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Gestapo Fact Sheet
A historical institution, examined in its full context
The Gestapo was Nazi Germany’s political police, embedded in a dictatorship that dismantled legal protections and used state power to persecute, imprison, deport, torture, and murder. This fact sheet traces the agency from its Prussian formation in 1933 through its integration into the Reich Security Main Office and its dissolution with Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945. It distinguishes the Gestapo from the SD, Kripo, Order Police, SS, and other institutions whose work intersected with its own.
Researched and compiled from public historical sources, this 34-page reference covers leadership, authority, organization, personnel, recruitment, training, institutional relationships, documented practices, wartime development, surviving records, and postwar accountability. It identifies where the record is incomplete and keeps archival evidence, trial material, survivor testimony, later scholarship, and other source classes distinct.
Built for careful OSINT-6 campaigns
The game material translates historical roles into eight occupational packages, including political police investigators, counterintelligence officers, custody officials, deportation administrators, foreign-worker police, occupation officials, and records specialists. Each package defines a narrow scope of skill, qualification, contact, and equipment benefits. None grants a mechanical reward for torture, persecution, deportation, or killing, and no rank or credential creates universal authority or moral legitimacy.
An equipment chapter marks items by evidence status and custody, so a documented object, a period-plausible item, and an unverified assignment aren’t treated as the same claim. Guidance for building a team keeps offices, powers, supervisors, territories, and evidence records specific to the chosen year and place.
Inside the fact sheet
A concise institutional history from 1933 to 1945, with dated organizational changes.
Coverage of authority, leadership, personnel, recruitment, training, and relationships with other Nazi institutions.
A documented-practices overview addressing denunciations, surveillance, searches, interrogation, detention, deportation, forced labor, occupation crimes, and Holocaust perpetration.
Eight historically bounded occupational packages for OSINT-6 characters.
Equipment verification categories, custody statuses, and role-based assignment packages.
Research notes, references, and an index for further investigation.
Historical play requires care
This supplement treats the Gestapo as a perpetrator institution, not a neutral investigative service. Its guidance asks groups to agree on limits before play and to preserve the agency and perspective of victims, survivors, witnesses, resisters, archivists, and prosecutors. Gestapo characters are one possible point of view, not the default or required center of a campaign.
For Game Masters and readers who want a sourced historical foundation for an OSINT-6 campaign, this fact sheet pairs gameable material with explicit limits and historical context. The OSINT-6 Core Rulebook supplies the rules referenced here.
A historical institution, examined in its full context
The Gestapo was Nazi Germany’s political police, embedded in a dictatorship that dismantled legal protections and used state power to persecute, imprison, deport, torture, and murder. This fact sheet traces the agency from its Prussian formation in 1933 through its integration into the Reich Security Main Office and its dissolution with Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945. It distinguishes the Gestapo from the SD, Kripo, Order Police, SS, and other institutions whose work intersected with its own.
Researched and compiled from public historical sources, this 34-page reference covers leadership, authority, organization, personnel, recruitment, training, institutional relationships, documented practices, wartime development, surviving records, and postwar accountability. It identifies where the record is incomplete and keeps archival evidence, trial material, survivor testimony, later scholarship, and other source classes distinct.
Built for careful OSINT-6 campaigns
The game material translates historical roles into eight occupational packages, including political police investigators, counterintelligence officers, custody officials, deportation administrators, foreign-worker police, occupation officials, and records specialists. Each package defines a narrow scope of skill, qualification, contact, and equipment benefits. None grants a mechanical reward for torture, persecution, deportation, or killing, and no rank or credential creates universal authority or moral legitimacy.
An equipment chapter marks items by evidence status and custody, so a documented object, a period-plausible item, and an unverified assignment aren’t treated as the same claim. Guidance for building a team keeps offices, powers, supervisors, territories, and evidence records specific to the chosen year and place.
Inside the fact sheet
A concise institutional history from 1933 to 1945, with dated organizational changes.
Coverage of authority, leadership, personnel, recruitment, training, and relationships with other Nazi institutions.
A documented-practices overview addressing denunciations, surveillance, searches, interrogation, detention, deportation, forced labor, occupation crimes, and Holocaust perpetration.
Eight historically bounded occupational packages for OSINT-6 characters.
Equipment verification categories, custody statuses, and role-based assignment packages.
Research notes, references, and an index for further investigation.
Historical play requires care
This supplement treats the Gestapo as a perpetrator institution, not a neutral investigative service. Its guidance asks groups to agree on limits before play and to preserve the agency and perspective of victims, survivors, witnesses, resisters, archivists, and prosecutors. Gestapo characters are one possible point of view, not the default or required center of a campaign.
For Game Masters and readers who want a sourced historical foundation for an OSINT-6 campaign, this fact sheet pairs gameable material with explicit limits and historical context. The OSINT-6 Core Rulebook supplies the rules referenced here.