Ausland-SD

Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers—SS
SD sleeve insignia
The SD was a branch of the SS.
Agency overview
Formed	1932
Preceding agency	Ic-Dienst 1931
Dissolved	8 May 1945
Type	Intelligence Service
Jurisdiction	Nazi Germany Occupied Europe
Headquarters	Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin
Employees	6,482 c. February 1944
Minister responsible	Heinrich Himmler 1931–45
Agency executives	Reinhard Heydrich, 1931–42 Heinrich Himmler, 1942–43 (acting) Ernst Kaltenbrunner, 1943–45
Parent agency	Allgemeine SS RSHA

Sicherheitsdienst (German: [ˈzɪçɐhaɪtsˌdiːnst], Security Service), full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS (English: Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was considered a sister organization with the Gestapo, which the SS had infiltrated heavily after 1934. Between 1933 and 1939, the SD was administered as an independent SS office, after which it was transferred to the authority of the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA), as one of its seven departments/offices. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich, intended for the SD to bring every single individual within the Third Reich's reach under "continuous supervision."

Following Germany's defeat in World War II, the SD was declared a criminal organisation at the Nuremberg Trials, along with the rest of Heydrich's RSHA (including the Gestapo) both individually and as branches of the SS in the collective.Heydrich's successor, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials, sentenced to death and hanged in 1946.

The SD was one of the oldest security organizations of the SS and was first formed in 1931 as the Ic-Dienst, operating out of a single apartment and reporting directly to Heinrich Himmler. Himmler appointed a former naval officer, Reinhard Heydrich, to organise the small agency. The office was renamed Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in the summer of 1932. The SD became more powerful after the Nazis took control of Germany and the SS started infiltrating all leading positions of the security apparatus of the Reich. Even before Hitler came to power, the SD was a veritable "watchdog" over the SS and members of the Nazi Party and played a critical role in consolidating political police powers into the hands of Himmler and Heydrich.