According to Canadian historian Robert Gellately's analysis of the local offices established, the Gestapo was-for the most part-made up of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon denunciations by citizens for their information.
The popular picture of the Gestapo with its spies everywhere terrorizing German society has been rejected by many historians as a myth invented after the war as a cover for German society's widespread complicity in allowing the Gestapo to work.