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From the Holocaust Encylopedia: The police in the Weimar Republic

In the years of the Weimar Republic, most active policemen were not Nazis, meaning they were not members of the Nazi Party or of Nazi organizations.

It also says at the top of the page,

Most German policemen were not members of the Nazi Party prior to 1933.

I've never seen these claim before. Is there any information on the actual composition of the police, and how many of them were members of the "Nazi Party and Nazi organizations"? It presents this as fact, however I am skeptical.

Evan Carroll
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    The site you link to says "Most policemen in the Weimar Republic were not Nazis **prior to 1933.**" That's a very easy to believe claim. Is the quote you picked talking about that period? – DJClayworth Jan 09 '21 at 04:08
  • Took me a few readings before it clicked that it means "most policemen who were on active duty" not "the policemen who were the most active". – Oddthinking Jan 09 '21 at 04:52
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    @DJClayworth: The quoted claim says "In the years of the Weimar Republic" which are[1918-1933](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic), so yes. – Oddthinking Jan 09 '21 at 06:28
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    That's my reading too. But I wanted to make sure the OP wasn't seeing something else. It makes this an odd question, because most people were not Nazis during the Weimar Republic, so why is it hard to believe that most Policemen were not? Frankly I don't think this is a good question for Skeptics, and would be better on [history.se]. – DJClayworth Jan 09 '21 at 15:55
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    I am confused by the downvotes and close votes. The close votes have selected a lack of a notable claim as the reason. The claim is meaningful and specific and is made by a notable source. @DJClayworth Maybe it would be better on history.SE. In my experience, History.SE has a much lower standard of evidence. OP chose to put it in Skeptics.SE and it is on topic here. – BobTheAverage Jan 09 '21 at 17:07
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    I disagree that History has a lower standard of evidence. It has a methodology that is appropriate for history, not one applicable to science. It also has a community of expert historians. – DJClayworth Jan 09 '21 at 17:42
  • @BobTheAverage: the OP tagged this with "Nazi Germany", so possibly he thought the [Weimar Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic) was the same thing. He's not given any reason for his skepticism other than "I've never seen that claim before". – Fizz Jan 09 '21 at 19:13
  • @DJClayworth I'm skeptical of the claim, and that's what this site is about. If we're to disclaim biases here, it doesn't seem likely that in an environment with emerging fascism police would be anything but the winds in the sail. And the very next paragraph in this article makes mention of the reasons for that. – Evan Carroll Jan 09 '21 at 20:55
  • @Fizz I didn't think they were the same thing. I did think that "nazi-germany" was sufficient to describe the conditions preceding Nazi Germany, specific to Nazi Fascism. – Evan Carroll Jan 09 '21 at 20:57
  • Ok, but since the NSDAP was minor party [until 1932 or so](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party#Ascension_and_consolidation) (and rather insignificant until 1930), why do you think this claim is implausible? – Fizz Jan 09 '21 at 21:01
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    @Fizz I'm confused at how that has any bearing on the claim. Just to drop some facts, 84% of the police backed Trump in 2016 and he was just a reality TV star in 2015. Things change fast. The predecessor to the Nazis was the DNVP: It was a major political party with 950,000 members. And the Nazis (NSDAP) were very large even early on. They were the #2 political party (major opposition, not a minor party) in 1930. They were 33% in 1932; 44% in 1933. Plenty of room for a majority of the police to be members. – Evan Carroll Jan 09 '21 at 21:17
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    In my personal opinion it's a wrong approach to say "I'm sceptical about this so I must ask on Skeptics". If you are uncertain of something related to Law, you ask on Law. If you are uncertain of something about travel, ask on Travel. – DJClayworth Jan 09 '21 at 21:22
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    @EvanCarroll: the claim does not specify a year. It's indeed likely that more were Nazi members in later years. It's also unlikely that yearly statistics existed for police membership in parties, back then. I've looked at a paper on this, albeit limited to Berlin. https://www.jstor.org/stable/259842?seq=1 The police (in Berlin at least) was forbidden from displaying open party affiliation. – Fizz Jan 09 '21 at 21:23
  • @DJClayworth I'll take that with a grain of salt. The question is on topic (but feel free to ask on meta), and you're an active participant on the [law](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A165+%5Blaw%5D) tag. ;) However, on the first comment you posted that quote is **also** on the original source so I updated the question and added it. – Evan Carroll Jan 09 '21 at 21:25
  • @Fizz I don't have an account, but that sounds like a good find and valuable contribution. – Evan Carroll Jan 09 '21 at 21:27
  • (Same paper): Starting in 1930 state officials in Prussia were forbidden from even having relations with the Communists or the NSDAP; both were considered too extreme. This came to an end though with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preu%C3%9Fenschlag – Fizz Jan 09 '21 at 21:31
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    I would accept that as an answer then @Fizz it sounds like strictly speaking there will be no data on this since it was against the law, and that moreover that claim can only exist if you find the statement "most active policemen were not Nazis" analogous to "police men could not legally be Nazi members". – Evan Carroll Jan 09 '21 at 21:35
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    Is there anyone claiming that most police were nazis at the time in question? – Andrew Grimm Jan 10 '21 at 08:47
  • No the question claims that most police were not Nazis in the time in question. I find that a bold claim. I'm skeptical. – Evan Carroll Jan 10 '21 at 22:29
  • @AndrewGrimm It's one of the quirks of the Skeptics site that you only need notability on one side. This leads to weird situations where you can ask things like "Is Paris a city in France", but you can't ask "Is Paris *not* a city in France" because you can't demonstrate notability. – DJClayworth Jan 11 '21 at 17:19
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    @EvanCarroll you [asked](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/revisions/50156/1) whether most active policemen were Nazis. – Andrew Grimm Jan 12 '21 at 00:37
  • What do you intend to bring to the conversation by objecting to a version of the question that predates the objection? I'm not sure if the pattern of not knowing *what* you want, or your intent is specific to me; but, I find our conversations always lack any form of productivity. – Evan Carroll Jan 12 '21 at 18:04
  • @EvanCarroll I pointed out that fact because you were not speaking the whole truth in your previous comment. A lot of people have downvoted or closevoted this question. I may as well say why I downvoted this: rather than a constructive question trying to get useful information, it feels like a smear against people in a certain profession. – Andrew Grimm Jan 12 '21 at 21:17
  • Please make statements that stand on their own. I have on idea what you're even talking about when you say *"were not speaking the whole truth in your previous comment"*. – Evan Carroll Jan 13 '21 at 03:15

