Arthur Nebe

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Arthur Nebe as SS-Gruppenführer (1942), admitted by Kurt Alber, SS Propaganda Company

Arthur Nebe (born November 13, 1894 in Berlin ; † probably March 3, 1945 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was since 1937 as Reich Criminal Director of the Reich Criminal Police Office (RKPA), Office V of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), initially with the rank of SS- Sturmbannführer , since 1941 as SS group leader .

In the Weimar Republic he disclosed official secrets to the NSDAP and thus promoted its rise.

His later attitude towards the Nazi regime was contradictory: On the one hand, as commander of SS Einsatzgruppe B, he was responsible for numerous massacres of Russian Jews and other civilians, tried out mass killing using poison gas , and procured poison gas for the killing of the disabled, e.g. B. in Operation T4 , pursued the Hitler bomber Georg Elser , was responsible for the deportation and extermination of Sinti and Roma and human experiments on concentration camp prisoners . At the same time he maintained contacts with the German resistance. After the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 , Nebe was sentenced to death by the People's Court and executed.

For a long time, the image of Nebe as a resistance fighter, first drawn in 1946 by his friend Hans Bernd Gisevius, was the dominant image in public. In contrast, recent historical research has focused on Nebe's active role in war and Nazi crimes .

Life

The son of an elementary school teacher took the Abitur at the Leibniz-Gymnasium in Berlin in 1914 , after he had previously failed the Abitur at the Gymnasium zum Grau Kloster , and volunteered for military service.

During the First World War he fought with the Pioneer Battalion 17, was wounded twice and on March 30, 1920 as first lieutenant a. D. dismissed. In 1918/19 he belonged to the Freikorps Grenzschutz Ost . He tried unsuccessfully to get a job at the Osram incandescent lamp factory and the Berlin volunteer fire department. On April 1, 1920, he became a candidate for a detective commissioner at the Berlin Police Administration and also studied medicine and economics for a few semesters. In the years 1920 to 1923 he organized the "German National Youth Group Prenzlauer Berg ".

He had been married to Elise Schaeffer since 1924 and had a daughter, Gisela, who was born in 1926.

Career in the criminal police and SS

Visit of the Hungarian police department in February 1939, from left to right: SS-Standartenführer Arthur Nebe, Boor and SS-Oberführer Werner Best (photo from the Adolf von Bomhard collection )

According to his own statement, Nebe formed a völkisch group with other police officers that dealt with propaganda against Jews and Freemasons within the police force, and became the NSDAP's liaison to the Berlin Criminal Police. On July 1, 1931, Nebe became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 574.307) and the SA . In addition, he initially became a supporting member of the SS .

He laid the foundation for his career in the spring of 1932, when he, together with other senior detective officers, organized the criminal police department within the Nazi officials' working group and passed on internal information from the Berlin police headquarters to Kurt Daluege , a member of the NSDAP in the Prussian state parliament .

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 recruited Hermann Goering the ascended to the Superintendent Nebe first for the Gestapo .

During the murder of the SA leadership at the end of June / beginning of July 1934, referred to as the Röhm Putsch in Nazi propaganda , Nebe was ordered as Goering's bodyguard, according to Hans Bernd Gisevius, and secured him with the police.

On January 1, 1935, he was entrusted with the management of the Prussian State Criminal Police Office (LKPA).

On December 2, 1936, he moved from the SA to the SS with the rank of "Sturmbannführer" (SS-No. 280.152) while simultaneously being appointed "SS Leader in the SD Main Office ". In July 1937 Arthur Nebe became head of the later Office V of the Reich Security Main Office , which carried out criminal investigation tasks. As Reich Criminal Director, Nebe was head of the German criminal police .

Discussion of the results of the investigation into the bomb attack in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich on November 8, 1939 by Georg Elser, from left to right: SS-Obersturmbannführer Franz Josef Huber , SS-Oberführer Arthur Nebe, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich and SS- Oberführer Heinrich Müller

After the assassination attempt on Hitler in the Bürgerbräukeller on November 8, 1939, Nebe led the investigation that led to the identification of Georg Elser as an assassin. According to Adolf Würth , Nebe commissioned the racial hygienist Robert Ritter from the Racial Hygiene Research Center at the Reich Health Office , with whom he was already working closely, to investigate the question of whether Elser was a “ gypsy ”. Würth and Eva Justin came to a negative result.

