| Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) | |
 Flag for the Chief of the SiPo and SD | |
| RSHA overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 27 September 1939 |
| Preceding agencies |
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| Dissolved | 8 May 1945 |
| Type | • Secret police • Intelligence agency |
| Jurisdiction |  GermanyOccupied Europe |
| Headquarters | Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8, Berlin 52°30′26″N13°22′57″E / 52.50722°N 13.38250°E /52.50722; 13.38250 |
| Employees | 50,648 (February 1944est.)[1] |
| Minister responsible |
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| RSHA executives |
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| Parent RSHA | Ministry of the Interior (nominally) Allgemeine SS |
| Child agencies |
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TheReich Security Main Office[a] (German:Reichssicherheitshauptamtpronounced[ˈʁaɪ̯çsˌzɪçɐhaɪ̯t͡sˌhaʊ̯ptʔamt]ⓘ,RSHA) was an organization underHeinrich Himmler in his dual capacity asChef der Deutschen Polizei (Chief of German Police) andReichsführer-SS, the head of theNazi Party'sSchutzstaffel (SS). The organization's stated duty was to fight all "enemies of theReich" inside and outside the borders ofNazi Germany. From its very inception, the RSHA was a central institution for theNazis, playing a pivotal role in orchestrating and executingthe Holocaust.
Himmler established the RSHA on 27 September 1939. His assumption of control over all security and police forces in Germany was a significant factor in the growth in power of the Nazi state.[2] With the formation of the RSHA, Himmler combined under one roof the Nazi Party'sSicherheitsdienst (SD; SS intelligence service) and theSicherheitspolizei (SiPo; "Security Police"), which was nominally under the Interior Ministry. The SiPo was composed of two sub-departments, theGeheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo; "Secret State Police") and theKriminalpolizei (Kripo; "Criminal Police").[3] In correspondence, the RSHA was often abbreviated toRSi-H[4] to avoid confusion with theSS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (RuSHA; "SS Race and Settlement Office"). The organization's main goal was to protect Nazi Germany against enemies "inside" the country but later became instrumental (by design) in dealing with any opposition in occupied territories.[5]
The creation of the RSHA represented the formalization, at the highest level, of the relationship under which the SD served as theintelligence agency for the security police. A similar coordination existed in the local offices, where the Gestapo, criminal police, and SD were formally separate offices. This coordination was carried out by inspectors on the staff of the local higher SS and police leaders. One of the principal functions of the local SD units was to serve as the intelligence agency for the local Gestapo units. In the occupied territories, the formal relationship between local units of the Gestapo, criminal police, and SD was slightly closer.[6]
The RSHA continued to grow at an enormous rate duringWorld War II in Europe.[7] Routine reorganization of the RSHA did not change the tendency for centralization withinNazi Germany, nor did it change the general trend for its members to develop direct relationships toAdolf Hitler, adhering to Nazi Germany's typical pattern of theleader-follower construct.[8] For the RSHA, centrality within Nazi Germany was pronounced since the organization completed the integration of government and Nazi Party offices as to intelligence gathering and security. Departments like the SD and Gestapo (within the RSHA) were controlled directly by Himmler and his immediate subordinate SS-Obergruppenführer and General of PoliceReinhard Heydrich; the two held the power of life and death for nearly every German and were essentially above the law.[9][10]
Heydrich remained the RSHA chief untilhis assassination in 1942. In January 1943 Himmler delegated the office to SS-Obergruppenführer and General of PoliceErnst Kaltenbrunner, who headed the RSHA until the end of the war in Europe.[11] The head of the RSHA was also known as the CSSD orChef derSicherheitspolizei und desSD (Chief of the Security Police and of the Security Service).[12][13]
The RSHA "became a typical overblown bureaucracy", wrote British authorGerald Reitlinger. "The complexity of RSHA was unequalled... with at least a hundred... sub-sub-sections, a modest camouflage of the fact that it handled the progressive extermination which Hitler planned for the ten million Jews of Europe".[14]
The organization at its simplest was divided into seven offices (Ämter):[15][16]
| No. | Portrait | Chief of SiPo and SD | Took office | Left office | Time in office | Party |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .jpg) | Heydrich, ReinhardSS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942) | 27 September 1939 | 4 June 1942 † | 2 years, 250 days | NSDAP |
