Otto Wächter

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Otto Gustav Wächter (born July 8, 1901 in Vienna , † July 14, 1949 in Rome , 1918/1919 Baron von Wächter ) was an Austrian lawyer , National Socialist politician and SS leader, most recently with the rank of SS group leader and lieutenant general of the police .

Life

Otto Wächter was the son of the former Austrian Army Minister Josef Wächter , who was appointed knight of the Military Maria Theresa Order in August 1918 , which was also associated with being awarded the title of baron. Guardian studied after passing the Matura Law at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate there in 1924 to Dr. jur. After that, Wächter initially worked as an assessor at the Vienna Higher Regional Court and from 1929 as a criminal defense attorney . From the beginning of January 1932 to July 1934, Wächter worked as a lawyer. Since 1932 he was married to the daughter of a manufacturer, Charlotte Bleckmann , and the couple had a son and a daughter.

From 1919 to 1922 he was a member of the Freikorps Deutsche Wehr and in 1923 he joined the Vienna SA . He was a member of the DNSAP for the first time from October 1923, but suspended his membership from late 1924 / early 1925 due to internal party conflicts. In October 1930 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 301.093). From 1931 he was Gauamtsleiter in Vienna and main training director of the NSDAP in Austria. He was also a party attorney and after the NSDAP ban in Austria from the summer of 1933 he was appointed special representative of the state management to negotiate with Austrian government agencies. In January 1934 he participated in the liberation of Josef Fitzthum from the Vienna Regional Court. According to the Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal , Wächter is said to have given the order to attack during the July coup in 1934 in the course of the murder of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss . As a result of his flight to the German Reich , his Austrian citizenship was revoked. Wächter joined the SS in March 1935 (SS No. 235.338). In the SS he reached the rank of SS group leader in May 1944.

After the " Anschluss of Austria ", Wächter worked from May 24, 1938 to April 30, 1939 as State Commissioner for Reich Minister Arthur Seyß-Inquart . In this function he had officials removed from the Austrian authorities who were not considered reliable by the Nazi regime. In the course of the occupation of Poland , Wächter was appointed governor of the Krakow district in early November 1939 . There he was also the district leader of the NSDAP and head of the commission for refugee issues . In December 1939, Wächter forbade Jewish children from attending school in all public, private and “Jewish schools”. He also discussed methods with Hans Frank and Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger in order to be able to recruit more Polish forced laborers for use in Germany. In May 1940 he ordered thousands of Jews to leave Krakow.

On January 21, 1942, Wächter became governor of the Galicia district, succeeding Karl Lasch, who was on leave . Richard Wendler took over the post of governor of Krakow . From February 1942, there were long-lasting conflicts between the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Ost Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger and Wächter. Krüger accused Wächter, among other things, of acting exclusively as a politician in the Generalgouvernement, but not as an SS leader. From October 1942 Wächter was also an SS leader on the staff of the SS Upper Section East. In his official correspondence and his oral statements, Wächter always represented Hans Frank's tough stance on the final solution to the Jewish question . Wächter had taken many reliable Austrian " old fighters " with them to enforce them. Most of these workers lived like colonial officials in luxury amidst the poor, with corruption and alcoholism being the order of the day. When the Galicia district was captured by the Red Army in the summer of 1944 , Wächter was given the post of head of military administration in Italy in September 1944. After Wächter became a full-time SS leader in August 1944, he was also appointed lieutenant general of the police by the Reichsführer SS . In the final phase of the Second World War , Wächter was still in charge of Eastern Affairs in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).

Wächter went into hiding in Rome in 1945 and successfully faked his death. Under the pseudonym Alfredo Reinhardt , he found refuge in a Catholic college under Bishop Alois Hudal in Rome and died there on July 14, 1949.

In 2017, Wächter's son, Horst von Wächter , returned paintings and a historical map he had stolen from Krakow during World War II to the city authorities.

literature

  • Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS generals. Himmler's reliable vassals. Hermagoras-Verlag, Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0578-4 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . (Updated 2nd edition)
  • Bogdan Musial : German civil administration and persecution of Jews in the Generalgouvernement. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-04208-7 ; 2nd edition, ibid. 2004, ISBN 3-447-05063-2 .
  • Magdalena Ogórek: Lista Wächtera. Generał SS, który ograbił Kraków , Zona Zero 2017. ISBN 978-83-948743-2-2
  • Werner Präg, Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939-1945. Publications of the Institute for Contemporary History , Sources and Representations on Contemporary History Volume 20, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-421-01700-X .
  • Thomas Sandkühler: Final solution in Galicia. The murder of Jews in Eastern Poland and the rescue initiatives of Berthold Beitz 1941–1944. Dietz successor, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-8012-5022-9 .
  • Phillippe Sands: The Ratline. Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 2020, ISBN 978-1474608138 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Schulz / Dieter Zinke: Die Generale der Waffen-SS and the Police , Bissendorf 2012, pp. 77–127.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Kuderna: The award of the Knight's Cross of the Military Maria Theresa Order to Lieutenant Colonel Josef Wächter in 1918. In: Festschrift Kurt Peball for his 65th birthday. (= Communications from the Austrian State Archives 43 (1993)), pp. 148–155, here pp. 148f .
  3. ↑ a b c Thomas Sandkühler: Final solution in Galicia. The murder of Jews in Eastern Poland and the rescue initiatives by Berthold Beitz 1941–1944 , Bonn 1996, pp. 448f.
  4. ↑ a b c d Bogdan Musial: German civil administration and the persecution of Jews in the Generalgouvernement . Wiesbaden 1999, p. 396.
  5. ↑ a b c Werner Präg / Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939–1945 , Stuttgart 1975, p. 954.
  6. ^ A b Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, pp. 69f.
  7. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 647f.
  8. ↑ a b Entry on Otto Wächter in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon ).
  9. ↑ Doc. VEJ 4/56 in: Klaus-Peter Friedrich (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 4: Poland - September 1939-July 1941 , Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , pp. 176f.
  10. ↑ Klaus-Peter Friedrich (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ... Volume 4: Poland - September 1939-July 1941 , Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , p. 304 with annotation 12.
  11. ↑ cf. Document VEJ 4/210 in: Klaus-Peter Friedrich (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ... Volume 4: Poland - September 1939 – July 1941 , Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486- 58525-4 , p. 464ff.
  12. ↑ See Wolfgang Graf "Österreichische SS-Generäle" (2012), p. 211.
  13. ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, pp. 69f.
  14. ^ Son of a Nazi functionary returns art to Poland spiegel.de , March 1, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Guardian, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guardian, Otto Gustav Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian lawyer and politician (NSDAP), SS group leader, governor of the Galicia district
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1949 or September 10, 1949
Place of death Rome