Kurt Daluege Character Analysis

Kurt Daluege is the head of a special branch of the German police called the Order Police, which includes city or municipal police, rural police, and community police. Daluege’s main office is in Berlin, which places him at an immense physical distance from the Order Police battalions (including Reserve Police Battalion 101) working in Poland and Russia. Many people willingly joined the Order Police to avoid having to go to war, so it is somewhat ironic that Daluege would then allow these men to be used as shooting squads in both Russia and Poland. As head of a major branch of the German police, Daluege works closely with Heinrich Himmler in creating and distributing orders to shoot Jewish men, women, and children. Like Himmler, Daluege is a “desk murderer,” meaning that he commits murders through creating and distributing these orders even though he himself doesn’t participate in the actual shootings. As a desk murderer, Daluege’s power over human lives is somewhat indirect—he supplies the orders for so many Jews in a certain area to be deported or killed, but it’s the soldiers and policemen who make direct contact with the Jews themselves. Daluege, then, can mentally distance himself from the reality of the violence and this helps him cope with the psychological burden of having caused it.