32 Facts About Arthur Seyss-Inquart

Arthur Seyss-Inquart was an Austrian Nazi politician who served as Chancellor of Austria in 1938 for two days before the Anschluss.

In 1938, Schuschnigg resigned in the face of a German invasion, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart was appointed his successor.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart was a member of the Schutzstaffel and held the rank of SS-Obergruppenfuhrer.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart instituted a reign of terror, with Dutch civilians subjected to forced labour and the vast majority of Dutch Jews deported and murdered.

At the Nuremberg trials, Arthur Seyss-Inquart was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart was born in 1892 in Stannern, a German-speaking village in the neighbourhood of the predominantly German-speaking town of Iglau.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart's father was Czech and his mother was German.

At the beginning of World War I in August 1914 Arthur Seyss-Inquart enlisted with the Austrian Army and was given a commission with the Tyrolean Kaiserjager, subsequently serving in Russia, Romania and Italy.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart was decorated for bravery on a number of occasions, and while recovering from wounds in 1917, he completed his final examinations for his degree.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart went into law after the war and in 1921 set up his own practice.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart 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.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart was not initially a member of the Austrian National Socialist party, though he was sympathetic to many of their views and actions.

In February 1938, Arthur 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.

Only then, on 13 March 1938, did Arthur Seyss-Inquart join the Nazi Party.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart received an honorary SS rank of Gruppenfuhrer and in May 1939 he was made a Reichsminister without Portfolio in Hitler's cabinet.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart fully supported the heavy-handed policies put into effect by Frank, including persecution of Jews.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart was aware of the Abwehrs murder of Polish intellectuals.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart supported the Dutch NSB and allowed them to create the paramilitary Nederlandse Landwacht, which acted as an auxiliary police force.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart 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.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart 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.

Up until the liberation, Arthur Seyss-Inquart authorized about 800 executions, although some reports put the total at over 1,500, including executions under the so-called "Hostage Law", the death of political prisoners who were close to being liberated, the Putten raid, and the reprisal executions of 117 Dutchmen for the attack on SS and Police Leader Hanns Albin Rauter.

Arthur 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.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart 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.

At the very end of the Dutch "hunger winter" in April 1945, Arthur Seyss-Inquart was with difficulty persuaded by the Allies to allow airplanes to drop food for the starving Dutch civilians of the occupied north-west of the country.

Unsurprisingly, at such a late stage in the war, Arthur Seyss-Inquart failed to achieve anything in his new office.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart remained in his posts until 7 May 1945, when, after a meeting with Donitz to confirm his rescission of the scorched earth orders, he was arrested on the Elbe Bridge in Hamburg by two soldiers of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, one of whom was Norman Miller, a German Jew from Nuremberg who had escaped to Britain at the age of 15 on a Kindertransport just before the war and then returned to Germany as part of the British occupation forces.

At the Nuremberg trials, Arthur 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.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart added that his "conscience was untroubled" as he improved the conditions of the Dutch people while Commissioner.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart was acquitted of conspiracy, but convicted on all other counts and sentenced to death by hanging.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart was hanged in Nuremberg Prison on 16 October 1946, at the age of 54, together with nine other Nuremberg defendants.

In Doris Orgel's children's novel, The Devil in Vienna, the narrator refers to Arthur Seyss-Inquart's rise as she observes the changing political atmosphere in her Vienna.

In Otto Preminger's movie The Cardinal, Arthur Seyss-Inquart is played by Erik Frey.