Kurt Daluege | |
|---|---|
(2).jpg) Daluege in 1936 | |
| Protector of Bohemia and Moravia | |
Acting | |
| In office 5 June 1942 – 24 August 1943 | |
| Appointed by | Adolf Hitler |
| Preceded by | Reinhard Heydrich(acting) |
| Succeeded by | Wilhelm Frick |
| Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia | |
| In office 5 June 1942 – 24 August 1943 | |
| Protector | |
| Preceded by | Reinhard Heydrich |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Chief of theOrdnungspolizei | |
| In office 26 June 1936 – 31 August 1943 | |
| Leader | Heinrich Himmleras Chief of the German Police |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Alfred Wünnenberg |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Kurt Max Franz Daluege (1897-09-15)15 September 1897 |
| Died | 24 October 1946(1946-10-24) (aged 49) Pankrác Prison, Czechoslovakia |
| Party | Nazi Party |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4 |
| Education | Civil engineering |
| Alma mater | Technische Universität Berlin |
| Civilian awards | Golden Party Badge |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | German Empire |
| Branch/service |  Imperial German Army |
| Rank | Vizefeldwebel |
| Unit | 7th Guards Infantry Regiment |
| Battles/wars | World War I |
| Military awards | Iron Cross, 2nd class Wound Badge |
| Criminal information | |
| Known for | Lidice massacre |
| Criminal status | Executed by hanging |
| Convictions | War crimes Crimes against humanity |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
Kurt Max Franz Daluege[1][2] (15 September 1897 – 24 October 1946) was a GermanSS-Oberst-Gruppenführer andGeneraloberst of the police, the highest ranking police officer, who served as chief ofOrdnungspolizei (Order Police) ofNazi Germany from 1936 to 1943, as well as the Deputy/Acting Protector ofBohemia and Moravia from 1942 to 1943.
Daluege served in thePrussian Army during theFirst World War on both fronts. He was severely wounded and received theIron Cross, second class for his bravery. After the war, he became a member ofGerhard Roßbach'sFreikorps. In 1922, Daluege joined theNazi Party and soon entered theSturmabteilung (SA), eventually becoming the SA leader in Berlin. He transferred to the SS in 1930 and was later elected as aReichstag deputy. In 1933,Hermann Göring appointed Daluege to the Prussian Interior Ministry and placed him in charge of the Prussian police forces. In that position, he played an important role in carrying out theNight of the Long Knives, in whichErnst Röhm and other leading members of the SA were murdered. By late 1934, his authority was extended to include all of Germany, and two years laterHeinrich Himmler named him chief of theOrdnungspolizei (Orpo) following the reorganisation of the German police force.
By the outbreak of theSecond World War, Daluege's Orpo had as many as 120,000 active-duty personnel. The organisation took part in policing, deportations and mass murder throughoutGerman-occupied areas and had an integral role in carrying out theHolocaust. FollowingReinhard Heydrich's assassination in 1942, Daluege was named Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia and directed the German reprisal actions, including theLidice massacre. At the end of the war, Daluege was arrested and extradited to Czechoslovakia, where he was tried and convicted forcrimes against humanity. He was sentenced to death and executed by hanging in October 1946.
