The Myth of the Nazi Police State - WW2 Documentary Special 

Of course, the Third Reich possesses means of enforcing its will beyond the Gestapo. In their totalitarian state, Hitler and the Nazis can pull on almost every aspect of the state and society as a lever of coercion and control. Nonetheless while producing this episode, we were quite shocked to discover how little most Germans fear the secret police. In one postwar survey conducted in Cologne, over 50% of people will admit to having broken Nazi laws. Nonetheless, 75% will state that they had never been afraid of arrest or punishment. This got us thinking, for those of you who live in countries with a secret police force, how much do you fear them?

I've heard of another joke a comedian was disappeared for. "How do you tell the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist is learning English and a pessimist is learning Russian."

an old German guy lived near us after the war. He told my dad "Everyone was on board. Very few had to be convinced."

Challenging these firm and established myths is the best part of the series

Gestapo was not only in Germany but MAINLY "worked" in occupied countries. In Czechoslovakia they were very "productive" bastards. Severe punishments and regular death penalties were very common here. In Prague Gestapo office was frequently requesting more resources because a lot of people were bringing info and giving up others. They simply had huge number of acive collaborants. You don't need extensive staff when you manage to seed enough fear.

They didn't use the Gestapo to keep people in line, they used the myth of the Gestapo.

We like to tell ourselves "well I would be a member of the resistance" if we were living in that kind of time and place The terrible truth is that most of us wouldn't. We'd do our best to survive, to protect ourselves and our families To do good and fight back in small, safe ways The idea of an omnipresent secret police is a story that makes us feel better for knowing that in the back of our minds.

It's the fear and uncertainty that drives the system. You never know who might be listening, even when no one usually is.

I read the book Gestapo : sanning och myt om Tredje rikets hemliga polis by Frank McDonough and was surprised. People were giving up colleagues, neighbours and relatives but often, according to the book, Gestapo dropped the charges much because the crimes were considered petty.

For my BA Thesis, I did a comparative case analysis based on Robert Gellately's work on the Gestapo (and less relevant right now: trying to apply it to the Stasi case). I was honestly surprised by the things I learned, and it's another reminder that all of us are capable of doing what some of the German population did during that time.

The Thumbnail picture used for the video is " chefs kiss "

I recall an interview of a German lady after the Wall had come down. Unknown to her the interviewer had accessed the Stasi archives and found a letter from her teenage self denouncing the lady next door to the Gestapo in the 30's. The interview ended abruptly when he produced a copy of the letter. The denounced lady had been partying dressed in tuxedos, she was arrested several times and died in prison.

For the gestapo, I always think of Her Flick from "'Ello 'ello", with Hilda always getting together with him.

"... it shows once again the seductive danger of totalitarian politics and the horrors that ordinary people are prepared to accept in their name." Beautiful quote

While Gestapo an NKVD were different animals, it is clear for me that NKVD had more members in absolute terms and in % of total population. Could you do a Video stating how NKVD organization worked in WW2, and before?

Reading a biography of Himler a funny thing that struck me was that in the late 30s himler gave a speech to the Gestapo about how they had to endeavor to be seen by ordinary Germans as not scary but rather a service institution to help them - was funny as the language was almost the same used here in Denmark when they reformed the Danish tax authorities to be more service orientated and less about control

You guys just keep knocking it out of the park! This sub-series is always a must watch. So little general knowledge on the subject is out there, yet you dive so deep into the particulars. Fascinating seems too ordinary a comment. I consider myself enlightened.

The everyday oppression did work through many ways beside the Gestapo. My grandfather was a civil servant in the air force ministry. When during a large meeting the information was brought in, that the USA had declared war, the senior officer remarked "that was it". Many nodded, but no one dared any discussion on that topic. My grandfather uncautiosly mentioned that to his sister, who went straight to the Gauleiter (Nazi party official with sometimes great influence). By pulling strings with friends in the military, the Gauleiter was forced to ignore that remark, which saved my grandfather. He was convinced, that he narrowly missed execution.

