THE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE GESTAPO by Butler, Rupert

Motorbooks, hard bound in dust jacket, VG/VG condition, 7 1/4 x 9 1/4, 240 pages, over 175 illus, appendices, bibliog, index................................. Excellent study which traces the growth of the 3rd Reich's ' GEHEIM STAATS POLIZEI '., from a small dept. of the Prussian State Police into an all encompassing bureaucracy of terror which spread thru all levels of German life. Osceola 1993, THE GESTAPO? Within living memory of tens of thousands, the very mention of the Nazi Secret State Police is sufficient to evoke images of power and repression unparalleled in human history. AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE GESTAPO demonstrates in absorbing detail how the Geheime Staats Polizei evolved from its beginnings as a small department of the Prussian State Police under Hermann Goring to become a tangled bureaucracy of terror, operating from the most feared address in the Third Reich - 8 Prinz Albrechtstrasse.Within the Third Reich and ultimately the Nazi occupied countries, the Gestapo was controlled by the baleful firm of Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Heinrich Muller, vivid portraits of whom are drawn in this book.............................................. For his engrossing account, Rupert Butler has drawn on archives within Germany itself, unearthing original Gestapo documents. He has also consulted archives iii Britain, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Czechoslovakia. One of the 's mast engrossing chapters consists of interviews with survivors of Gestapo interrogation and torture, many of whom tell their remarkable stories for the first time. The twelve-year success of the Gestapo-it survives until the very death throes of the Third Reich -still points its potent moral; the very real danger of allowing those who should be tireless servants of the State to become its cruelest masters.