From 1938 to 1944 Nebe was also director of the International Criminal Police Commission (IKPK), now Interpol , and from 1942 to 1943 he was entrusted with the administration of the President of the IKPK.

Together with Gottlob Berger, Nebe was responsible for the rehabilitation of poachers from the SS Special Unit Dirlewanger .

Contact to the resistance

In 1938 Nebe supported the judge at the Reich Court Martial and later resistance fighter Karl Sack in his endeavors to prevent Hitler's attempts to overthrow Werner von Fritsch , the head of the army, who was accused of homosexuality . By Hans Oster Nebe was in the plans for a coup against Hitler inaugurated in September 1938 and supported the conspirators with important information. However, the outcome of the Sudeten crisis prevented the implementation of these plans.

After the Second World War , Gisevius turned a meeting between Nebe and Henning von Tresckow in the attacked Soviet Union in 1941 , together with Fabian von Schlabrendorff , both von Tresckows orderly officers , into an informal resistance group. Von Schlabrendorff withholds the reason for the actual cooperation and the meeting in officers against Hitler : Tresckow negotiated with the SS brigade leader Kurt Knoblauch and Nebe about the use of SS brigades to clean up and secure the rear area of ​​the front.

Participation in the mass killing by poison gas in gas vans or gas chambers

Viktor Brack from the Führer Chancellery commissioned Nebe in the planning phase of Action T4 to develop a method for mass killing using poison gas. Nebe passed the order on to Albert Widmann , who belonged to the Forensic Institute of the Security Police (KTI), which was subordinate to him .

Widmann asked back whether people or animals should be killed, to which Nebe replied that it should be neither people nor animals, but "animals in human form". Nebe assured that Widmann was not responsible. This was followed by a meeting in the Fuehrer's office, at which Brack, Hans Hefelmann , Richard von Hegener as well as Nebe and Widmann were present.

After Heinrich Himmler took part in a mass execution in Minsk on August 15, 1941 , which Nebe - at the time commander of SS-Einsatzgruppe B - had organized especially for him at his request, he asked Nebe to find more suitable methods of murder. Nebe, through his Berlin deputy Paul Werner , called on the explosives experts Helmut Hoffmann and Widmann, who had previously tested killing with poison gas in animal experiments and had accompanied a "test gassing" in the Brandenburg prison in 1940 , from his office. Probably in mid-September 1941, the two arrived at Nebe's, who explained his plan to blow up a group of Russian mentally ill people in a bunker. In a forest near Minsk, 25 inmates of a Minsk institution were locked in a wooden shelter on which explosive charges were attached. After about half of the victims survived the first demolition, a second one with more explosives was carried out. Nebe then rejected this type of killing as imponderable. The group drove on to Mogilew , where the laboratory of a mental institution was converted into a provisional gas chamber by walling up the windows and sealing them . Some prison inmates were locked in the room and then the exhaust gases from a car were discharged through pipes. When this initially did not have the desired effect, Nebes ordered a second hose to be used to connect the exhaust of a truck to the police. The engines ran until it was certain that the victims were dead. The group, which also included Karl Schulz and Hans Battista , came to the conclusion that killing by exhaust fumes was preferable. According to Widmann's testimony to the Düsseldorf public prosecutor, Nebe connected the second hose himself.

Commander of SS Einsatzgruppe B

When Nebe was supposed to temporarily lead an SS task force, he allegedly wanted to give up his position as head of the Reich Criminal Police Office in order not to have to accept the task that high-ranking SS leaders were supposed to carry out. According to information from Hans Bernd Gisevius, who is now controversial in some areas, however, Colonel General Ludwig Beck Nebe asked to lead a task force so that, as head of the Reich Criminal Police Office, he could continue to provide information from the SS leadership to the resistance. Beck: “We need you; we hope you won't let us down. ” Henning von Tresckow , who was then a member of Army Group Center staff, in whose area Einsatzgruppe B was to be deployed, also let his connections play in order to make Nebe head of Einsatzgruppe B. Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff , at that time also employed in the staff of Army Group Center, wrote that Tresckow “immediately got in touch with all possible offices in order to get the director of the Reich Criminal Office and SS-Oberführer Artur Nebe with the leadership Task Force B was entrusted. Tresckow knew that Nebe was a determined opponent of the National Socialist regime, an internationally known criminalist and a decent man. At that time he was very happy that his efforts were successful. ”From June 1941, during the first months of the war against the Soviet Union , Nebe headed Einsatzgruppe B, which murdered more than 45,000 civilians, mostly Jews, in the Soviet Union under his command .

