Denunziation im Dritten Reich: die Bedeutung von Systemunterstützung und Gelegenheitsstrukturen

Abstract

The Third Reich has been termed in recent literature a “self-policing” society: without denunciations the Gestapo would not have been effective. In the article it is argued that this picture is an over-simplification. Differential opportunity structures create different ways of access to the “deviants”. Where the private sphere is affected, “deviance” can only be detected by people in private environments. In contrast to common descriptions the proportion of Gestapo cases made up by denunciations does not reflect the extent of regime support in the population. A large percentage of Gestapo cases, because of being trivial, merely led to dismissal or warning. Besides the Gestapo existed a more encompassing system of social control that ranged from the “Blockwart” to the “Kreisleitung” to the SD. They dealt with “deviance” by their own and might have played a more important role than the Gestapo in the social control of daily