senior advisory position with the police section by the Social Demo-
cratic minister Carl Severing and charged with combating both Nazi
and communist extremism. Following the Nazi seizure of power,
Hermann Göring became the new minister-president of Prussia and
sought Diels’s professional counsel in reorganizing the police force,
especially its political branch.
The result was the law of 26 April 1933, which established the
Prussian political police as a separate entity and was the genesis of
the Gestapo. Under Diels’s direction, its personnel increased from 60
to 250. One of his major assignments included the interrogation of
Marinus van der Lubbe, the prime suspect in the arson of the Reich-
stag. He disbanded numerous “unofficial” concentration camps, run
primarily by the SA, and provided Göring with secret files about
Göring’s political adversaries. Yet Diels’s tenure lasted only a year.
His removal from office on 1 April 1934 occurred as the result of a
power struggle between Göring and SS chief Heinrich Himmler,
who took over Gestapo operations himself.
With Göring’s assistance, Diels managed to avoid the intrigues of
Reinhard Heydrich of the Sicherheitsdienst and, after briefly serv-
ing as deputy police president in Berlin, was appointed head of the lo-
cal government in Cologne. In 1940, he assumed the same position in
Hanover but was dismissed because of his refusal to execute a local
Nazi official’s order to arrest Jews in the city. The following year saw
his appointment as director of transportation on the Black Sea. After
the failure of the 20 July 1944 conspiracy against Adolf Hitler, Diels,
who had married a cousin of Göring the previous year, managed to
escape arrest by the Gestapo due to Göring’s intervention.
Interned after the war, Diels appeared as a prosecution witness
before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg and was also
called to testify by Göring’s defense lawyer. Diels’s postwar career
in the Federal Republic of Germany included an administrative post
in Lower Saxony and a position as undersecretary in the Interior Min-
istry in Bonn. He died in a hunting accident on 18 November 1957.
His autobiography, Lucifer ante Portas (Lucifer before the Gates),
was published in 1950.DILGER, ANTON (1884–1918). An American physician and practi-
tioner of bacteriological sabotage during World War I, Anton Dilger
DILGER, ANTON • 83