Trial of the Major War Criminals before International Military Tribunal ...

Immediately superior to the Staatspolizeileitstellen was the
Commander of the Security Police (Befehlshaber der Sicherheits-
polizei) who himself was subordinate to the Secretary of State
(since 1943 Deutscher Staatsminister) as Hoherer SS. and Polizei-
fuehrer and to the Reich Protektor on one hand and to the RSHA
on the other. -­
In Bohemia ("Land Boehmen") imposing of "Preventive Custody"
(Vorbeugende Polizeihaft) was in the competence of the "Kriminal-
zentrale" in Prague, in Moravia ("Land Maehren") it belonged to
that of the Police Headquarters (Polizeidirektion) - C.I.D. (Kriminal-
abteilung) in Brno.
The Kriminalzentrale has to perform in their area the duties of
the criminal police, which cannot be discharged by the District of
Local Police. They supervise the District and Local Police (in towns
where there exist State Police Administrations (Staatliche Polizei-
venvaltungen) their respective C.1.D.s) in the execution of their
criminal-police duties.
Part of the criminal-police duties is the so-called prevention of
crimes. The most important preventive means at the disposal of the
criminal police is the "Preventive Custody". The Kriminalzentrale
too and its subordinate District and Local Police authorities are
charged with the close supervision of the population. They have to
concern themselves with "acts and endeavours endangering the
national order, which do hot spring out of political motives". With
' "crimes in a broad sense of the word", not only with acts and ommis-
sions to be tried by criminal courts. (Best, op. cit., p.32 and 33).
Their investigations covered a field much wider than the usual
sphere of interest of a criminal police and led in case of observations
not sufficient for a trial before a criminal court to "Preventive
Custody".
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The Kriminalzentrale too was directly subordinate to the Com-
mander of the Security Police and indirectly to the authorities
superior to him.
The framework and the tasks of the Police in the "Defence
Area" (Wehrkreis) Bohemia and Moravia ("Protectorate") do not
differ essentially from those of the police in those parts of the
Republic which belonged to other "Defence Areas".
The terror spread by the police organisation built up during the
occupation is mainly based on three factors:
(1) on the volume of the organisation, its wide sphere of interest
and the intensity of their activities;