Task Force Austria

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The Einsatzkommando Österreich was a special police unit formed from members of the so-called German Security and Order Police, which, on the occasion of the annexation of Austria to the German Reich, moved into Austria in March 1938 together with the military occupation associations of the German Wehrmacht to carry out special assignments in connection with the To fight against political and ideological opponents.

General tasks of the task force

The Task Force Austria was formed on the basis of a special order from Adolf Hitler to the chief of the security police and the SD and head of the secret state police office Reinhard Heydrich . Heydrich described the activities of the Einsatzkommando Austria and three later, similar commands that were set up on the occasion of the German invasions in the Sudetenland , in what is known as the rest of Czech Republic and in Poland , in a memo dated July 2, 1940 as follows:

“[The Einsatzkommando] had systematically through arrest, confiscation and seizure of the most important political material violent blows against the imperial elements in the world from the camp of emigration , freemasonry , Judaism and political-church opponents as well as the 2nd and 3rd due to the prepared work . International led. "

Individual actions of the task force in Austria

The members of the task force carried out a large number of different assignments in Austria, especially in the Vienna area:

At the beginning of the German invasion of Austria, the member of the Einsatzkommando Werner Göttsch was initially deployed as head of the so-called leader protection escort command, which was to escort Adolf Hitler on the way to Vienna and guard it there. After Hitler dismissed the command in Salzburg because he did not need it because he already had his own Führerbegleitkommando , Göttsch was then sent to Vienna, where he and four to five other men guarded the Austrian imperial insignia for one night , as feared in Berlin that Austrian nationalists could steal them. The insignia was removed the next day.

In the first days after the occupation of Vienna, on behalf of the command leader Franz Six, Göttsch smashed the so-called Spann circle, a political circle around the conservative state theorist Othmar Spann that the SD classified as opposing .

The member of the Einsatzkommando Horst Böhme kidnapped the diplomat Wilhelm Freiherr von Ketteler on the night of March 13-14, 1938, probably on the basis of a special order from Heydrich and without the knowledge of the leadership of the Einsatzkommando, whom he murdered soon after and took him to the Danube threw.

In Vienna, the task force relied on Austrian police forces, occupation troops, the general SS and members of the now legalized NS underground organizations in order to cope with the extensive arrest lists. The Red-White-Red Book wrote:

"According to unanimous estimates, the first wave of arrests in March 1938 already comprised over 70,000 people. And as a result, Austrian patriots disappeared day after day, individually and in large numbers, in the dungeons and prisons of the Gestapo for weeks, months, years, forever. "

Establishment and composition of the task force

Forty to sixty people belonged to the Austrian Einsatzkommando, most of whom were employees of the Secret State Police Office and the SD Main Office in Berlin. Franz Six, the head of the enemy research department in the Secret State Police Office, was entrusted with the compilation and management of the command.

On March 12, 1938, the Kommando traveled by special train from Berlin to Munich and from there drove to Vienna in automobiles.

Adolf Eichmann later reported on the preparations for the work of the task force:

“One day the order was issued that a large number of members of the Reich Security Main Office had to be assigned to a three-shift permanent service in preparation for Austria. […] The work: thousands of personal names, organizations, newspapers and magazines, authorities, schools, etc. had to be rewritten on special index cards from long lists that some agency of the RSHA compiled over the course of time. It was a special index card that I never saw before. "

Members of the task force

So far, historical research has identified the following people as members of the task force:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Buchheim , p. 71.
  2. ↑ Jonny Moser: The persecution of Jews in Austria 1938-1945 , 1966, p. 5.
  3. ↑ "Then I gave Dr. Lionheart a slap in the face". Back from a spy trip, Adolf Eichmann takes over the "Judaism" section in Vienna - continuation of the documentation of his memories (part 9). In: The world. August 21, 1999, accessed September 15, 2014 .