Gestapo: NS-Terror on the spot. The Staatspolizeistelle Trier in the southern Rhineland.

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The Gestapo was a central element of the power structure of the Nazidictatorship. Due to the destruction of archival evidence the questionhow it functioned and practically worked for the implementation of theideological goals of the regime and for its political survival is still acentral topic of recent historical research on national socialism. Theproject’s aim is to analyze the role of the Gestapo by means of a welldocumented regional case study of the borderregion of the SouthernRhineland around Trier (Regierungsbezirk Trier) focusing on three mainaspects: - The cooperation and conflicts between law administration, law courtsand the regional Gestapo unit. - The role of the Gestapo as a centralinstance of inclusion or exclusion into the new national socialist“Volksgemeinschaft”, the new social order of the dictatorship, and thedifferent ways the regional Gestapo acted as a watchdog of theregime or as custodian of the new social order. - The structure andfunctioning of the regional organisation of the Gestapo, its practices ofadministration, its material resources and its freedom of action.Informal personal networks are of particular interest to betterunderstand the functioning of a highly mobile and fast growingorganization like the Gestapo. - The project is based on new archivalmaterial (prosecution files) of the Staatspolizeistelle Trier recentlymade accessible in the French national military archives in Vincennesand a huge collection of sources referring to the regional Gestapocoming from all kinds of party or state offices of the Nazi regime. Thisarchival basis allows insights into all main aspects of the activities ofthe regional Gestapo in this borderregion of the southern Rhineland.The project covers the whole 12 years of the Nazi dictatorship butlooks also forward at the silent inclusion of former Gestapo membersinto the West German society after 1945 and backwards at thepolitical control activities during the Weimar period in this borderregion of Prussia and the Reich.