Sicherheitspolizei

The Sicherheitspolizei (in Spanish : security police), sometimes abbreviated as SiPo , was a term used in Germany to refer to a type of police already missing. In Nazi Germany he was employed to describe security agencies charged with investigating crimes and political crimes. It was created by combining forces through the Gestapo (Secret Police of the state) and the KriPo (Criminal Police), existing between 1936 and 1939. From 1939 it was transferred and placed under the authority of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), as one of The seven departments that comprised this state agency.

History

The term has its origins in August 1919, when the Ministry of Reichswehr established a Sicherheitswehr as militarized police force to take action in the event of riots or strikes occur. However, due to numerical limitations of the army by the Treaty of Versailles , it will end up being renamed as Sicherheitspolizei to hide its true intentions. In spite of this, it was considered a military body and the recruitment was realized to a good extent between Freikorps , with noncommissioned officers and officers coming from the old German Imperial Army . ²

In 1936 the State Security Police had been consolidated and placed under the control of Reinhard Heydrich , and head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) of the Nazi Party. ³ The idea was to obtain the complete unification of the party intelligence agency (SD) with a state agency (SiPo), but in practice both agencies maintained their independence and ended up having numerous conflicts due to jurisdiction. Many officers, investigators and professional policemen of the SiPo despised the SD, whom they considered an incompetent organism. In addition, in the same year the state police agencies in Germany were divided by decree between Ordnungspolizei (regular police) and Sicherheitspolizei (State security police). The two branches of the police were commonly known as the OrPo and SiPo. ³

In September 1939, with the founding of the SS- Reichssicherheitshauptamt ( RSHA ), the Sicherheitspolizei was integrated into the new state agency as a section and ceased its existence. ⁴ However, the term SiPo was generally used to describe any police force which consisted the RSHA .

Cold War

After the end of World War II , the expression Sicherheitspolizei was used in East Germany to name some forces that comprised the secret police of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).