After the SS security service rose to become the only political intelligence service of the NSDAP in 1934, its leading staff developed an ambitious concept for the collection, evaluation, and practical application of information about the opponents of the Nazi state. The opponent researchers in Department II of the Security Main Office sought to exert political influence on the party and state leadership of the "Third Reich." Their analyses also served as training material for the operational Gestapo, thus providing the material and ideological foundation for the persecution of the "enemy" - Freemasons, Jews, the "political churches," "Marxists," and liberals. A common mindset emerged among the opponent researchers. From this, they developed strategies for identifying and combating opposing groups, professionalizing these efforts by the mid-1930s. Many of them applied the very methods for combating opponents that they had co-developed in Department II of the Security Main Office in the first Einsatzgruppen in Austria, Czechoslovakia, or Poland, in the staffs of the commanders of the Security Police, and as "Jewish advisors.".