How is it possible that the Secret State Police (Geheime Staatspolizei – Gestapo), despite a relatively low number of officers (it reached its peak number of 31 thousand officers in 1944), managed to efficiently protect the Third Reich’s totalitarian regime in the occupied territories?

Gestapo originated from the political police of Prussia and other German states. During the times of the Weimar Republic, the political police was a very small service. It engaged in invigilation and suppression of extremist political movements whose activities were aimed against the legal authorities: the radical left — communists, and the radical right including the NSDAP (Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party).