Wilhelm Kube (13 November 1887 – 22 September 1943) was a German Nazi Germany politician and official who served as the Generalkommissar of Generalbezirk Weißruthenien in the Reichskommissariat Ostland from 1941 to 1943.
Kube was involved in numerous far-right and antisemitism organisations before becoming a leader of the Nazi Party in the Free State of Prussia from 1928 to 1933. Kube was an important figure in the German Christian movement and the Gauleiter of Gau Kurmark during the early years of Nazi rule. Kube was removed from all of his offices and forced out of the SS in 1936 due to a scandal over his personal feud with Walter Buch. Kube was rehabilitated into the SS by Heinrich Himmler in 1940 and appointed Generalkommissar of Generalbezirk Weißruthenien based in Minsk shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Kube was a participant in the Holocaust and approved numerous against Jewish people in western Belarus, having said: "What plague and syphilis are to humanity, are Jews to the white race" though his relatively mild treatment of German Jews during his early rule was controversial.[Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 116–119.]
Kube was assassinated by Soviet partisans Yelena Mazanik with a bomb in 1943.
Early life
Wilhelm Kube was born on 13 November 1887 in
Glogau,
Prussian Silesia (present-day Głogów,
Poland) the son of
tax collector Richard Kube and his wife Ida (née Kadach). Kube was raised in
Berlin and attended the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster, a prestigious gymnasium where he developed a reputation for his
anti-semitic remarks. From 1908 to 1912, he studied history,
economics and
theology at the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin.
[Uwe Puschner (Professor at the Free University of Berlin): Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2001, , p. 11.] He was active in the Völkisch movement as a student and a member of the Berlin chapter of the anti-semitic German Student Association. In 1911, he received a Moses Mendelssohn Scholarship, ironically named in honour of Moses Mendelssohn, a
German-Jewish philosopher and
theologian. In 1917, during World War I, Kube was briefly
conscripted into the Imperial German Army, but his service was quickly deferred due to his position as general-secretary of the German Conservative Party in Silesia. Kube worked as a
journalist for a number of
conservative newspapers after the war, and joined the German National People's Party (DNVP) in 1919 when the German Conservative Party merged into it. He co-founded the Bismarck Youth, the DNVP's
youth wing, and became leader of that organisation in 1922. He became general-secretary of the Berlin DNVP in 1920 and sat on the Berlin City Council from 1922 to 1923.
Nazi Party
Kube first became involved with
Nazism in 1923 when he left the DNVP, believing it not
militant enough, and instead joined the more radical German Völkisch Freedom Party (DVFP) which had
splinter party from the DNVP a year earlier. At the time, the DVFP had a close relationship with the National Socialist Freedom Movement (NSFP), the legal replacement of the
Nazi Party that had been banned after the failed Beer Hall Putsch. In May and December 1924, Kube was elected to the
Reichstag from the NSFP
electoral list though he was not an official member, and served until May 1928.
[ Wilhelm Kube entry in the Reichstag Members Database] In February 1925, the NSFB was dissolved when the Nazi Party reformed after its ban expired in January and
Adolf Hitler had been released from prison. Kube continued his affiliation with the DVFP, but infighting within the party led to his explusion in 1926. Members from northern and eastern Germany also left the DVFP with Kube to join the Nazi movement.
Kube joined the Nazi Party (membership number 71,682) in late 1927 and soon became the leader of the party in the Prussian Landtag. Under his leadership, the Nazi Party in Prussia grew from a tiny faction of 6 seats in 1928 to be the largest party in the Landtag by 1932. On 1 February 1928, he was appointed Gauleiter (regional party leader) of Gau Ostmark with his seat at Frankfurt an der Oder. At the July 1932 election, Kube returned to the Reichstag as a deputy from electoral constituency 5 (Frankfurt an der Oder.
Nazification of Christianity
Kube remained an active
Christians as well as a zealous Nazi, becoming one of the leading supporters of the
Gleichschaltung of Christianity. In 1932, he organised the list of candidates of the Faith Movement of the German Christians for the ordinary election of
and
within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union on 13 November that year. The German Christians then gained about a third of all seats in presbyteries and synods. Kube was elected as one of the presbyters of the congregation of Gethsemane Church in
Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. The presbyters elected him from their midst as synodal into the competent
deanery synod (; Berlin then comprised 11 deaneries altogether), and these synodals again elected him a member of
deanery synodal board (). He remained active in the German Christian movement which sought to "Nazify" the 28 Protestant
Landeskirche (church bodies) in Germany.
