• Administrator of Operation Reinhard, General of the Schutzstaffel Odilo Lotario Globocnik, 1904

 

Odilo Globocnik was born on 21 April 1904 into a family of Slovene descent in the Imperial Free City of Trieste, in what was then the capital of the Austrian Littoral administrative region of the Austro - Hungarian Empire (now in Italy). He was the second child of Franz Globocnik from the Upper Carniolan town of Neumarktl (now Tržič in Slovenia) who served as a Habsburg 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 it was the custom with officers resigning their commission for marriage's sake, he was given a job in the Imperial and Royal Mail. In 1914, the family left Trieste for Cseklész where Franz Globocnik was recalled to active duty with the outbreak of World War I.

The same year, Odilo Globocnik joined the army via a military school. The war ended his military education prematurely. Odilo and his family moved to Klagenfurt. Globocnik enrolled at the Hohere Staatsgewerbeschule (a higher vocational school for mechanical engineering) in Klagenfurt, where he passed his Matura (the Austrian equivalent of the German Abitur) and graduated with honors. He performed jobs such as carrying suitcases at the train station in order to help support the family financially.

Globocnik first appeared in politics in 1922, when he became a prominent member of the pre-Nazi Carinthian paramilitary organizations and was seen wearing a swastika. At this time he was a building tradesman. He was introduced to this when he was engaged to Grete Michner. Her father, Emil Michner, talked to the director of KÄEWAG, which was a hydropower plant, and secured Globocnik a job as a technician and construction supervisor.

In August 1933, Globocnik 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 National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP, commonly known as the Nazi Party), as he had become a member of the Nazi party three years earlier, in 1930 while in Carinthia. Although he was arrested four times between 1933 and 1935, he spent little over a year in jail. This was due to Heinrich Himmler’s intervention, after two years of arguments between Globocnik 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. Globocnik was inducted into the SS on September 1, 1934 with the number 292,776.

In June 1933, in Vienna, a bomb was thrown at the shop of Jewish jeweler Norbert Futterweit, killing him. This was one of the first murders in Austria attributable to the Nazis, and a number of historians believe that Globocnik was involved in the attack.

His fanatical devotion to the Nazi cause paid off for Globocnik, as he quickly climbed the ladder of the party apparatus in his native Austria. He became a Deputy Gauleiter for the whole of the country in 1933 at the age of 29, and was a key player in the usurpation of the Austrian government by the National Socialists. Globocnik was rewarded for his diligence, being appointed Gauleiter of Vienna on May 24, 1938 by Adolf Hitler.

While Gauleiter of Vienna, Globocnik spread anti - Semitic propaganda:

In his early tenure as Gauleiter, Globocnik 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".

As corrupt as he was fanatical, Gauleiter Globocnik was relieved of his post and stripped of his party honors in 1939 when it was discovered he was involved in illegal foreign currency speculations. Himmler transferred Globocnik to the Waffen SS in the rank of corporal as punishment, where he served with SS Standarte Germania during the Polish campaign.

Himmler liked Globocnik and recognized the value of the ruthless Austrian. In late 1939 Globocnik was pardoned, promoted to SS-Brigadeführer, and assigned to Lublin province.

On November 9, 1939, Himmler appointed Globocnik SS and Police Leader in the Lublin district of the General Government. After a disappointing party career, Globocnik now had a second chance in the ranks of the SS and the police.

In the years that followed Globocnik was responsible for:

• 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.
• Liquidating the Bialystok Ghetto, which stood out for its strong resistance to German occupation.
• Resettling a large number of Poles under the premise of ethnic cleansing.
• Implementation and supervision of the Lublin reservation, to which 95,000 Jews were deported, with its adjacent network of forced labor camps in the Lublin district. He was also in charge of over 45,000 Jewish laborers.

