Gustav Adolf Nosske was a German lawyer and SS-Obersturmbannführer. In 1941–42, he commanded Einsatzkommando 12 within Einsatzgruppe D, under the command of Otto Ohlendorf. Tried in the Einsatzgruppen Trial in 1948, Nosske was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released early in 1955.
Career
Gustav Aldolf Nosske was born on 29 December in Halle. After studying law, he became a lawyer in Halle and Aachen. Nosske joined the Nazi Party and the SS in 1933. He became the head of the Gestapo in Aachen in 1935 and then in Frankfurt from September 1936 to June 1941. Ranked Obersturmbannführer in the SS, was appointed chief of Einsatzkommando 12 before the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. In the areas of Donetsk and Novocherkassk, his unit committed many atrocities against the civilian population. In mid-August 1941 Otto Ohlendorf ordered Nosske to transport 11,000 Jews from Mohyliv-Podilskyi to Yampil in order to make them cross the Dniester river and place them in the Romanian zone. During this walk hundreds of Jews were murdered. Between 16 and 28 February 1942, Einsatzkommando 12 killed 721 Jews, 271 communists, 74 partisans and 421 Roma. In April 1942 Nosske joined the RSHA office in Berlin concerning the Occupied Eastern Territories. In 1943, he was appointed head of the "Foreigners and Enemies of the State" division of the Gestapo. He worked as a liaison officer between the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and the RSHA. From August 1943 to September 1944 he was head of the state police in Düsseldorf. He did not execute the order to collect all German Jews of Düsseldorf married to non-Jews for extermination. The order was eventually not enforced.
Trial and conviction
Nosske was arrested by the Allies and brought to trial at the Einsatzgruppen Trial in 1948 at Nuremberg. He was the only accused who did not seek clemency from General Lucius D. Clay in the American sector of occupation. On 10 April 1948, Nosske was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes. He was released early, on 15 December 1951. His later life is unknown. On 26 March 1965, he testified as a witness at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, with Düsseldorf as declared place of residence and legal advisor as profession. He likely died in 1990.