| – | .jpg) | Himmler, HeinrichReichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Acting | 4 June 1942 | 30 January 1943 | 240 days | NSDAP |
| 2 | _(3x4_cropped).jpg) | Kaltenbrunner, ErnstSS-Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) | 30 January 1943 | 12 May 1945 | 2 years, 102 days | NSDAP |
Activities within Nazi Germany superintended by the RSHA included gathering intelligence, criminal investigation, overseeing foreigners, monitoring public opinion, and Nazi indoctrination. The RSHA was also "the central office for the extra-judicial NS (National Socialist) measures of terror and repression from the beginning of the war until 1945".[23] The list of persecuted people included Jews, Communists,Freemasons, pacifists, and Christian activists.[24]
In addition to dealing with identified enemies, the RSHA advocated expansionist policies for the Reich and the Germanization of additional territory through settlement.[25] After France's defeat in June 1940, it was the RSHA that was tasked with facilitating the proposedMadagascar Plan; the plan called for forcibly relocating 4 million Jewish deportees to the island of Madagascar, over a four-year period.[26] The Madagascar Plan also required France to cede the island to Germany so the Nazis could create a "superghetto" overseen by theSecurity Police (SiPo).[27] Logistical difficulties notwithstanding, new opportunities to relocate the Jews elsewhere consequent to the invasion of the Soviet Union led Hitler to decide against Madagascar in favor of sending them to the East.[28]
Generalplan Ost (General Plan East), the secret Nazi plan to colonize Central and Eastern Europe exclusively with Germans—displacing inhabitants in the process through genocide and ethnic cleansing in order to obtain sufficientLebensraum—also stemmed from officials in the RSHA, among other Nazi organizations.[29] To this end, the RSHA, particularly through theEinsatzgruppen and Gestapo, orchestrated the systematic murder of Slavic populations, Jews, and other "undesirable" groups, clearing the way for German settlers by overseeing forced labor, starvation policies, and mass executions.[30] Additionally, the RSHA's intelligence and planning divisions collaborated with the SS and other agencies to classify populations, determined who would be Germanized or exterminated, and coordinated genocidal policies, making it a key participant in Nazi racial imperialism.[31][32]
In its role as the national and Nazi security service, the RSHA coordinated activities among various agencies with wide-ranging responsibilities within the Reich.[33] According to German historian,Klaus Hildebrand, the RSHA was "particularly concerned with racial matters".[34]Adolf Eichmann stated in 1937 that "the anger of the people expressed in riots [was] the most effective means to rob the Jews of a sense of security".[35] Entry into the Second World War afforded the RSHA the power to act as an intermediary in conquered or occupied territories, which according toHans Mommsen, lent itself to implementing the extermination of Jewish populations in those places.[36] An order issued by the RSHA on 20 May 1941 to block emigration of any and all Jews attempting to leave Belgium or France as part of the "imminentFinal Solution of theJewish question" demonstrates its complicity for the systematic extermination of Jews.[37] By November of 1941, the RSHA had delivered threegas vans to theChełmno extermination camp and within a month (8 December 1941) the Nazi's mass murder campaign using gas began.[38]
Part of the RSHA's efforts to encourage occupied nations to hand over their Jews included coercing them by assigning Jewish advisory officials.[39] Working with Eichmann's Reich Association of Jews in Germany, they deliberately deceived Jews still living in Germany and other countries by promising them good living quarters, medical care, and food inTheresienstadt (a camp which was a way station to facilities likeAuschwitz) if they turned over their assets to the RSHA through a fictitious home-purchase plan.[40] Systematic mass deportations of Jews to Auschwitz thus began in late March 1942 and were supervised by Eichmann, whose RSHA office was responsible for Jewish affairs and evacuations, the man Heydrich called his "expert" concerning the transportation of Jews to occupied Poland.[41] These transports to Auschwitz came from all over occupied Europe but started with Jews from Slovakia and France.[42] Within the RSHA, Eichmann employed techniques such as deliberate gaps in documentation and strategic ambiguity to deflect accountability. These same methods resurfaced during his trial, where he deliberately confused legal proceedings to evade a clear judgment of his personal culpability. His role in the RSHA also highlights the organization’s systemic approach to deception, manipulation, and the weaponization of bureaucracy as a tool of mass murder.[43]
