Austrians

Alois Brunner

Alois Brunner

Alois Brunner

Alois Brunner, born 8 April 1912 in Nádkút, Vas, Austria-Hungary, SS-Hauptsturmführer in the Gestapo, commander of the Drancy internment camp, oversaw deportations of tens of thousands of Jews from France, Austria, Salonika and Slovakia to extermination camps, assistant to Adolf Eichmann, fled to Syria after the war to avoid prosecution, known in Syria as Dr. Georg Fischer, condemned to death in abstentia in France in 1954, object of many manhunts and investigations over the years by different groups, serious injured several times by Israeli Mossad letter bombs, interviewed by Bunte magazine in 1985,  lived in an apartment building on 7 Rue Haddad in Damascus, probably died in Syria in 2010 and buried somewhere in Damascus, said in an interview in 1987:

“I first heard about gas chambers after the end of the war.”

Alois Brunner2016-03-29T13:39:09-05:00

Amon Göth

Amon Göth

Amon Göth

Amon Leopold Göth, SS-Hauptsturmführer, born 11 December 1908 in Vienna, Austria, assigned to Operation Reinhard in Lublin in the summer of 1942, commandant of the Płaszów concentration camp, in charge of the liquidation of the Tarnów ghetto, and the liquidation of the Szebnie concentration camp, relieved of his position and charged by the SS with theft of Jewish property in 1944, diagnosed Göth as suffering from mental illness and he was committed to a mental institution in Bad Tölz , Bavaria, found guilty in Poland after the war of homicide, sentenced to death, hanged at Montelupich prison at Krakow on 13 September 1946, last words were “Heil Hitler,” remains cremated and the ashes scattered in the Vistula River.

Amon Göth2016-03-29T13:10:41-05:00

Franz Stangl

Franz Stangl shortly before his death

Franz Stangl shortly before his death

Franz Stangl, SS-Hauptsturmführer, born 26 March 1898 in Altmünster, Austria, served as the Police Superintendent of the T-4 Euthanasia Program at Hartheim Euthanasia Center, and later of the Bernburg Euthanasia Center, kommandant of the Sobibór and Treblinka extermination camps of Operation Reinhard, winner of the War Service Cross 1st Class, arrested in Sao Paulo in 1967, convicted of crimes against humanity, sentenced to Life Imprisonment, died of a heart attack 28 June 1971 in prison at Düsseldorf, on the Treblinka extermination camp:

“It was Dante’s Inferno.  It was Dante come to life.”

Franz Stangl2016-03-29T12:19:01-05:00

Ernst Lerch

Ernst Lerch at time of trial

Ernst Lerch at time of trial

Ernst Lerch, SS-Sturmbannführer, born 19 November 1914 in Klagenfurt, Austria,  employed in his father’s Café Lerch in his home town in the 1930s, adjutant to SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik in Lublin, Poland, participant in Operation Reinhard (Aktion Reinhard)– the operation to kill the Jews of Poland, winner of the Iron Cross 1st Class, served as chief of Globocnik’s personal staff in the OZAK (Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland), tried in Austria in 1972 but trial adjourned without verdict, died in 1997, said of SS-Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik, the chief of Operation Reinhard:

“Globocnik has two souls: one sincere and pleasing one; he really was sociable and fun loving, even witty, and then there was another, completely reversed aspect – the harshness and unbending behavior in his work.  The orders, which came from above, were executed in each particular case; an order could not be discussed.  He had the extraordinary ability, sometimes like that of a priest, to obey these orders.”

Ernst Lerch2016-03-29T11:35:04-05:00

Otto Skorzeny

Otto Skorzeny

Otto Skorzeny

Otto Skorzeny, SS-Standartenführer, born 12 June 1908 in Vienna, Austria, commando leader who rescued Benito Mussolini at Gran Sasso, commanded special commandos at the Battle of the Bulge, winner of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, author Skorzeny’s Secret Missions: War Memoirs of the Most Dangerous Man in Europe, by some accounts was an Israeli Mossad agent in the 1960s, died 5 July 1975 in Madrid, Spain, said on loyalty:

“I believe that if I am loyal to a man when he is winning I should also be loyal to him when he loses.”