On July 22, 1941, Nebe reported: "There are no more Jewish intelligentsia in Minsk".

Fabian von Schlabrendorff , who was in the resistance against Hitler, was also on the General Staff of Army Group Center, in whose rear area Einsatzgruppe B was deployed. Schlabrendorff wrote: “When Army Group Center was tied up in Smolensk near Moscow, our gaze was also directed to our hinterland. It had been possible to reduce the SS terror to a minimum. That was not our merit, but the merit of SS-Gruppenführer Nebe. "

In October 1941 Nebe successfully asked for his replacement and transfer back to Berlin.

Shooting of prisoners from Stalag Luft III

At the end of March 1944, 87 British soldiers and officers managed to escape from the German prison camp Stalag Luft III , but all but three were caught again soon afterwards. Hitler gave the secret order to have 50 of them executed. Nebe participated in this war crime by having his subordinates carry out the selection. Between April 6 and 18, 1944, a Gestapo detachment shot the selected persons allegedly "on the run". Because of this incident, the British were still searching for Nebe months after the war, because they did not trust the information that he had been executed in early March 1945 after a judgment by the People's Court for participating in the attempted coup of July 20, 1944.

Participation in the Porajmos

On Porajmos with seemed Nebe. He was also responsible for the Reich Central Office for Combating the Gypsies , which from 1936 onwards became Department V A 2 b of the RKPA in several intermediate steps.

In 1939 Nebe had tried to arrange for a mass deportation of the Berlin “gypsies”, he telegraphed Adolf Eichmann in Vienna “when he can send the Berlin gypsies”. Eichmann suggested: “Regarding the evacuation of the gypsies, it is announced that the first transport of Jews will leave Vienna on Friday, October 20th, 1939. 3-4 gypsy carriages can be attached to this transport. "

In June 1944, Nebe advocated human attempts to make seawater drinkable and suggested selecting "anti-social gypsy hybrids in the Auschwitz concentration camp ". These attempts were branded a crime at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial after the war . For practical reasons, they were carried out in Dachau concentration camp instead of Auschwitz .

Continue promoting euthanasia crimes

In January 1943, Nebe had the “ cultural film ” Dasein ohne Leben , which was never shown publicly , and which legitimized the killing of the sick, was shown to hundreds of SS officers, who enthusiastically received the film.

The poisons required for the murder of the sick were procured through the KTI , which is subordinate to Nebe .

Involvement in the attempted coup of July 20, 1944

Nebe was in contact with the German resistance against Hitler and is said to have warned Hans von Dohnanyi and Hans Oster about arrests by the Gestapo. He is said to have given the resistance information about secret conferences chaired by Heinrich Himmler, at which the " final solution to the Jewish question " was discussed.

On July 20, 1944, Nebe provided 15 police officers and detective inspectors from Office V, under whose leadership troops of the reserve army were to arrest important Reich ministers during the overthrow. Together with Paul von Hase , Nebe waited for the order from the Bendler block to use these units, which, however, was never given. He was charged with having participated in the coup attempt through testimony from the head of the "Miles Office" who was arrested after the attack . On July 24th he went underground. To mislead, he faked his suicide twice and, with the help of Hans Bernd Gisevius, hid in various places. At the end of July, Nebe asked his girlfriend Adelheid Gobbin (1896–1963), who was employed by the female criminal police , for shelter. In the course of the failed assassination attempt on Hitler, she was interrogated by the Gestapo as a relative of General Erich Fellgiebel on July 25th . At the beginning of August Gobbin brought him into the house of the merchant Walter Frick in Motzen . She was interrogated by the head of the Gestapo special commission Willy Litzenberg in January 1945 and put under pressure for her, her sister and mother with the death penalty. On January 16, she betrayed Nebe in an interrogation by the Gestapo. He was arrested the same day and sentenced to death by the People's Court on March 2nd .

