Odilo Globočnik
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| “ | Gentlemen, if ever a generation will come after us which is so weak and soft-hearted that it doesn't understand our task, then indeed the whole of National Socialism has been in vain. To the contrary, in my opinion one should bury bronze plates on which it is recorded that we have had the courage to carry out this great and so necessary work. | „ |
| ~ Odilo Globočnik |
Odilo Globočnik (21 April 1904 – 31 May 1945) was an Austrian war criminal. He was a Nazi Party member and later a Schutzstaffel leader. As associate of Adolf Eichmann, he had a leading role in Operation Reinhard, which saw the murder of over one million mostly Polish Jews during the Holocaust in Nazi extermination camps Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec. Historian Michael Allen described him as "the vilest individual in the vilest organization ever known". At the end of the war, he was captured by the British and committed suicide via a cyanide capsule while under interrogation.
Biography edit
In August 1933, Globočnik was arrested for the first time, for attempting to contact imprisoned Nazis in Klagenfurt. This was also the same year that he became a member of the Austrian SS. He was arrested because of his public support for the Nazi Party (NSDAP), as he had become a member of the party in 1930 while he was in Carinthia. Although he was arrested four times between 1933 and 1935, he spent little over a year in jail. This was due to Heinrich Himmler’s intervention, after two years of arguments between Globočnik and the authorities.
His first documented activity for the NSDAP occurred in 1931, when his name appeared in documents relating to the spreading of propaganda for the party. By this point he had more or less abandoned his career as a building tradesman, and attached himself very closely to the NSDAP. One of his tasks for the NSDAP was to construct a courier and intelligence service, which channeled funds from the German Reich into Austria. In June 1933, in Vienna, a bomb was thrown at the shop of Jewish jeweller Norbert Futterweit, killing him. This was one of the first murders in Austria attributable to the Nazis, and a number of historians believe that Globočnik was involved in the attack.
Globočnik joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) on 1 September 1934. His devotion to the Nazi cause paid off for Globočnik, as he quickly climbed the ladder of the party apparatus in his native Austria. He became a Deputy Gauleiter for Austria in 1933 at the age of 29, and was a key player in the usurpation of the Austrian government by the National Socialists.
The Anschluss saw the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in early 1938. Globočnik was rewarded for his diligence, being appointed Gauleiter of Vienna on 24 May 1938 by Adolf Hitler.
While Gauleiter of Vienna, Globočnik spread anti-Semitic propaganda.
In his early tenure as Gauleiter, Globočnik espoused Nazi anti-Jewish philosophy: "I will not recoil from radical interventions for the solution of Jewish questions." Later that same year he opened Vienna's first anti-Semitic political exhibition, which was attended by 10,000 visitors on the first day. Prominent at the exhibition and received enthusiastically by the public was the film, "The Eternal Jew".
Early gestures of accommodation to the new government by Cardinal Innitzer did not assuage the Austrian Nazi radicals, foremost among them the young Gauleiter Globočnik. He launched a crusade against the Church, and the Nazis confiscated property, closed Catholic organisations and sent many priests to Dachau. Anger at the treatment of the Church in Austria grew quickly and October 1938 saw the first act of overt mass resistance to the new regime, when a rally of thousands left Mass in Vienna chanting "Christ is our Führer", before being dispersed by police. A Nazi mob ransacked Cardinal Innitzer's residence, after he denounced Nazi persecution of the Church.
Globočnik was relieved of his post and stripped of his party honours in 1939, when it was discovered that he was involved in illegal foreign currency speculation. As punishment, Himmler transferred Globočnik to the Waffen-SS, in the rank of corporal, where he served with SS Standarte "Germania" during the Polish campaign. Himmler liked Globočnik and recognised the value of the ruthless Austrian. In late 1939, Globočnik was pardoned, promoted to SS-Brigadeführer, and assigned to Lublin province.
On October 13, 1941, Globocnik received a verbal order from Heinrich Himmler to start immediate construction work on Belzec, the first extermination camp in the General Government. The construction of two more extermination camps, Sobibor and Treblinka, followed in 1942. All in all Globocnik was responsible for killing more than 1.5 million Polish, Slovak, Czech, Dutch, French, Russian, German, and Austrian Jews in the death camps of Operation Reinhard which he organised and supervised. He exploited Jews as slave laborers in his own forced labor camps, and seized the properties and valuables of murdered Jews.
After Benito Mussolini's downfall, Globocnik was transferred from the General Government to Istria in the German-occupied portion of Italy in September 1943, and was stationed in his hometown of Trieste. He was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader of the Adriatic Coastal Region.
His main task there was combatting partisans, but again, he played a leading role in the persecution of Italian Jews. With the advance of Allied troops, Globocnik retreated into Austrian Carinthia and finally went into hiding high in the mountains in an alpine hut near Weissensee, still in company of his closest staff members.
Tracked down and captured by the British on May 31, 1945, he committed suicide the same day in Paternion, by biting on his capsule of cyanide.