Otto Wächter

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Otto

Early life Otto Gustav von Wächter was the third child and only son of Martha (née Pfob), daughter of the owner of the Graben Hotel in the centre of Vienna. His father, Joseph Freiherr von Wächter, was born in northern Bohemia and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army. In the last year of the First World War, Joseph was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Maria Theresa, which earned him the title of Freiherr (Baron). In 1922, after the First Austrian Republic was established, he was twice nominated as Minister of Defence in the Cabinets of Johann Schober (in the first replacing Carl Vaugoin). Otto von Wächter spent his first years in Vienna before the family moved to Trieste (then part of Austria-Hungary) in 1908. For the duration of the First World War, he lived in southern Bohemia, studying and taking his Matura school leaving examinations in 1919 in České Budějovice, then called by its German name, Budweis, where everyday life was dominated by the national differences between Germans and Czechs. The family moved to Vienna, where Wächter studied law and joined national and sporting organizations. In April 1923, he joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) and became Austrian Champion…Citește mai mult

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Governor of Galicia Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Soviet-occupied eastern part of the former Austrian province of Galicia was attached to the General Government as the District of Galicia. Its capital city, variously known as L'viv (Ukrainian), Lwów (Polish) and Lemberg (German), had been the fourth-largest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where Poles, Ukrainians and Jews had lived together for centuries. The first German governor was Karl Lasch, an intimate friend of Frank, who was later arrested and shot for extensive black market activities on the orders of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Wächter was chosen by Adolf Hitler "as the best man on the spot", and installed as Governor on 22 January 1943. His first official visit was to the influential and respected Greek Catholic Metropolit Andrij Aleksander Szeptycki (Sheptytsky). With his assistance, Wächter endeavored to promote a greater degree of co-operation among the occupying Germans and the ethnic elements in the District of Galicia. Consequently, he immediately found himself in conflict with SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, Himmler's representative in the General Government and executor of his planned large-scale resettlement programs. At the government meeting in Kraków on 17 February, Wächter publicly opposed plans to…Citește mai mult

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Involvement in the Holocaust Nazi documents detail Wächter's involvement with the establishment of ghettos and the implementation of the Final Solution, the genocide of Europe's Jews. Wächter's name is seen on the order to establish the Kraków ghetto, where many inhabitants perished, and the rest would eventually be liquidated as a part of Operation Reinhard. Wächter also ran the transportation systems, which would carry trains of Jews to their deaths under his watch. The U.S. Justice Department also holds documents indicting Wächter. One, signed on March 13, 1942, by Wächter, was an order to restrict the employment of Jews throughout Galicia. The Justice Department also maintains a document from Heinrich Himmler to Wilhelm Stuckart, the State Secretary to the Reich Minister of the Interior in Berlin, on Wächter's future, dated August 25, 1942. It describes how Himmler was recently in Lemberg and asked Wächter if he would want to be transferred out to Vienna. Wächter replied to Himmler that he did not want to go to Vienna. This document implies Wächter willingly chose to stay in Lemberg for the implementation of Operation Reinhard and directly refutes Horst's claim that his father "had no chance to leave the system." While Wächter…Citește mai mult

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Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter (8 July 1901 – 14 July 1949) was an Austrian lawyer, Nazi politician and high-ranking member of the SS, a paramilitary organisation of the Nazi Party. He participated in the extermination of Jews in Europe during the Holocaust and was instrumental in creating an SS division consisting of Ukrainians. During the occupation of Poland in World War II, he was the governor of the district of Kraków in the General Government and later of the District of Galicia (now mainly in Ukraine). In 1944 he was appointed head of the German Military Administration in the puppet Italian Social Republic. During the last two months of the war, he was responsible for the non-German forces at the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in Berlin. In 1940, Wächter ordered the expulsion of 68,000 Polish Jews from Kraków and in 1941 the Kraków Ghetto was created for the remaining 15,000 Jews by his decrees. After the war, wanted by the Polish People's Republic, Wächter managed to evade Allied authorities for four years. In 1949 he was given refuge by the pro-Nazi Austrian bishop Alois Hudal in the Vatican, where he died the same year, aged 48, reportedly from…Citește mai mult

