These public and degrading forms of capital punishment were designed to deter others. Although the Nazi state in principle penetrated as far down as the ranks of concierges, porters and schoolchildren, it lacked the active manpower to do more than demonstrate the risks of ‘forbidden relations’. The Gestapo might enjoy its omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent reputation but its totalitarian aspirations were curtailed by staff shortages, which became worse during the war. Just as when policing contact between Jewish men and ‘Aryan’ women before the war, so now the Gestapo depended on
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