Johann Wanner (resistance fighter)

Johann Wanner (born January 23, 1919 in Seefeld in Tirol ; † June 1, 1942 in Zams , Austria) was an Austrian resistance fighter against the Nazi regime.

Life and activity

In 1939, Wanner was forced into compulsory Reich labor service in Haselstauden near Dornbirn . For the summer months he was transferred to the RAD command camp at Schloss Mentlberg near Innsbruck . After a collision with a RAD field master, he was transferred back to Haselstauden.

When numerous comrades from the Free Austria resistance group were arrested, he fled to Switzerland in August 1939.

He was classified as an enemy of the state by the National Socialist police. In the spring of 1940 - as he was mistakenly suspected to be in Great Britain - he was placed on the special wanted list by the Reich Security Main Office , a directory of people who in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the occupying forces of the occupying forces of the SS with special Priority should be located and arrested.

After learning of Wanner's whereabouts in Switzerland, a Gestapo spy wrote a bogus letter to Wanner claiming that his father was dying and that he wanted to see him. Thereupon he decided to return home secretly: On May 31, 1942 he crossed the border into Austria near Nauders in Tyrol. He was discovered by a patrol and seriously injured by a shot in the back of the head near Birkach, in the Pfunds community. After being admitted to the Zams hospital, he died the following day.

literature

• Johann Holzner: Witnesses of the Resistance: a documentation about the victims of National Socialism in North, East and South Tyrol from 1938 to 1945. Tyrolia-Verlag, Innsbruck 1977, p. 105.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Wanner on the special wanted list (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .