Editing Police brutality (section)

=== [[Nazi Party|Nazi Germany]] ===
Police brutality became common in Germany following [[Adolf Hitler]]'s rise to power, particularly when [[the Holocaust]] got underway. SS-''Reichsführer'' [[Heinrich Himmler]] established the ''[[Ordnungspolizei]]'' as the official police force of Nazi Germany, giving them nearly unlimited power to persecute ideological opponents and "undesirables" of the Nazi regime such as Jews, freemasons, the churches, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other groups defined as "asocial". The Nazi conception of criminality was racial and biological, holding that criminal traits were hereditary, and had to be exterminated to purify German blood. As a result, even ordinary criminals were consigned to [[concentration camp]]s to remove them from the German racial community (''Volksgemeinschaft'') and ultimately exterminate them.