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Possibly, but it's hard to have evidence that compares e.g. to contemporary polls among police officers' support for Trump (which was given [in a comment] as basis for skepticism of this claim).

The best I could find on the matter is a paper on the Berlin police relationship with the Nazis during the Weimar era. (This may or may not be representative of police in Germany more broadly, even during that era; the paper doesn't try to generalize). What this paper says, in rough summary:

  • Berlin police were not allowed to display open party affiliation.

  • The policemen were however most likely anti-communists as their internal police documents generally spoke of communists in worse terms than of everyone else, and because many police recruits came from a conservative rural background. The police cadets were actually given some lectures trying to instill them with democratic values, but these efforts were probably not very effective.

  • From the late 1920s onward, the nazis themselves (including the SA) avoided physical confrontations with the Berlin police, but instead mercilessly attacked the police chiefs with propaganda trying to drive a wedge between the patrolman and his superiors. (This was made easy because some police chiefs in Berlin were Jewish, a fact which aligned well with the broader anti-Semitic propaganda of the nazis.)

  • At some late point in 1930 the Prussian government made a more formal effort (by a decree of 25 June 1930) to forbid state officials from having relations with either communists or the NSDAP (both being regarded as too extreme), but the Prussian government itself was soon the object of the Preußenschlag in 1932. During these events some police chiefs in Berlin were replaced.

Fizz
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  • Please also emphasise your definitions of what 'a nazi' is. Also: PG or not, the Weimar police was mostly right-wing–extreme-right-wing, as was the judicial system; both staunchly united as at least anti-communists, often with much more Weltanschauung in common (to differentiate from any concrete party affiliation). Sadly [not many numbers, or good refs, but a good starting point](https://www.antifainfoblatt.de/artikel/ein-blick-zur%C3%BCck-die-polizei-der-weimarer-republik) (coming from experts on the matters, albeit biased in their own ways…) – LangLаngС Jan 14 '21 at 13:38
  • Biased from the other side, but giving harder numbers (which are dubious in their exactness but ballpark) and a few quite interesting further sources for the task 9783663097570 (Ch2, p43f). Equally, 3486566709 gives the exact counterweight in primary src I mentioned (p71, an observer no-PG from the police writing in his report how delighted he was –as everyone else present– listening to the antisemitism of Streicher himself, describing it as 'funny'…) – LangLаngС Jan 14 '21 at 17:54