The offices of the new State Police were in a huge building which was, however, not large enough to take all the prisoners. Special concentration camps for the Gestapo were established, and their names will go down in history as a mark of infamy. These were Oranienburg and the Gestapo’s private prison in Papestrasse, Columbia House, or, as it was cynically nicknamed, “Columbia Hall.”
I should like to make it quite clear that this was certainly rather amateurish compared with what all of us experienced later. But so it started, and I can only convey my personal impression by describing a brief incident I remember. After only 2 days I asked one of my colleagues, who was also a professional civil servant—he had been taken over from the old Political Police into the new one, and he was one of those officials who were forced into it—I asked him, “Tell me, am I in a police office here or in a robber’s den?” The answer I received was, “You are in a robber’s den and you can expect to see much more yet.”
DR. PANNENBECKER: Under whom was the Political Police at that time and who was the superior authority?
GISEVIUS: The Political Police was under one Rudolf Diels. He, too, came from the old Prussian Political Police. He was a professional civil servant, and one might have expected him still to retain the ideas of law and decency: but in a brutal and cynical way he set his mind on making the new rulers forget his political past as a democrat and on ingratiating himself with his superior, the Prussian Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Göring. It was Diels who created the Gestapo office; he suggested to Göring the issue of the first decree for making that office independent. It was Diels who let the SA and the SS enter that office; he legalized the actions of these civil Kommandos. But soon it became evident to me that such a bourgeois renegade could not do so much wrong quite by himself. Some very important person must have been backing him; in fact, I very quickly saw also that somebody was taking a daily interest in everything that happened in that office. Reports were written; telephone inquiries were received. Diels went several times daily to give reports, and it was the Prussian Minister of the Interior Göring who considered this Secret State Police as his special preserve.
During those months nothing happened in this office which was not known or ordered by Göring personally. I want to stress this, because in the course of years the public formed a different idea of Göring because he noticeably retired from his official functions. At that time, it was not yet the Göring who finally suffocated, in his Karinhall. It was the Göring who looked after everything personally and had not yet begun to busy himself with the building of Karinhall or to don all sorts of uniforms and decorations. It was Göring still in civilian clothes, who was the real chief of an office, who inspired it, and who attached importance to being the “iron” Göring.
DR. PANNENBECKER: Witness, I believe you can describe some points more concisely. As to what you have just said, do you know this from your own experience, or where did you learn of it?
GISEVIUS: I not only heard and saw it myself, but I also learned much from a man who in those days was also a member of the Secret State Police, and whose information will play an important part in the course of my statements.
At that time a criminologist had been called into the Secret State Police, probably the best known expert of the Prussian police, Oberregierungsrat Nebe. Nebe was a National Socialist. He had been in opposition to the former Prussian police and had joined the National Socialist Party. He was a man who sincerely believed in the purity and genuineness of the National Socialist aims. Thus I saw for myself how this man found out on the spot what was actually going on and how he inwardly recoiled.
I can also state here, as it is important, the reasons why Nebe became a strong opponent, who went with the opposition up to 20 July and later suffered death by hanging. At that time, in August 1933, Nebe was ordered by the Defendant Göring to murder Gregor Strasser, formerly a leading member of the National Socialist Party, by means of a car or hunting accident. Nebe was so shocked at this order that he refused to carry it out and made an inquiry at the Reich Chancellery. The answer from the Reich Chancellery was that the Führer knew nothing of this order. Thereupon Nebe was summoned to Göring, who reproached him most bitterly for having made an inquiry. Nevertheless, when he finished these reproaches he considered it advisable to promote him, because he thought he would thereby silence him.
The second thing which happened at that time, and which is also very important, was that the Defendant Göring gave the Political Police so-called open warrants for murder. At that time there were not only so-called amnesty laws which gave amnesty for infamous actions, but there was also a special law according to which investigations, already initiated by police authorities and by the public prosecutor, could be quashed, on condition, however, that in these special cases the Reich Chancellor, or Göring, personally signed the pertinent order. Göring made use of this law by giving open warrants to the Chief of the Gestapo, with which all that had to be done was to fill in the names of those who were to be murdered. Nebe was so shocked by this that from that moment on he felt it his duty to fight against the Gestapo. At our request he remained with us there, and afterwards in the Criminal Police, because we needed one man at least who could keep us informed about police conditions in case our desire for a revolution should materialize.