Sicherheitsdienst
The Sicherheitsdienst (SD, English: "Security Service"), full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS (English: "Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS"), was the intelligence agency of the SS and the NSDAP. The SD was mainly an information-gathering agency, while the Gestapo, and to some degree the Kriminalpolizei, were the executive agencies of the political police system. After 1938, there was also overlap with the functions of the Abwehr. Between 1933 and 1939, the SD was administered as an independent SS office, after which it was transferred to the authority of the Reich Main Security Office on 27 September 1939.
History
The Security Service was commissioned on 4 September 1931 by a secret order from Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler as an intelligence service within the SS structure and subordinate to the newly recruited Reinhard Heydrich.
The SD started it's work in the same year with just three short-term employees. Initially called the “Ic Service” in reference to the military institution, Heydrich changed the name to “PI Service” (Press and Information Service) as a camouflage during the ban on the SA and SS from April to June 1932, before the department eventually became a “security service”. Initially operating as a loose intelligence system, from the summer of 1932 it was elevated to a special department of the SS. Until the end of its existence, the SD was financially supported by the budget of the Reich Treasurer of the NSDAP, Franz Xaver Schwarz.
On 27 January 1933, Himmler ordered his subordinate Heydrich to move the headquarters of the SD from Munich to Berlin. However, it turned out to be too weak for the actual tasks of the NSDAP's intelligence service, which now also fulfilled state functions, and the SD was still too weak in terms of organization and personnel. Although the intelligence service had begun gathering intelligence and monitoring political opponents and party members themselves by the summer of 1932 at the latest, it still lacked a lot for comprehensive state-run repression of the population, as intended by Adolf Hitler and Himmler.
Even before the Röhm affair in the summer of 1934, the responsibilities were adjusted more precisely and shortly afterwards legally sanctioned through appropriate regulations. Through a decree issued by Rudolf Heß on 9 June 1934 in his role as deputy to the Führer, the SD became the NSDAP's only internal party intelligence service. It therefore officially became the party's espionage and counter-espionage service, which also used the Gestapo to expose enemies of the state. Because the SD did not yet have any executive instruments. From the summer of 1935, the SD's intelligence monopoly was finally confirmed. This meant that it was on an equal footing with the military counterintelligence (Abwehr) and the Research Office or Forschungsamt (FA), but it was increasingly in competition with the other two secret service institutions. In 1935, it was divided into the “General SD”, which was then staffed by members of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo), and the more important “Intelligence SD”, which monitored possible enemies of the state. A decree from the Reich Ministry of the Interior dated 11 November 1938 stated:
- “The Sicherheitsdienst of the RFSS has important tasks to fulfill as an intelligence organization for the party and the state – especially in support of the SiPo. The SD thus acts on behalf of the state. This requires close and understanding cooperation between the SD and the administrative authorities of the general and internal administration.”
For this purpose, the SD had 52 SD (control) sections with 51 main and 519 branch offices at its disposal. In 1944, 6,482 full-time SD members and over 30,000 undercover agents worked there. In total, the SD had grown to 18,284 full-time staff by mid-1944.
RSHA
Of the original six offices, the SD occupied a total of four areas of responsibility within the RSHA. The SD also appointed the respective heads of these sub-areas:
- Office I Administration and Law Werner Best (de)
- Office II enemy research Franz Six (de)
- Office III German Living Regions Otto Ohlendorf (de)
- Office VI Foreign Intelligence Service Heinz Jost
In a first change in the organizational structure in mid-1940, Office I was divided into two offices. From then on, Office I, headed by Bruno Brückenbach, was responsible for personnel matters, while the newly formed Office II, under Dr. Best, was responsible for organization, administration and law. The previous Office II became the new Office VII “Ideological Research and Evaluation” with the head Franz Six. In addition to Heydrich as head of the authority, from May 1940, five of the offices were under the leadership of SD officers.
After 1945, numerous members of the SD were taken over into Western intelligence organizations under the leadership of the former major general of the Wehrmacht's Foreign Armies East Department, Reinhard Gehlen – initially into the anti-communist "Gehlen Organization", which was absorbed into the newly founded Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst) of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1956. Others agreed to work for the CIA or went into hiding. Several of them adopted a new identity or moved abroad.
