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. guards overseeing
Jews being rounded up in March 1943 during the liquidation of the
Krakow Ghetto Generalplan Ost (General Plan East), the secret Nazi plan to colonize Central and Eastern Europe exclusively with Germans—displacing inhabitants in the process through genocide and ethnic cleansing in order to obtain sufficient
Lebensraum—also stemmed from officials in the RSHA, among other Nazi organizations. To this end, the RSHA, particularly through the
Einsatzgruppen and Gestapo, orchestrated the systematic murder of Slavic populations, Jews, and other "undesirable" groups, clearing the way for German settlers by overseeing forced labor, starvation policies, and mass executions. Additionally, the RSHA's intelligence and planning divisions collaborated with the SS and other agencies to classify populations, determined who would be Germanized or exterminated, and coordinated genocidal policies, making it a key participant in Nazi racial imperialism. In its role as the national and Nazi security service, the RSHA coordinated activities among various agencies with wide-ranging responsibilities within the Reich. According to German historian,
Klaus Hildebrand, the RSHA was "particularly concerned with racial matters".
Adolf Eichmann stated in 1937 that "the anger of the people expressed in riots [was] the most effective means to rob the Jews of a sense of security". Entry into the Second World War afforded the RSHA the power to act as an intermediary in conquered or occupied territories, which according to
Hans Mommsen, lent itself to implementing the extermination of Jewish populations in those places. An order issued by the RSHA on 20 May 1941 to block emigration of any and all Jews attempting to leave Belgium or France as part of the "imminent
Final Solution of the
Jewish question" demonstrates its complicity for the systematic extermination of Jews. By November 1941, the RSHA had delivered three
gas vans to the
Chełmno extermination camp and within a month (8 December 1941) the Nazi's mass murder campaign using gas began. Part of the RSHA's efforts to encourage occupied nations to hand over their Jews included coercing them by assigning Jewish advisory officials. Working with Eichmann's Reich Association of Jews in Germany, they deliberately deceived Jews still living in Germany and other countries by promising them good living quarters, medical care, and food in
Theresienstadt (a camp which was a way station to facilities like
Auschwitz) if they turned over their assets to the RSHA through a fictitious home-purchase plan. Systematic mass deportations of Jews to Auschwitz thus began in late March 1942 and were supervised by Eichmann, whose RSHA office was responsible for Jewish affairs and evacuations, the man Heydrich called his "expert" concerning the transportation of Jews to occupied Poland. These transports to Auschwitz came from all over occupied Europe but started with Jews from Slovakia and France. Within the RSHA, Eichmann employed techniques such as deliberate gaps in documentation and strategic ambiguity to deflect accountability. These same methods resurfaced during his trial, where he deliberately confused legal proceedings to evade a clear judgment of his personal culpability. His role in the RSHA also highlights the organization's systemic approach to deception, manipulation, and the weaponization of bureaucracy as a tool of mass murder. It was to the leaders of the RSHA specifically—comprised by the top brass of the SS (most prominently Heydrich at first)—that reports about the murders and/or evacuation of Jews were sent. In January 1942, Heydrich sent SS-
Oberführer Emanuel Schäfer to Serbia, who later (June 1942) "reported with pride" to the RSHA how Serbia was "
now free of Jews" after having overseen the murder of some 17,000 persons. From March 1942 through November 1943, the horrific endeavor
Operation Reinhard commenced under the RSHA's oversight, whereby they established
extermination camps at
Belzec,
Sobibor, and
Treblinka, which resulted in the systematic murder of approximately 1.7 million Jews.
Wannsee Conference The
Wannsee Conference, held on January 20, 1942, in a villa in Berlin's affluent suburb of
Wannsee, was a pivotal meeting in the Nazi regime's bureaucratic machinery of genocide, comprised by "representatives from the RSHA and state secretaries and other officials from the ministerial bureaucracy". Convened by RSHA chief, Reinhard Heydrich, the meeting brought together fifteen high-ranking Nazi officials from various government organizations, including the Gestapo, SS, and the civil administration. Among the key topics of discussion was the fate of
Mischlinge (people of mixed Jewish and non-Jewish descent) and Jews in mixed marriages. Some officials proposed sterilization, while others argued for direct deportation. The meeting lasted approximately 90 minutes, during which mass murder was spoken of in purely administrative terms, reflecting the dehumanizing efficiency of Nazi policy. Contrary to some misconceptions, the purpose of the conference was not to decide whether to exterminate Europe's Jewish population—that decision had already been made—but to formalize the logistical and administrative details necessary to carry out the "Final Solution to the Jewish question." In callous and detached language, Heydrich outlined plans to deport 11 million Jews from both occupied and neutral European countries to the East, where they would be subjected to forced labor under conditions designed to ensure mass death. Those who survived this process would be "treated accordingly," a euphemism for outright extermination in killing centers such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor. The Wannsee Protocol, the official record of the meeting according to the RSHA, later became crucial evidence in post-war trials, exposing the role of Nazi bureaucrats in the Holocaust. Historians avow that the conference remains a chilling example of how genocide can be facilitated not just by ideological fervor, but also through cold, technocratic planning by educated officials operating within a modern state apparatus.
Oversight of Einsatzgruppen The RSHA also oversaw the
Einsatzgruppen,
death squads that were formed under the direction of Heydrich and operated by the SS. Originally part of the SiPo, in September 1939 the operational control of the
Einsatzgruppen was taken over by the RSHA. Men for the
Einsatzgruppen were drawn from the RSHA's Security Police, SD, Gestapo,
Kripo,
Orpo, and
Waffen-SS. Heydrich and Bruno Streckenbach, head of personnel at the RSHA, personally selected
Einsatzgruppen leaders from these units. These committed Nazis and antisemitic ideologues were highly educated, often holding doctorates in law, and had years of experience in policing and security. Their first missions were conducted during early territorial expansions (Austria, Sudetenland, Bohemia-Moravia) to target political opponents, when the
Einsatzgruppen units followed the invasion forces of the
German Army into Eastern Europe. Although designed only as temporary units on their initial use, these RSHA-controlled units became permanent by 1942, with
Einsatzgruppen A, B, C, and D becoming notorious for atrocities, especially against Polish intellectuals, whom they systematically arrested or executed based on pre-compiled lists. Additional
Einsatzgruppen operated in other regions like North Africa, Croatia, Hungary, and Slovakia, continuing their role in political repression and genocide. Not infrequently, commanders of
Einsatzgruppen and
Einsatzkommando sub-units were also desk officers from the main office of the RSHA. Historian
Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the
Einsatzgruppen, related agencies, and foreign auxiliary troops co-opted by the Nazis, killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews. ==Rosenstrasse protest and RSHA involvement==