Hans Kobelinski

Hans Kobelinski (born June 2, 1900 in Eisenach ; † August 29, 1937 in Dachau concentration camp ) was a German SS officer .

Life and activity

Previous career

After attending school, Hans Kobelinski joined the Imperial Army in 1918 . In the last phase of the First World War he took part as a private and as a flag junior in a guard corps . After the war, he joined the Wolf Freikorps in 1919 . From April to August 1921 he was a member of the Upper Silesian Self-Protection . With the 6th Company in the 2nd Battalion of the Federal Oberland he took part in the Hitler putsch in November 1923 . When the coup was suppressed, he was arrested and imprisoned for two and a half months. He later studied law . Around 1930 he lived as an unemployed trainee lawyer in Hamburg .

Career in the security service of the SS

Kobelinski joined the NSDAP on December 1, 1930 ( membership number 374.173), in which he was assigned to the Hamburg branch with regard to his residence at the time. On June 1, 1931, he also became a member of the SS (SS No. 31,069). When the establishment of the security service of the SS (SD) began in the autumn of 1931, Kobelinski became one of the first and most important employees of the head of the SD, Reinhard Heydrich : In August 1931 he was initially employed as an IC officer, i.e. H. employed as a consultant for intelligence matters at SS-Section III (Braunschweig) before he was appointed Ic of SS-Standarte 4 Altona in September, a position he retained until August 1, 1932. The SD researcher George C. Browder believes that Heydrich Kobelinski had met in Hamburg in 1931 and characterizes him as the "first right hand" ( first right hand man ) of the SD chief.

In connection with his intelligence activities, Kobelinski was targeted by the authorities in Oldenburg in February 1932 on suspicion of spying on military facilities: In that month Herbert Weichardt, one of Kobelinski's IC staff, was arrested after some of his agents were scouting Information about military fortifications in Wilhelmshaven had been caught. Since the evidence brought against Kobelinski by the authorities was insufficient for trial, he avoided serious punishment.

In the summer of 1932 Kobelinski was then appointed Ic of the SS Group East in Berlin, where he was promoted to Sturmhauptführer on February 28, 1933. Kobelinski first moved to Braunschweig as the Ic of the SS Group in Berlin, from where, in Browder's opinion, he oversaw the entire SS intelligence network, which was gradually being built up and expanding throughout northern Germany. The reason for choosing Braunschweig as a place of residence was that the then small part of the German Reich Braunschweig was co-governed by the National Socialists, so that he could expect extensive immunity from police measures there. In August 1932 Heydrich sent Kobelinski personally to Berlin, where from then on he was subordinate to the SS General Kurt Daluege , who was largely independent of Himmler and Heydrich , and who was in command of the SS Upper Section Berlin.

From February 1933 to January 1934 Kobelinski headed the SD branch in Berlin. On November 9, 1933 Kobelinski was awarded the NSDAP Blood Order (No. 1356). From the beginning of January to March 14, 1934, he took over the management of the newly created SD Upper Section East in Berlin. On March 14, 1934, Kobelinski was removed from his post by Heinrich Himmler ( Hermann Behrends' successor ) and demoted to SS man . The reasons given were that he had communicated official matters to a "girl he knew", this fact against a subordinate SS storm man denied on his honor and insulted and threatened Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler and SS brigade leader Reinhard Heydrich .

The exact circumstances and reasons for Kobelinski's removal from the management of the Upper Section East and for his expulsion from the SD and SS have not been fully clarified, but evidence suggests that his fall was due to the power struggle between Rudolf Diels and the Himmler / Heydrich duo for control the Gestapo was related. Allegedly Kobelinski is said to have passed on secret SS materials to Diels and thus aroused the suspicion of Heydrich, who feared a conspiracy between Kobelinski and Diels. Corresponding claims made Kobelinski's subordinate Alfred Naujocks in his memoirs after the Second World War. Naujocks further explained that he had informed Heydrich about this during the SD chief's visit to Berlin in order to get revenge because Kobelinski had previously punished him for disobedience.

After Kobelinski had been re-admitted to the SS, he was expelled from the SS again in accordance with an order of May 2, 1936 for alleged misconduct against Section 175 of the Criminal Code (homosexuality). As a result, he was also expelled from the party and put on the black list of the Reich leadership, which made a resumption permanently impossible. Kobelinski was then transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, where he officially died by suicide .

A number of pieces of evidence indicate that Kobelinski was actually killed on the orders of the SS / SD leadership and that his death was then disguised as a suicide. Conceivable motives for an elimination would be, on the one hand, the wish of the SD leadership to permanently silence a dangerous confidante of sensitive secrets from the early days of the SS intelligence service and, on the other hand, the considerably intensified persecution of homosexual SS members in 1937 at the instigation of Himmler. In a secret speech to SS officers in Bad Tölz on February 18, 1937, Himmler stated that, in his opinion, homosexuality harbors the danger of "destroying the state", which is why he has it persecuted with particular severity if it occurs among SS members :

“These people will of course be publicly demoted and expelled in any case and will be handed over to the court. After serving the sentence set by the court, they will be taken to a concentration camp on my orders and shot in the concentration camp while they were fleeing. "

The American SD researcher George C. Browder evaluates Kobelinski as a "prime example" ( a prime Example ) for the characteristic of the early (by an amateurish personnel policy amateurish personnell policies marked) SD, "some unstable personalities" ( some unstable personalities ) as To attract employees who had been lured into the ranks of the SD by the “ romantic secret agent image ” and the “mysterious cloak-and-dagger posturing ” of the intelligence service.

Promotions

• December 5, 1931: SS squad leader
• January 8, 1932: SS troop leader
• July 22, 1932: SS-Sturmhauptführer
• February 1, 1933: SS-Sturmbannführer
• June 1, 1933: SS Standartenführer

literature

• George C. Browder : Hitler's Enforcers. The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution , 1996.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Collection of Shlomo Aronson on the SD in the Institute for Contemporary History (PDF; 8.5 MB).
2. ^ Browder: Enforcers, p. 107.
3. ^ Browder: Enforcers, p. 108.
4. ^ Reprint of the disciplinary criminal case.
5. ^ Browder: Enforcers , p. 120.
6. ↑ Alexander Zinn: SA, Homosexuality and Fascism , in: Yves Müller (Ed.): Civil War Army. Research on the National Socialist Sturmabteilung (SA) . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 411.
7. ^ Browder: Enforcers , p. 141.