I guess you can say that radio tower one really was… a killer joke

First episode with Astrid I could watch. I believe Spartacus calm way of talking also slows her down and makes her voice less shrill and grating, even though there are still a few cases where it hurts my ears. Keep pairing her with him

My mother used to work with an immigrant from Romania. This woman explained to her that it wasn't so much secret police on every corner but scared, paranoid citizens turning in their neighbors to save themselves. She told her that if one needed to go out they would keep their heads down and not say a word to anyone out of fear of being 'disappeared' as so many others had been.

Good video, these types of things are important for people to see and understand. Myths always get built up through the media and those who never dig into the stories deeper.

I find it interesting that the Kempeitai or the NKVD were a lot more effective, informed and ruthless than the Gestapo towards the regular civilian population.

Hi Sparty and Astrid Great video. Clearing myth about gestapo. Thanks.

I knew Spartacus facial hair would win Astrid's heart eventually.

A wonderful and valuable perspective into a sticky and self hidden part of history from both sides for opposite reasons. Well done.

Great episode! I love Spies and Ties and I love it when there's a jointing hosting so this was right up my alley.

Thanks for your research and presentation.

A very interesting Special here, I learnt something new here today and some surprises too about the realities of the Gestapo as well. This is one of the reasons why we support the World War Two team as members of the TimeGhost Army!

this episode is very good...this is what its like living in china...nothing is a problem until its a problem no joke, i'm here right now

This is a critically important episode - exaggeration of how life under the Gestapo was is part of the "it could never happen here" mentality. The fact is, for the average passive citizen, life in Russia and China right now is probably the same. It's just not that hard to subdue a population.

It is great to have you presenting together, thank you very much.

...yet this may be read as effective control. After all, it appears people knew the boundaries of what they could and could not get away with; step over a particular line and you might become an example on the end of a rope. Thus, many would "self-police" and limit their actions

My father, born in the Soviet Union spent time in the Gulag in northern Russia (ostensibly because of a joke he told a friend a joke about Stalin’s five year plans) experienced the NKVD and then the Gestapo. He came to Canada and then had contact with the security services run by the Canadian RCMP asking about others he knew both native born Canadians and immigrants from the Soviet Union. One day quite shocking to me as a Canadian, my father made the remark that the RCMP was worse than the Gestapo--you could tell who was the Gestapo since they wore uniforms but those working for the RCMP security services did not and were invisible. My mother was a “guest worker” on a farm in Germany and while well treated by the farmer and his wife, she got beaten up by the Gestapo when they caught her when she snuck out to visit a friend working on a nearby farm. So the Gestapo was operating even in such rural settings.

All your content is amazing. Keep up the good work.🌹

Really goes to show how willing humans are to sell each other out in self interest. Never forget.

This is very well thought out and presented, I can't believe youtube hasn't removed it yet.

It turns out that the communist secret police in post-war Poland (UB, later SB) had more informants than Gestapo. They actually did have at least one informant in every factory. Not to mention the Soviet Union, to which Churchill's description would very much fit.

Fun fact: The Gestapo get rid of the black uniforms circa 1941. So what you're saying is that followers of Hitler--which was a majority of people--had nothing to worry. Interesting...

Quite Eye opening and informative!!

As ever, very interesting episode and really good to see the media and Hollywood myths being deconstructed so we get a clearer appreciation of what was actually happening. Thanks.

This is also most certainly true of Soviet Russia. The KGB certainly was very oppressive, but they did not have the 1984 scale of tracking every single person's actions and thoughts. It's unfeasible. Just as I am sure there are individuals critical of Communist China all over who will never be caught. Authoritarian regimes do not have the ability to oppress everybody all the time; however, they are always able to suppress just enough to prevent any sort of real resistance from developing.

Another great episode. Thank you.

Perfect duo and amazing topic.

