Aktion Gitter

Aktion Gitter was a "mass arrest action" by the Gestapo which took place in Germany between 22 and 23 August 1944. It came slightly more than a month after the failed attempt to assassinate the country's leader, Adolf Hitler, on 20 July 1944.

The programme targeted former officials and members of mainstream centre and left-wing "Bourgeois" parties from the period of democratic government that been declared illegal after January 1933. Those arrested included Social Democrats and trades unionists, Liberals, Communists and Bavarian People's Party members, along with members of the old centre parties.

The word "Gitter" can be translated into English as "grille" or "lattice": in the context of Aktion Gitter it refers to putting people "behind bars".

The term had already been officially used before, in connection with a that had taken place in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on 16 March 1939, in connection with completion of the German takeover in what had previously been the western part Czechoslovakia.

Aktion Gitter was the official title used by the government, but these events are also sometimes identified in sources as Aktion Gewitter or Aktion Himmler. "Gewitter" is a German word for a "thunder storm" and Heinrich Himmler was a senior member of the government whose areas of responsibility included policing and a wide range of other matters administered in his capacity as Minister of the Interior.

The mass arrests of Aktion Gitter were neither unprecedented nor a spontaneous government response to the assassination attempt of July 1944, but the working through of long-standing policies. Leading politicians from the Weimar years had been identified on a so-called government "A-list" as early as 1935/36, divided into sub-categories A-1, A-2 and A-3. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 the Gestapo had arrested between 2,000 and 4,000 people whose names appeared on List A-1. These were identified as "enemies of the state" and placed in "protective custody", in most cases in the Buchenwald concentration camp. However, most of these had been released by the summer of 1940. Nevertheless, Chancellor Hitler gave notice in April 1942 that "if a mutiny were to break out today somewhere in the country", it would meet with an immediate response ("Sofortmaßnahmen"). Directly following the outbreak of civil arrest or similar disturbances, all "leading men from the [left-wing] opposition, and indeed also those from the Catholic political tradition would be arrested, removed from their homes and sent for execution. Additionally all concentration camp inmates would be shot along with all criminals, whether they were in state detention or at liberty at the time.

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