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Following the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Germans established a state known as the General Government which was ruled over by Hans Frank. Until 1940, his deputy was Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who took Wächter with him to the General Government, where Wächter was appointed governor of the administrative district of Kraków, Poland. Wächter chose the two crowns of Galicia in the coat-of-arms issued for the nobility of his father. As Governor of Kraków, he was under the direct and local supervision of Frank and had to face the fanatical actions of the local SS and police forces. The arrest on 6 November 1939 of the entire staff of professors and academics of the Jagiellonian University and other academic institutions and their subsequent deportation to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, an event known as Sonderaktion Krakau, resulted in worldwide condemnation. Wächter publicly criticised the action, which took place without his knowledge, and reportedly tried to free the academics. Due to the "Special Action Kraków", he was indicted by exiled Poles in New York in 1942. In his capacity as governor, an execution warrant for 52 Poles in Bochnia was issued 18 December 1939 under Wächter's signature, as reprisal for killing two Viennese…Citește mai mult

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Waffen-SS Galizien In 1943, Wächter conceived the idea of creating a Waffen-SS division made up of Ukrainians. The division was organized as a part of a program of creating foreign (e.g., Estonian, Latvian) formations of the Waffen-SS to fight with the Germans on the Soviet front. Wachter first proposed his idea to SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler on March 1, 1943, and wanted to name them Division Ukraine. Wächter succeeded in creating the division, but they were ultimately called Division Galizien. The creation of the Division Galizien was announced on April 28, 1943, at ceremonies throughout Galicia. Wächter appointed the members of the Military Board of the Division Galizien and had good relations with them. In 1945, he was the commander in chief of all Waffen SS divisions made up of non-Germans. In organizing Waffen-SS Galizien, Wächter worked closely with the head of the Ukrainian Central Committee in Cracow, Volodymyr Kubijovyč. In March 1945, the German government announced the formation of the Ukrainian National Army. Wächter successfully secured the appointment of General Pavlo Shandruk, a former officer in the Polish Army, as commander of the Ukrainian National Army. On April 25, 1945, the Waffen-SS Galizien was officially reorganized as the First…Citește mai mult

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End of the war With the loss of the entire District of Galicia on 26 July 1944 to the advancing Red Army, Wächter sought to be released from his administrative obligations in the General Government so that he could take up a position in the Waffen-SS. In response, Himmler agreed to order his release on the basis that he assume a new commission as "Chief of the Military Administration to the Plenipotentiary General of the German Wehrmacht in Italy headed by SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Wolff. Himmler felt Wächter would be "of immense use in this equally interesting and difficult field." On assuming his new post, Wächter relocated to Gardone on Lake Garda. As the German situation at the front worsened day by day, in a vain attempt to regain the military initiative the Nazi authorities became increasingly desperate and sought to exploit the Eastern European Anti-Bolshevik movements. In so doing, on 30 January 1945, Himmler appointed Wächter as subsidiary head of Group D of the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin, which sought to utilize and combine the Russian Liberation Army of General Andrey Vlasov and the newly formed Ukrainian National Army which included the 1st Ukrainian Division (formerly the SS…Citește mai mult

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Post-war life and death Following the defeat of Germany, Wächter remained with the staff of the 1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army until 10 May. He left them near Tamsweg in the Salzburg mountain district to avoid being taken prisoner and inevitable extradition to the Soviet Union. Together with a young member of the 24th Waffen-Gebirgs-(Karstjäger-) Division of the Waffen-SS, he successfully hid for four years, sustained by his wife who supplied both men with food and equipment from secret pick-up points. In the spring of 1949, Wächter crossed the border to South Tyrol in Italy where he met his wife and his elder children for the last time. On 24 April 1949, he arrived in Rome, where, through pro-Nazi Bishop Alois Hudal, rector of the Teutonic College of Santa Maria dell'Anima, he found rudimentary accommodation in the clerical institute "Vigna Pia" on the southern outskirts of Rome under the name of Alfredo Reinhardt. In June, he took part in an Italian film, playing the part of an actor and was in the process of collecting information about a flight to South America. As a result of his daily morning swim in the polluted Tiber, he appeared jaundiced on…Citește mai mult

