Kurt Daluege was a senior Nazi official who became the de facto Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. He was born on September 15, 1897, in Kreuzburg, then part of the German Empire.
Daluege was still a high school student when World War I began on July 28, 1914. After completing his school exams in 1916, he volunteered for the German Army and mainly fought on the Western Front, where he was severely wounded.
He was hospitalized and declared 25 percent disabled. In 1918 he was discharged as a sergeant and awarded the Iron Cross Second Class for bravery.
After World War I ended on November 11, 1918, Daluege became leader of the Upper Silesian Defense, a veterans organization engaged in combat with Poles in that region. He then worked temporarily in Berlin as a factory worker and studied civil engineering at the Technical University of Berlin from 1921 to 1924.
During this time he was involved in various nationalist and anti-Semitic associations, and in 1922 he became a member of the Nazi Party. He supported Adolf Hitler during the failed coup attempt on November 8 and 9, 1923.
That event, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, saw Hitler lead a coalition group in an attempt to overthrow the German government. The plotters hoped to march on Berlin to launch a national revolution, but the insurrection was ultimately unsuccessful.
Units of the Munich police force clashed with Nazi Storm Troopers as they marched into the city center. The two groups exchanged fire, resulting in the deaths of 16 members of the Nazi Party and four police officers.
Hitler was convicted of high treason and sentenced to five years in prison, but he only served eight months. During the putsch, Daluege served as a liaison officer in Berlin, a service that Hitler highly valued throughout his life.
In 1926 Daluege became a deputy party leader in Berlin to Joseph Goebbels, who several years later would become the minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany. The same year he joined the SA, eventually becoming its district leader in Berlin.
The SA, also known as the Sturmabteilung, was the Nazi paramilitary force commonly referred to as the Stormtroopers or the Brownshirts due to the color of their uniforms. In October 1926 Daluege married, and together with his wife they adopted one child and later had three more of their own.
In July 1930, at Hitler's personal request, Daluege left the SA and joined the SS with the rank of SS senior leader. The SS headquarters in Berlin was strategically located across from the SA headquarters at that time.
The SS was a branch of the SA, and Daluege's role was to spy on both the SA and opponents of the Nazi Party. The SA leader in Berlin during this period, Walter Stennes, voiced significant dissatisfaction within the SA and demanded increased funding and political influence within the National Socialist movement.
When Hitler dismissed his concerns, Stennes believed action was necessary to assert authority. On August 30, 1930, Joseph Goebbels attempted to deliver a speech at a rally in Berlin but was refused protection by the Berlin SA.
After Goebbels enlisted SS assistance to secure the event and protect the Berlin party headquarters, tensions escalated. The situation reached a boiling point when the SA stormed the Nazi Party building, leading to injuries among the SS members and significant damage.
During the attack, Daluege's SS men defended the building and stopped the assault. After the incident, Hitler immediately met with the SA leadership to address the crisis and promised significant improvements in the SA's financial condition.
In September 1930 Hitler assumed supreme command of the SA, and in January 1931 he appointed his close friend Ernst Röhm as the SA's chief of staff. Although this move temporarily diffused the crisis, the underlying structural conflicts between the SA's ambitions and the Nazi Party's leadership remained dormant for several years.
In a heartfelt open letter to Daluege, Adolf Hitler praised the unwavering loyalty of the SS, proclaiming, "SS man, your honor is loyalty." This powerful declaration resonated deeply, inspiring the SS to adopt "My honor is loyalty" as its official motto.
Hitler then promoted both Daluege and Heinrich Himmler to the rank of SS senior group leader. Daluege was assigned leadership of the SS in Northern Germany, while Himmler took charge of the Southern units from Munich. In addition, Himmler served as the head of the entire SS.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. In September of the same year, Daluege was transferred to the Prussian Interior Ministry, where he took charge of the non-political police holding the rank of SS major general.
He continued to amass power within Germany, and in November 1933 he secured a seat in the German Parliament. The inherent tensions between the SA and the Nazi Party continued to grow under the leadership of Röhm, whose ambitions were higher than those of Stennes.
As early as April 1934, Heinrich Himmler and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich began conspiring with Hermann Göring, the president of the German Parliament, to persuade Hitler to eliminate Röhm. Röhm, along with the SA leadership, wanted to replace the military elites with fanatical Nazis.
