Arthur Nebe
Arthur Nebe (13 November 1894 – 3 March 1945) was a German police official and SS-Gruppenführer who directed the Reich Criminal Police (Kripo) from 1936 until 1943 and commanded Einsatzgruppe B, a mobile killing squad that murdered over 45,000 Jews, Communists, and others in Belarus during the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union.[1][2]
Nebe began his career in the Weimar Republic's criminal police after serving in World War I, rising to commissioner by 1923 before aligning with the Nazis, joining the party in 1931 and the SS in 1933; he contributed to the regime's early repressive apparatus, including Gestapo operations and the T-4 euthanasia program's development of gas van technology for mass killings.[1][3]
Though deeply complicit in Nazi crimes—such as experimenting with explosives and carbon monoxide gassing on psychiatric patients and overseeing Einsatzgruppe shootings—Nebe developed reservations after events like the Night of the Long Knives and secretly aided the military resistance from 1938 onward, supplying intelligence on SS activities and participating in the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler by securing police support post-coup; after the plot's failure, he went into hiding, was betrayed and arrested in January 1945, and executed by hanging following a Volksgerichtshof trial.[1][4][5]