[Biographical information from Ernst Klee, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich (Fischer Verlag 2005), 346] For 23 July 1933, Hitler ordered an unconstitutional, premature re-election of all presbyters and synodals, with the German Christians now gaining 70–80% of the seats, so Kube could then further advance as head of the Berlin synod of the old Prussian Church. Following the German conquest of Poland in 1939, his Nazi party domain was extended to include Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Reichsgau Wartheland.
Accusations and removal from office
In late 1935, the
USCHLA under Chairman
Walter Buch, the father-in-law of
Martin Bormann, began an investigation into Kube due to allegations of
adultery and
corruption in running his Gau, including
nepotism, favoritism and a
management style. In December, Kube was issued a letter of reprimand and, swearing revenge, sent an anonymous letter claiming that Buch was married to a "
half-Jew". This, of course, would have far-reaching implications not only for Buch but for Bormann, whose wife consequently also was accused of not being a pure
Aryan race. Kube was leveling serious charges at two Party
. In the course of a
Gestapo investigation, it came to light that the letter had been written by Kube. Buch and Bormann saw to it that Kube was removed from all of his posts on 7 August 1936. Only on Hitler's orders was he allowed to retain the title of
Gauleiter, albeit without a Gau. Furthermore, owing to a dispute with Reinhard Heydrich over a search conducted of Kube's mistress' apartment, he offered his resignation from the
Allgemeine SS on 11 March 1936; he was officially discharged on 1 April.
In 1940, Kube was rehabilitated by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and reinstated as a full member of the SS with the rank of Rottenführer (Squad Leader). He was appointed to Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria.
Generalkommissar of White Ruthenia
On 17 July 1941, in the wake of the German invasion of Soviet Union, Kube was appointed General Commissioner (
Generalkommissar) for
Generalbezirk Weißruthenien (General District
White Ruthenia), one of the four districts of
Reichskommissariat Ostland. Kube, with his headquarters in
Minsk, was responsible for Nazi civil administration over the western half of
Byelorussian SSR. In this role, he oversaw the extermination of the large Jewish population of this area and crushing the partisan resistance. He pursued a policy of tolerance towards the non-Jewish
Belarusians population and sought to prevent them from supporting partisans by both concessions and force.
Nazi propaganda lightly endorsed Belarusian nationalism in White Ruthenia, including use of the "white-red-white flag" and distinguishing Belarusians from
Russians. He declared Belarusian as the co-official language alongside
German language. On 9 September 1941, Kube made an announcement to the population stating that those found in possession of
or
ammunition were to be shot.
Kube was outraged by the Slutsk Affair (or Slutsk Massacre) in October 1941, when Einsatzgruppen (mobile death squads) of the SS and the Lithuanian Auxiliary Police liquidated the Jewish ghetto in Slutsk without his authority. Many non-Jewish Belarusians were also killed in the sloppy operation, creating great resentment among the population. Kube wrote in protest to his supervisor and SS chief Himmler:
The town was a picture of horror during the action. With indescribable brutality on the part of both the German police officers and particularly the Lithuanian partisans, the Jewish people, but also among them Belarusians, were taken out of their dwellings and herded together. Everywhere in the town shots were to be heard and in different streets the corpses of shot Jews accumulated. The Belarusians were in greatest distress to free themselves from the encirclement.
The letter concluded:
I am submitting this report in duplicate so that one copy may be forwarded to the Reich Minister. Peace and order cannot be maintained in Belarus with methods of that sort. To bury seriously wounded people alive who worked their way out of their graves again is such a base and filthy act that the incidents as such should be reported to the Führer and Reichsmarschall.[ Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression: Volume III (Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality OCCPAC). Washington, D.C.: USGPO. 1946. pp.783–789 accessed January 2008.]
Despite these misgivings, Kube participated in an atrocity at the Minsk ghetto on 2 March 1942. During a search by German and Belarusian police, a group of children were seized and thrown into pits of deep sand to die.
At that moment, several SS officers, among them Wilhelm Kube, arrived, whereupon Kube, immaculate in his uniform, threw handfuls of sweets to the shrieking children. All the children perished in the sand.[Gilbert, M: "The Holocaust", p. 297. Fontana/Collins, 1987.]
Holocaust
Kube was actively involved in the
Holocaust and governed an area located at the heart of the Pale of Settlement, where there was a particularly high population of Jews. He began to distinguish between "German Jews" (German-speaking Jews from
Central Europe) versus the "non-German Jews" (mostly
Yiddish-speaking Jews from
Eastern Europe). His less hostile view of German Jews is shown in his behaviour towards those deported to Minsk in late 1941. He was particularly incensed by the presence of deportees who were
Mischlings or had been decorated for their service in World War I. On at least one instance, he was able to arrange for the transfer of a Jewish decorated World War I veteran to
Theresienstadt. The man, Karl Loewenstein, survived the war there.