Otto Skorzeny2016-03-28T22:08:28-05:00

Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (right) during a visit to Mauthausen concentration camp with Heinrich Himmler

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (right) during a visit to Mauthausen concentration camp with Heinrich Himmler

Ernst Kaltenbrunner, SS-Obergruppenführer, born 4 October 1903 in Ried am Inn, Austria, Chief of the Reich Main Security Service (RSHA), successor to Reinhard Heydrich, winner of Nazi Golden Party Badge, Blood Order and Knight’s Cross of the War Service Cross, convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at Nürnberg, executed by hanging 16 October 1946 at Nürnberg, said of the Nazi concentration camp system:

“Concentration camps were not my responsibility.  I never found out anything about any of this.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner2016-03-28T21:18:05-05:00

Hermine Braunsteiner

Hermine Braunsteiner

Hermine Braunsteiner

Hermine Braunsteiner, female SS auxiliary guard at Ravensbrück and Maidanek concentration camps, nicknamed “The stomping mare,” born 16 or 17 July 1919 in Vienna, Austria, convicted after the war of crimes against humanity in Austria but released, emigrated to the United States in 1959, lived in Queens New York, extradited to West Germany and convicted in 1981 of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, released from prison in 1996 due to complications from diabetes (amputation), died in Bochum, Germany on 19 April 1999, said of herself in 1964:

“I’ve suffered enough…after all I only did my duty…”

Hermine Braunsteiner2016-03-28T20:58:54-05:00

Hermann Höfle

Hermann Höfle

Hermann Höfle served as the chief-of-staff and right hand man to Odilo Globocnik during Operation Reinhard, the killing of at least 1,700,000 Jews in eastern Poland.  Born in Salzburg, Austria on June 19, 1911, Höfle joined the Nazi Party on August 1, 1933.  He had previously been an auto mechanic and a taxi driver, rising to ownership of a cab company.  Prior to the German takeover of Austria, Höfle was convicted of anti-government crimes and spent time in a Salzburg police prison.

Immediately after the Polish Campaign, he was assigned to the Sicherheitsdienst in southern Poland.  Beginning in November 1940, Höfle worked as an overseer of Jewish work camps southeast of Lublin.  Workers from these camps built a large number of anti-tank ditches.  Married with four children, he worked in the Lublin area for several years, not including a short stint at Mogilev, Russia, emerging from obscurity to become a leading figure in the “Final Solution.”

With his headquarters at the Julius Schreck Barracks in Lublin,  SS-Hauptsturmführer Höfle procured Ukrainian guards for the three major extermination camps and instructed SS personnel – to include Action T4 gassing experts from Berlin – in their duties and responsibilities, including administering an oath of secrecy.  He coordinated the deportations of Jews from all areas of the General Government and directed them to one of the death camps.

Beginning on the morning of July 22, 1942, now SS-Sturmbannführer, Höfle began the deportation of Jews from the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto, an operation that ended with the deaths of several hundred thousand people at Treblinka extermination camp.  He also played a key role in the “Harvest Festival” massacre of 42,000 Jewish inmates of the various labor camps in the Lublin district in early November 1943.  Months after the end of Operation Reinhard, Hermann Höfle joined Globocnik in Trieste, ostensibly to hunt partisans.

After the war, Höfle was in and out of various confinement facilities as numerous proceedings against him were begun but then dropped.  He also spent three years living under an alias in Italy.  Authorities arrested Hermann Höfle a final time in 1961.  He committed suicide in an Austrian prison in Vienna on August 21, 1962, while awaiting trial, by hanging himself.

Hermann Höfle2016-03-28T21:00:23-05:00

Franz Novak

Franz Novak

SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Novak was born on January 10, 1913 in Wolfsberg in the Carinthia district of Austria.  The son of a locomotive driver, he joined the Hitler Youth and subsequently the Nazi Party. Following the assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss, the Austrian Chancellor who had banned the Nazi Party, Novak fled to Germany.  The crime occurred on July 25, 1934, when ten Austrian Nazis entered the Chancellery building and shot Dollfuss to death; Novak was involved in the plot.  In 1938, he joined the SS and Security Service.  Following the Anschluss, Novak returned to Austria, working in the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, first in Vienna, then Berlin, and finally in Prague. Novak was SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann’s railroad and transportation timetable expert and thus occupied a liaison role with the Ministry of Transport.

