The Reich Security Main Office ( , RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as (Chief of German Police) and , the head of the Nazi Party's (SS). The organization's stated duty was to fight all "enemies of the Reich" inside and outside the borders of Nazi Germany. From its very inception, the RSHA was a central institution for the Nazis, playing a pivotal role in orchestrating and executing the Holocaust.
Formation and development In 1934, the Nazi regime accelerated the centralization of state power, abolishing the sovereignty of Germany's federal states and subordinating them directly to the Reich government. Even before the formal creation of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the Gestapo under Himmler had already asserted nationwide authority, laying the groundwork for a unified security apparatus. These moves toward central control were further reinforced by the establishment of the as a political court to enforce Nazi ideology. Then on 27 September 1939, Himmler officially established the RSHA. His assumption of control over all security and police forces in Germany was a significant factor in the growth in power of the Nazi state. With the formation of the RSHA, Himmler combined under one roof the Nazi Party's (SD; SS intelligence service) and the (SiPo; "Security Police"), which was nominally under the Interior Ministry. The SiPo was composed of two sub-departments, the (Gestapo; "Secret State Police") and the (Kripo; "Criminal Police"). In correspondence, the RSHA was often abbreviated to to avoid confusion with the (RuSHA; "SS Race and Settlement Office"). The organization's main goal was to protect Nazi Germany against enemies "inside" the country but later became instrumental (by design) in dealing with any opposition in occupied territories. Dealing with any and all forms of "discontent with the war" was certainly one of its roles.
The creation of the RSHA represented the formalization, at the highest level, of the relationship under which the SD served as the intelligence agency for the security police. A similar coordination existed in the local offices, where the Gestapo, criminal police, and SD were formally separate offices. This coordination was carried out by inspectors on the staff of the local higher SS and police leaders. One of the principal functions of the local SD units was to serve as the intelligence agency for the local Gestapo units. In the occupied territories, the formal relationship between local units of the Gestapo, criminal police, and SD was slightly closer.
The RSHA continued to grow at an enormous rate during World War II in Europe. Routine reorganization of the RSHA did not change the tendency for centralization within Nazi Germany, nor did it change the general trend for its members to develop direct relationships to Adolf Hitler, adhering to Nazi Germany's typical pattern of the leader-follower construct. For the RSHA, centrality within Nazi Germany was pronounced since the organization completed the integration of government and Nazi Party offices as to intelligence gathering and security. Departments like the SD and Gestapo (within the RSHA) were controlled directly by Himmler and his immediate subordinate SS- and General of Police Reinhard Heydrich; the two held the power of life and death for nearly every German and were essentially above the law. Other figures high in the RSHA like Gestapo chief and Heydrich's deputy Heinrich Müller were similarly empowered—evidenced after the invasion of the Soviet Union—when the latter was charged with evaluating thousands of Soviet soldiers, determining which among them was suitable to retain for reconstructive slave labor and who would be otherwise too dangerous and hence, outright murdered. Heydrich considered either task equivalently important.
Facing a shortage of personnel and vast occupied territories, German military officials in Ukraine initially created auxiliary units, which later fell under SS and Police Leaders (HSSPF) and RSHA authority. By early 1942, Heydrich, acknowledging staffing shortfalls, authorized Einsatzgruppen to recruit indigenous forces for security work, expanding upon earlier efforts like . Under RSHA guidance, particularly Walter Schellenberg's Office VI, the RSHA also launched Operation Zeppelin, attempting (unsuccessfully) to recruit Soviet POWs and non-Russian ethnic groups for sabotage operations behind Soviet lines.
Heydrich remained the RSHA chief until his assassination in 1942. In January 1943 Himmler delegated the office to SS- and General of Police Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who headed the RSHA until the end of the war in Europe. The head of the RSHA was also known as the CSSD or (Chief of the Security Police and of the Security Service).
Organisation The RSHA "became a typical overblown bureaucracy", wrote British author Gerald Reitlinger. "The complexity of RSHA was unequalled... with at least a hundred... sub-sub-sections, a modest camouflage of the fact that it handled the progressive extermination which Hitler planned for the ten million Jews of Europe".
Structure and functions The RSHA functioned as more than a police authority; it was conceived as a uniquely National Socialist institution that fused state and party structures. Its task extended beyond conventional policing to safeguarding the and Aryan "life force" against enemies defined in racial and ideological terms. In this framework, policy-making was effectively transformed into policing, since the boundaries of race and could not be fixed by law.
The RSHA was deliberately designed as a flexible and mobile "fighting administration" (), capable of expanding or dissolving departments, shifting priorities, and creating ad hoc task forces as political needs dictated. Its leaders were not mere bureaucrats; they combined administrative authority with direct participation in repression and terror, moving between central offices in Berlin and operational posts in occupied territories. This combination of ideological mission and structural adaptability made the RSHA the institutional embodiment of the Nazi ambition to construct a racial order free of legal or moral constraints.
