Naming the Gestapo

"...Neighbors turned surly; petty jealousies flared into denunciations made to the SA- the Storm Troopers- or to the newly founded Geheime Staatspolizei, only just becoming known by it's acronym, Gestapo (GEheime STAatsPOlizei), coined by a post office clerk seeking a less cumbersome way of identifying the agency."

The Gestapo's reputation for omniscience and malevolence arose from a confluence of two phenomena: first, a political climate in which merely criticizing the government could get one arrested, and second, the existence of a populace eager not just to step in line...but also to use Nazi sensitivities to satisfy individual needs and salve jealousies. One study of Nazi records found that a sample of 213 denunciations, 37% arose from ...private conflicts, with the trigger often breathtakingly trivial...Germans denounced one another with such gusto that senior Nazi officials urged the populace to be more discriminating...Hitler himself acknowledged..."we are living at present in a sea of denunciations and human meanness."

Really? You think so?

Those last two comments were from me!

From Erik Larson's bestseller "In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin", 2011.

Shelters: Living Underground in the London Blitz

"...British government policy on the provision of air-raid shelters was to encourage maximum dispersal of the population during attacks, and to issue each household with a small prefabricated metal shelter of the type designed by the Home Office official, Dr. David Anderson, after whom they were named. Large public shelters were to be provided only in areas where use of Anderson shelters was impractical and, in the case of London, underground stations were not to be made available for this purpose. The government feared that their use would create a "shelter mentality" and that people would refuse to leave them during the day."

"...The German "Blitzkrieg" on London began the night of September 7, 1940. Many parts of central London were too densely built-up for Anderson shelters to have been erected, and many people felt that underground basements, railway arches and the deeper underground stations offered the best protection. The basements of many buildings were thus taken over for use as shelters and railway arches were bricked-up and protected with sandbags."

"...The pressure on the governement to recognise these places as official shelters was so great that by the middle of September it had reversed its policy. It instituted official supervision by appointing Shelter marshals and by providing latrines and first aid staff and equipment. Apprehensions about the use of underground stations proved...to be...unfounded...a "shelter mentality" did not develop and even at its peak, less than 5% of London's population used them."

Mike Seaborne
1988
"Shelters: Living Underground in the London Blitz"