This reminds me of a story about Hans Massaquoi, a half-black/half-German journalist who grew up during the Nazis' rise. According to Massaquoi while the Nazis were as racist towards blacks as they were to Jews they seem to save the worst actions for the Jews as the Nazis saw the Jews as the hidden power brokers while blacks were seen as useful idiots. After getting a machinist apprenticeship he was told by his mentor the Nazis hoped to regain Germany's old African colonies and plan to train a number of black Germans as future managers. Massaquoi did get detained by the SD, the SS's intel branch, for looking suspicious (ironically he had just dropped off his secret girlfriend, the daughter of an SS officer). The only thing that save him was a police officer-and father of one of his coworkers- vouch for him citing his apprenticeship.

It was hardly the only such agency. For example the less well-known SD or Sicherheitsdienst also played a significant role in surveillance and repression.

With Sparty around, I noticed "darlings" was a little more subdued.... I hope you all had a pleasant Christmas and are able to take some time off for the new year. Thank you for what you do.

Thank you for the lesson.

Always a pleasure to see Astrid and Sparty side by side doing a collab video! Keep it up :)

I am a bit shocked that the German populace was in fact somewhat let free in listening to foreign radio, the prevalence of anti nazi/party/Hitler jokes and pretty much being critical of the course taken. In a hard brutal communist style regime, or worse, I would be more inclined to believe how easy it was for the Nazis to have there way with the country, and foreign countries. But it seems life was quite...comparable to today. This worries me and should worry everyone. Atrocities and looking away are in all of us (as long as the foot of the Tirant is on someone's else his neck). BigTech+BigGov now have tools that the Gestapo could only dream of.

Sparty n Astrid hosting together was quite nice. And this video an informative look into how much the Gestapo affected the lives of normal Germans. I would love it if more people could see this video.

Great video!

you don't have to convince everyone all of the time that they are being watched or that they would be punished for every crime. Just that they can't KNOW when they are being watched, and that they WILL be punished for breaking certain crimes. Then they will do the policing for you in their heads, "do I really want to do this? they can be watching me right now."

great ep! love Astrid's tie and hat

So what you're saying is that the Gestapo were pretty lame compared to the NKVD (or the post-war STASI)...

5:43 got the whole room chuckling.

Am not surprised at all, I mean they didn't need to " have people everywhere" since neighbors, friends and family can do their work for them It's really a fairly common phenomenon that police authorities are using to their advantage - especially in authoritarian regimes That's why in my country we say that : You should never tell anyone about something that can put you in jail Especially your girlfriend!! ( or boyfriend)

I wonder how honest people would be in a post-war poll though. I would think that shortly after the war, people would be unsure about how those loyal to the regime were to be treated. Longer after, I would think self-honesty regarding any level of duplicity with such an evil regime would be difficult for many to acknowledge once the full extent of their crimes were revealed.

Great video you two :D

Thank you, I enjoyed this video. Now subscribed

Unlike the Spanish Inquisition, everyone expected the Gestapo

It would be great if you could do a video talking about the SD and how they differed from the Gestapo and how often the kinds of things they did and were responsible for were attributed to the Gestapo.

This is an excellent series.

Great video

Most Gestapo personnel continued in the various West German police forces after the war unmolested by judicial authorities.

Great episode that lifts the veil on the Gestapo and their relationship with the ordinary German citizen. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Nice analysis.

Thanks!

Good topic! Very interesting. Can you make a comparison between the Gestapo and the Stasi?

You know it's going to be a great video when the Queen of F'ing Everything appears.

Thank you!

The circuitous logic in this is incredible....

So you're saying there wasn't an issue with Gestapo, unless you happen to be a member of the 40,000 executed. 🤔

The Gestapo is most prominent in European movies, but they rarely appear in German ones, that‘s for a reason

Great Job. I got a hearty Kek from the "Hitler and Goering on the Tower" joke. RIP to the joke teller though.

This channel is so good and informative.

