The Vienna Gestapo, 1938–1945: Crimes, Perpetrators, Victims

Abstract

While much has been published on the organization, methods and perpetrators of the Geheime Staatspolizei in Nazi Germany, far less scholarly attention has been paid to the institution’s largest office outside of the central headquarters—numerically larger than Prague or even Berlin—in Vienna. With over 900 staff members, the Gestapo’s Staatspolizeistelle Wien made more arrests than any other regional headquarters in the Reich, amounting to over 50,000 between 1938 and 1945. Its territory of operations included the former federal provinces of Vienna, Niederösterreich, Burgenland and areas of the former Czechoslovakia absorbed into the Reichsgau Niederdonau, comprising over 3.5 million people in total, and its responsibilities expanded to include protecting the Reich’s new borders with the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and with Slovakia and Hungary. That such a history, which both considers the significance of the Viennese Gestapo and contextualizes the organization within the rich corpus on the Nazi police machinery, has hitherto been elusive justifies the present attempt by Elisabeth Boeckl-Klamper, Thomas Mang and Wolfgang Neugebauer to offer a comprehensive analysis which considers not only the victims of persecution and repression but also the structures, organization and individuals actively involved on the Gestapo side.