It was to the leaders of the RSHA specifically—comprised by the top brass of the SS (most prominently Heydrich at first)—that reports about the murders and/or evacuation of Jews were sent.[44] In January 1942, Heydrich sent SS-OberführerEmanuel Schäfer to Serbia, who later (June 1942) "reported with pride" to the RSHA how Serbia was "now free of Jews" after having overseen the murder of some 17,000 persons.[45] From March 1942 through November 1943, the horrific endeavorOperation Reinhard commenced under the RSHA's oversight, whereby they establishedextermination camps atBelzec,Sobibor, andTreblinka, which resulted in the systematic murder of approximately 1.7 million Jews.[46]
TheWannsee Conference, held on January 20, 1942, in a villa in Berlin's affluent suburb ofWannsee, was a pivotal meeting in the Nazi regime’s bureaucratic machinery of genocide, comprised by "representatives from the RSHA and state secretaries and other officials from the ministerial bureaucracy".[47] Convened by RSHA chief, Reinhard Heydrich, the meeting brought together fifteen high-ranking Nazi officials from various government organizations, including the Gestapo, SS, and the civil administration.[48][b] Among the key topics of discussion was the fate ofMischlinge (people of mixed Jewish and non-Jewish descent) and Jews in mixed marriages. Some officials proposed sterilization, while others argued for direct deportation. The meeting lasted approximately 90 minutes, during which mass murder was spoken of in purely administrative terms, reflecting the dehumanizing efficiency of Nazi policy.[50] Contrary to some misconceptions, the purpose of the conference was not to decide whether to exterminate Europe’s Jewish population—that decision had already been made—but to formalize the logistical and administrative details necessary to carry out the "Final Solution to the Jewish question."[51][c]
In callous and detached language, Heydrich outlined plans to deport 11 million Jews from both occupied and neutral European countries to the East, where they would be subjected to forced labor under conditions designed to ensure mass death. Those who survived this process would be "treated accordingly," a euphemism for outright extermination in killing centers such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor.[54] The Wannsee Protocol, the official record of the meeting according to the RSHA, later became crucial evidence in post-war trials, exposing the role of Nazi bureaucrats in the Holocaust. Historians avow that the conference remains a chilling example of how genocide can be facilitated not just by ideological fervor, but also through cold, technocratic planning by educated officials operating within a modern state apparatus.[55]
The RSHA also oversaw theEinsatzgruppen,death squads that were formed under the direction of Heydrich and operated by the SS.[56] Originally part of the SiPo, in September 1939 the operational control of theEinsatzgruppen was taken over by the RSHA. When the units were re-formed prior to theinvasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the men of theEinsatzgruppen were recruited from the SD, Gestapo,Kripo,Orpo, andWaffen-SS.[57] Heydrich and Bruno Streckenbach, head of personnel at the RSHA, personally selectedEinsatzgruppen leaders from these units. These committed Nazis and antisemitic ideologues were highly educated, often holding doctorates in law, and had years of experience in policing and security.[58] The units followed the invasion forces of theGerman Army into Eastern Europe.[59] Not infrequently, commanders ofEinsatzgruppen andEinsatzkommando sub-units were also desk officers from the main office of the RSHA.[60] HistorianRaul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 theEinsatzgruppen, related agencies, and foreign auxiliary troops co-opted by the Nazis,[d] killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews.[63]
As early as 1941, Propaganda MinisterJoseph Goebbels began to complain that large numbers of Jews had not been transported out of Germany because of their work in the armaments industry.[65] They were protected from deportation as they were considered to be irreplaceable labourers, and many were also married toAryan Germans. These Jews believed that these factors ensured their safety. But by late 1942, Hitler and the RSHA were ready to rid Berlin of its remaining German Jews.[66] In September 1942, Hitler decided that these labourers would still be protected, but that they were to be sent out of the country. Meanwhile, Auschwitz administrators were lobbying the government to send them more armaments workers, as they had struck a bargain with the arms producer IG Farben to construct a camp specifically for arms development using slave labour.[67] As a result, the RSHA decreed theFabrik-Aktion, an initiative to register all Jews working in armaments production. The primary targets of this action were Jews who were married to Aryans.[66]