Daluege, son of aPrussian state official, was born in the smallUpper Silesian town ofKreuzburg (now Kluczbork) on 15 September 1897.[3] He entered thePrussian Army in 1916 and served with the 7th Guards Infantry Regiment, attaining the rank ofVizefeldwebel.[4] He served on theEastern Front. In October 1917, he attended officers training in Doberitz. During his service on theWestern Front, he was severely wounded in the head and shoulder in April 1918. He was hospitalised until October and declared 25% disabled. Daluege was awarded theIron Cross, second class (1918) and theWound Badge in Black (1918).[5]
After World War I, Daluege became leader ofSelbstschutz Oberschlesien (SSOS) – Upper Silesian Self Defense – an Upper Silesian veterans' organization engaged in combat with the Poles in that region. In 1921, he also became active in theFreikorpsRossbach while studying engineering atTechnische Hochschule in Berlin,[3] where he eventually earned a civil engineering degree.[6] Two years later he joined theNazi Party (NSDAP) and was assigned Party number 31,981.[7] He also joined the Greater German Workers' Party in the same year.[8] From 1924, he helped to organize the BerlinFrontbann, largely a front organization for the NaziSturmabteilung (SA), since it and the Nazi Party were banned inPrussia at that time.[8] On 22 March 1926, he joined the SA, becoming the SA-Gauführer of Berlin, which he would continue to lead until 21 June 1928. On 1 November 1926, he becameJoseph Goebbels' deputyGauleiter in Gau Berlin-Brandenburg (later,Gau Groß-Berlin), a post he would retain until 1 November 1930.[9]
In July 1930, in accordance withHitler's wishes, Daluege resigned from the SA and joined theSS with the rank of SS-Oberführer and membership number 1,119.[7] His main responsibility was to spy on the SA and political opponents of the Nazi Party.[10] Berlin SS headquarters was strategically placed at the corner of Lützowstrasse and Potsdamerstrasse, opposite the SA headquarters.[11]
In August 1930, when Berlin SA leaderWalter Stennes had his men attack the Berlin Party headquarters, it was Daluege's SS men who defended it and put the attack down. Sometime afterwards in an open letter to Daluege,Adolf Hitler proclaimed"SS Mann, deine Ehre heißt Treue!" ("SS man, your honour is loyalty"). Then, the slogan "Meine Ehre heißt Treue" (My honour is loyalty) was duly adopted by the SS as its motto.[12] Hitler promoted both Daluege andHeinrich Himmler to SS-Obergruppenführer, with Daluege the SS leader of northern Germany while Himmler controlled the southern SS units out of Munich in addition to serving as national leader for the entire SS.
In April 1932, Daluege was elected a Nazi Party deputy to theLandtag of Prussia where he served until its dissolution in October 1933.[9] In June 1933, he was appointed the DeputyPlenipotentiary for Prussia to theReichsrat where he served until itsabolition on 14 February 1934.[13] On 11 July 1933, PrussianMinister PresidentHermann Göring appointed Daluege to the recently reconstitutedPrussian State Council.[14] In September 1933, Göring moved Daluege to the Prussian Interior Ministry, where he took over the nonpolitical police with the rank ofGeneralmajor der Landespolizei. On 12 November 1933, he was elected to theReichstag representing the Potsdam II (later, Berlin–East) electoral district, a seat he retained until 1945.[13] Intrigues created by Göring, Himmler and Heydrich surroundingErnst Röhm led to Daluege's playing an important role in the infamousNight of the Long Knives. In that operation, Röhm and other leading members of the SA were killed between 30 June and 2 July 1934, thus neutralizing the SA and shifting the balance of power within the party to the SS.[15][16][17]
Evidence of Daluege's ruthlessness goes beyond his intrigue against his former SA comrades, and is discernible in his remarks about anyone he considered a threat to society. He once argued that "the consciously asocial enemies of the people (Volksfeinde)" must be eliminated by state intervention "if it hopes to prevent the outbreak of complete moral degeneration."[18] Historian George Browder claims that Daluege "bragged that the Police Institute for detective training had especially been reorganized according to NS viewpoints", and that advancement within this organization was contingent to a considerable degree on the internalization of Nazi ideology.[19]
By November 1934, Daluege's authority over the uniformed police was extended beyond Prussia to include all of Germany.[20] That meant he commanded municipal police forces, the rural gendarmerie, traffic police, the coastguard, the railway police, the postal protection service, fire brigades, the air-raid services, the emergency technical service, the broadcasting police, the factory protection police, building regulations enforcement, and the commercial police.[21]
