Walter Turza

Walter Turza (born August 4, 1890 in Olbersdorf / Austrian Silesia , † February 8, 1961 in Bad Ischl ) was an Austrian SS leader who was one of the founders of the SS in Austria.

Life

Turza was the son of a civil servant. He attended elementary and community school and then trained as an electrical engineer. He had done his military service in 1911. He took as a soldier of the artillery with the Imperial Army throughout the First World War in part and was in Russia and on the Italian front used.

After the war he ran an electronics store. Politically, he was active in the NSDAP (membership number 51.282) and SA from the mid-1920s . In 1929 Turza built the first SS troop in Austria from SA Storm 33 in Vienna , which was still under the SA in the first year of its existence. From 1931 he led the SS Standarten 11, 37 and 38. However, the Reich German Walter Graeschke was soon entrusted with the management of the Austrian SS , with whom Tura got into serious disputes over competence and conflicts. Graeschke's supporters accused Turza of wasting money. Turza himself was expelled from the SS by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler in November 1932 for extortion after threatening to divulge SS internals if he was not promoted . Turza's expulsion from the NSDAP also followed through Theodor Habicht . Attempts by Turzas to be exempted from these Nazi organizations by means of letters of appeal to high-ranking Nazi functionaries initially fail. However, he was re-accepted into the SS in 1937 and then headed several SS standards. In addition, he became inspector of the SS Upper Section Danube. After the “ Anschluss of Austria ” in March 1938, he was involved in Aryanizations , including forcibly appropriating a “woodworking machine company”. In April 1944 he was appointed SS-Oberführer (SS No. 2,389). In the late summer of 1944 he was supposed to be drafted into the Waffen SS , but did not comply with this request. From November 1944 he was in a Vienna SS hospital because of a heart disease.

After the end of the Second World War he was held in the Glasenbach internment camp. A people's court sentenced him to ten years in heavy dungeon because of “improper enrichment” and his high rank as SS-Oberführer . However, due to illness, he was released from prison after a few weeks. Then he ran a coffee house in Bad Ischl.

literature

• Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Hermagoras-Verlag, Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0578-4 , pp. 217-219.

Web links

• Short biography and picture of Walter Turza (Polish)