Here you will find descriptions of a range of terms, events, themes and institutions featured on the website.
March-Action (März-Aktion)
On 9 March 1937, the Criminal Police carried out the first mass arrests of »career and habitual criminals« (»Berufs- und Gewohnheitsverbrecher«) as well as »habitual moral offenders« (»gewohnheitsmäßige Sittlichkeitsverbrecher«) across the Reich. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, as head of the police, set the arrest quota at 2,000 individuals. They were selected based on their criminal records and employment status. The men were imprisoned in the Dachau, Lichtenburg, Sachsenburg, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, while the women were sent to the Moringen concentration camp.
The SS (»Schutzstaffel«) under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler was envisioned as an elite paramilitary organisation of the National Socialist state. With Himmler’s takeover and reorganisation of the police, the SS became the regime’s central instrument of terror. In 1934, it was given control over all concentration camps. The Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), formed in 1939 as the planning centre for crimes in German-occupied Europe, was subordinated to it.
| People who committed sexual offences were classified as »Sittlichkeitsverbrecher«. Even under the criminal law of the German Empire, »crimes and offences against morality« could be punished with prison terms or penal servitude. The National Socialists tightened existing criminal law by legally enshrining longer prison sentences, indefinite preventive detention, and additional measures for »habitual criminals«. |
The Criminal Police (Kriminalpolizei, »Kripo«) is a regular police division in charge of investigating crimes. In the National Socialist state its tasks additionally included the surveillance and persecution of »community aliens« (»Gemeinschaftsfremde«). People deemed »career criminals« or »asocials« by the Criminal Police were placed under systematic surveillance and were detained indefinitely.
It was up to police officers to decide what was to be considered »asocial behaviour«: the slightest deviation from the norm could lead to imprisonment.