Did they really want to attack the gestapo?

[Bruce Tuncks]

I have just read a book called "the gestapo hunters" and it was partly about a raid to save several french resistance from a gestapo firing squad. I got the impression that the top brass even in the RAF sort of liked the gestapo and had to be dragged into attacking them.

This was further reinforced by the story of the Belgian who tried for years to convince the brass of an attack and ended up doing an unauthorised one by himself.

I would really like to be convinced I am wrong about this. But I've got the idea that attacking the gestapo was something the workers liked but the rulers didn't agree.

 

 

[onetrack]

The Aarhus Air Raid puts paid to the idea that the RAF was soft on attacking the Gestapo. Other raids on the Gestapo were probably deemed too high a risk for minimal gain, the Gestapo would have largely been well protected by the Nazis.

 

The simple problem would have been trying to find a large concentration of Gestapo without a considerable number of Allied and Resistance prisoners being held in close quarters to them.

 

Even though the Aarhus raid was deemed highly successful, the RAF aircraft still killed 30 Danish Resistance prisoners by accident.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarhus_Air_Raid

[IBob]

I have no idea when the tide changed, but certainly prior to WW2 a significant number of privileged people in Allied countries were pro-fascist and also anti-semitic. This included the likes of aviator Charles Lindbergh, Dame Lucy Houston (who wrote a check for 100,000pounds to support the Schneider Trophy effort when the British government would not, as a deliberate snub to the Labour government of the time), and Edward VIII who abdicated.

 

I don't know whether or how much this may have been the case in Australia and NZ.

[turboplanner]

3 minutes ago, IBob said:

I have no idea when the tide changed, but certainly prior to WW2 a significant number of privileged people in Allied countries were pro-fascist and also anti-semitic. This included the likes of aviator Charles Lindbergh, Dame Lucy Houston (who wrote a check for 100,000pounds to support the Schneider Trophy effort when the British government would not, as a deliberate snub to the Labour government of the time), and Edward VIII who abdicated.

 

I don't know whether or how much this may have been the case in Australia and NZ.

That's getting away from the Gestapo though, they were a breed on their own.

[IBob]

True enough. But you don't think the Gestapo were seen as dealing with the Jewish?

[turboplanner]

8 minutes ago, IBob said:

True enough. But you don't think the Gestapo were seen as dealing with the Jewish?

They certainly made Hitler's plan for treatment of human beings a reality.

[onetrack]

Possibly the greatest concern about any attack on the Gestapo being termed "successful", was the inevitable and brutal Gestapo-led Nazi retaliation to any of their members being killed.

 

In every case, where the Gestapo, or any leading Nazis, were attacked and their members killed, the Nazis, led by the Gestapo, retaliated with a ferocity that was extreme.

 

In the case of the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich, it is believed that Nazi reprisals for Heydrichs assassination cost the lives of 5000 people - and the Nazis cared little whether they shot civilians or soldiers. Hitler was reported as wanting 10,000 killed in retaliation for Heydrichs death.

 

In numerous villages across Europe, there are the remains of villages with memorial plaques, standing testament to Nazi reprisals that often involved the massacre of hundreds of civilians, simply because they supported resistance to the Nazis.

[Yenn]

Surely this is not the place for this subject. It has nothing to do with our flying. How could the RAF or anyone else attack the Gestapo. They were the more or less brutal police and part of the German army. It is rather like expecting an attack on the catering corps.

[Thruster88]

The author may have put his spin on what and why things did or did not happen 78 years ago. 

[Garfly]

Some related lockdown viewing  😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[skippydiesel]

Eugenics was at the core of the Nazi creed and went hand in glove with racism & anti-Semitism.

Pre WW2 this was a World wide movement. Even the Pope was a sympathiser.

This goes some way to explain the reluctance of the political/ruling classes of the Western World to "move" against the Nazi state. 

Even after war was declared and the existence of concentration/death camps, slave labour and genocide well known by the "upper echelons" little was done to hinder these activates.

[APenNameAndThatA]

On 30/08/2021 at 8:38 PM, Bruce Tuncks said:

I have just read a book called "the gestapo hunters" and it was partly about a raid to save several french resistance from a gestapo firing squad. I got the impression that the top brass even in the RAF sort of liked the gestapo and had to be dragged into attacking them.

This was further reinforced by the story of the Belgian who tried for years to convince the brass of an attack and ended up doing an unauthorised one by himself.

I would really like to be convinced I am wrong about this. But I've got the idea that attacking the gestapo was something the workers liked but the rulers didn't agree.

 

 

One book = no books. Behaviour is determined by lots of different factors too determined, too. And, organisations are made  up of lots of different people. 

[APenNameAndThatA]

1 hour ago, skippydiesel said:

Eugenics was at the core of the Nazi creed and went hand in glove with racism & anti-Semitism.

Pre WW2 this was a World wide movement. Even the Pope was a sympathiser.

This goes some way to explain the reluctance of the political/ruling classes of the Western World to "move" against the Nazi state. 

Even after war was declared and the existence of concentration/death camps, slave labour and genocide well known by the "upper echelons" little was done to hinder these activates.

How much did they know before the Americans arrived? And what could they do? Apparently some Jewish people in America knew there was a problem but did not want to cry wolf. What could the Allies have done? Changed their mind and decide to win the war? 

[APenNameAndThatA]

On 31/08/2021 at 1:01 PM, Yenn said:

Surely this is not the place for this subject. It has nothing to do with our flying. How could the RAF or anyone else attack the Gestapo. They were the more or less brutal police and part of the German army. It is rather like expecting an attack on the catering corps.

Im fine with it. Get them to revive the off-topic section. 

[Bruce Tuncks]

In each attack, aircraft were used against gestapo buildings. In the first attack, great care was needed or the dropped bombs could bounce and hit your plane or the following one.

[facthunter]

From what I know the Gestapo weren't liked by anyone even the germans. Nev

[Bruce Tuncks]

It was garfly's video of the rogue attack that got me reminded of the first account where the french resistance were calling for an attack with the aim of freeing prisoners, some of whom were due for execution. In each case, I got a slight impression that the top brass was not as keen as the lower people.

[IBob]

Perhaps these were some of the awful decisions about what is for the greater good, that we all hope never to face, but that sometimes have to be made in wartime. For example:

 

As we now know, the Allies learnt to crack the (shifting) coded messages from the Enigma encoding machine, used for critical communications by the German military. The dilemma then was how to use that information without alerting the Germans to the fact that their comms were not secure.
One common rumour after the war was that the war office knew of the upcoming air raid that blitzed Coventry, but chose not to alert the populace for this reason. Whether this is true, I have no idea. But it certainly seems possible.