Albert Krebs

Who was Albert Krebs?

Albert Krebs was the Nazi Gauleiter in Hamburg in the time of the Third Reich.

Krebs, a higher archive official's son, did his Abitur in 1917 after finishing school at the Gymnasium in Aschaffenburg and thereafter reported to the military as a volunteer. He was not deployed in the First World War.

Krebs was discharged in March 1919, leaving him free to begin studies in Germanistics, history, national economics, and English language in Würzburg, Tübingen, Marburg and Frankfurt am Main. In 1922, he graduated and in the same year, he joined the Nazi party, the NSDAP.

Krebs had been busying himself in the youth movement even before the war. Furthermore, during his studies, he was in the Gildenschaft and in the Freikorps von Epp and Oberland.

In March 1925, Krebs was working at the Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfen-Verband in Spandau in Berlin. After the reorganisation of the NSDAP, Krebs joined it in May 1926, and was appointed on 4 November 1926 leader of a group that had formerly been downgraded from Nazi Gau to "local group". After the group was once again raised to Gau on 26 February 1928, Krebs became Gauleiter of Hamburg.