Editing Gestapo (section)

==Membership==
[[File:Gestapo Klatovy.jpg|thumb|Gestapo members in [[Klatovy]], [[German-occupied Czechoslovakia]]|left]]

In 1933, there was no purge of the German police forces.{{sfn|Gellately|1992|p=50}} The vast majority of Gestapo officers came from the police forces of the Weimar Republic; members of the SS, the SA, and the Nazi Party also joined the Gestapo but were less numerous.{{sfn|Gellately|1992|p=50}} By March 1937, the Gestapo employed an estimated 6,500 people in fifty-four regional offices across the Reich.{{sfn|Dams|Stolle|2014|p=34}} Additional staff were added in March 1938 consequent the annexation of Austria and again in October 1938 with the acquisition of the [[Sudetenland]].{{sfn|Dams|Stolle|2014|p=34}} In 1939, only 3,000 out of the total of 20,000 Gestapo men held SS ranks, and in most cases, these were honorary.{{sfn|Gellately|1992|p=51}} One man who served in the Prussian Gestapo in 1933 recalled that most of his co-workers "were by no means all Nazis. For the most part they were young professional civil service officers..."{{sfn|Gellately|1992|p=51}} The Nazis valued police competence more than politics, so in general in 1933, almost all of the men who served in the various state police forces under the [[Weimar Republic]] stayed on in their jobs.{{sfn|Gellately|1992|pp=54–55}} In [[Würzburg]], which is one of the few places in Germany where most of the Gestapo records survived, every member of the Gestapo was a career policeman or had a police background.{{sfn|Gellately|1992|p=59}}

The Canadian historian [[Robert Gellately]] wrote that most Gestapo men were not Nazis, but at the same time were not opposed to the Nazi regime, which they were willing to serve, in whatever task they were called upon to perform.{{sfn|Gellately|1992|p=59}} Over time, membership in the Gestapo included ideological training, particularly once Werner Best assumed a leading role for training in April 1936. Employing biological metaphors, Best emphasised a doctrine which encouraged members of the Gestapo to view themselves as 'doctors' to the 'national body' in the struggle against "pathogens" and "diseases"; among the implied sicknesses were "communists, Freemasons, and the churches—and above and behind all these stood the Jews".{{sfn|Dams|Stolle|2014|p=30}} Heydrich thought along similar lines and advocated both defensive and offensive measures on the part of the Gestapo, so as to prevent any subversion or destruction of the National Socialist body.{{sfn|Dams|Stolle|2014|p=31}}

Whether trained as police originally or not, Gestapo agents themselves were shaped by their socio-political environment. Historian [[George C. Browder]] contends that there was a four-part process ([[authorisation]], bolstering, routinisation, and [[dehumanisation]]) in effect, which legitimised the psycho-social atmosphere conditioning members of the Gestapo to [[radicalised]] violence.{{sfn|Browder|1996|pp=33–34}} Browder also describes a sandwich effect, where from above; Gestapo agents were subjected to ideologically oriented [[racism]] and criminal biological theories; and from below, the Gestapo was transformed by SS personnel who did not have the proper police training, which showed in their propensity for unrestrained violence.{{sfn|Browder|1996|pp=88–90}} This admixture certainly shaped the Gestapo's public image which they sought to maintain despite their increasing workload; an image which helped them identify and eliminate enemies of the Nazi state.{{sfn|Höhne|2001|pp=186–193}}