Gestapo in the context of "Law enforcement in Germany"

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 October 1903 – 16 October 1946) was an Austrian high-ranking SS official during the Nazi era, major perpetrator of the Holocaust and convicted war criminal. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and a brief period under Heinrich Himmler, Kaltenbrunner was the third Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), which included the offices of Gestapo, Kripo and SD, from January 1943 until the end of World War II in Europe.

Kaltenbrunner joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and the SS in 1931, and by 1935 he was considered a leader of the Austrian SS. In 1938, he assisted in the Anschluss and was given command of the SS and police force in Austria. In January 1943, Kaltenbrunner was appointed chief of the RSHA, succeeding Reinhard Heydrich, who was assassinated in May 1942.

Annelies Marie Frank (German: [ˈanə(liːs maˈʁiː) ˈfʁaŋk] , Dutch: [ˌɑnəˈlis maːˈri ˈfrɑŋk, ˈɑnə ˈfrɑŋk] ; 12 June 1929 – c. February or March 1945) was a German-born Jewish girl and diarist who perished in the Holocaust. She gained worldwide fame posthumously for keeping a diary documenting her life in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands. In the diary, she regularly described her family's everyday life in their hiding place in an Amsterdam attic from 1942 until their arrest in 1944.

Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929. In 1934, when she was four and a half, Frank and her family moved to Amsterdam after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party gained control of Germany. By May 1940, the family was trapped in Amsterdam due to Germany's occupation. Frank lost her German citizenship in 1941 and became stateless. Despite spending most of her life in the Netherlands and being a de facto Dutch national, she never officially became a Dutch citizen. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in rooms concealed behind a bookcase in the building where Frank's father, Otto Frank, worked. The family was arrested two years later by the Gestapo, on 4 August 1944.

Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943) was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active in the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany.

Raised in a politically engaged family, Scholl initially joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the female branch of the Hitler Youth, but later became critical of the Nazi regime. Influenced by philosophy, theology, and the writings of Theodor Haecker, she became involved in passive resistance efforts alongside her brother, Hans, and fellow students. The White Rose distributed leaflets calling for opposition to the Nazi state, citing ethical and philosophical arguments against its policies. In February 1943, after being caught distributing leaflets at the University of Munich, she and her brother Hans were arrested by the Gestapo, interrogated, and convicted of high treason in a show trial presided over by Roland Freisler. They were sentenced to death and executed by guillotine.

Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; German: [ˈhɛʁman ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈɡøːʁɪŋ] ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German Nazi politician, aviator, military leader, and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which controlled Germany from 1933 to 1945. He also served as Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe (Supreme Commander of the Air Force), a position he held until the final days of the regime.

He was born in Rosenheim, Bavaria. A veteran World War I fighter pilot ace, Göring was a recipient of the Pour le Mérite. He served as the last commander of Jagdgeschwader 1 (JG I), the fighter wing once led by Manfred von Richthofen. An early member of the Nazi Party, Göring was among those wounded in Adolf Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. While receiving treatment for his injuries, he developed an addiction to morphine that persisted until the last year of his life. After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Göring was named as minister without portfolio in the new government. One of his first acts as a cabinet minister was to oversee the creation of the Gestapo, which he ceded to Heinrich Himmler in 1934.

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈluːɪtpɔlt ˈhɪmlɐ] ; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician and military leader. He was the 4th Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful figures in Nazi Germany. He was also one of the main architects of the Holocaust.

After serving in a reserve battalion during World War I without seeing combat, Himmler went on to join the Nazi Party in 1923. In 1925, he joined the SS, which was initially a small paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party that served as a bodyguard unit for Adolf Hitler. Himmler rose steadily through the SS's ranks to become Reichsführer-SS by 1929. Under Himmler's leadership, the SS grew from a 290-man battalion into one of the most powerful institutions in Nazi Germany. Over the course of his career, Himmler acquired a reputation for good organisational skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of the Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police) and Minister of the Interior, which gave him oversight of all police and security forces (including the Gestapo). He also controlled the Waffen-SS, a branch of the SS that served in combat alongside the Wehrmacht (Germany's armed forces) in World War II.

Sicherheitsdienst (German: [ˈzɪçɐhaɪtsˌdiːnst] , "Security Service"), full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS ("Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS"), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization and the Gestapo (formed in 1933) was considered its sister organization through the integration of SS members and operational procedures. The SD was administered as an independent SS office between 1933 and 1939. That year, the SD was transferred over to the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA), as one of its seven departments. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich, intended for the SD to bring every single individual within the Third Reich's reach under "continuous supervision".

Following Germany's defeat in World War II, the tribunal at the Nuremberg trials officially declared that the SD was a criminal organisation, along with the rest of Heydrich's RSHA (including the Gestapo) both individually and as branches of the SS in the collective. Heydrich was assassinated in 1942; his successor, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials, sentenced to death and hanged in 1946.

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (/ˈhaɪdrɪk/; German: [ˈʁaɪnhaʁt ˈtʁɪstan ˈʔɔʏɡn̩ ˈhaɪdʁɪç] ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official in Nazi Germany as well as one of the principal architects of the Holocaust. He held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei. Many historians regard Heydrich as one of the most sinister figures within the Nazi regime. Adolf Hitler described him as "the man with the iron heart."

Heydrich was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD). He was also Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. He served as president of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC, now known as Interpol) and chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalised plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish question"—the deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe.

The White Rose (German: Weiße Rose, pronounced [ˈvaɪsə ˈʁoːzə] ) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students and one professor at the University of Munich: Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime. Their activities started in Munich on 27 June 1942; they ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943. They, as well as other members and supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced show trials by the Nazi People's Court (Volksgerichtshof); many of them were imprisoned and executed.

Hans Fritz Scholl and Sophie Magdalena Scholl, as well as Christoph Probst were executed by guillotine four days after their arrest, on 22 February 1943. During the trial, Sophie interrupted the judge multiple times. No defendants were given any opportunity to speak.