In 1936, the entire German police force was reorganized with the administrative functions previously exercised by the now largely defunct federal states reassigned to the nominal control of the Reich Interior Ministry, but under the actual control of Himmler's SS.[22] Making the most of his police expertise and coinciding with his appointment, Daluege wrote and published a book entitledNational-sozialistischer Kampf gegen das Verbrechertum (NS Struggle against Criminality).[16] That same year, Himmler appointed Daluege as chief of theOrdnungspolizei (Orpo), which gave him administrative, though not executive, authority over most of the uniformed police inNazi Germany.[23][24][25] He commanded the Orpo until 1943, rising to therank ofSS-Oberst-Gruppenführer undGeneraloberst der Polizei.Reinhard Heydrich, who took control of the SiPo (Security Police) at the same time that Daluege took control of the Orpo, thought very little of Daluege, as he was a former rival in the early struggle for power, and was contemptuously referred to by Heydrich as 'Dummi-Dummi', or 'the idiot'.[26]
By August 1939, the strength of the Orpo under Daluege's command and control had reached upwards of 120,000 active-duty personnel.[27]Further indications of the brutality coming from Daluege's office (Chief of theOrdnungspolizei), are shown in a report dated 5 September 1939, outlining the methods to be employed during pacification operations in Poland. Regarding uniformed police battalions for planned reprisal actions around the Polish town of Czestochowa, the report gave the following instructions: "[t]he leader of this battalion is ordered to take the most drastic actions and measures such as those in the upper Silesian industrial area, the hanging of Polishfranc-tireurs from light poles as a visible symbol for the entire population."[28]
During the war in 1941, he attended a mass murder of 4,435 Jews byPolice Battalion 307 nearBrest-Litowsk and a mass murder of Jews inMinsk. Furthermore, in October 1941 Daluege signed deportation orders for Jews from Germany, Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, toRiga and Minsk.[29] On 7 July 1942, he attended a conference led by Himmler which discussed the "enlargement" ofOperation Reinhard, the secretiveNazi plan to mass-murderPolish Jews in theGeneral Government district ofoccupied Poland, and other matters involving SS and police policies in the east.[30]
In 1942 Daluege became theDeputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, following theassassination of Deputy ProtectorReinhard Heydrich.[31][32] There seemed to be almost no logic behind Hitler appointing Daluege beyond the fact that he was a senior SS officer and was already in Prague at the time, where he had arrived on the day of Heydrich's assassination for medical treatment. Hitler originally wanted to appointErich von dem Bach-Zelewski but Himmler persuaded Hitler not to do so, arguing that Bach-Zelewski could not be spared because of the military situation on the Eastern front.[33] AlthoughKonstantin von Neurath was nominally Protector he had been stripped of his authority in 1941, so Daluege was Acting Protector in all but name. In June 1942, along withKarl Hermann Frank and other SS operatives, he ordered the villages ofLidice andLežáky razed in reprisal for Heydrich's death. All the men in both villages were murdered, while many of the women and children were deported toNazi concentration camps.[15][34]
On 16 October 1926, Daluege married Käthe Schwarz (born 23 November 1901) who later became a member of the Nazi Party (member no. 118,363).[35] In 1937, Daluege and his wife adopted a son. Afterwards, Daluege's wife bore three biological children, two sons born in 1938 and 1940 and a daughter born in 1942.[35]
In May 1943, Daluege became seriously ill after a massiveheart attack. In August, he was relieved of all of his day-to-day responsibilities and spent the rest of the war living on a property inwestern Pomerania, given to him by Hitler.[36]
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In May 1945, Daluege was arrested by British troops inLübeck and interned inLuxembourg and then atNuremberg, where he was charged as "a major war criminal".[30] In September 1946 after being extradited toCzechoslovakia, he was tried for his manycrimes against humanity committed in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.[30] Throughout his trial, Daluege was unrepentant, claiming he was beloved by "three million policemen", onlyfollowing Hitler's orders, and had a clear conscience.[37] He was convicted on all charges and sentenced to death on 23 October 1946. Daluege was hanged inPankrác Prison inPrague on 24 October 1946.[31][38] He is buried in an unmarked grave at theĎáblice Cemetery in Prague.[39]
Notes
Bibliography
Media related toKurt Daluege at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related toKurt Daluege at Wikiquote| Government offices | ||
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| Preceded by Reinhard Heydrich (Acting Protector) | Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (Acting Protector) 5 June 1942 – 24 August 1943 | Succeeded by Wilhelm Frick (Protector) |
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