Personnel file photo of Franz Novak

Personnel file photo of Franz Novak

Once Eichmann had  coordinated the deportations of Jews from a specific region with that area’s local government, he would assign his deputy, SS-Sturmbannführer Rolf Günther the task of arranging transportation.  Günther, in turn, notified his subordinate, Franz Novak, of the number of people to be deported, the origin of the proposed movement and the final destination.  Novak then contacted Office 21 of the Reichsbahn Traffic Section and the railroad men would handle the rest.  Novak worked with Eichmann on the deportation of Hungarian Jews in 1944 to Auschwitz.

After the war, Novak went into hiding in Austria under an assumed name, but reverted to his real name in 1957.  Following Eichmann’s trial in 1961, which revealed the role Novak played in the deportation of Jews to their deaths, he was arrested.  In 1964, an Austrian court sentenced Novak to eight year’s imprisonment; during the trial Novak had said:  “For me, Auschwitz was just a train station.”

After an appeal, a retrial was ordered in 1966 and Novak was acquitted. This reversal did not sit well in Austria.  Two years later, the Austrian Supreme Court revoked the result of the second trial and ordered a third trial.  This court, meeting in 1969, issued a unanimous verdict of guilty, resulting in a sentence of nine year’s imprisonment.  Novak’s attorney pleaded for a nullification of the verdict and Novak was not re-arrested. After the third appeal to the Austrian Supreme Court, a verdict of guilty was handed down by a court in 1972.

The ruling explicitly denied that Novak was obligated to obey binding orders.  However, he was convicted not for murder, but for committing “public violence under aggravating circumstances” by transporting human beings without providing sufficient water, food and toilet facilities.  Seven of the eight members of the jury did not convict Novak of being an accessory to murder.  He was granted a pardon by Austrian President Rudolf Kirchschläger.  Franz Novak died on October 21, 1983 in Langenzersdorf (just north of Vienna), Austria.

 

 

Franz Novak2016-03-28T21:01:55-05:00

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler, the Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party, hailed from Ranshofen, a small village in the municipality of Braunau am Inn, Austria.  He was born on April 20, 1889, the fourth of six children of a minor customs official, Alois Hitler – and Klara Pölzl.  At age three, Adolf moved with the family to Passau, Germany, but remained there only two years before locating in Leonding, near Linz, Austria.  This early traveling between the two countries helped Adolf later adopt the feeling that he was more German than Austrian.

Hitler’s father, Alois Hitler, was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber.  The baptismal register did not show the name of Alois’ father, so Alois received his mother’s surname.  In 1842, a Johann Georg Hiedler married Maria Anna.  After she died in 1847 and he in 1856, Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler’s brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler.  In 1876, Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest before three witnesses.  However, many in the family – and others as well, although they kept quiet – were convinced that Maria Anna, Alois’ mother, was employed as a housekeeper for a Jewish family in Graz, Austria and that this family’s 19-year-old son, Leopold Frankenberger, had actually fathered Alois.  If true (and many prominent historians disbelieve this assertion) that would make Hitler – who hated all Jews and wanted to exterminate them – a quarter Jewish himself in the Nazi way of determining race.

In June 1895, the Hitler family moved to a small landholding at the village of Hafeld near Lambach, Austria, when Alois retired from customs and tried his hand at farming and beekeeping.  Young Adolf attended school at the village of Fischlham.  However, he rebelled against the school discipline, as well as that of his father, and began to emotionally separate from members of the family.  With the farming attempt in shambles, Alois moved the family back to Lambach and a year later to Leonding.  In February 1900, Edmund, Adolf’s younger brother, died from measles, which further pushed Adolf to being a sullen and detached boy, constantly bickering with his father and schoolteachers.  That September, Alois sent Adolf to the Realschule in Linz, Austria, hoping the son would become a customs bureau employee.  This event soured Adolf further, as he had wished to become an artist and attend a classical high school.  His schooling declined, when on January 3, 1903, Alois suddenly died.  Adolf transferred to the Realschule at Steyr, Austria for a year, before leaving school completely.

