Robert Heinrich Wagner

Robert Heinrich Wagner, born Robert Heinrich Backfisch, (13 October 1895 - 14 August 1946) was a Nazi Party official who served as Gauleiter (regional leader) of Baden, and later Alsace, from 1925 - 1945, and as Chief of Civil Administration in Alsace from 1940 - 1945.

Biography

Wagner was born Robert Backfisch in Lindach, German Empire, in 1895. He served in World War I and fought in the infamous Battle of the Somme and Battle of Verdun, being awarded the Iron Cross for bravery. He was later promoted to Oberleutnant and sent to an officer training school in Munich, where he met Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorff. Under their influence, Wagner joined Hitler's Nazi Party and participated in the Beer Hall Putsch, an unsuccessful attempt by the Nazis to overthrow the government. Wagner lead his students in marching with the Nazis. After the Putsch's failure Wagner was convicted of treason but a pro-Nazi judge only sentenced him to 15 months in prison. He served 11 weeks in a minimum security prison before being released.

Wagner was appointed Gauleiter of Baden in 1925, and also served as deputy to Robert Ley at the party headquarters in Munich. Following the Nazi takeover in 1933 Wagner was officially elected as Gauleiter of Baden and set to work enforcing Nazi racial and anti-Catholic policies, chiefly the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws. Those deemed racially impure were banned from holding public office by a decree issued by Wagner. Wagner also played a role in inciting the Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews in 1938.

Following the outbreak of World War II, Germany annexed France and the Alsace region was incorporated into Baden, placing it under Wagner's authority. Wagner embarked on a program to Germanize Alsace within five years, banning the citizens from speaking French in public and ordering that all those with French names begin using their German equivalents. He ordered all Alsatian men of fighting age be conscripted into the German army, with about one-third of those conscripted dying in action on the Eastern Front. This only served to turn the populace against Nazi rule, not helped when Wagner ordered the public execution of 12 suspected draft dodgers. Wagner also participated in The Holocaust, initiating a massive roundup of Jews on 22 October 1940 in which the entire Jewish population of Baden-Alsace, taking up seven whole trains, were arrested with no advance notice and deported to Camp Gurs, a French internment camp. Many of these were later sent to the extermination camps at Auschwitz and Majdanek, with only 800 of the 4, 464 Jews surviving. Baden-Alsace was declared the first Gau to be free of Jews and Wagner gained the nickname "The Butcher of Alsace".

Towards the end of the war, Allied forces closed in on Baden-Alsace. Wagner fled across the Rhine river, mobilizing battalions to fight the Allies and distributing leaflets calling for sabotage and guerrilla warfare. When Hitler issued the Nero Decree ordering the destruction of German architecture to prevent it from being captured by the Allies, Wagner gave the order to burn all cities in Baden, threatening those who refused to comply with the death penalty. As Baden-Alsace fell, Wagner attempted to flee to Switzerland but was barred from entry by border guards. He went into hiding as a German farmhand, but was eventually captured by American forces on 29 July 1945. Convicted of war crimes before a military tribunal, he was executed by firing squad in August 1946.