The move merged the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) and the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo, the criminal police). SiPo targeted political opposition to the Nazis, primarily communists and socialists.

In early 1941, the Wehrmacht chief of staff Franz Halder targeted unarmed socialists and communists. It used the Einsatzgruppen death squads to murder them.

"Entire hordes of communists are now being shot and hanged on an almost daily basis," Second Lieutenant Peter Geissler of the 714th Infantry Division wrote home in July, 1941. 

"I cannot help feeling that the panic fear of the Western world of the term communism, this fear by which the fascists have so long maintained themselves, is somewhat superstitious and childish and one of the greatest follies of our epoch," wrote Thomas wrote after the war. 

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 Is Folly Emerging in America under the Rule of President Donald Trump? 

On October 8, the Trump administration held a briefing on Antifa, the autonomous and decentralized anti-fascist political movement. During this meeting, the MAGA influencer Jonathan Choe linked Antifa to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). 

"Another group right now that is behind antifa and working with antifa very closely based on the research that we have right now that we're gonna give to you and your team are the Democratic Socialists of America," Choe said. He argued that Antifa is part of what he called the "homeless complex."