Arthur Nebe
A high-ranking SS officer who helped orchestrate the Holocaust before a failed plot against Hitler led to his execution.
1894–1945 (age 51)·German SS functionary and Holocaust perpetrator·Birthday: November 13·The Lost Generation
Biography
Arthur Nebe’s story is one of profound moral contradiction within the Nazi regime. A career policeman who rose to command the Reich Criminal Police, he was an early member of the SS and a willing participant in the regime's worst crimes. In 1941, he volunteered to lead Einsatzgruppe B, a mobile death squad responsible for the systematic murder of tens of thousands of Jews and others behind the Eastern Front. His technical police mind was applied to the grim logistics of genocide. Yet, disillusioned by the war's course, Nebe became involved with the German resistance, connected to the conspirators of the July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Hitler. When the plot failed, he went into hiding but was eventually betrayed, arrested, and sentenced to death by the Nazi regime he had served and then betrayed. Executed in March 1945, Nebe remains a complex and odious figure: a mass murderer who ultimately turned against the system that enabled his atrocities, not out of repentance for his victims, but from political and strategic calculation.
The Lost Generation
1883–1900
Came of age during World War I. Disillusioned by the carnage, they rejected the certainties of the Victorian era and built modernism from the wreckage — in art, literature, and politics.
Arthur was born in 1894, placing them squarely in The Lost Generation. The events that shaped this generation — world wars, depression, and rapid industrialization — shaped the world they entered and the choices available to them.
#1 When Arthur Was Born
The biggest hits of 1894
Arthur's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1894Born
President: Grover Cleveland
1899Started school
President: William McKinley
1907Became a teenager
Financial panic grips Wall Street
President: Theodore Roosevelt
1910Could drive
Halley's Comet makes its closest approach
President: William Howard Taft
1912Could vote
Titanic sinks on its maiden voyage
President: William Howard Taft
1915Turned 21
The Lusitania is sunk by a German U-boat
President: Woodrow Wilson
1924Turned 30
First Winter Olympics held in Chamonix, France
President: Calvin Coolidge"It Had to Be You" — Isham Jones
1934Turned 40
Gas: $0.19/galPresident: Franklin D. Roosevelt"Stars Fell on Alabama" — Jack TeagardenBest Picture: It Happened One Night
1944Turned 50
D-Day: Allied forces land at Normandy
Gas: $0.21/galHome: $3,400Min wage: $0.30/hrPresident: Franklin D. Roosevelt"Swinging on a Star" — Bing CrosbyBest Picture: Going My Way
1945Died at 51
WWII ends; atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Gas: $0.21/galHome: $4,600Min wage: $0.40/hrPresident: Harry S. Truman"Sentimental Journey" — Les Brown & Doris DayBest Picture: The Lost Weekend
Key Achievements
- Served as the head of the Reich Criminal Police Office (Kripo) within the RSHA, the Nazi security apparatus.
- Commanded Einsatzgruppe B in the Soviet Union in 1941, a unit responsible for mass executions of civilians.
- Was a participant in the July 20, 1944, conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
- Pioneered the use of the gas van as a method of mass murder during the Holocaust.
Did You Know?
Before the Nazi rise to power, he was a detective who helped solve a high-profile serial murder case, the 'S-Bahn Murderer'.
Nebe was the only head of an Einsatzgruppe death squad to be involved in the plot to kill Hitler.
His execution was carried out by hanging with piano wire at Plötzensee Prison, a method reserved for conspirators.
He was briefly considered as a potential head of police in a post-Hitler Germany by the plotters.
“The orders were to kill all Jews, including women and children, without exception.”
