page_title: Odilo Globočnik
section_title: Nazi Party and SS career
hierarchical_section_title: Odilo Globočnik / Nazi Party and SS career
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Der Gauleiter von Wien: Globotschnigg [Globocnik] 6949/38
context_page_description: 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 organized the murder of more than 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".
  Because Globočnik was a leading Nazi official, and perpetrator of not only the Holocaust but the enslavement and ethnic cleansing of millions of Poles and other Slavs, historians have been interested in accounts of Globočnik's Slavic ancestry. In his 2004 biography of Globočnik, historian Joseph Kranjc devoted the entire first chapter to the debate concerning his ancestry. He says that Globočnik was ridiculed by other Nazis for his surname, because Hitler classified Slavs as sub-human. But senior Nazis such as Himmler defended him, saying that he was of Aryan origin and that his surname had been derived from slavicization.
context_section_description: 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.
  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.
  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 National Socialists. 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. 
  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 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.
caption: Gauleiter of Vienna, 1938
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