CHIEF OF GESTAPO

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20110, 2 December 1939, Page 3

CHIEF OF GESTAPO

HERR HIMMLER’S CAREER PITILESS AND CRUEL RULE BY TERRORISM One night in tiro early summer of 1938 a New Zealand journalist sat in the telephone room of a Fleet street newspaper office and listened on an extension line to the voices of correspondents dictating their despatches from European capitals. Rome, Paris, Stockholm, and Bucharest came through at top speed (for such messages are mechanically recorded). But the Berlin man was deliberate, with occasional gaps in the message, which, lie explained rather vaguely, would be “sent later.” The visitor wanted to know why Berlin acted in this fashion. “That’S because the line is being tapped.” explained an operator. “The Gestapo, you know. They listen in every night. If anything they don’t like is sent through the paper is banned in Germany next day.”

The Gestapo is Nazi Germany’s Secret State Police (Geheime StaatsPolizei) —terrorist and snoopers par excellence of Hitlerism. At the head of the organisation is a mild-manner-ed, quiet-looking man named Heinrich Himmler. This 38-year-old Nazi is’ considered to be the third most powerful party member. Only General Goering and Herr Hitler himself can dispute his decisions. He is feared within and without the party though he is less hated than are men of the stamp of Dr. Goebbels and Herr Strcicher.

“Tiie eyes behind the pince-nez are of a cold blue, and his lips shut tightly,” wrote a pre-war interviewer. “But I should say he is pitiless rather than actively cruel.” Nevertheless, he has been both pitiless and cruel to the Jews, for it is he and no other who is responsible for the pogroms, the concentration camps and the ruthless expulsions of ihc last year or two. Passion for Filing Ilerr Ilimmler started life as a tutor in Bavaria. He married the daughter of a chemist and joined the Nazi Party almost at its inception. His passion for filing is said to have raised him to his present position. He painstakingly compiled records of all

party members, which now run into millions of dossiers, kept in steel cabinets in the Brown House at Munich.

Herr Himmler does not believe much in speeches and is a poor rhetorician, but he is a masterful organiser. His features are those of a typical German bureaucrat -insensitive, rather heavy, and respectable.

Although he is a practical mart he has a mystical strain. Be believes that he can raise an elite by training his men and providing them with suitable brides. He shares Herr Hitler’s racial doctrines and his dreams of a race of supermen who will create and rule a Germany greater than the Holv Roman Empire.

Directly under Ilerr Himmlers orders are:—

1. The S.S., or Black Guards, 200,000 strong. These are the pick ol the young men of the party. They live at home, and turn out when wanted. Most of them have now been called up Cor military service.

2. The “Verfugungsiruppe” of the 5.8., believed to number aiso 2U0.000. It is a seven-year-service civilian army, equipped and trained like soldiers for the maintenance of internal order. If trouble -breaks out in Germany, these troops, distributed among all the large towns, have the task or dealing with it. On active service iney wear field-grey. „

3. The "Adolph Hitler Liebstandartc,’ 10,000 strong. They are the Fuehrer's bodyguard, the most carefully picked soldiers in the world, physically, morally, politically, ancestrally, even aesthetically, lor a man is reiused it he has not a “good German appearance.” Yneir commander is Colonel Sefjp Dietrich, who was once a porter at Munich railway station.

4. The ordinary uniformed _ police and gendarmerie, under General Daluege.

5. The Gestapo—the plain-clothes political C.I.D. of Germany, under neinliard Heydrich, a tall, handsome, lair-haired, oiue-eyed young man, who has won many orizes as an athlete and a horseman.

There is also a special party police, called the Uschia, partly attached to Himmler, but also under Herr Kudoli Hess, the Fuehrer’s deputy and party chiel.

Sticks at Nothing

Like Lire Ogpu, the Gestapo sticks at nothing to get its victims. The faking ol evidence is easy for police of unlimited power. Witnesses who cannot be threatened are appealed to in the potent name of the Fuehrer.

It is hard to find out what goes on in the cells beneath the secret police headquarters in the PrinzAlbrecjhtstrasse, Berlin, or at the Gestapo prison ol Columbia House. People who are fortunate enough to be released, instead of going to « concentration camp, are too terrified to talk.