Beside the date of death is controversial: The most likely date is March 3, 1945, as this information comes from a facsimile of the official notice of execution of Nebes wife. However, March 2, 1945, March 4, 1945, March 21, 1945 and March 23, 1945 are mentioned differently. It is likely that the sentence was carried out by hanging in Plötzensee prison in Berlin .

His successor in the role of Reich Criminal Director was taken on August 15, 1944 by SS-Obersturmbannführer and Senior Government Councilor Friedrich Panzinger .

Interpretations

In this context, the historian Christian Gerlach speaks of "fogging mainly by those involved on July 20" as von Schlabrendorff, Frhrn. v. Gersdorff and Gisevius. The version of a "reluctant Nebes" is controversial among historians. In addition, he was responsible for 45,000 Jews murdered by Einsatzgruppe B, he was involved in the development of gas vans and attempts to kill them with explosives, and in 1944 he offered “anti-social gypsy hybrids” for medical experiments. According to Gerlach, Nebe was an “unscrupulous mass murderer ”; He did not ask for his early replacement out of humanitarian concerns. Even after his return to Berlin, “[Nebe] continued to develop criminal initiatives”, for example the mass abduction of “gang women and gang children” or the development of poison ammunition and gas hand grenades for the purpose of fighting partisans.

Michael Wildt points out that the information about Nebe in the early years of the Nazi regime is based predominantly on Gisevius' reports and that these should only be treated "with extreme caution". There is no question that Nebe was an anti-Semite and had spoken of a " völkisch - racial-biological definition of criminality". Nebe had maneuvered “between ambition, opportunism and insecurity” and his contacts with the resistance against Hitler were “far too cautious, distant, protective” to be able to count him among the resistance group. His personal involvement in the crimes of the regime has been proven many times over.

Gerald Reitlinger stated as early as 1953: the statements made in favor of Nebes were in complete contradiction to those of Bach-Zelewskis . Reitlinger comes to the conclusion that Nebes role "as a hero of the resistance movement could not have been more than an attempt at an alibi".

