Gustav Simon (2 August 1900– 18 December 1945) was a Nazi Party official who served as Gauleiter of Gau Moselland from 1931 to 1945 and, from 1940 until 1942, as Chief of Civil Administration in occupied Luxembourg. In this position, he was chiefly responsible for the Holocaust in Luxembourg.
Early years
Gustav Simon's father was a railway official. His parents farmed small plots on the Hunsrück. Simon went to a volksschule in Saarbrücken, and thereafter underwent training as a schoolteacher in Merzig. Although he passed his teaching examinations, he was not able to secure a teaching job. He then decided to work towards obtaining his abitur, and meanwhile he was employed as a railway assistant in Hermeskeil and as a customs broker from 1920 to 1922. He passed his abitur, and studied economics and law at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main from 1922 to 1925, planning to become a teacher. In 1923, while still a student, Simon was a member of a völkisch College Group (völkische Hochschulgruppe) in Frankfurt, and was elected to the position of Second Chairman that year.
Nazi Party career
In 1924, when the Nazi Party was banned after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Simon joined the National Socialist Freedom Party, a Nazi front organization. After the Nazi Party was re-founded, Simon joined it on 14 August 1925, with membership number 17,017, thereby becoming one of the "Old Fighters" ("alte Kämpfer") who would later automatically be decorated with the Golden Party Badge. Shortly after joining, Simon founded the Hochschulgruppe Frankfurt of the National Socialist German Students' League and in 1927, he was chosen by the majority of students to be President of the General Students' Committee. In addition, he had already founded a local NSDAP local branch (Ortsgruppe) in Hermeskeil in autumn 1926. After completing his studies in May 1927, he was employed as a business teacher in Völklingen. Before a year was even out, though, he left the school and began working full-time for the Nazi Party at the invitation of Robert Ley, then the Gauleiter of the southern Rhineland.
Beginning in 1928, Simon quickly rose in the Party hierarchy. In 1928 he became NSDAP Bezirksleiter (District Leader) for the Trier-Birkenfeld district, and in 1929 for the Koblenz-Trier district. In November 1929, he was elected to the Koblenz City Council and the Landtag of Rhine Province. On 14 September 1930, he was elected a member of the Reichstag for electoral district 21, Koblenz-Trier. On 1 June 1931, Adolf Hitler appointed him Gauleiter of the newly created Gau Koblenz-Trier when Ley’s Gau was divided in two. In 1933 Simon published a Nazi newspaper, the Coblenzer Nationalblatt and served as its editor-in-chief. After the Nazi seizure of power, he was appointed the President of the Rhineland Landtag on 10 April 1933 and became a member of the Prussian State Council in July 1933. In 1934 came an appointment as a Prussian Provincial Councilor for the Rhineland and, in September 1935, he was made a member of the Academy for German Law. Unlike most other Gauleiters, Simon did not belong to the SA or the SS; however, he was a member of the National Socialist Motor Corps (Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrerkorps, NSKK) being promoted to NSKK-Gruppenführer on 9 November 1935 and NSKK-Obergruppenführer on 30 January 1939.
At the start of the Second World War, Simon was made a member of the Defense Committee for Wehrkreis (Military District) XII that included his Gau, which was renamed Moselland on 24 January 1941. On 16 November 1942, Simon was named Reich Defense Commissioner for the Gau. In this capacity, he had responsibility for civil defense, air defense and evacuation matters, as well as wartime rationing and suppression of black market activity.
Simon had the reputation of a notoriously corrupt administrator. Considered by many as one of the least able and most arrogant of the Gauleiters, his jurisdiction was riddled with corruption and nepotism. Due to his short stature and toxic personality, he was derisively referred to as the "Toadstool of Hermeskeil."