[Rentrup, Petra (2011). Tatorte der „Endlösung“ - Das Ghetto Minsk und die Vernichtungsstätte von Maly Trostinez. Berlin. p. 189.] His interest in these Jews, whom he regarded as belonging "to our cultural
milieu," prompted him to file a complaint with the Reich Security Main Office and Heydrich, in which he stated that "during the evacuation of Jews from the Reich, the guidelines on who was to be evacuated had not been properly observed" and he attached a list of names. During the 2 March 1942 massacre, Kube withheld German Jews from a
mass shooting, which was conducted in Minsk under the supervision of
Sturmbannführer Eduard Strauch, at which 3,412 Jews were killed. This unprecedented act that provoked a formal complaint from the SS, according to which "
Generalkommissar Kube appears to have promised to the German Jews, who before my time were delivered to the ghetto five thousand strong, that life and health would remain theirs". Kube told Strauch that his methods were "unworthy of a German person and a Germany of
Immanuel Kant and Goethe". Strauch wrote a letter to Erich von dem Bach recommending Kube's dismissal, accusing him of being unable to differentiate between a German and a German Jew, his open appreciation for the ethnically Jewish composers Jacques Offenbach and Felix Mendelssohn, warning the Minsk
Judenrat about an upcoming "resettlement", and calling a policeman a "pig" for shooting a Jew. Heydrich flew to Minsk to deliver Kube a reprimand, after which he felt compelled to comply with extermination actions. On 31 July, he wrote to his friend, the
Reichskommissar for the Ostland,
Hinrich Lohse, in
Riga:
Following lengthy talks with the SS- Brigadeführer Zenner and the extraordinarily diligent head of the SD, SS- Obersturmbannführer Strauch, in the last two weeks in White Russia we have liquidated roughly 55,000 Jews....In the city of Minsk about 10,000 Jews were liquidated on 28 and 29 July. Of these, 6,500 were Russian Jews, predominantly women, children, and the aged; the rest were Jews unfit for labor, mainly from Vienna, Brno, Bremen, and Berlin. The latter had been sent to Minsk last year in accordance with the Führer's orders....In Minsk proper there are 2,600 Jews from Germany left.[ Quoted from Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkeley: University of California Press 1987), pp. 116–119.]
By March 1942, Kube's preferential treatment of German Jews appeared to come to an end after pressure from his superiors within the SS. In the spring of 1942, contrary to the opinion of SS- Obersturmführer Kurt Burkhardt, he ordered the resumption of mass murders in the ghettos, which had been interrupted during the winter months because of the frozen ground. He justified this with the fear of the spread of in the ghettos. In an order dated 8 September 1942, Kube stressed that "the strong presence of Jews among the partisans" could only be counteracted by "cleansing the country of Jews". In May 1943, Kube demonstrated a gas chamber to a delegation of Italian fascists. Kube planned to level Minsk and replace it with a German settlement called Asgard.[Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder, p. 251]
Assassination
At 1:20 am on 22 September 1943, Kube was
assassinated in his Minsk apartment by a time-detonated bomb hidden in his
mattress. The bomb was placed by
Yelena Mazanik, a Belarusian
Soviet partisans who was hired in Kube's household as a
maid and was convinced to assassinate him. According to an alternate version, the explosives were set up by Lev Liberman from the Minsk Ghetto, who was also employed in the household, but this later proved to be false. In total, 12 groups received an order from
Moscow to assassinate Kube.
The bomb went off 40 minutes early, purportedly due to higher
air temperature than that during bomb testing.
SS-
Gruppenführer Curt von Gottberg, the SS and Police Leader of White Ruthenia, temporarily replaced Kube as
Generalkommissar.
In retaliation for the assassination, the SS killed more than 1,000 male citizens of Minsk. Owing to Kube's antagonistic attitude to some SS anti-Jewish actions, Himmler felt that the dead man had been well on the way to booking himself a place in a concentration camp anyway, and reportedly described the assassination as a "blessing".[Raul Hilberg (2003). The Destruction of the European Jews (3rd ed.).
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. p. 400.][Reidlinger 1960 p. 157 as quoted in Turonek 1989 p. 118.]
Mazanik escaped the reprisals and continued to fight with the partisans. On 29 October 1943, she was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, along with other members of the assassination group Nadezhda Troyan and Mariya Osipova. After the war she went on to become deputy director of the Fundamental Library of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences.
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