This is especially useful, even compared to the usual videos from WAH and S&Ts. One thing I wondered about, is the effect of passing draconian laws that are broken by a large percentage of the population, but are only rarely enforced. My guess is that a situation like this is very handy for authoritarian governments, because anyone of interest to those governments can be demonstrated to be a criminal with minimal effort. But with the tiny number of Gestapo personnel cited in this video, I suppose this would not apply to Nazi Germany?

Whenever Astrid says “darlings” it makes me think of the nuns, back in school. I instantly panic and think of things I should feel guilty about 😆

Great video! Love the click here blooper. This is simply great stuff!

14:48 great point!

As a dual national, British and German, I have to say that even to this day the culture of “snitching” to the Police, even for the most minor social transgressions, remains very high in Germany. Still to this day many apartment buildings still have the classic “Denunziant/in”. 😂 They seem to think what would be unthinkable in the U.K as totally acceptable! 😂

An excellent video as usual. I do wonder how much of the answers to these post-war surveys may have been affected by the allied victory, with compliant Germans wanting to seem more rebellious.

This helps explain why my maternal Oma told me they were given a warning by the gestapo once for some violation but nothing more.

Excellent !

In any oppressive society, though, If you cooperate, you’re probably not gonna have too much problem. Just saying.

Ah, wartime jokes! Like the one about Putin visiting a fortune teller, asking her if she can see his future. Yes I can, she says. You are in a car, driving along the streets of Moscow. And all the people are waving, and cheering, and laughing with joy. Good, good, says Putin. Do I wave back? No, the fortune teller says. The casket is closed.

Thank you very much for this sober view on the Gestapo!

WHAT??? Now that was totally unexpected, and very interesting, thanks.

I am not sure of the purpose of this topic. It would be insightful to understand the effect on self censorship that these high profile cases have on the population. This is applicable today because many people around the world are experiencing an increase in self censorship on several topics.

I challenge the premise. Every resident of Berlin during the Olympics statyed away from reporters out of fear.

Incredible WW2 history i have ever watched. I need to learn how to be as articulate at they are.

Need some thrills? ☠️ Do you know what the interrogations and tortures carried out by the Gestapo in PAWIAK in Warsaw during the occupation looked like? You have many possibilities. Until 1944, about 100,000 people were tortured there. Few of those who survived never recovered from the horrors they endured behind bars. The Gestapo employed sadists and psychopaths. Beating with a rubber cable after hanging naked from a steel beam, beating with barbed wire, pulling nails out, beating with a steel bar, knocking out teeth, electric shock, suffocating with a damaged gas mask, frying with a heat gun and cigarettes, drowning in a bucket, walking barefoot on hot coal, physical terror and psychological terror, and "ordinary" taking them to be shot. The torturers had no mercy for anyone - they did not spare even pregnant women. Hair matted with blood. This is the real crime story of the Gestapo. Calling someone today "Gestapo" is one of the worst insults. In hell, the Gestapo today have their own exclusive cauldron. 💀🔥👹 That's for sure.

As fascism grows in power worldwide, you think "hey let’s may a video about how the Gestapo weren’t as bad as people thought." REALLY? :/ even some of the examples you gave bring into question the absurdity of making the argument of downplaying the extreme nature of the Gestapo and the fear and impact they had.

Very good choice of wristwatch.

You’ve almost completely overlooked the detailed studies of esteemed academics such as Eric Johnson, who’ve more or less proven that the vast majority of Gestapo arrests ( or ‘ protective custody ‘ , as the Gestapo termed it ) relied on agents of the Nazi state to do not much more than sit back and await a veritable deluge of denunciations and slander from a wide variety of disgruntled nasties. Johnson’s work examines, in minute detail, that expose that the mere ‘ warnings ‘ you refer to quite often DID lead to prolonged detention, interrogation, torture, and despatchment to certain demise.