From 1905 to 1913, Adolf lived in Wien, Austria.  Following a bohemian lifestyle, he was financed by orphan’s benefits; his mother also supported him.  During this time, Hitler worked as a part-time laborer and eventually as a painter of watercolors.  The Academy of Fine Arts, Wien, rejected Hitler for admittance in 1907 and 1908, because of his inaptitude for painting, and the academy’s director suggested that Hitler study architecture.  Klara Hitler died on December 21, 1907, an event that crushed Hitler’s spirit.  Running out of money, he lived in a homeless shelter in 1909 and by 1910, he had settled into a house for poor working men.  He probably began his virulent Anti-Semitism at this time.  Hitler left Austria in February 1914 and moved to München.

At the outbreak of World War I, Hitler volunteered to serve in the Bavarian Army as an Austrian citizen.  He was assigned to the 1st Company of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment “List Regiment” and served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium.  He was in combat at the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras and the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres.)  He was soon decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross 2nd Class in 1914.  During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded in the groin area and left thigh by shrapnel from an artillery shell that exploded in the dispatch runners’ dugout.  He subsequently spent almost two months in the Red Cross hospital at Beelitz, not returning to his regiment until March 5, 1917.  Hitler received the Iron Cross 1st Class on August 4, 1918, having previously received the Black Wound Badge on May 18, 1918.  On October 15, 1918, Hitler was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack and was hospitalized in Pasewalk.  At this hospital, he received word of Germany’s defeat, and suffered a second bout of blindness.

Now a decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers’ Party (a precursor of the Nazi Party [NSDAP]) in 1919, and became the leader of the NSDAP in 1921.  On November 9, 1923, Hitler and his followers attempted a coup d’état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in downtown München.  The failed coup resulted in a conviction for treason and imprisonment at Landsberg Prison, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).  After Hitler’s release from prison in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, Anti-Semitism, and Anti-Communism through the use of charismatic oratory, superb organizational skills and Nazi propaganda.

Slowly, but surely, the Nazi Party gained traction.  After his appointment as Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Hitler transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism.  Now as Führer and Reichskanzler, his public aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.  His private discussions revealed Hitler’s foreign and domestic policies that had the goal of seizing “living space” (Lebensraum) for the Germanic people in Eastern Europe and Russia.  Hitler directed the rearmament of Germany, the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht in September 1939.  These actions led to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.  Under Hitler’s rule, in 1941 German forces and their European allies occupied most of Europe and North Africa and invaded Russia.  The Nazis “Final Solution,” the destruction of the European Jews, accelerated at this point.  By 1943, Hitler’s military decisions led to escalating German defeats.  In 1944, the Western Allies invaded France and the Soviet Union reached Poland in the east.  In 1945, the Allied armies successfully invaded Germany.

In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun.  On April 30, 1945, Hitler finished dictating his final testament and the pair committed suicide, Hitler by biting down on a cyanide capsule, while simultaneously shooting himself in the head with a pistol, to avoid capture by the Red Army.  SS troops doused the corpses with gasoline in the garden of the Reichs’ Chancellery and burned the corpses.  Rumors persisted for three decades that Hitler had fooled his enemies and had fled to South America, but all the stories proved false.

Hitler said numerous outrageous things during his career.  Here are a few perverse statements he made about women:

“A highly intelligent man should have a primitive and stupid woman.”

“These women are so oddly primitive.  A hairdresser, clothes, dancing, theaters can distract them from any serious activity.

“The only things they’re willing to read are magazines and novels.”

“With all due respect for older ladies, I would prefer having younger ones nearby.”

“I detest women who dabble in politics.  And if their dabbling extends to military matters, it becomes utterly unendurable.”

“Other women are extremely careful of their appearance, but not beyond the moment when they’ve found a husband.  They’re obsessed by their outlines, they weigh themselves on exact scales – the least gram counts!  Then you marry them, and they put on weight by the kilo!”

“Intelligence, in a woman, is not an essential thing.”

“Spanish women, even though they speak several languages, are outstandingly stupid.”

Adolf Hitler2016-03-28T21:03:53-05:00
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