The "Racial Welfare" State and its Political and Religious Enemies. Research Notes on the Gestapo Files from the Beginning of the Nazi Dictatorship (1933-1937)

Abstract

The main problem of this paper is the relationship between the actions of Die Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), the generation and maintenance of an order that had to eliminate and neutralize the “enemies” of the “German people” -Communists and the Catholi copposition- and the assurance of its “well-being” during the first years of the Nazi dictatorship. The Gestapo was one of the early instruments used to ensure the neutralization of resistance to the Nazi project. It involved extreme nationalism, which used racial and ideological arguments in the pursuit of the construction of a social order that would ensure the alleged conditions of life and supremacy of “Aryan” Germans. The article also seeks to remind the reader that the opposition existed, regardless of its powerlessness and failure. Although the dictatorship had allies and collaborators on its path of terror, the historical memory of the resistance that existed must be kept alive: not everyone was an accomplice.