Kurt Daluege - SS and Police Leader

SS and Police Leader

In July 1930, Daluege in accordance with Hitler's wishes resigned from SA and joined the Schutzstaffel SS with the rank of SS-Oberführer. His SS membership number was 1,119. Daluege's main responsibility was to spy on the SA and political opponents of NSDAP. Daluege's Berlin SS headquarters was strategically placed at the corner of Lützowstrasse and Potsdamerstrasse, across from the SA headquarters.

In August 1930, when Berlin SA leader, Walter Stennes had his men attack the Berlin party headquarters, it was Daluege's SS men who fought in its defence and put it down. Sometime afterwards in an open letter to Daluege, Adolf Hitler proclaimed "SS Mann, deine Ehre heißt Treue!", and "Meine Ehre Heißt Treue" (my honor is called loyalty) was adopted by the SS as its motto. Hitler promoted both Daluege and Heinrich Himmler to the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer with Daluege the SS leader of Northern Germany while Himmler controlled southern SS units out of Munich as well as serving as the National Leader for the entire SS as a whole. In 1932 Daluege became an NSDAP delegate in the Prussian state parliament and in November 1932 was elected to the Reichstag for Electoral District Berlin-Ost, a seat he retained until 1945. At the same time, Hermann Göring moved him to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, where he took over the non-political police with the rank of General der Polizei. In 1936, the entire German police force was reorganized and administrative functions previously exercised by the now largely defunct federal states were reassigned to the Reich Ministry of Interior. The same year, Daluege was appointed, by Wilhelm Frick, the chief of the Ordnungspolizei, Orpo, which gave him administrative, though not executive, authority over most of the uniformed police in Nazi Germany. He commanded the Ordnungspolizei until 1943 reaching the rank of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer und Generaloberst der Polizei.

In 1942 Daluege became the Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. In June 1942, he along with Karl Hermann Frank and other organs of the SS carried out the reprisal orders by having the village of Lidice razed to the ground; the male inhabitants there and all adults in the village of Ležáky murdered. Further, many of the women and children were deported to Nazi concentration camps.