The RSHA planned to remove all German Jews from Berlin in early 1943 (the deadline to deport these Jews was 28 February 1943, according to a diary entry Goebbels wrote in early February).[68] On 27 February 1943, the RSHA sent plainclothes Gestapo officials to arrest intermarried Jews and charge them with various crimes.[69] Around 2,000 intermarried Jewish men were taken to Rosenstrasse 2–4, where they were held.[70] Goebbels complained that many of the arrests had been "thwarted" by industrialists since some 4,000 Jews were expected to be detained.[71] Angry wives—as "Women of German blood"—began protesting against this action in front of the building on Rosenstrasse where the men were being held.[72] On 6 March, all but 25 of the intermarried Jews were released; the 25 still held were sent to Auschwitz.[73] On 8 March, RSHA head Ernst Kaltenbrunner told Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick that the deportations had been limited to Jews who were not intermarried.[74]
After the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Allied powers sought to hold accountable those responsible for the crimes of Nazi Germany through the creation of an international court.[75] Although the RSHA was not tried as an individual entity at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg, its constituent branches—theGestapo,Sicherheitsdienst (SD), and SS—were all declared criminal organizations.[6] Because the RSHA effectively centralized these agencies under one bureaucratic and operational umbrella, this ruling meant that many of its personnel were liable for prosecution simply by virtue of their involvement, unless they could prove they were coerced or unaware of the organization’s crimes.[76]
One of the highest-ranking RSHA officials to face justice was Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who led the RSHA from 1943 until the war’s end.[77] As Heydrich’s successor, Kaltenbrunner was deeply involved in orchestrating the Final Solution, overseeing the activities of concentration camps and directing theEinsatzgruppen—mobile killing squads responsible for mass executions in Eastern Europe, even though he tried to present himself as a sacrificial lamb for Himmler.[78] Despite attempts during his trial to minimize his role or claim ignorance, the tribunal found substantial evidence linking him directly to numerous atrocities. He was found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and was executed by hanging on 16 October 1946.[79]
Beyond Kaltenbrunner’s conviction, the subsequent Nuremberg Trials (1947–1949) brought additional RSHA personnel to justice.[80] Particularly notable was theEinsatzgruppen Trial, in which 24 senior commanders of these killing units were prosecuted.[81] Responsible for the deaths of over a million civilians—primarily Jews—these men were among the most direct perpetrators of the Holocaust.[82][83] This trial, led by Chief Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz, became a landmark in the development of international criminal law, establishing genocide and crimes against humanity as prosecutable offenses.[84] Fourteen defendants received death sentences, though only four were carried out.[85] In theRuSHA Trial,RSHA officials involved in racial policy, Germanization, and child abduction programs were also held to account, further highlighting the role of RSHA bureaucracies in violating international norms.[86]
Many RSHA members avoided prosecution altogether, particularly as Cold War tensions soon overshadowed the postwar justice effort.[87] In West Germany, the denazification process faltered,[88][89] and numerous mid-level RSHA officials were reintegrated into civil service or intelligence agencies, such as the newly formedBundesnachrichtendienst (BND).[90] East Germany, by contrast, made more frequent public use of RSHA crimes in its political rhetoric but often prosecuted only a limited number of individuals, dropping to as few as 23 person by 1955, and just one person each in 1957 and 1958.[91] The overall result was an uneven application of justice, with only a fraction of RSHA personnel ever facing legal consequences; in some cases, figures high in the RSHA hierarchy were given mininal sentences, such as known perpetrator SS-Standartenführer (Colonel)Walter Huppenkothen, who was a directorate chief in the RSHA headquarters that only served three years of a six-year sentence.[92]
Nevertheless, the trials of RSHA officials—especially Kaltenbrunner and theEinsatzgruppen leaders—had lasting legal and moral significance.[93] They helped define the concepts of crimes against humanity and bureaucratic complicity in mass murder.[94] Furthermore, they exposed how the machinery of genocide relied not just on fanatics or frontline perpetrators, but on administrators, planners, and technocrats—figures who, through paperwork and procedure, made industrial-scale murder possible.[95] The legacy of these proceedings continues to influence international law and collective memory to this day.[96]
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