head: Kurt Daluege). In 1933, between two and three hundred people worked for the Secret State Police Office; by 1942, the agency employed more than 1,100 people, 477 of whom were working directly on the Prinz Albrecht Terrain.

 

The Gestapo "House Prison"

 

In the late summer of 1933, a prison was established at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8, in the cellar of the Secret State Police Office. The "house prison", with its 39 cells, served to confine prisoners whose interrogation was of particular interest to the Gestapo. For most prisoners, the "house prison" was a transit station on the way to other prisons and concentration camps of the SS State.

 

Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8 was particularly notorious for its brutal torture methods, which the Gestapo used to obtain desired information from prisoners. The victims were primarily Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, members of smaller socialist groups and resistance organisations, and others who refused to be repressed by the regime.

 

With the outbreak of World War II, a number of single resistance fighters, such as Georg Elser, and members of small resistance groups, such as Robert Havemann, were imprisoned at the Gestapo "house prison". Members of the resistance group Harnack/Schulze-Boysen (Rote Kapelle) were particularly well represented, as were various groups involved in the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler, ranging from Socialists and the Kreisau Circle to nationalist-conservative civil servants and officers. Prisoners from the German-occupied countries also spent time during the war in the "house prison" at the Gestapo headquarters.