that Nebe inflated these numbers to account for executions purposely
never carried out. Moreover, working with a friend of Hans Bernd
Gisevius, he conveyed inside information regarding the Gestapo’s
hunt for members of the anti-Hitler resistance. As an important link
in the assassination plot of 20 July 1944, Nebe agreed to have police
squads on alert to arrest prominent Nazi functionaries in Berlin once
Hitler’s death had been established. When the plot failed, he fled on
24 July to an island in the Wannsee, erroneously believing that the
Gestapo had discovered his involvement. Betrayed by a former mis-
tress, a criminal inspector named Heide Gobbin, Nebe was arrested
four months later and court-martialed. He was hanged in Berlin on
3 March 1945.NEIBER, GERHARD (1929– ). One of the four deputy ministers of
the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), Gerhard Neiber was
born in Neutitschein, Czechoslovakia (now Nový Jičín, Czech Re-
public), on 20 April 1929, the son of a worker. Following World War
II, he held several police positions in Erfurt before becoming an early
member of the MfS. After working in different capacities in Weimar,
Erfurt, and Schwerin, Neiber headed the MfS regional administration
in Frankfurt an der Oder between1960–1980. He received a doctorate
from the Juristische Hochschule des MfS in 1965.
Appointed deputy minister to Erich Mielke in 1980, Neiber be-
came responsible for border control and later for counterintelligence
in the army and police. Particularly noteworthy was the counterter-
rorism unit (Department XXII) under his command, which grew to
more than 800 employees and maintained contacts with the Irish Re-
publican Army, the Palestine Liberation Front, the Red Army Faction
in West Germany, and the Basque separatist organization Euskadi Ta
Askatasuna. Dismissed in 1990, Neiber faced charges six years later
for his alleged involvement in the attempted murder of an “escape
facilitator” in Hamburg.
NEUMANN, FRANZ (1900–1954). A leading German émigré
scholar who functioned as a Soviet double agent within the U.S.
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Franz Neumann was born in
Kattowitz (now Katowice, Poland) on 23 May 1900. A lawyer in
Berlin, he maintained a close affiliation to the Sozialdemokratische
318 • NEIBER, GERHARD