Gestapo: The Myth & Reality of Hitler's Secret Police

Review This fascinating and absorbing new book, drawing on original Gestapo files, provides a wide range of vivid and fascinating stories that explore the tragic human plight of victims of Nazi terror, and the motives of the German citizens who denounced them. By examining in depth how the Gestapo dealt with Jews, Communists, religious dissidents and those on the margins of society, McDonough has produced a brilliant, readable and deeply significant examination of Hitler's notorious secret police. ― Andrew Roberts A compelling and crisply written new history of the Third Reich's central instrument on domestic terror between 1933 and 1945. McDonough moves beyond the administrative history of the Gestapo to examine the key target groups not just political and religious opponents, but social outsiders and Jews He provides a nuanced account via Gestapo files and courtroom testimony. In setting a range of victims' life stories revealed in these neglected Gestapo case files against long standing historical views of either an all pervasive surveillance or total reliance on public denunciations, The Gestapo provides an original and welcome perspective on this often misunderstood symbol of Nazi repression and enforced conformity. Impressive, illuminated by real victim stories, this book is strongly recommended. -- Matthew Feldman, Professor in Contemporary History at Teesside University and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bergen, Norway In this thoroughly researched and elegantly written book, Frank McDonough confronts decades of myth-making to uncover the complex realities of Hitler's notorious secret police. The Gestapo is as surprising as it is illuminating, and it sets a new standard for this vitally important subject. -- Roger Moorhouse, leading Third Reich historian and best-selling author Superbly scholarly and just as readable. A chilling, meticulous record of state brutality that is more compelling than any novel. -- Dan Snow, Award-winning TV historian and best-selling author Professor Frank McDonough has unearthed much, drawn from recent research and his own work in the Gestapo's surviving archives and has blended it in this lucid, authoratative study of the institution and its servants. As for those servants' villiany, he lets them and their victims speak for themselves: this is a chilling as well as a compelling read...In telling the story of the how the Gestapo worked, McDonough has provided fascinating insights into the experiences of Germans in a fickle and frightening world. -- Lawrence James ― The Times It seems incredible that humane qualities could be exhumed from such evil, but that is one achievement of Frank McDonough's nuanced study...The contribution of McDonough's illuminating account - based on the 73,000 files at Düsseldorf, the largest surviving collection of Gestapo records - is to reveal that the organisation was neither faceless nor monolithic....Too often historians present material of this vile kind in emotive prose, forcing the reader into uneasy agreement with whatever argument they are presenting. Here, by combining a calm tone with a lucid, factual approach, McDonough has convincingly portrayed a system that was highly efficient and profoundly pernicious, but not unequivocally wicked. -- Miranda Seymour ― The Sunday Telegraph A myth-busting study exposes how ordinary Germans ran rings round the secret police...[McDonough] offers real insight into the methods, motives and backgrounds of the men who tried... to police the thoughts of the inhabitants of the Third Reich...Another remarkable point that McDonough makes is that judges often threw out cases brought by the Gestapo. Many were old-fashioned conservatives... with a prickly sense of their own independence. -- Marcus Ranner ― The Independent McDonough's penetrating study of the Gestapo, which challenges established myths- for instance that the Gestapo was everywhere, an Orwellian 'thought police' that kept everyone in check a