Background
Kurt Daluege was born in Kreuzburg, Upper Silesia, on 15 September 1897.
Kurt Daluege was born in Kreuzburg, Upper Silesia, on 15 September 1897.
During World War I he served as a volunteer in an assault division. Daluege briefly worked as a foreman in an engineering firm before becoming the leader of a unit in the notorious Rossbach Freikorps. A swashbuckler and rowdy in his early years, Daluege joined the NSDAP in 1922 and on 22 March 1926 founded and led the first SA group in Berlin and North Germany. Leader of the Berlin SA until 1928, he then transferred to the SS, organizing special shock-battalions for surprise attacks on opponents, and for the next five years was Commander of SS units in East Germany. In the spring of 1933, the young SS officer was closely linked to Goering and given the special task of purging the police apparatus and political opponents of the régime. In May 1933 he was put in charge of the police division in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior and made Commander of all Prussian Police Forces. As the chief mediator between the SS and the Prussian State hierarchy.
In 1933 Daluege was appointed Ministerial Director and a Prussian State Councillor and became a member of the Reichstag, representing the electoral district of East Berlin. A year later he was made SS-Obergruppenfuhrer and in 1936 Commander of the German Ordrtungspolizei (which comprised the urban and administrative police, the coastal police, fire service, passive defence, etc.) and Chief of its High Command. Already Chief of Security Police in the central office of the SD, Daluege also established the Kameradschaftsbund Deutscher Poli¬zeibeamten - a National Socialist umbrella organization of police officials.
Responsible for the suppression of internal revolt, for protecting the lives of Hitler and other Nazi leaders, Daluege was the most powerful policeman in the SS, second in rank only to his rival, Heinrich Himmler, who controlled the political police. It was under Daluege’s supervision that the Ordnungspolizei was comprehensively Nazified and militarized. After Heydrich's death, Daluege became Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia in 1942, later being held responsible for the destruction of Lidice and other terrorist measures taken against the Czech population. He was executed by the Czechs on 24 October 1946.
In 1937, Daluege and his wife adopted a son. Afterwards, Daluege's wife bore three biological children, sons born in 1938 and 1940 and a daughter born in 1942.