Odilo Globocnik

Odilo Globočnik was born on 21 April 1904 in the Imperial Free City of Trieste, then the capital of the Austrian Littoral administrative region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Italy). He was the second child of Franz Globočnik, a cavalry lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army.

His father was unable to accumulate the money needed to get an officer's marriage permission and had to leave the service. As was the practice at this time, he was given a job in the Imperial and Royal Mail. Odilo's mother Anna, née Petschinka, was born in Versecz, Kingdom of Hungary (now Vršac, Serbia); she was half-Serbian and half-Croatian. In 1914, the family left Trieste for Cseklész, where Franz Globočnik was recalled to active duty after the outbreak of the First World War.

The same year, Odilo Globočnik joined the army, via a military school. The war ended his military education prematurely. Odilo moved with his family to Klagenfurt in Carinthia. There as a teenager, he joined the pro-Austrian volunteer militia fighting Slovene volunteers and, later, the Yugoslav Army during the Carinthian War (1918–19). In 1920, he worked as an underground propagandist for the Austrian cause during the Carinthian Plebiscite.

Globočnik first became active in politics in 1922, when he became a prominent member of pre-Nazi Carinthian paramilitary organisations and was seen wearing a swastika. At the time, he was a building tradesman, introduced to his job while engaged to Grete Michner. Her father, Emil Michner, had talked to the director of KÄEWAG, a hydropower plant, and secured Globočnik a job as a technician and construction supervisor.

His first documented activity for the NSDAP occurred in 1931, when he was documented as distributing propaganda for the party. By this point he had nearly abandoned his work as a building tradesman, and attached himself very closely to the NSDAP. He was assigned to develop a courier and intelligence service for the NSDAP, 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. A number of historians believe that Globočnik was involved in the attack.

In August 1933, Globočnik was arrested for the first time, for attempting to contact imprisoned Nazis in Klagenfurt. This was 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 1931 while he was in Carinthia. Although he was arrested four times between 1933 and 1935, he served only a little over a year in jail. Heinrich Himmler intervened on his behalf, after two years of arguments between Globočnik and the authorities.

Globočnik joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) on 1 September 1934. His devotion to the Nazi cause paid off, as he quickly climbed the ladder of the party apparatus in his native Austria. He became a Deputy Gauleiter briefly in Vienna and then in Carinthia between January and May 1933. He was appointed as the head of the party intelligence apparatus in Carinthia, serving from 1934 to 1936. From September 1936 to May 1938, he served as the Chief of Staff of the National Leadership of the Austrian Nazi Party under Hubert Klausner.

Globočnik was a key player in the usurpation of the Austrian government by the Nazis. With the Anschluss, Nazi Germany annexed Austria on 12 March 1938.

Globočnik was rewarded with an appointment as a State Secretary in the Nazi government, set up by Chancellor Arthur Seyss-Inquart on 15 March. On 10 April 1938, he was elected to the Reichstag. Next came his appointment as Gauleiter of Vienna on 22 May 1938 by Adolf Hitler.

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 in October 1938 the first act of overt mass resistance to the new regime took place. 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 posts and stripped of his party honours on 30 January 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 9 November 1939, Himmler appointed Globočnik as SS and Police Leader in the Lublin district of the General Government territory. After the initially disappointing party career, Globočnik now had a second chance in the ranks of the SS and the police. On 16 February 1940, Globočnik declared: "The evacuated Jews should feed themselves and be supported by their countrymen, as these Jews have enough [food]. If this does not succeed, one should let them starve."

There are indications that Globočnik, along with a chief accomplice Christian Wirth, may have originated the concept of the extermination camp and industrialised murder, and been the person to suggest it to Himmler. At a two-hour meeting with Himmler on 13 October 1941, Globočnik received verbal approval to start construction work on the Belzec extermination camp, the first such camp in the General Government. Shortly beforehand, in September 1941, Globočnik had been visited by Philipp Bouhler and Viktor Brack, the top officials in the Fuhrer Chancellery responsible for the Aktion T4 "euthanasia" program, which had been using gas chambers disguised as shower rooms to execute many of its victims. On or about 1 October 1941, Globočnik had written a memorandum to Himmler containing proposals for actions against the Jews "of a security policy nature," and the 13 October meeting was held to discuss this memorandum and related subjects.

A colleague's contemporaneous letter reflects Globočnik's state of mind at the time of the 13 October meeting: Globočnik said it was necessary to undertake a "cleansing of the entire [General Government] of Jews and Poles" and was "full of good and far-reaching plans" to accomplish this. There are indications that Globočnik may have begun a crude experimental gassing facility in the woods near Belzec shortly before his mid-October meeting with Himmler. At the 13 October 1941 meeting with Himmler, Globočnik proposed exterminating the Jews in assembly-line fashion in a concentration camp, using gas chambers. On 14 October 1941 – the day after he had met with Globočnik – Himmler held a five-hour meeting with Reinhard Heydrich to discuss "executions", following which other extermination camp gassing sites were built. Days later, Himmler forbade all further Jewish emigration from Reich territory "in view of the forthcoming 'Final Solution' to the Jewish question."

The gassing facilities that Globočnik established at Belzec soon after his 13 October meeting with Himmler were designed by T4 programme personnel assigned to him. They used carbon monoxide, as the T4 programme had done. Before it became an extermination camp, Belzec had been part of Himmler's and Globočnik's Burggraben project. The construction of three more death camps, Sobibor and Majdanek in the Lublin district and Treblinka at Małkinia Górna, followed in 1942. Globočnik was complicit in the extermination of more than 1.5 million Polish, Czech, Dutch, French, Russian, Slovak, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Spanish and Austrian Jews, as well as a smaller number of non-Jews, in the death camps which he organised and supervised.

He exploited Jews and non-Jews as slave labourers in his own forced labour camps. He was responsible for seizing the properties and valuables of murdered inmates while in charge of Operation Reinhard. Although other arms of the Nazi state were also involved in the overall management of the greater concentration camp system, Globočnik had control over the Aktion Reinhard camps, and any orders that he received came directly from Himmler. From 1942–1943 he also oversaw the beginning of the Generalplan Ost, the plan to expel Poles from their lands and resettle those territories with German settlers (see Zamość Uprising). On 9 November 1942, Globočnik was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant der Polizei.

After the Armistice of Cassibile, Globočnik was appointed as Higher SS and Police Leader of the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral of Italy on 13 September 1943.

Globočnik was tracked down and captured by a British armoured cavalry unit on 31 May 1945 in Carinthia, Austria. A unit from the 4th Queen's Own Hussars, found him on the Möslacher Alm, a 1,250 m (4,100 ft) mountain in the Eastern Alps, with seven other wanted Nazis including Georg Michalsen, Friedrich Rainer, Ernst Lerch, Hermann Höfle, Karl Hellesberger, Hugo Herzog and Friedrich Plöb.

After he entered politics, Globočnik faced ridicule from the German and international media for his Slavic surname, in light of the Nazis' (including Globočnik's) extreme racism against Slavs. Globočnik would assiduously maintain that he was of Germanic ancestry. This was important, since Slavs were considered sub-human (Untermenschen) and eventually subjugated to genocide by the Third Reich. He said that his paternal grandfather was an "Aryan" who was culturally slavicized, but maintained his Germanic blood. Historians have often dismissed this as a ruse. But historian Joseph Popzeczny argued in his 2004 biography of Globočnik that the story was true, citing Austro-Hungarian census data from 1910 indicating that the Globočniks were ethnic Germans.