On February 16, 1940, Globocnik 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 Globocnik may have been the originator of the extermination camp industrialized murder concept and the one who suggested it to Himmler. At a two - hour meeting with Himmler on October 13, 1941, Globocnik received verbal approval to start immediate construction work on Belzec extermination camp, the first such camp in the General Government. Shortly beforehand, in September 1941, Globocnik had been visited by Phillip Bouhler and Victor Brack, the top officials in the Fuhrer Chancellery responsible for the T4 euthanasia program, which had been using gas chambers disguised as shower rooms to execute many of its victims. Thus, apart from what he may have learned through the SS grapevine, Globocnik had specific occasion to learn about this gassing technology prior to his October 13 meeting with Himmler. Moreover, on or about October 1, 1941, Globocnik had written a memorandum to Himmler containing proposals for actions against the Jews "of a security policy nature," and the October 13 meeting was held to discuss this memorandum and related subjects. Additionally, a colleague's contemporaneous letter reflects Globocnik's state of mind at the time of the October 13 meeting: Globocnik then considered it 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 even indications that Globocnik may have begun a crude experimental gassing facility in the woods near Belzec shortly before his mid October meeting with Himmler. Thus leading historians conclude that it was Globocnik who at this October 13, 1941 meeting proposed exterminating the Jews in assembly line fashion in a concentration camp utilizing gas chambers. Notably, on October 14, 1941- the day after he had met with Globocnik - Himmler held a five - hour meeting with Reinhard Heydrich to discuss "executions", following which there was a proliferation of other extermination camp gassing sites. One may reasonably speculate that at this meeting, Himmler and Heydrich eagerly seized upon Globocnik's idea for industrialized murder of the Jews and decided to expand upon it. Just days later, Himmler forbade all further Jewish emigration from Reich territory "in view of the forthcoming 'Final Solution' of the Jewish question." Against this background, therefore, Globocnik arguably may be viewed as the real father of the Final Solution.

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

He exploited Jews and non-Jews as slave laborers in his own forced labor 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, Globocnik had control over the Aktion Reinhard camps, and any orders that he received came directly from Himmler. Since 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 (Zamość Uprising).

Following Italian leader Benito Mussolini's downfall and having looted some of the stolen assets from the labor camps, Globocnik was transferred from the General Government of occupied Poland to the Julian March in the German occupied portion of Italy in September 1943 and was stationed in his hometown of Trieste. He was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader of the Operation Zone of the Adriatic Littoral, as well as command of the Risiera di San Sabba concentration camp in Trieste. Globocnik took with him a number of his staff from Operation Reinhard, including Christian Wirth, Franz Stangl and Franz Reichleitner.

His main task there was combating Yugoslav partisans, but again, he played a leading role in the persecution of Italian Jews. With the advance of Allied troops, Globocnik retreated into Austrian Carinthia and finally went into hiding high in the mountains in an alpine hut near Weissensee, still in company of his closest staff members.

Globocnik was tracked down and captured by a British armored cavalry unit, the 4th Queen's Own Hussars, at the Möslacher Alm, overlooking the Weissensee on May 31, 1945. The British unit, under the command of a Major Ramsey from SIS (MI6), had been tracking potential war criminals in Austria. Globocnik was taken to Paternion to be interrogated, and at around 11:30 hours committed suicide by biting on a cyanide capsule. At least two contemporary photographs show Globocnik's body shortly after his death, and there are several reliable reports, including the Regimental Diary and Field Reports of the 4th Queen's Own Hussars, detailing the circumstances of his capture and suicide.

Captured with him were seven men, including Georg Michalsen, Friedrich Rainer, Ernst Lerch, Hermann Höfle, Karl Hellesberger, Hugo Herzog and Friedrich Plöb.

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 laid to rest without ceremony.

Prior to the 1980s, there was debate over the circumstances of Globocnik's survival - some had speculated that his death in either early May or June 1945 at the hands of either partisans or a Jewish revenge squad.

A false version of Globocnik'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 ("Spin Time For Hitler", London, April 21, 1996).