This first socio-organizational history of the Gestapo, the SD, and the regular detectives of the Third Reich, 1932-1937, explores the roots of their roles in police terror and programs of mass murder. These personnel helped to form the character and missions of their organizations, which were not simply created from above by Hitler, Himmler, or Heydrich. Hitler's Enforcers is based on research at 34 archives in Germany and the United States, including the personnel files of over 1,000 former members, and is the first such study to benefit from the German documents captured by the Soviets and Poles and kept secret until recently.
From 1931 to 1937, as Germany's police merged with security services of the National Socialists, the standards of police work, such as professionalism, protecting the state, and the image of `good' guys fighting `bad' were perverted. Browder closely details this transition by following the lives of the men who participated in it.