Promotions

Awards

Media processing

Movie

Fiction

literature

Web links

Commons : Arthur Nebe  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ronald Rathert: Crime and Conspiracy. Arthur Nebe the chief of police in the Third Reich. Lit Verlag, Münster 2001, ISBN 3-8258-5353-5 , p. 21.
  2. ↑ a b Ronald Rathert: Crime and Conspiracy. Arthur Nebe the chief of police in the Third Reich. Lit Verlag, Münster 2001, p. 23.
  3. ↑ Ronald Rathert: Crime and Conspiracy. Arthur Nebe the chief of police in the Third Reich. Lit Verlag, Münster 2001, p. 23 f.
  4. ↑ Ronald Rathert: Crime and Conspiracy. Arthur Nebe the chief of police in the Third Reich. Lit Verlag, Münster 2001, p. 46.
  5. ↑ Ronald Rathert: Crime and Conspiracy. Arthur Nebe the chief of police in the Third Reich. Lit Verlag, Münster 2001, p. 47.
  6. ↑ Ronald Rathert: Crime and Conspiracy. Arthur Nebe the chief of police in the Third Reich. Lit Verlag Münster 2001, pp. 100-105.
  7. ^ Benno Müller-Hill : Deadly Science. Reinbek 1988, p. 153. Interview with Adolf Würth
  8. ↑ Hans Buchheim : Anatomy of the SS State. Vol. 1. Munich 1989, p. 304.
  9. ↑ Ronald Rathert: Crime and Conspiracy. Arthur Nebe the chief of police in the Third Reich. Lit Verlag, Münster 2001, p. 116 f.
  10. ^ Judgment of the Stuttgart Regional Court against Widmann according to Ernst Klee: Euthanasia in the Nazi state. Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 84 f.
  11. ↑ Ronald Rathert: Crime and Conspiracy. Arthur Nebe the chief of police in the Third Reich. Lit Verlag, Münster 2001, p. 120 f.
  12. ^ Andrej Angrick: Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. Task Force D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943. Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 1993, pp. 368-372.
  13. ^ Testimony of Widmann and other eyewitnesses at the Düsseldorf public prosecutor AZ: 8 Js 7212/59 according to Eugen Kogon (ed.): National Socialist mass killings through poison gas. Frankfurt am Main 1989, p. 81f.
  14. ↑ Hans Bernd Gisevius: Where is Nebe ?: Memories of Hitler's Reich criminal director. Droemer, Zurich 1966, pp. 239–242.
  15. ^ Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff: Soldier in the downfall. Ullstein publishing house, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1977, p. 85.
  16. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. 2nd, updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 430.
  17. ^ Fabian von Schlabrendorff: Officers against Hitler. 3. Edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / Hamburg 1961, p. 61.
  18. ↑ Ronald Rathert: Crime and Conspiracy. Arthur Nebe the chief of police in the Third Reich. Lit Verlag, Münster 2001, pp. 135-137.
  19. ↑ Dieter Schenk: The brown roots of the BKA. Frankfurt am Main, pp. 49, 162, 204.
  20. ↑ After: Sybil Milton: preliminary stage to destruction. The gypsy camps after 1933. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. 43rd year, 1st edition (Jan. 1995), pp. 115-130, here p. 127 ( PDF ).
  21. ↑ Dieter Schenk: The Brown Roots of the BKA. Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 161, telegrams reproduced in: Romani Rose: Bürgerrechte für Sinti und Roma. Heidelberg 1980, p. 16.
  22. ↑ Document VEJ 11/146 in Lisa Hauff (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 (source book), Volume 11: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia April 1943-1945 . Berlin / Boston 2020, ISBN 978-3-11-036499-6 , pp. 427-228.
  23. ↑ Alexander Mitscherlich, Fred Mielke (ed.): Science without humanity. Medical and eugenic aberrations under dictatorship, bureaucracy and war. Lambert Schneider , Heidelberg 1949, p. 71.
  24. ^ Karl Heinz Roth : Film propaganda for the destruction of the mentally ill and handicapped in the 'Third Reich'. In: Reform and Conscience. Euthanasia in the service of progress. 2nd Edition. Berlin 1989, p. 178.
  25. ↑ Der Spiegel : The Game is Over - Arthur Nebe. Glory and misery of the German criminal police. Issue 16/1950 from April 20, 1950. According to Ronald Rathert, the anonymous author of the Spiegel article is Bernhard Wehner , former head of the “Reich Central Office for Investigating Capital Crimes” in Office V of the RSHA. (Excerpt online) .
  26. ↑ Der Spiegel: Nebe hopped from puddle to puddle: Hans Bernd Gisevius on the escape of the German police chief in July 1944. Issue 13/1966 of March 21, 1966.
  27. ^ Andreas Weigelt: Retraining camps do not exist: On the history of the Soviet special camp Jamlitz 1945–1947 . Brandenburg State Center for Civic Education - Foundation for coming to terms with the SED dictatorship, Potsdam 2001, ISBN 3-932502-29-9 , p. 153.
  28. ↑ Ronald Rathert: Crime and Conspiracy. Arthur Nebe the chief of police in the Third Reich. Lit Verlag, Münster 2001, pp. 186f.
  29. ↑ Michael Wildt: The generation of the absolute. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-930908-75-1 , p. 709.
  30. ↑ Plötzensee Memorial - Executions after July 20, 1944
  31. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 430.
  32. ^ Robert Harris in the "follow-up" of his novel "Vaterland", which is also based on authentic sources .
  33. ↑ olokaustos.org: biography of Arthur Nebe (ital.)
  34. ^ Christian Gerlach: Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Study edition. Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-930908-63-8 , pp. 641f.
  35. ↑ Michael Wildt: Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. 2nd Edition. Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-930908-87-5 , pp. 305–306 with note 74.
  36. ↑ Michael Wildt: Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. 2nd Edition. Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-930908-87-5 , pp. 36, 310.
  37. ↑ Michael Wildt: Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. 2nd Edition. Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-930908-87-5 , p. 301.
  38. ↑ Gerald Reitlinger: The Final Solution - Extermination of the Jews of Europe 1939-1945. Kindler-Taschenbuch Nr. 57-59, Munich 1964, p. 172.
  39. ↑ The Criminal Court: The Nebe Case (Part 1) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  40. ↑ The criminal court: The case Nebe (part 2) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Nebe, Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS group leader and head of the Reich Criminal Police Office
DATE OF BIRTH November 13, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: March 3, 1945
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee