Soziale Kontrolle im NS-Regime : Protest, Denunziation und Verfolgung ; zur Praxis alltäglicher Unterdrückung im Wechselspiel von Bevölkerung und Gestapo

For the Gestapo denunciations were one of their most important sources of information. For the disclosure and ubiquitous fight against protest they were indenspensable. This dissertation analyses the mechanism, how oppression within the interaction between secret police, justice and population in Germany 1933-1945 worked.
Central basis for the analysis are data drawn from the personal files of the Gestapo concerning denunciation and persecution in 331 cases of everyday protest. The data compilation includes villages, small towns and one major city, which represent areas of different size and population density.
Theoretical considerations about the nature of social control are guiding to the identification of selective filters in the process of source production. This identification seems to be a novum for the Nazi-Time. It leads to a source oriented critical reevaluation of older findings and points to time spanning mechanisms of social ‘with and against each other’.
The findings of the empirical analysis enlight the uneven, though regular, risks to be denunciated and to succumb strong forms of nationalsocialistic punishment. Additional tables show the course of protest and denunciation, their social profile, the motives as well as the distribution of different forms of persecution. In comparison it becomes clear how much within the fight against the organised resistance alternative sources of perception ruled: Not in
general the ‘selfpolicing’ of the society but the pragmatic combination with the pro-active work of decoverage leads the Gestapo to its legendary performance and helped to secure, despite their limited ressources, decisively the existence of the nationalsocialistic dominion.