Karl Wahl

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Karl Wahl (disambiguation) .

Karl Wahl

Karl Wahl (born September 24, 1892 in Aalen , † February 18, 1981 in Vaterstetten ) was a German politician (NSDAP) , Gauleiter of the Swabian Gau during the National Socialist rule and SS-Obergruppenführer .

Life

Between 1899 and 1910, Wahl attended elementary school and advanced vocational training school in his hometown. In 1910 he took up an apprenticeship as a locksmith. In the same year he joined the 2nd Bavarian Jäger Battalion in Aschaffenburg as a two-year-old volunteer . In 1911 he switched to the medical service; In 1912 he was accepted into the career of a medical sergeant. From 1912 he was stationed in Landau ; from 1913 he headed the Army Medical School of the II Bavarian Army Corps .

During the First World War , Wahl was used as a front-line medic from August 1914 to December 1918. In July 1917 he was promoted to medical deputy sergeant . Until October 1919 he was head of the Hessingschen Anstalt founded by Friedrich Hessing in Göggingen . Most recently head of the chief medical office of the Augsburg garrison hospital , Wahl was retired from the army in November 1921. Between 1921 and 1933 he was employed by the city of Augsburg.

In 1921 Wahl joined the Augsburg local branch of the NSDAP and the SA . During the prohibition of the NSDAP he was active in the Völkisch-Soziale Block ; after the re-admission of the party, he rejoined the NSDAP on February 26, 1925 ( membership number 9,803). Between 1925 and 1929 Wahl was the local group leader and district leader of the NSDAP in Augsburg and led the SA standard there. In the state elections in May 1928 he was elected to parliament. On October 1, 1928 he was appointed Gauleiter for Swabia. In February 1931 he founded the National Socialist Neue National-Zeitung Augsburg , whose editor he remained until 1945.

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists election received a mandate in the functionless in November 1933 Reichstag . In 1934 he was appointed regional president of Swabia. In August 1934 Wahl became SS honorary leader ( SS member number 228.017) with the rank of SS group leader . On February 2, 1942, Wahl asked Himmler in writing why he had not been promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer - in contrast to other Gauleiter like Murr , Sauckel or Hildebrandt . Inquiries from Himmler led to a report from the SD headquarters in Augsburg, according to which the Gauleiter did not give preferential support to the SS and rarely appeared in SS uniform, but provided SS leaders with special support in emergencies. On March 31, 1942, Himmler decided that the lack of promotion was due to the fact that he was not Reich Governor like the other Gauleiter . Wahl finally achieved the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer on August 1, 1944; before that, in November 1942, following the reorganization of the Reich Defense Districts, he was appointed Reich Defense Commissioner for the Gau Schwaben.

Augsburg was handed over to the American troops on April 28, 1945 without a fight. The Augsburg Freedom Movement , a citizens' movement, responded to their ultimatum to hand them over . "Wahl saw no reason to take action, but he stayed in the city." On May 10, 1945, Wahl was captured by American troops in Augsburg.

In the run-up to the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals , Wahl was heard as a witness in July 1945. In the denazification in December 1948, Wahl was classified as the “main culprit” and sentenced to three and a half years in a labor camp, although 40 months' imprisonment counted towards the sentence. In addition, property and property were confiscated. After Wahl had already spent several months in the hospital due to physical weakness, he was discharged on September 23, 1949. Initially active as a textile salesman, Wahl was head of the library at Messerschmitt AG in Munich from 1958 to 1968 .

literature

• Bernhard Gotto: The invention of a “decent National Socialism”. Politics of the past of the Swabian administrative elite in the post-war period , in: Peter Fassl (ed.), The end of the war in Swabia. Scientific conference of homeland care of the Swabian district and the Swabian Research Society on 8/9 April 2005, Augsburg 2006, pp. 263-283, ISBN 3-89639-552-1 .
• Sven Keller: "Every village is a fortress" or a "gentle" end of the war in Swabia? Volkssturm, perseverance and the role of Gauleiter Wahls in the end of the war in 1945 , in: Peter Fassl (ed.), The end of the war in Swabia. Scientific conference of homeland care of the Swabian district and the Swabian Research Society on 8/9 April 2005 , Augsburg 2006, pp. 23-54, ISBN 3-89639-552-1 .
• Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform: the members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the Volkish and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 . P. 703 f.
• Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-10-091052-4 .
• Wolfgang Proske (Hrsg.): Nazi victims from eastern Württemberg (=  perpetrators - helpers - free riders . Volume 3 ). 2nd, revised edition. Kugelberg, Gerstetten 2014, ISBN 978-3-945893-02-9 , pp. 222 ff .

Web links

• Karl Wahl in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Karl Wahl in the parliamentary database at the House of Bavarian History
• Joachim Lilla: Choice, Karl. In: ders .: Minister of State, senior administrative officials and (NS) functionaries in Bavaria from 1918 to 1945.

Individual evidence

1. ^ The correspondence with: Helmut Heiber (Ed.): The normal madness under the swastika. Trivial and strange things from the files of the Third Reich. Herbig, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7766-1968-6 , documents 138a, b, c, d.
2. ^ Source: "History of the City of Augsburg from Roman Times to the Present" page 634, ISBN 3-8062-0283-4 .