From the earliest days of Adolf Hitler's dictatorship, the Gestapo had the power to impose "protective custody" on anyone, to prevent "undesirable" political activities, to monitor the activities of suspects and to wiretap their conversations, without accountability to any court or other government authority, but regular police retained their traditional role subject to law as regulated by the courts. Reich Leader Heinrich Himmler of the elite Nazi SS had taken control of the Gestapo and all the concentration camps in 1934. In June 1936, he became chief of all the German police, thus subordinating all state power to the Nazi apparatus and to the party's political imperatives.

This form letter card front is a summons to an interrogation.

Three values of Hindenburg Medallion definitive stamps with POL perfins, plus one Nazi Swastika Official stamp, correctly paid the 46-pfenning rate (40 pfennigs for legal service of a document through the post plus 6 pfennigs local letter postage in that combination). next >>