Arthur Seyss-Inquart
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Arthur Seyss-Inquart | |
---|---|
Minister of Defence of Austria | |
February–March 1938 | Minister of the Interior of Austria |
1937–1938 | State Councillor of Austria |
Personal details | |
Born | Execution by hanging | 22 July 1892
Political party |
|
Spouse |
Gertrud Maschka (m. 1916) |
Children | 3 |
Cabinet | War crimes Crimes against humanity |
Trial | Nuremberg trials |
Criminal penalty | Death |
Arthur Seyss-Inquart (
During World War I, Seyss-Inquart fought for the Austro-Hungarian Army with distinction. After the war he became a successful lawyer, and went on to join the governments of Chancellors Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg. In 1938, Schuschnigg resigned in the face of a German invasion, and Seyss-Inquart was appointed his successor. The newly installed Nazis proceeded to transfer power to Germany, and Austria subsequently became the German province of Ostmark, with Seyss-Inquart as its governor (Reichsstatthalter).
During World War II, Seyss-Inquart served briefly as the Deputy Governor General in occupied Poland and, following the fall of the Low Countries in 1940, he was appointed Reichskommissar of the occupied Netherlands. He was a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer. He instituted a reign of terror, with Dutch civilians subjected to forced labour and the vast majority of Dutch Jews deported and murdered.[2]
At the Nuremberg trials, Seyss-Inquart was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging.[3][4]
Early life
Seyss-Inquart was born in 1892 in Stannern (Czech: Stonařov), a German-speaking village in the neighbourhood of the predominantly German-speaking town of Iglau (Czech: Jihlava). This area constituted a German linguistic island in the midst of a Czech-speaking region; this may have contributed to the outspoken national consciousness of the family, and the young Arthur in particular. Iglau was an important town in Moravia, one of the Czech provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in which there was increasing rivalry between Germans and Czechs. His parents were the school principal Emil Zajtich (who changed his surname to Seyss-Inquart) and Augusta Hirenbach. His father was Czech and his mother was German.
The family moved to
In 1911, Seyss-Inquart met Gertrud Maschka. The couple married in December 1916 and had three children: Ingeborg Carolina Augusta Seyss-Inquart (born 18 September 1917), Richard Seyss-Inquart (born 22 August 1921) and Dorothea Seyss-Inquart (born 7 May 1928).
Political career and the Anschluss
Seyss-Inquart went into law after the war and in 1921 set up his own practice. During the early years of the
In February 1938, Seyss-Inquart was appointed Austrian
Head of Ostmark and Southern Poland
Seyss-Inquart drafted the legislative act reducing Austria to a province of Germany and signed it into law on 13 March. With Hitler's approval, he became Governor (
Following the invasion of
Reichskommissar in the Netherlands
Following the capitulation of the Netherlands on 15 May 1940, Seyss-Inquart was appointed Reichskommissar for the Occupied Netherlands. He directed the civil administration, imposed complete economic subordination to Germany, and carried out Nazi policies. In April 1941, he was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer.[8] Among the Dutch people he was mockingly referred to as "Zes en een kwart" ("six and a quarter"), a play on his name, and the fact that Seyss-Inquart suffered from a limp. He supported the Dutch NSB and allowed them to create the paramilitary Nederlandse Landwacht, which acted as an auxiliary police force. Other political parties were banned in late 1941 and many former government officials were imprisoned at Sint-Michielsgestel. The administration of the country was controlled by Seyss-Inquart himself and he answered directly to Hitler.[9] He oversaw the politicisation of cultural groups from the Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer "right down to the chessplayers' club", and set up a number of other politicised associations.
He introduced measures to combat resistance, and when there was a widespread strike in
There were three
Seyss-Inquart was an unwavering
When the Allies advanced into the Netherlands in late 1944, the Nazi regime had attempted to enact a scorched earth policy, and some docks and harbours were destroyed. Seyss-Inquart, however, was in agreement with Armaments Minister Albert Speer over the futility of such actions, and with the open connivance of many military commanders, they greatly limited the implementation of the scorched-earth orders.[6]
At the very end of the Dutch "
Before Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, he named a new government headed by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz in his last will and testament, in which Seyss-Inquart replaced Joachim von Ribbentrop, who had long since fallen out of favour, as Foreign Minister. It was a token of the high regard Hitler felt for his Austrian comrade, at a time when he was rapidly disowning or being abandoned by so many of his other key lieutenants. Unsurprisingly, at such a late stage in the war, Seyss-Inquart failed to achieve anything in his new office.
He remained in his posts until 7 May 1945, when, after a meeting with Dönitz to confirm his rescission of the scorched earth orders, he was arrested on the Elbe Bridge in Hamburg by two soldiers of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, one of whom was Norman Miller (birth name: Norbert Mueller), a German Jew from Nuremberg who had escaped to Britain at the age of 15 on a Kindertransport.[12] The Anglo-Dutch art dealer Edward Speelman was also involved in Seyss-Inquart's arrest.[13][14]
Nuremberg trials
At the
In his final statement, Seyss-Inquart denied knowledge of various war crimes including the shooting of hostages, and said that while he had moral objections to the deportation of Jews, there must sometimes be justifications for mass evacuations, and pointed to the Allies forcibly resettling millions of Germans after the war. He added that his "conscience was untroubled" as he improved the conditions of the Dutch people while Commissioner. Seyss-Inquart concluded by saying, "My last word is the principle by which I have always acted and to which I will adhere to my last breath: I believe in Germany."[15]
Seyss-Inquart was acquitted of conspiracy, but convicted on all other counts and sentenced to death by hanging. The final judgment against him cited his involvement in harsh suppression of Nazi opponents and atrocities against the Jews during all his billets, but particularly stressed his reign of terror in the Netherlands. It was these atrocities that sent him to the gallows.