However, Hitler, the Nazi Party leadership, and the SS leadership understood that the regime needed to collaborate with traditional elites to consolidate power and prepare the nation for a war of expansion. During the purge known as the Night of the Long Knives, which lasted from June 30 to July 2, 1934, 85 members of the SA leadership and political opponents were killed, with Röhm shot dead in his cell after refusing to commit suicide.
Daluege during this time took a harsh stance against former SA comrades, viewing them as threats to society. By November 1934, Daluege's authority over the uniform police had expanded across all of Germany.
His command now included a diverse array of forces, from municipal and rural police to fire brigades and aid services. In 1936 Himmler appointed Daluege chief of the Order Police, or Orpo, the uniform police force in Nazi Germany.
At the same time, Reinhard Heydrich took control of the Sicherheitspolizei, or Security Police. Heydrich, who viewed Daluege as a former rival from their early power struggles, disrespectfully referred to him as "Dummy" or "the idiot."
In the following years until 1939, Daluege was pushed back and largely marginalized by the SS leadership under Himmler and Heydrich, but remained in office due to his good contact with Hitler. By August 1939, Daluege had a master force of over 120,000 active-duty personnel under his command in the Orpo.
World War II started on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. In a report dated September 5, 1939, outlining the methods to be employed during pacification operations in Poland, Daluege's office gave instructions that the leader of a battalion was ordered to take the most drastic actions and measures, such as the hanging of guerrilla fighters from light poles as a visible symbol for the entire population.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Daluege was involved in the mass shooting of almost 4,500 Jews in Belarus. Additionally, in October 1941 Daluege signed deportation orders for Jews from Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, sending them to Riga and Minsk.
In July 1942 he attended a conference led by Himmler discussing the expansion of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan aimed at exterminating approximately 2 million Jews in German-occupied Poland. On May 27, 1942, Daluege was in Prague for medical treatment when Reinhard Heydrich was mortally wounded by Czechoslovak paratroopers Josef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš.
Heydrich contracted an infection and died eight days later. Although he was not Hitler's first choice, Daluege was appointed as the next Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia alongside Karl Hermann Frank, the Protectorate Secretary of State and chief of police.
They played a key role in the civilian massacre and destruction of the Czech villages of Lidice and Ležáky, which occurred on June 9, 1942, to avenge Heydrich's death. They ordered the shooting of all men in Lidice, sent all the women to concentration camps, and placed children considered worthy of Germanization in the care of SS families. Children not deemed suitable for Germanization were also murdered.
In total, 340 inhabitants of Lidice were slaughtered: 192 men, 60 women, and 88 children. All the men and boys were shot and buried in a mass grave, while the children were murdered in gas vans at the Chełmno extermination camp. Additionally, four pregnant women were forced to undergo abortions in the same hospital where Heydrich died.
After a year, Daluege struggled to manage his roles as chief of the Orpo in Berlin and de facto Reich Protector in Prague. In June 1943 Hitler relieved him of his duties as Deputy Reich Protector following a second heart attack.
In the same month, Daluege requested medical leave from his position as chief of the Orpo, and in August he resigned from all his positions. As a reward for his service, in 1944 Hitler awarded Daluege an estate located in northeastern Germany by the Baltic Sea, valued at 610,000 Reichsmarks, an equivalent of more than 4.6 million United States dollars today.
He retired there until the end of the war. However, he did not escape justice. In May 1945 Daluege was apprehended by British forces, first held in Luxembourg, then transferred to Nuremberg, where he faced charges as a major war criminal.
Extradited to Czechoslovakia in September 1946, he stood trial for numerous crimes against humanity committed in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Throughout the trial, Daluege was arrogant, openly defying Czechoslovak authorities and insisting that only the German Reich had the authority to judge him.
He further declared himself a beloved role model for several million German policemen and a loyal servant of Adolf Hitler who committed no crimes but merely fulfilled his duty as a German citizen of the Reich. However, his arrogance and lies did not help him, and he was convicted on all charges and sentenced to death.
Kurt Daluege was 49 years old when he was hanged on October 24, 1946, at Pankrác Prison in Prague. Because of his failing health, he hardly noticed that he was going to his execution. There were no tears shed for Kurt Daluege.