RSHA

The RSHA, or Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office), was a subordinate organization of the SS created by Heinrich Himmler on September 22 1939, through the merger of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, or Security Agency), the Gestapo (Secret State Police) and the Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police). The organization's stated duty was to fight all "enemies of the Reich" within and outside the borders of Nazi Germany. Included within the rubric of "enemies" were communists, freemasons, Jews, Gypsies and other "racially undesirables"; thus the RSHA coordinated activities among a number of different agencies with wideranging responsibilities.

The first director of the RSHA was SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, who led the organization until his assassination on June 4, 1942. SS-Obergruppenführer Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner replaced him for the remainder of World War II. The director of the RSHA oversaw the Einsatzgruppen death squads that followed the invasion forces of the German army into the eastern territories.

Organization

The organization was divided into seven offices (or Ämter):

• Amt I, Personnel and Organization, headed by SS-Brigadeführer Bruno Streckenbach

• Amt II, Administration, Law, and Finance, headed by SS-Standartenführer Dr. Hans Nockemann.

• Amt III, Inland-SD, headed by Otto Ohlendorf, which dealt with ethnic Germans outside of Germany's prewar borders, and matters of culture.

• Amt IV, Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), headed by Heinrich Müller. Adolf Eichmann, one of the main executioners of the Holocaust, was head of the Amt IV section called Referat IV B4.

• Amt V, Kriminalpolizei, under SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe. This was the "Criminal Police", which dealt with non-political serious crimes, such as rape, murder, and arson.

• Amt VI, Ausland-SD, led first by Heinz Jost, and later by Walter Schellenberg. This was the foreign intelligence service of the SS.

• Amt VII, Written Records, overseen by Professor Franz Six. This was responsible for "ideological" tasks, by which was meant the creation of anti-semitic and anti-masonic propaganda.

The RSHA also supplied security forces on an "as needed" basis to local SS and Police Leaders.

External link

• Wiesenthal Centre - Reichssicherheitshauptamt

Further reading

• Michael WILDT Generation of the Unbound Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2002 (Engl., in Orig. German, Hamburg: 2002)

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