Upon hearing of his death sentence, Seyss-Inquart was fatalistic: "Death by hanging... well, in view of the whole situation, I never expected anything different. It's all right."[16]
Before his execution, Seyss-Inquart returned to the
He was hanged in Nuremberg Prison on 16 October 1946, at the age of 54, together with nine other Nuremberg defendants. He was the last to mount the scaffold, and his last words were the following: "I hope that this execution is the last act of the tragedy of the Second World War and that the lesson taken from this world war will be that peace and understanding should exist between peoples. I believe in Germany."
His body, with those of the other nine executed men and that of Hermann Göring (who committed suicide the previous day), was cremated at the Ostfriedhof in Munich, and their ashes were scattered into the River Isar.[18][19][20]
Cultural references
In Doris Orgel's children's novel, The Devil in Vienna, the narrator refers to Seyss-Inquart’s rise as she observes the changing political atmosphere in her Vienna. In Otto Preminger's movie The Cardinal, Seyss-Inquart is played by Erik Frey.
See also
- List of SS-Obergruppenführer
- Nazi plunder
- The Holocaust in the Netherlands
- Kajetan Mühlmann
- Anschluss
References
- ^ "Arthur Seyss-Inquart". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
- OCLC 53223516.
- ^ "Final moments of Nazis executed at Nuremberg". The Guardian. 11 September 2009. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
- ^ "Nuremberg Trial Judgements: Arthur Seyss-Inquart". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
- ^ Snyder, Louis L. (1976). Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. McGraw-Hill. p. 320.
- ^ a b "Judgement : Seyss-Inquart". The Avalon Project.
- ^ Positions Held by Seyss-Inquart, Document 2910-PS, p. 579 in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Vol.V, Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, 1946, Retrieved 3 January 2021.
- ISBN 978-0764310614.
- Cornell University Law Library / OSS Research and Analysis Branch. 27 August 1945. Archived from the originalon 27 October 2018. Retrieved 27 October 2018.
- ^ Aderet, Ofer (15 June 2017). "Never-before-seen Photos of Palestinian Mufti With Hitler Ties Visiting Nazi Germany". Haaretz. Tel Avi, Israel: Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd (Haaretz Group). Archived from the original on 9 February 2018.
- Dwight Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, London: Heinemann, 1949 (third printing), p. 455
- ^ The Flash (A Fortnightly Edition Published by The Royal Welch Fusiliers), 10 December 1945, Front Page
- ^ "Speelman, Edward Joseph (Oral history)". Imperial War Museums. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
- ^ Tom. "Max J. Friedländers bevrijdende zomer van 1945". RKD Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis (in Dutch). Retrieved 28 January 2022.
Niet minder opgetogen was hij over de ontvangst van de Engelse uitgave van zijn boek Von Kunst und Kennerschaft uit handen van de Engelse kunsthandelaar Edward Speelman. Het manuscript, dat door Bruno Cassirer stiekem mee naar Engeland was genomen en daar in 1942 als On Art and Connoisseurship was uitgegeven, kreeg Friedländer nu voor het eerst onder ogen. Wat de overhandiging extra bijzonder maakte, was het feit dat Speelman, die tijdens de oorlog in het Britse leger had gediend, een belangrijke rol had gespeeld bij de arrestatie van Arthur Seyss-Inquart, de voormalige Rijkscommissaris van het bezette Nederland.
- TracesOfWar.com (in Dutch). STIWOT. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
- G. M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (1947), Farrar Straus, page 433.
- ^ Doino, William Jr. (3 August 2017). "The saint who captivated the secular world". Catholic Herald.
- ^ Thomas Darnstädt (2005), "Ein Glücksfall der Geschichte", Der Spiegel, 13 September (in German), vol. 14, no. 14, p. 128
- ^ Manvell 2011, p. 393.
- ^ Overy 2001, p. 205.
Further reading
- Dieter A. Binder (2010), "Seyss-Inquart, Arthur", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 24, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 302–303; (full text online)
- Dieter A. Binder: "Seyss-Inquart Arthur". In: ")
- Graf, Wolfgang: Österreichische SS-Generäle. Himmlers verlässliche Vasallen. Hermagoras-Verlag, Klagenfurt/Ljubljana/Wien 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0578-4.
- Koll, Johannes: Arthur Seyß-Inquart und die deutsche Besatzungspolitik in den Niederlanden (1940–1945). Böhlau, Wien [u. a.] 2015, ISBN 978-3-205-79660-2.
- Koll, Johannes: From the Habsburg Empire to the Third Reich: Arthur Seyß-Inquart and National Socialism. In: ISBN 978-3-902811-61-5.
- Manvell, Roger (2011). Goering : the rise and fall of the notorious Nazi leader. London: Frontline Books. OCLC 787859366.
- ISBN 978-0-670-03008-8.
- Zebhauser, Helmuth: Alpinismus im Hitlerstaat. Gedanken, Erinnerungen, Dokumente. Dokumente des Alpinismus, Band 1. Rother, München 1998, ISBN 3-7633-8102-3.