Product Code Database
Siegfried Kasche (18 June 1903 – 7 June 1947) was a German Nazi Party politician who served as the ambassador of Nazi Germany to the Independent State of Croatia where he was complicit in the atrocities committed against Serbs, Jews and other ethnic groups. He was also an SA- Obergruppenführer in the Sturmabteilung (SA), a Nazi paramilitary organization. He headed the SA agricultural settlement program to replace native populations in the occupied Polish territories with SA settlers. Kasche was proposed as the head of the Reichskommissariat Moskowien but, due to German military reversals, the Reichskommissariat was never established. Following the end of the Second World War, he was put on trial in Croatia, convicted of war crimes and hanged.
Attaining the rank of SA- Gruppenführer in 1932, Kasche headed the SA- Gruppe Pommern and later advanced to the leadership of SA- Obergruppe II with headquarters in Stettin (today, Szczecin). At the end of June 1934, Kasche was one of the SA senior general officers to survive the Night of the Long Knives, when SA- Stabschef Ernst Röhm and many of his close associates were murdered. Hermann Göring, Prussian Minister-president and Reichstag president, was coordinating the murders in Berlin. Kasche survived execution by pleading his case with Göring who arranged for him to be left unharmed. Der Spiegel 26/1984 - Mordsache Röhm Kasche served as the Führer of SA- Gruppe Niedersachsen in Hanover from 1934 to 1937. On 9 November 1936, he was promoted to SA- Obergruppenführer and, in November 1937, he was transferred to become the Führer of SA- Gruppe Hansa, headquartered in Hamburg.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> ZBW Press Archives, Document 6: Kasche –Gesandter in Ugram in Hamburg Fremdenblatt, 21 April 1941 He replaced SA- Gruppenführer Herbert Fust in this post.
In September 1938, SA- Stabschef Viktor Lutze appointed Kasche as the SA Representative for New Farming Settlements and Ethnicity Issues. He was charged with furnishing prospective settlers from the SA ranks to take up new farming settlements in eastern Germany. Recruits were required to be at least twenty-five years old, married and of Aryan race descent. It was intended that they would provide ideological and political homogeneity in the new settlements to act as a bulwark against the neighboring states. The outbreak of the Second World War and the quest for Lebensraum provided an opportunity to expand the program into territory conquered from Poland. Previously Polish-owned farms were expropriation, and it is estimated that nearly 15,000 such farms were seized in formerly Polish sections of Upper Silesia alone.
Unfortunately for Kasche, on 7 October 1939, Adolf Hitler appointed Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood to coordinate the return, repatriation, and settlement of Volksdeutsche in the conquered territories. Kasche lacked the power to challenge Himmler over their competing plans and, although he attempted to retain a role for continuing to resettle SA men from Germany proper, Himmler successfully marginalized the SA agricultural settlement program. Combined with a lack of interested SA recruits (only 2,150 volunteers by April 1941 as opposed to the estimated 45,000 needed), this spelled failure for Kasche's program. At the time he left the post for his next assignment, no successor was immediately appointed and the SA eventually gave up on any direct role in the settlement project.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> ZBW Press Archives, Document 9: SA-Obergruppenführer Kasche in Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (Berlin), 22 April 1941
In February 1941, Kasche was assigned to the Foreign Ministry for diplomatic service. On 15 April 1941, when Germany recognized the Independent State of Croatia, Kasche was named ambassador, arriving in Zagreb on 20 April. He was one of a handful of SA officers appointed to diplomatic posts in central and southeastern Europe by Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in an effort to limit Himmler's influence in the area. For his part, Kasche had never forgiven the Schutzstaffel for its involvement in the Röhm purge. However, he had no diplomatic training or background and, according to one German observer in Zagreb, "he barely knew where Croatia was". Kasche also retained his post as SA Fuhrer in Hamburg until 21 January 1942, when Herbert Fust returned to the position.
At a meeting of the Nazi leadership at Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters on 16 July 1941, Kasche was designated as the future Reichskommissar of the planned Nazi occupation regime to be called Moskau, which was to comprise the main territories of central and northern Russia up to the Ural Mountains. German military reversals on the eastern front during the 1941–42 winter that culminated in the failure to take Moscow prevented its establishment, leaving the project in the planning stages.
The Croatian dictator Ante Pavelić and his Ustaše Croatian Revolutionary Movement were pledged to eliminate non-Croat influence in the new state, particularly that of Serbs and Jews. Since Kasche was very supportive of Pavelić and the Ustaše, he justified their policy and actions to the extent that Adolf Hitler called him a "greater Croat than Pavelić". The expulsions triggered massive Serb resistance and the Croats unleashed a program of ethnic cleansing. There were widespread massacres, and concentration camps were turned into killing centers. By 1943, it is estimated that at least 400,000 people had been murdered.
Kasche was in constant conflict with Edmund Glaise-Horstenau, the Wehrmacht Plenipotentiary-General in Croatia who protested the atrocities. After the unsuccessful Lorković–Vokić plot in 1944, an attempt to align Croatia with the Allies, Kasche denigrated Horstenau and forced his recall from Croatia, as he was involved in the plot. Kasche reported to Berlin on 18 April 1944 that "Croatia is one of the countries in which the Jewish problem has been solved". Jewish History of Yugoslavia, porges.net; accessed 5 May 2016.
|
|