How dare you minimize the atrocities of the Nazis and particularly the Gestapo. In reality the vast majority of Germans fully backed Hitler UNTIL they started to lose the war. Only then did they demonstrate doubt and uncertainty about the war they caused. And that is when the Gestapo started the domestic crackdowns and informer networks and murders. The real Gestapo atrocities were committed against the people you mentioned in your report; homosexuals, mentally ill etc. And they were every bit as bad as anything Stalin or Mao did. As for the average German and Hitler supporter, which was MOST of the German people, well, they got what they deserved.

Here in the United States, modern day law enforcement puts the tactics used by the Gestapo to shame. The FBI has went several steps further and adopted the methods used by the SAVAK, the STASI, the KGB, and, quite likely, Idi Amin, to control "enemies of the state", and teaches the same to local and state law enforcement all across the Neu AmeriKa, if these state and local agencies hope to receive any federal money.

How refreshing to hear something that isn't hyperbole and alarmist.

Now that's a power couple.

While I don't doubt the factual data given in this video, I don't fully agree with the conclusion. (Almost) Everyone claiming after the war that they never really supported the Nazis is obviously hogwash and, as you've said, fear from the Gestapo is a convenient alibi for remaining silent while one's neighbours were being taken away, but what happened when for example, people were caught trying to help Jews and thus can we say that inaction due to fear was never anything more than an excuse? But I would like to start from a different angle. Any meaningful political opposition needs to have leaders, who then shape the political goals and are capable of moving and coordinating the masses. Otherwise, you will have isolated groups with varying goals (often detracting from one another) and any public display of dissent will be small enough to easily be stomped out before others have had the time to hear about it and decide whether they were going to join it. In Germany, serious opposition leaders had been eradicated, which then served a dual purpose of both "decapitating" the opposition and setting an example. We see that in effect today in some totalitarian countries: a group of people goes out to protest semi spontaneously, police shows up, grabs as many as they can before the demonstrations disperse, first time offenders get a slap on the wrist and repeat offenders and "ring-leaders" get trumped up charges and years long prison sentences and things quiet down. The second thing that I'd like to point out is that, for the German people to toe the line, Gestapo didn't have to be everywhere, it was enough that the citizens believed that it was (similar to the age old tactics of kicking up dust to make the enemy overestimate the other side's numbers). From the quotes of Churchill and that soc-dem paper, that did seem to be the case. As per your numbers, on average, for every day of Nazi rule, 4 German citizens who were neither Jews nor any other special kind of "undesirables" were executed. And you can look at the total population of the Reich and say "that's not really such a big number", but consider how it felt for an ordinary German citizen to be able to hear that someone just like him has been executed once again, pretty much every day (also, try imagining 4 executions per 100M people per day in a normal society, that would be 13 people daily for the US, or around 4500 per year; no one would say that that wasn't a big number). Thus, if Gestapo did happen to knock on your door, only for it to end up in a warning, you didn't think that they were "mostly harmless", you thanked your lucky star and tried to stay on the straight and narrow in the future. And your neighbours, who knew that you'd been visited by the Gestapo and saw that you changed a bit since? Well, they would probably try to avoid being visited by them themselves and also they wouldn't be sure if you hadn't been made an informant. Finally, knowing that you're technically guilty of a capital crime (such as listening to the foreign radio), yet still breathing, does not make you feel safe from the police, especially when all of the above is considered. It makes you aware that, should the state take interest in you, they could, under the law, easily crush you. Just like those four people that were executed every day. In conclusion, if 75% of the population stated that they were not afraid of an arrest, I highly doubt that they all felt that way because they believed that they lived in a free society. Rather, I would say that they felt that way because they had not done anything for which people were being arrested. So one would huddle next to the radio in their own home and quietly listen to the BBC without much worry, but one would know better than to do anything active or public. Not like those kids, writing defeatist and pacifist pamphlets and getting their heads lopped off for it, no, nothing of the sort. And thus they "felt safe from arrest".