Josef Leopold was the Nazi Party Gauleiter of Lower Austria from 1927 to 1938, as well as the Party's Landesleiter and the head of the Sturmabteilung for all of Austria from 1935 to 1938.
24 Facts About Josef Leopold
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Josef Leopold belonged to the faction within Austrian Nazism that supported an independent Austrian Nazi state rather than a union with Germany.
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At the outbreak of the Second World War, Leopold joined the German Army and was killed during the invasion of the Soviet Union.
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Josef Leopold was born in Langenlois, in the rural Waldviertel region of Lower Austria, and attended Volksschule there until 1904.
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Josef Leopold then decided on a military career, joining the 49th Infantry Regiment of the Austro-Hungarian Army on 7 October 1910.
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Josef Leopold was sent to Siberia as a prisoner of war where he remained until February 1918 when he escaped, returning to Austria.
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Josef Leopold became an instructor of new recruits in Vienna and, after the end of the war, he remained in military service with the Volkswehr.
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Josef Leopold became its training officer in August 1923, where he remained until 1925.
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Josef Leopold quickly rose through the Party ranks, from Ortsgruppenleiter in Krems in 1924 to Kreisleiter of the Waldviertel district in 1925 and, by September 1926, he formally joined the Nazi Party and was made leader of the Sturmabteilung in Lower Austria, as well as Deputy Gauleiter of that region.
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Josef Leopold belonged to the pro-independence faction within Austrian Nazism and insisted that Adolf Hitler was only a spiritual leader rather than the future Austrian leader.
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Josef Leopold subsequently was removed from his positions in the Landtag and the Landesrat, and he was discharged from the Austrian Army on 31 August 1933.
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Josef Leopold was appointed the Landesleiter of the banned Austrian Nazi Party on 29 January 1935 and the leader of all SA troops in Austria in June.
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Later in 1936, Josef Leopold began negotiating with Schuschnigg in an attempt to regain legal status for the Nazi Party.
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Josef Leopold hoped through this to become part of a coalition government and to eventually form an independent Nazi government in Austria.
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Josef Leopold then sought to work more closely with other nationalist groups in order to come closer to his ideal of a Nazi Austria and, in this endeavour, won the backing of cabinet ministers Edmund Glaise-Horstenau and Odo Neustadter-Sturmer.
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Indeed, Josef Leopold came out of the negotiations badly, as not only were his plans to reconstitute the Nazi Party as part of the Fatherland's Front made public, but he failed to secure an offer of a cabinet post as he had hoped.
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Heinrich Himmler made him leader of the Austrian Schutzstaffel in 1937, but he soon grew tired of the quarrelsome Josef Leopold, who had clashes with Hermann Goring, Rudolf Hess, Franz von Papen and his co-leader of the Austrian Nazis Hermann Neubacher.
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However, the conversation was picked up by Schuschnigg who had Josef Leopold's office raided, where documents relating to the coup plot were seized.
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Hitler, who had been due to hold talks with Schuschnigg, was especially annoyed that Josef Leopold had launched a bombing campaign in the run-up to the meeting, and so acted quickly to remove him.
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Josef Leopold was considered for the role of Gauleiter of Reichsgau Lower Danube, although this role went to Hugo Jury instead.
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On 21 February 1938, Josef Leopold was granted the title of Honorary Gauleiter.
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Josef Leopold died on 24 July 1941 at the eastern front as a result of an accident with a Romanian soldier's grenade.
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Josef Leopold had been Reich Minister Alfred Rosenberg's choice for the post of Generalkommissar for Crimea, but the job ultimately went to fellow-Austrian Alfred Frauenfeld.
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Josef Leopold had been a member since 1927, and had been awarded the Golden Party Badge.