Arthur Seyss-Inquart: SS-Obergruppenführer, Austrian Minister of the Interior (1938), Head of Ostmark and Southern Poland (1940) and Reichskommissar in the Netherlands (1940-1945)

(22 July 1892 – 16 October 1946)

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 father was Czech and his mother was German.

The family moved to Vienna in 1907. Seyss-Inquart later studied law at the University of Vienna. At the beginning of World War I in August 1914 Seyss-Inquart enlisted with the Austrian Army and was given a commission with the Tyrolean Kaiserjäger, subsequently serving in Russia, Romania and Italy. He was decorated for bravery on a number of occasions, and while recovering from wounds in 1917, he completed his final examinations for his degree. 

In 1911, Seyss-Inquart met Gertrud Maschka. The couple married in December 1916 and had three children: Ingeborg Carolina Augusta Seyss-Inquart, Richard Seyss-Inquart and Dorothea Seyss-Inquart.

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 Austrian First Republic, he was close to the Fatherland Front. A successful lawyer, Seyss-Inquart was invited to join the cabinet of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in 1933. Following Dollfuss' murder in 1934, he became a State Councillor from 1937 under Kurt Schuschnigg. A keen mountaineer, Seyss-Inquart became the head of the German-Austrian Alpine Club. He later became a devotee of Heinrich Himmler's concepts of racial purity and sponsored various expeditions to Tibet and other parts of Asia in hopes of proving Aryan racial concepts and theories. Seyss-Inquart was not initially a member of the Austrian National Socialist party, though he was sympathetic to many of their views and actions. By 1938, however, Seyss-Inquart knew which way the political wind was blowing and became a respectable frontman for the Austrian National Socialists.

In February 1938, Seyss-Inquart was appointed Austrian Minister of the Interior by Schuschnigg, after Hitler had threatened Schuschnigg with military actions against Austria in the event of non-compliance. On 11 March 1938, faced with a German invasion aimed at preventing a plebiscite on independence, Schuschnigg resigned as Austrian Chancellor. Under growing pressure from Berlin, President Wilhelm Miklas reluctantly appointed Seyss-Inquart his successor. On the next day, German troops crossed the border of Austria at the telegraphed invitation of Seyss-Inquart. This telegram had actually been drafted beforehand and was released after the troops had begun to march, so as to justify the action in the eyes of the international community. Before his triumphant entry into Vienna, Hitler had planned to leave Austria as a pro-NS puppet state headed by Seyss-Inquart. However, the acclamation for the German army from the majority of the Austrian population led Hitler to change course and opt for a full Anschluss, in which Austria was incorporated into National Socialist Germany as the province of Ostmark. Only then, on 13 March 1938, did Seyss-Inquart join the NSDAP.

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 (Reichsstatthalter) of the newly named Ostmark, thus becoming Hitler's personal representative in Austria. Ernst Kaltenbrunner served as chief minister and Josef Burckel as Commissioner for the Reunion of Austria (concerned with the "Jewish Question"). Seyss-Inquart also received an honorary SS rank of Gruppenführer and in May 1939 he was made a Reichsminister without Portfolio in Hitler's cabinet. Almost as soon as he took office, he ordered the confiscation of Jewish property and sent Jews to concentration camps. Late in his regime, he collaborated in the deportation of Jews from Austria.

Following the invasion of Poland, Seyss-Inquart was named as the Chief of Civil Administration for Southern Poland, but did not take up that post before the General Government was created, in which he became Deputy to the Governor General Hans Frank, remaining in this position until 18 May 1940. He fully supported the heavy-handed policies put into effect by Frank, including persecution of Jews. He was also aware of the Abwehr's murder of Polish intellectuals.

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 National Socialist policies. In April 1941, he was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer. 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. 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 Amsterdam, Arnhem and Hilversum in May 1943, special summary court-martial procedures were brought in, and a collective fine of 18 million guilders was imposed. During the occupation, Seyss-Inquart authorized about 800 executions, although some reports put the total at over 1,500. Although the majority of Seyss-Inquart's powers were transferred to the military commander in the Netherlands and the Gestapo in July 1944, he remained a force to be reckoned with. It is thought he met with Haj Amin al-Husseini, an exiled leader of Palestinian Arabs, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, somewhere in Germany in 1943.

Seyss-Inquart was an unwavering anti-Semite; within a few months of his arrival in the Netherlands, he took measures to remove Jews from the government, the press and leading positions in industry. Anti-Jewish measures intensified after 1941: approximately 140,000 Jews were registered, a "ghetto" was created in Amsterdam and a transit camp was set up at Westerbork. Subsequently, in February 1941, 600 Jews were sent to Buchenwald, a concentration camp located within Germany's borders, and to Mauthausen, located in Upper Austria.

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. The Anglo-Dutch art dealer Edward Speelman was also involved in Seyss-Inquart's arrest.

Nuremberg trials

At the Nuremberg trials, Seyss-Inquart was defended by Gustav Steinbauer and faced four charges: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. During the trial, Gustave Gilbert, an American army psychologist, was allowed to examine the National Socialist leaders who were tried at Nuremberg for war crimes. Among other tests, a German version of the Wechsler-Bellevue IQ test was administered. Arthur Seyss-Inquart scored 141, the second highest among the defendants, behind Hjalmar Schacht.

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."

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.