Enemies of the People
Hitler's Critics and the Gestapo

Explores the Gestapo's complex system of enforcement and control to reveal the everyday reality of political policing under Hitler.

J. Ryan Stackhouse (Author)

9781108832601, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 October 2021

330 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.63 kg

'Stackhouse's fascinating book demonstrates how frighteningly quickly the Nazis managed to exert control over a region in which the majority of people had not voted for them. The central insight is how easy it is for authoritarian rulers to set up sustainable regimes.' Thomas Weber, University of Aberdeen

How do terror and popularity merge under a dictatorship? How did the Gestapo deal with critics of Nazism? Based on hundreds of secret police case files, Enemies of the People explores the day-to-day reality of political policing under Hitler. Examining the Gestapo's policy of 'selective enforcement', J. Ryan Stackhouse challenges the abiding perception of the Gestapo as policing exclusively through terror. Instead, he reveals the complex system of enforcement that defined the relationship between state and society in the Third Reich and helps to explain the Germans' abiding support for Hitler and their complicity in the regime's crimes. Stories of everyday life in Nazi Germany paint the clearest picture yet of just how differently the Gestapo handled certain groups and actions, and the routine investigation, interrogation, and enforcement practices behind this system. Enemies of the People offers penetrating insights into just how reasonable selective enforcement appeared to Germans, and draws unavoidable parallels with the contemporary threat of authoritarianism.

1. National and Regional Foundations, 1933-1945
2. Criminalizing Conversation, 1933-1934
3. Defining Opposition, 1935-1939
4. Discovering Offences, 1935-1943
5. Confirming Culpability, 1935-1943
6. Cooperation and Ascendancy, 1935-1939
7. Principles of Internal Security, 1939-1942
8. Enforcing People's Community, 1939-1942
9. Total War Policing, 1943-1944
10. Involving the Party, 1943-1944
11. Death Throes.

Subject Areas: Fascism & Nazism [JPFQ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]