Sicherheitspolizei

SiPo

Sicherheitspolizei
The SiPo was an agency of the SS.
Sicherheitspolizei officers in Marseilles during World War II
Agency overview
Formed	26 June 1936
Preceding agency	Gestapo Kriminalpolizei
Dissolved	22 September 1939
Superseding agency	Reich Main Security Office (RSHA)
Type	State Security Police
Jurisdiction	Germany Occupied Europe
Headquarters	Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin
Employees	4,500
Ministers responsible	Wilhelm Frick (nominal authority) 1936–1939, Interior Minister Heinrich Himmler 1936–1939, Chef der Deutschen Polizei
Agency executive	SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich 1936–1939, Director, SiPo and Gestapo

The Sicherheitspolizei (English: Security Police), often abbreviated as SiPo, was a term used in Germany for security police. In the Nazi era, it was used to describe the state political and criminal investigation security agencies. It was made up by the combined forces of the Gestapo (secret state police) and the Kripo (criminal police) between 1936 and 1939. As a formal agency, the SiPo was folded into the RSHA in 1939, but the term continued to be used informally until the end of World War II in Europe.

The term originated in August 1919 when the Reichswehr set up the Sicherheitswehr as a militarised police force to take action during times of riots or strikes. However owing to limitations in army numbers, it was renamed the Sicherheitspolizei to avoid attention. They wore a green uniform, and were sometimes called the "Green Police". However it was a military body, recruiting largely from the Freikorps, with NCOs and officers from the old German Imperial Army.

When the Nazis came to power, Germany, as a federal state, had myriad local and centralised police agencies, which often were un-coordinated and had overlapping jurisdictions. Himmler and Heydrich's grand plan was to fully absorb all the police and security apparatus into the structure of the Schutzstaffel (SS). To this end, Himmler took command first of the Gestapo (itself developed from the Prussian Secret Police). Then on 17 June 1936 all police forces throughout Germany were united, following Adolf Hitler's appointment of Himmler as Chef der Deutschen Polizei (Chief of German Police). As such he was nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, but in practice Himmler answered to no-one but Hitler.

Himmler immediately reorganised the police, with the state agencies statutorily divided into two groups: the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police; Orpo), consisting of both the national uniformed police and the municipal police, and the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; SiPo), consisting of the Kripo and Gestapo.Reinhard Heydrich was appointed chief of the SiPo and was already head of the party Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service; SD) and the Gestapo. The two police branches were commonly known as the Orpo and SiPo (Kripo and Gestapo combined), respectively.