Kusch, Oskar-Heinz August Wilhelm, born 06-04-1918 in Berlin, 
the son of Heinz Kusch, was the gifted only child of a wealthy family in Schöneberg, an upper-class neighborhood in southwestern Berlin. His father, Heinz—the director of a large insurance company—was a World War I veteran, but also a member of the Freemasons, whose secret rituals and freethinking traditions later drew reprisals from the Third Reich. An intelligent, sensitive youth with an athletic physique and a flair for water sports, Oskar enjoyed a liberal upbringing that shielded him from the worst excesses of Nazification after 1933.
As a boy, Kusch joined the Bündische Jugend, 
an alliance of youth groups inspired by the International Boy Scouts. His club embraced the teachings of classical art, literature, and philosophy, planting the seeds that would inform his refined views as an adult. In his teens, Kusch started showing what would become a lifelong tendency to thumb his nose at Nazi orthodoxy: after the Hitler Youth 
absorbed the Bündische Jugend in 1935, Kusch quit but continued to attend clandestine meetings of his old organization. This landed him on a register of “politically unreliable individuals” with the Gestapo 
, Germany’s notorious secret police. As a result, although he had graduated high school with honors in autumn 1936, Kusch failed to obtain a police certificate of good political standing and proof of “desirable personal conduct” from the Gestapo—a criterium for entering higher education and many civil professions.
This problem evaporated when the 18-year-old was drafted for military service in April 1937. Thanks to his experience as a sailor in civilian regattas, Kusch was advised to join the Kriegsmarine, the German navy. To his great relief, he discovered that the navy, in particular among the branches of the German armed forces, was considered a place of political independence, where liberal ideas were tolerated and one could escape persecution from the “Brown Shirts” (Hitler’s stormtroopers, 
whose uniforms became synonymous with the regime’s brutality). As Kusch would soon discover, that didn’t keep Nazi ideologues and spies from joining the navy’s ranks, U-boat forces included.
Oskar-Heinz so joined the Kriegsmarine as an officer candidate in 1937 and was inducted into Crew 1937a. Other members of his Crew went on to have distinguished naval careers, among them U-boat Aces Korvettenkapitän Siegfried von Forstner, (Crew U-402), Kapitänleutnant (Crew 37a) Hans-Günther Lange, Kapitänleutnant (Crew 37a) Siegfried Koitschka and Kapitänleutnant Karl-Heinz Marbach.
His early naval career was unexceptional: from being transferred to the U-boat arm in 1940, he served on U-103 until 1943 before taking over command of the long-range type IXC U-boat U-154. Korvettenkapitän Siegfried von Forstner, 
age 33, was also a recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. He and his entire crew of U-402 were killed in action on 13-10-1943. Kapitänleutnant Hans-Günther Lange 
survived the war and passed away on 03-04-2014; he was 97 years old. Siegfried Koitschka survived the war also and spent more than two years in Allied captivity before he was released in June 1946. He died 07-05-2002 (age 84) in Lohra / Hessenand Kapitänleutnant Karl-Heinz Marbac also survived the war and died 27-09-1995 (aged 78)
Kusch took U-154 
on two patrols in the South Atlantic, sinking three large vessels totalling over 23,000 tons, and was by all accounts a capable and efficient officer: handsome, athletic, intelligent and popular with his men, direct sometimes to the point of outspokenness.
The crew strength of the U 154 was 48 men, including four officers (commander, 1st and 2nd watch officer [W.O.] and chief engineer [L.I.]) as well as 44 non-commissioned officers and men. Lieutenant at sea Ulrich Abel, 
the I. W.O., was born on 03-03-1912 and went to sea from 1929 to 1932 after graduating from high school. In 1938 he received his doctorate from the Prussian University of Greifswald. iur. PhD. He died as commander of U 193 after 28-04-1944, at the latest in May 1944. II. W.O. Lieutenant Heinrich Meyer, Chief Engineer Kurt Druschel, was a “high Hitler youth leader” before he joined the Navy.
Death and burial ground of Kusch, Oskar-Heinz August Wilhelm.
Kusch took U-154 on two patrols in the South Atlantic, sinking three large vessels totalling over 23,000 tons, and was by all accounts a capable and efficient officer: handsome, athletic, intelligent and popular with his men, direct sometimes to the point of outspokenness.
On 26-01-1944, Oberleutnant zur .Sea Oskar Kusch was condemned to death by court martial, following a denouncement for alleged “Wehrkraftzersetzung” (sedition and defeatism) made by his former IWO Dr. Ulrich Abel. Abel had been discontented at Kusch rating him unfit to command his own boat after his first patrol on U-154, and although Kusch’s report after a second patrol classed him as fit for command, Abel was enraged by being described in it as “inflexible and rigid” and of only average ability. Abel had turned the other officers on U-154 against Kusch after receiving the first report, and since he held a doctorate in law, was well aware that the accusation he made could very likely result in a death sentence.
One of eleven politically motivated accusations against Kusch was that he had ordered a photograph of Adolf Hitler removed from U-154’s wardroom to a less conspicuous location, commenting that “We are not in the business here of practising idolatry.”
At his trial his officers took the stand against him. His defence team pointed to his successful career and record of honourable service, and claimed that he only stated his opinions to his officers to provoke debate and to raise awareness of current affairs and Germany’s situation.
He was also sentenced to one year in prison for “listening to foreign radio stations”. He was given a chance to ask for clemency, but he chose to stand by his convictions and morals and admit no wrongdoing. He was also found to have had “liberal tendencies” by choosing to leave the almost-mandatory Hitler Youth at the age of 17 (a few months after being forced to join when the non-Nazi youth group he was a member of was dissolved). One of the officers empanelled at the court martial was Oberleutnant. Otto Westphalen, 
a fellow U-boat commander. Oberleutnant. Otto Westphalen, survived the war and died age 87, on 09-01-2008 in Hamburg,
The Oskar Kusch Case
In Jan 1944 Otto Westphalen was empanelled, along with fellow U-boat officer Wolfgang Dittmers, to serve on the court martial of the commander of U-154, Oscar-Heinz Kusch, accused of defeatism and other politically motivated charges by his 1WO, Dr. Ulrich Abel. The prosecutor asked for Kusch to be given ten years imprisonment, but the court imposed the death sentence.
After the war Westphalen and Dittmers tried to defend their actions by stating that Kusch’s political views had somehow made his U-boat less effective in the war effort – a questionable view at best. Kusch’s fellow officers did nothing to save his life (and neither did Grossadmiral, Oberbefehlhaber der Kriegsmarine Karl Dönitz, 
who could probably have chosen to prevent the matter going this far, as he did in the case of other U-boat officers who fell foul of the Gestapo). Oskar Kusch was executed by firing squad on 12-05-1944, age 26, in Kiel-Holtenau. He is buried at the Nordfriedhof in Kiel, Westring, 24118 Kiel. Stadtkreis Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
In 1996, Kusch’s name was finally cleared, and in 1998 the City of Kiel erected a memorial and renamed a street in his honour, 
not far from the firing range where he had been shot 54 years before.
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