Walter Kubitzky

Walter Kubitzky (born February 14, 1891 in Gostyń , Posen Province , † April 26, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer in the police force and SS leader.

Live and act

Youth, Education and Early Career

Walter Kubitzky was a son of the rent master Karl Kubitzky and his wife Martha geb. Pyrkosch. In his youth, Kubitzky attended the Catholic grammar school in Glatz , where he passed the matriculation examination at Easter 1909. He then studied law and economics at the University of Wroclaw . In August 1914 he passed the trainee exam there. On September 19, 1914 he was accepted into the Reich Service.

From August 6, 1914 Kubitzky took part with the Prussian army in the First World War, from which he retired on November 28, 1918 with the rank of lieutenant of the reserve; his twin brother Hans died in the First World War. Then Walther Kubitzky worked from December 9, 1918 to July 9, 1919 as a trainee lawyer at the local court in Glatz. Then he completed training for the middle legal service until May 1920.

On June 4, 1920, Kubitzky was hired as border police commissioner on revocation at the regional police east in Frankfurt an der Oder . On June 1, 1921, he was finally hired permanently with the position of border commissioner of the state criminal police in the administrative district of Breslau. On April 24, 1926 he was given the title of detective commissioner. From September 8 to 30, 1926, he completed the course for senior detective officers at the Oak Police School. On December 1, 1929, Kubitzky was finally transferred to the Breslau Police Headquarters as a detective.

time of the nationalsocialism

After the National Socialist seizure of power in the spring of 1933, Kubitzky was transferred from the Breslau police headquarters to the Breslau state police station, which at that time was taken over by the Silesian SA leader Edmund Heines . It was probably against this background that Kubitzky joined the SA, in which he achieved the rank of troop leader and which he left again in 1934.

On December 2, 1933, Kubitzky was then taken from Breslau to the Secret State Police Office (Gestapa) in Berlin in accordance with a decree of November 30, 1933 . This transfer probably took place at the instigation of his Breslau superior Günther Patschowsky , who was appointed to Berlin at the same time from the post of Deputy Police President in Breslau as head of Department IV (treason and counter-espionage) of the Gestapa. After moving to Berlin, Kubitzky moved to Windscheidstrasse 32 with his wife Selma and their four children.

After taking up his post in Berlin in January 1934, Kubitzky was appointed Deputy Head of Main Department IV of the Gestapa with the rank of Detective Inspector, which shortly afterwards - when the departments were renumbered - was given the name Main Department III. In this capacity he was the most important employee of the main department head Patschowsky. According to the renegade SD agent Heinrich Orb , Kubitzky was an employee of Patschowsky in the first months of 1934 in the intrigue of SS leaders Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich against the then Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels , which ultimately led to the replacement of Diel by Heydrich and the takeover The Gestapo led through the SS: In this sense, Kubitzky was significantly involved in preparing the ground for the takeover of the Gestapo, which at that time was still hostile to the SS, by systematically promoting the position of Diels as Gestapo chief as a smuggled "mole" undermined from the inside and by passing internal information from the Office for the Power Struggle with Göring and Diels to Himmler and Heydrich. The handover of the Gestapo to Heydrich and Himmler finally took place on April 20, 1934.

On April 1, 1934, Kubitzky had already been promoted to the criminal police officer. Soon afterwards he must have been subordinated to the detective Ernst Damzog - who was also transferred from Breslau to the Gestapa at the turn of the year 1933/1934 . According to the alleged former Gestapo employee Koehler, in 1934 Kubitzky headed the "Eastern subdivision" within the Defense Department, which dealt with the processing of counter-police measures in relation to Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Romania and the Baltic States and the Far East . In his book Inside the Gestapo , published in London in 1940 , Koehler describes Kubitzky as an “old, experienced criminalist” and “expert for all Eastern countries”. Visually, he described him as a man of "medium stature, somewhat shorter than average, thin, always carefully shaved, with glasses; his nose is sharply cut, his face hawk-like with a completely hair-free skull and unpleasant frog eyes. "

Kubitzky, who had also been a member of the NSDAP since May 1, 1933 ( membership number 1.972.106) and a member of the SS since around 1936 - in which he achieved the rank of Sturmbannführer - remained until the end of the NS regime in spring 1945 Active in the Gestapa: From October 2 to 23, 1936, he completed the "course for detective inspectors to train in the political police" at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Police Institute. After the establishment of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) in 1938, he took over in Office IV (Gestapo) of the RSHA as head of Department IV E 4 ("Defense East"), which dealt with counter-espionage against the Soviet Union . On April 1, 1939, he was promoted to criminal director in the criminal service and in 1941 to the government and criminal councilor.

During the Second World War , Kubitzky was involved in uncovering the activities of the Red Orchestra . Kubitzky shot himself at the end of April 1945 during the Battle of Berlin , shortly before the Reich capital was conquered by the Red Army .

literature

• Shlomo Aronson: Heydrich and the beginnings of the SD and the Gestapo. 1931-1935 , 1967.
• Christoph Graf: Political Police Between Democracy and Dictatorship , 1983.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Business distribution plan of the Gestapo of January 20, 1934, Federal Archives R 58/840/272.
2. ^ Heinrich Orb: National Socialism. 13 Years of Power Intoxication , pp. 128, 140ff and 381.
3. ↑ Hansjuergen Koehler: Inside the Gestapo , 1940, p. 40. In the original the passage reads: “[A man] of middle stature, on the smallish side, slim, always clean shaven, bespectacled; his nose is sharp, his face hawk-like, with a completely bald dome and unpleasant frog's eyes. "
4. ↑ Michael Wildt: Generation des Unbedinges , 2002, p. 737.