An Army of Spies? The Gestapo Spy Network 1933—45

Abstract

The contemporary belief of a Gestapo spy on every corner that, in turn, helped create a veil of fear over the German people has been too easily dismissed by scholars on the grounds that the Gestapo did not possess an `army of spies'. The image of the Gestapo as a `big brother' figure with eyes and ears everywhere has been discredited by historians such as Robert Gellately as a nazi fabrication. Gellately's important work on denunciations successfully pushed his thesis of a `self-policing' society operating within a `consensus dictatorship' to the forefront of historiography, but in a revisionist overstatement he exaggerated the significance of denunciations. This article hopes to address the current debate concerning the nature of policing in nazi Germany by demonstrating that there was a regular presence of paid informers alongside denouncers, reinforcing the proactive nature of the Gestapo in repressing dissent.