Gustav Noske (July 9, 1868 - November 30, 1946) was a German administrator. He served as the Defense Minister of Germany between 1919 and 1920. He was the first defense minister of the Weimar Republic.

Noske was a Social Democratic politician and a member of the German Parliament during World War I. He had long shown an interest in military and colonial affairs. Generally speaking, he was on the right wing of the socialists.

Best known for brutally putting down the Communist and left wing risings throughout Germany in early 1919, Noske was and remains a controversial figure. Willing to use extralegal methods to crush the incipient anarchy, he permitted and even encouraged the organization and employment of right-wing, ultra-nationalist freikorps; on the other hand, he defused the Kiel Mutiny of 1918 without a shot being fired. One of the few Social Democrats willing to work with the traditional officer class which continued to dominate the Army, Noske is viewed by right-wing historians as having been instrumental in restoring order and preventing a German version of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The fact that the German soldiers and workers seized armed power nearly unbloody and competely without atrocities, and that they displayed ability to orderly set up a concil system which could have replaced the Kaiser-loyal bureaucracy Ebert and Noske wished to keep, demonstrates that Russian Bolshevism was never a danger, while the freikorps butchered these attempts to transform the Reich in the very manner the SPD had always promised to. Noske himself was deeply shocked when he finally realized (based on talks with General Hans von Seeckt) that the German Army's chief loyalty was not to the state, but to itself.

He was president of the Province of Hanover from 1920 on, but was dismissed by the Nazis in 1933. In 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo under suspicion of complicity in anti-Hitler plots. Noske was freed by advancing Allied troops and lived in Hanover afterwards. He died while preparing for a lecture tour of the United States.

Politicians of the Social Democratic Party of Germany | 1868 births | 1946 deaths | German ministers

Gustav Noske | Gustav Noske | Gustav Noske | 古斯塔夫·諾斯克