38 Facts About Wilhelm Kube

Wilhelm Kube was an important figure in the German Christian movement and the Gauleiter of Gau Kurmark during the early years of Nazi rule.

Wilhelm 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.

Wilhelm Kube was a participant in the Holocaust and approved numerous war crimes 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.

Wilhelm Kube was assassinated by Soviet partisan Yelena Mazanik with a bomb in 1943.

Wilhelm Kube was born on 13 November 1887 in Glogau, Prussian Silesia the son of tax collector Richard Kube and his wife Ida.

Wilhelm 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.

Wilhelm Kube was active in the Volkisch movement as a student and a member of the Berlin chapter of the anti-semitic German Student Association.

In 1917, during World War I, Wilhelm 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.

Wilhelm Kube worked as a journalist for a number of conservative newspapers after the war, and joined the German National People's Party in 1919 when the German Conservative Party merged into it.

Wilhelm Kube co-founded the Bismarck Youth, the DNVP's youth wing, and became leader of that organisation in 1922.

Wilhelm Kube became general-secretary of the Berlin DNVP in 1920 and sat on the Berlin City Council from 1922 to 1923.

Wilhelm 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 Volkisch Freedom Party which had splintered from the DNVP a year earlier.

In May 1924, Wilhelm Kube was elected to the Reichstag for the NSFP though he was not an official member.

Wilhelm Kube continued his affiliation with the DVFP, but infighting within the party led to his explusion in 1926.

Wilhelm Kube joined the Nazi Party in late 1927 and soon became the leader of the party in the Prussian Landtag.

Wilhelm Kube joined the SS on 29 September 1933 with the rank of Oberfuhrer and on 27 January 1934, he was promoted to SS-Gruppenfuhrer.

On 9 September 1935, Wilhelm Kube was made a member of the Academy for German Law.

Wilhelm Kube remained an active Christian as well as a zealous Nazi, becoming one of the leading supporters of the Nazification of Christianity.

Wilhelm Kube was elected as one of the presbyters of the congregation of Gethsemane Church in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin.

Wilhelm Kube remained active in the German Christian movement which sought to "Nazify" the 28 Protestant Landeskirche in Germany.

Buch and Bormann saw to it that Wilhelm Kube was removed from all of his posts on 7 August 1936.

In 1940, Wilhelm Kube was rehabilitated by SS chief Heinrich Himmler and reinstated as a full member of the SS with the rank of Rottenfuhrer.

Wilhelm Kube was appointed to Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria.

Wilhelm Kube pursued a policy of tolerance towards the non-Jewish Belarusian population and sought to prevent them from supporting partisans by both concessions and force.

Wilhelm Kube declared Belarusian as the co-official language alongside German.

On 9 September 1941, Wilhelm Kube made an announcement to the population stating that those found in possession of firearms or ammunition were to be shot.

Wilhelm Kube was outraged by the Slutsk Affair in October 1941, when Einsatzgruppen of the SS and the Lithuanian Auxiliary Police liquidated the Jewish ghetto in Slutsk without his authority.

Wilhelm Kube wrote in protest to his supervisor and Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler:.

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.

Wilhelm 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.

Wilhelm Kube began distinguish between "German Jews" versus the "non-German Jews".

Wilhelm Kube was particularly incensed by the presence of deportees who were Mischlings or had been decorated for their service in World War I In at least one instance, he was able to arrange for the transfer of a Jewish decorated World War I veteran to Theresienstadt.

Wilhelm Kube told Strauch that his methods were "unworthy of a German person and a Germany of Kant and Goethe".

Strauch wrote a letter to Erich von dem Bach recommending Wilhelm 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.

Wilhelm Kube justified this with the fear of the spread of epidemics in the ghettos.

In May 1943, Wilhelm Kube demonstrated a gas chamber to a delegation of Italian fascists.

Wilhelm Kube planned to level Minsk and replace it with a German settlement called Asgard.

At 1:20 am on 22 September 1943, Wilhelm Kube was assassinated in his Minsk apartment by a time-detonated bomb hidden in his mattress.