Odilo Globočnik


Odilo Globočnik was an Austrian war criminal. He was an official of the Nazi Party and later a high-ranking leader of the Schutzstaffel. As an 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 the Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec extermination camps. Historian Michael Allen described him as "the vilest individual in the vilest organization ever known".
As a leading Nazi official, and perpetrator of not only the Holocaust but the enslavement and ethnic cleansing of millions of Poles and other Slavs, rumors of Globočnik's Slavic ancestry has drawn the interest of historians. In his 2004 biography on Globočnik, historian Joseph Kranjc devoted the entire first chapter to the debate concerning his ancestry. He describes how Globočnik was ridiculed for his surname, in light of the Nazi classification of Slavs as sub-human. Globočnik was defended by senior Nazis such as Himmler, who maintained that he was of Aryan origin and that his surname was the product of slavicization.
Globočnik committed suicide shortly after being captured and detained by British soldiers.

Early life and ancestry

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. He was the second child of Franz Globočnik, a cavalry lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army.
Franz Globočnik 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. His mother Anna, née Petschinka, was born in Versecz, Kingdom of Hungary ; she was half-Serbian 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 and his family moved to Klagenfurt in Carinthia. There, he joined, as a teenager, the pro-Austrian volunteer militia fighting the Slovene volunteers and later the Yugoslav Army during the Carinthian War. In 1920, he worked as an underground propagandist for the Austrian cause during the Carinthian Plebiscite.
He later enrolled at the Höhere Staatsgewerbeschule, where he passed his Matura and graduated with honours. He performed jobs, such as carrying suitcases at the railway station, in order to help support the family financially.
Globočnik first appeared 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 this while engaged to Grete Michner. Her father, Emil Michner, talked to the director of KÄEWAG, a hydropower plant, and secured Globočnik a job as a technician and construction supervisor.
After he entered politics, Globočnik faced ridicule from the German and international media for his Slavic surname, in light of the Nazis' extreme racism against Slavs. Globočnik would assiduously maintain that he was of Germanic ancestry, an important ancestral distinction, since Slavs were considered sub-human and eventually subjugated to genocide by the Third Reich. He stated 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.

Nazi Party and SS career

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, 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 only spent a 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 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 briefly in Vienna and then in Carinthia between January and May 1933, then worked as the head of the party intelligence apparatus in Carinthia 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 National Socialists. The Anschluss saw the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. Globočnik was rewarded for his diligence, being appointed 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.
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 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.

Crimes in occupied Poland

On 9 November 1939, Himmler appointed Globočnik 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 . If this does not succeed, one should let them starve."
In the years that followed Globočnik was responsible for:
  1. 'Liquidating' the Warsaw Ghetto, which contained about 500,000 Jews, the largest Jewish community in Europe and the second largest in the world after New York.
  2. Liquidating the Bialystok Ghetto, which stood out for its strong resistance to German occupation.
  3. Resettling a large number of Poles under the premise of 'ethnic cleansing'.
  4. Implementation and supervision of the Lublin reservation, to which 95,000 Jews were deported, with its adjacent network of forced labour camps in the Lublin district. He was also in charge of over 45,000 Jewish labourers.

    Extermination camps

There are indications that Globočnik, along with one of his chief accomplices Christian Wirth, may have been the originator of the extermination camp industrialised murder concept and the one who suggested 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 Phillip Bouhler and Victor Brack, the top officials in the Fuhrer Chancellery responsible for the Action 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 then considered it necessary to undertake a "cleansing of the entire of Jews and Poles" and was "full of good and far-reaching plans" to accomplish this. There are even indications that Globočnik may have begun a crude experimental gassing facility in the woods near Belzec shortly before his mid-October meeting with Himmler. Globočnik at the 13 October 1941 meeting proposed exterminating the Jews in assembly-line fashion in a concentration camp utilising 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 there was a proliferation of other extermination camp gassing sites. 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 used carbon monoxide, as the T4 programme had done, and were designed by T4 programme personnel assigned to Globočnik. Before it became an extermination camp, Belzec had been part of Himmler's and Globočnik's Burggraben project. The construction of three more camps, Sobibor and Maidanek 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, and 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. On 9 November 1942, Globočnik was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant der Polizei.

Activities in Italy

After the Armistice of Cassibile Globočnik was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader of the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral of Italy on 13 September 1943. After the completion of Operation Reinhard in Poland he was sent to Trieste, his hometown.
Having looted assets stolen from Holocaust victims at death camps in occupied Poland, Globočnik went to Italy with a number of his men who had taken part in Aktion Tiergarten 4 including Franz Stangl from Treblinka and Franz Reichleitner from Sobibor. A few days after 8 September 1943 Christian Wirth arrived in Trieste. Together, they converted an old rice mill on the outskirts of Trieste into a detention centre complete with a crematorium, known as Risiera di San Sabba. At San Sabba, thousands of Italian Jews, partisans and other political dissidents were interrogated, tortured and murdered by them after the 1943 downfall of Benito Mussolini and the German takeover of the country.
In Slovene Littoral, Slovene Partisans were fought both by Germans and by the Littoral Home Guard, which was also under Globočnik's direct command and provided Germans with lists of locations of Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation hideouts and suspicious individuals.
With the advance of Allied troops, Globočnik retreated into Austrian Carinthia and finally went into hiding high in the mountains near Weissensee, still in company of his closest staff members.

Death

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 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.
Globočnik was taken to Paternion in Villach-Land District to be interrogated. However, before he was questioned Globočnik committed suicide by biting on a cyanide capsule.
His body was taken to be buried in a local churchyard, but the priest reportedly refused to have 'the body of such a man' resting in consecrated ground. A grave was dug outside the churchyard, next to an outer wall, and the body was buried without ceremony.

Conspiracy theories

Despite contemporary photographs of Globočnik's corpse and reliable reports, such as the Regimental Diary and Field Reports of the 4th Queen's Own Hussars, detailing the circumstances of his capture and suicide, his apparent death has become the subject of urban legends.
Prior to the 1980s, there was debate over the circumstances of Globočnik's survival; some had speculated that his death in either early May or June 1945 was at the hands of either partisans or a Jewish revenge squad. A false version of Globočnik's fate has circulated indicating that he was turned over to U.S. intelligence by the British. This is based on an "official US document signed by US CIC S/A Operations Officer Andrew L. Venters, dated 27 October 1948, more than three years after his supposed death". However, this document was exposed as a forgery in the 1980s by the investigative writer and historian, Gitta Sereny; she gives all details in a long article in the Observer newspaper.