The GESTAPO: Myth and Reality

[Rev.Cambeul]

M. Ranner - The Independent (Britain)
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-gestapo-the-myth-and-reality-of-hitlers-secret-police-by-frank-mcdonough-book-review-10474804.html

... The Geheime Staatspolizei, the secret police, or Gestapo ... lives on in our collective imagination as the acme of Nazi terror ... Or was it? Frank McDonough's myth-busting biography of Hitler's secret police [shows] ... the Gestapo never numbered more than 16,000 officers, not nearly enough to patrol tens of millions of people. Cologne, with a population of 750,000, had 69 Gestapo officers, less than one per 10,000 inhabitants ... Still more surprising is how gingerly the Gestapo dealt with undoubted malcontents ... Another remarkable point that McDonough makes is that judges often threw out cases brought by the Gestapo. Many were old-fashioned conservatives, he explains, trained under the Prussian monarchy, with a prickly sense of their own independence.