Kube, Wilhelm, 1887-1943

Wilhelm Kube (13 November 1887 – 22 September 1943) was a German Nazi politician and official who served as the Generalkommissar of Generalbezirk Weißruthenien in the Reichskommissariat Ostland from 1941 to 1943. Kube was involved in numerous far-right and antisemitic organisations before becoming a leader of the Nazi Party in the Free State of Prussia from 1928 to 1933. Kube was an important figure in the German Christian movement and the Gauleiter of Gau Kurmark during the early years of Nazi rule. Kube was removed from all of his offices and forced out of the SS in 1936 due to a scandal over his personal feud with Walter Buch. Kube was rehabilitated into the SS by Heinrich Himmler in 1940 and appointed Generalkommissar of Generalbezirk Weißruthenien based in Minsk shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Kube was a participant in the Holocaust and approved numerous war crimes against Jewish people in western Belarus, having said: "What plague and syphilis are to humanity, are Jews to the white race" though his relatively mild treatment of German Jews during his early rule was controversial. Kube under pressure from his SS superiors was fully compliant in the extermination of German Jews by 1942. Kube was assassinated by Soviet partisan Yelena Mazanik with a bomb in 1943.