The organisation at its simplest was divided into seven offices ():
Amt I, "Administration and Legal", originally headed by SS- Dr. Werner Best. In 1940, he was succeeded by SS- Bruno Streckenbach. In April 1944, Erich Ehrlinger took over as department chief. Amt II, "Ideological Investigation", headed by SS- Professor Franz Six. Amt III, "Spheres of German Life" or the , headed by SS- Otto Ohlendorf, was the SS information gathering service for inside Germany. It also dealt with ethnic Germans outside of Germany's prewar borders, and matters of culture. Amt IV, "Suppression of Opposition". This was the , better known by the sobriquet Gestapo. It was headed by SS- Heinrich Müller. SS- Adolf Eichmann, one of the main architects of the Holocaust, was head of the Amt IV sub-department known as . It was responsible for the deportation of Jews to concentration or extermination camps. Amt V, "Suppression of Crime" (Kripo), originally led by SS- Arthur Nebe and later by SS- Friedrich Panzinger. This was the Criminal Police, which dealt with serious non-political crimes, such as rape, murder, and arson. Amt V was also known as the (Reich Criminal Police Department or RKPA). Amt VI, "Foreign Intelligence Service" or , originally led by SS- Heinz Jost and later by SS- Walter Schellenberg. Amt VII, "Ideological Research and Evaluation" was a reconstitution of Amt II overseen by SS- Professor Dr. Franz Six. Later it was headed by SS- Paul Dittel. It was responsible for the creation of anti-semitic, anti-masonic propaganda, the sounding of public opinion, and monitoring of Nazi indoctrination by the public.
Leadership
Timeline
Ideology and leadership culture The RSHA leadership corps was socially and generationally uniform: about three-quarters were born after 1900, most from lower-middle-class families, and many were the first in their families to attend university. Around two-thirds completed higher education and nearly one-third earned doctorates, making the RSHA a vehicle for upwardly mobile, academically trained elites. Law and political science dominated their studies, though a significant share specialized in the humanities, particularly within the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). More than half had been politically active as students, especially in the National Socialist Student Association, which styled itself as a revolutionary vanguard.
Their worldview was shaped less by doctrine than by a radical belief in will, action, and leadership. They dismissed bourgeois norms and legalistic traditions, arguing that deeds and success alone legitimized authority. Many embraced the idea of the as a "community of blood and fate" (), seeing themselves as a "spiritual elite" committed to building a utopian racial order.
Himmler's vision of a pagan religion of blood and ancestry gained little direct support, but his emphasis on genealogy, race, and the creation of a new SS nobility strongly influenced the RSHA leadership. Historian Michael Wildt describes their shared as uncompromising, driven by an imperative to translate ideology into radical practice. The RSHA thus emerged as a distinctly National Socialist institution—flexible, mobile, and overtly ideological—linking intellectual utopianism with systematic repression and genocide.
Role in the Holocaust Activities within Nazi Germany superintended by the RSHA included gathering intelligence, criminal investigation, overseeing foreigners, monitoring public opinion, and Nazi indoctrination. The RSHA was also "the central office for the extra-judicial NS (National Socialist) measures of terror and repression from the beginning of the war until 1945". The list of persecuted people included Jews, Communists, Freemasons, pacifists, and Christian activists.
In addition to dealing with identified enemies, the RSHA advocated expansionist policies for the Reich and the Germanization of additional territory through settlement. After France's defeat in June 1940, it was the RSHA that was tasked with facilitating the proposed Madagascar Plan; the plan called for forcibly relocating 4 million Jewish deportees to the island of Madagascar, over a four-year period. The Madagascar Plan also required France to cede the island to Germany so the Nazis could create a "superghetto" overseen by the SiPo. By mid-August, the RSHA finalized a plan to deport four million Jews to Madagascar, using two ships per day. Eichmann and his team detailed procedures for registering Jews, confiscating their property to fund the operation, and establishing the island as an SS-controlled open-air prison without Jewish self-governance. The RSHA's promotion of the Madagascar Plan in mid-1940 led to the temporary suspension of ghettoization efforts in Poland, as Nazi officials anticipated deporting Jews overseas. However, Britain's refusal to surrender, the cancellation of Operation Sea Lion, and with Germany's inability to control the sea-lanes, the plan was unfeasible. Also, the RSHA estimated it would take some four years to transport all the Jews to Africa's east coast. As a result, the Nazi regime, unable to remove Jews from Europe, increasingly resorted to harsher internal measures under conditions shaped more by wartime strategic realities than by ideological consistency. New opportunities to relocate the Jews elsewhere consequent the invasion of the Soviet Union also led Hitler to decide against Madagascar in favor of sending them to the East.