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Dealing of the Wächter family with the history His son Horst has claimed that his father "was against the racial ideology of putting other races below Aryan Germans" and maintains he never made an antisemitic speech. He has described him as "an unwilling cog in the Nazi killing machine", who "became doomed and murdered for something he never planned and executed himself." Horst's claims have been refuted by considerable evidence. This includes family photo albums held by Horst himself at his home, Schloss Hagenberg (near Mistelbach, Lower Austria; the albums feature pictures of Otto Wächter with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Hans Frank and Joseph Goebbels, and a book with the inscription "With my best wishes on your birthday, —H. Himmler, 8 July 1944." These personal mementos place Wächter among the inner circles of the Nazi party, and at the heart of its day-to-day operations. Horst's daughter Magdalena Wächter-Stanfel is the only one out of 23 grandchildren who admits publicly that her grandfather "was a mass murderer". This had cost her an inheritance from her father Horst, who sold the Hagenberg castle that they had bought with the money that had come to him through his late mother Charlotte, wife of…Citește mai mult

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Bibliography Christian Blankenstein, Die Merk-würdigen von Gestern und ihre Spuren im Heute pp. 176–192: Alois Hudal der Bischof und die Nazis, Nordhausen 2011 Peter Broucek (ed.): Ein General im Zwielicht. Die Erinnerungen Edmund Glaise von Horstenau. Band 2. Böhlau Verlag, Wien - Köln - Graz 1983 Hans Frank, Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945 Microfilm Federal Archive Berlin – Munich. Towiah Friedman (ed.): Die zwei illegale (sic!) Nazis Dr. Otto Wächter als Gouverneur in Krakau und Lemberg und Rudolf Pavlu als Stadthauptmann in Krakau waren beteiligt an der Ermordung der Juden in Krakau und Lemberg, - Collection of documents, Haifa 2002 Wolf-Dietrich Heike: Sie wollten die Freiheit. Die Geschichte der ukrainischen Division 1943 - 1945, Podzun-Verlag, Dorheim/H. 1974 Ludwig Losacker: Von der Schwierigkeit ein Deutscher zu sein - Erinnerungen an das besetzte Polen (The difficulty of being a German - Memories of occupied Poland), c. 1980 German Federal Archive Koblenz, copy Archives Wächter Michael James Melnyk: To Battle, The Formation and History of the 14th Galician Waffen-SS Division, Helion and Co, Solihull England 2002 Sylvia Maderegger, die Juden im österreichischen Ständestaat 1934-1938, Vienna 1973 Dieter Pohl: Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien, 1941-1944. Oldenbourg, München 1997, ISBN 3-486-56233-9. Werner Präg…Citește mai mult

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External links Interview with Wächter's son, Horst, ft.com; accessed 4 May 2016. Exposing 'The Ratline': One man's quest to track a Nazi who escaped justice, France24 Aktion Reinhard and the Emergence of "The Final Solution", deathcamps.org; accessed 18 April 2016. Philippe Sands, "My father the good Nazi", article in Financial Times London, UK, 3 May 2013 Ratline - BBC Podcast about Nazi escapes in post-World War II Europe by Philippe Sands. What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy A human-rights lawyer conducts conversations with two men whose fathers were indicted as war criminals for their roles in WWII (2015) Roberto Almeida, interview with Horst von Wächter in Opera Mundi, São Paulo, 19–21 September 2013, with evaluation of the latter on 26 September 2013 Operamundi.uol.com.br, operamundi.uol.com.br; accessed 4 May 2016.(in Portuguese) Operamundi.uol.com.br, operamundi.uol.com.br; accessed 4 May 2016.(in Portuguese) Operamundi, operamundi.uol.com.br; accessed 4 May 2016.(in Portuguese)