46 Facts About Karl Wahl

Karl Wahl was the Nazi Gauleiter of Gau Swabia from the Gau inception in 1928 until the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945.

Karl Wahl was born as the thirteenth child of a boilerman in Aalen, then in the Kingdom of Wurttemberg, in 1892.

Karl Wahl attended volksschule and vocational school in Aalen, training as a hairdresser and passing his journeyman examinations in 1910.

Karl Wahl was assigned to the 2nd Royal Bavarian Jager Battalion, and later transferred to the medical corps.

Karl Wahl served in the First World War on the western front as a Sanitater with the 5th Royal Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment and was seriously wounded with grenade fragments to the knee on 12 October 1914, being hospitalized until March 1915.

Karl Wahl was promoted to Vizefeldwebel for bravery in the face of the enemy and was decorated with the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class.

Karl Wahl then became a legal assistant to the Magistrate of the city until 1933.

Karl Wahl first joined the Nazi Party and the SA in 1921.

Karl Wahl became the Fuhrer of the SA Standarte in Augsburg in September of that year, retaining this command through September 1928.

On 20 May 1928, Karl Wahl was elected to the Bavarian Landtag, the state parliament, a seat he held until 14 October 1933.

Karl Wahl was the only holder of this position, staying in office until the end of the Second World War in Europe in May 1945, when the Gaue were abolished.

Karl Wahl established the first Nazi-owned newspaper in Augsburg in February 1931, the Neuen National-Zeitung Augsburg, which engaged in hate propaganda against Jews, the workers' movement and the political opposition.

On 12 November 1933, Karl Wahl was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 24, Upper Bavaria-Swabia.

Karl Wahl would retain this seat until the end of the Nazi regime.

Additionally, Karl Wahl was appointed to the office of Acting Regierungsprasident of Swabia on 10 April 1934.

Karl Wahl thus united under his control the highest party and governmental offices in his jurisdiction.

Karl Wahl was made a member of the Academy for German Law on 9 September 1935.

Swabia was a relatively small Gau, and Karl Wahl had to fend off an attempt in June 1934 by his more powerful neighbor, Adolf Wagner, Gauleiter of Gau Munich-Upper Bavaria, to incorporate Swabia into his jurisdiction.

Unlike Wagner, who was a personal friend of Hitler, Karl Wahl wielded no real influence with the party leadership.

However, Karl Wahl strenuously opposed this power grab and demanded that the plan receive Hitler's countersignature.

When confronted, Hitler agreed to allow Karl Wahl to continue in office.

Karl Wahl was the only one of the Bavarian Gauleiter not to have graduated from university.

Karl Wahl joined the SS with the rank of honorary SS-Gruppenfuhrer on 9 September 1934 and was assigned to SS-Oberabschnitt-Sud in Munich until 1 April 1936 when he was reassigned to the staff of Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler.

Karl Wahl nevertheless held a close friendship to Auxiliary Bishop Franz Xaver Eberle of Augsburg throughout the time of the Third Reich and Hitler himself complimented Wahl in 1937, saying "Wahl, your auxiliary bishop is the most sympathetic priest that I have ever met".

On 12 July 1938, Karl Wahl presided over the annexation of Jungholz and the Kleinwalsertal to the Gau Schwaben.

On 17 February 1939, Karl Wahl was placed in charge of all municipal construction measures in Augsburg.

Karl Wahl noticed that the excitement within the German population for another war was very limited.

Karl Wahl denounced the leaders of many of the countries Germany had defeated as cowards, due to the fact that they fled to England and elsewhere rather than stayed or died with their people and soldiers.

Karl Wahl founded and published a magazine named Front und Heimat intended for soldiers from Swabia.

Karl Wahl visited Swabian troops in France and spent six weeks with a Swabian mountain division in the Donetsk region on the eastern front in 1941.

On 16 November 1942, when the jurisdiction for the Reich Defense Commissioners was changed from the Wehrkreis to the Gau level, Karl Wahl was named Reich Defense Commissioner for Gau Swabia.

Karl Wahl had not sought the approval of the Party or SS hierarchy, and the idea was immediately quashed by Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler.

Karl Wahl was promoted to SS-Obergruppenfuhrer on 1 August 1944, and on 25 September 1944 he became the leader of Swabia's Volkssturm forces, ironically, a home defense force similar to what he had proposed the previous year.

Karl Wahl met Hitler for the last time on 25 February 1945 in Berlin.

Karl Wahl attributed this harsh statement to the stress the Fuhrer was in and perceived him to be mortally ill.

Karl Wahl was arrested by the occupying troops on 10 May 1945.

Karl Wahl was held in 13 different internment camps and prisons over the next few years, including Dachau and appeared as a witness at the Nuremberg trials in 1946.

Karl Wahl's autobiography was the first of any Gauleiter to be published.

Karl Wahl later worked as the library director of the Messerschmitt factory from 1958 to 1968, thanks to his friendship with Willy Messerschmitt, established in the Nazi era.

Karl Wahl further says, he contacted a personal friend at the Reichssicherheitshauptamt to enquire whether there was any substance to the rumour and was told it was a lie.

Karl Wahl was asked to disclose the names of the soldiers who had approached him.

Kershaw points out that Karl Wahl did advocate to Bormann the use of kamikaze-like suicide attacks with bomb-laden aircraft on US supply bridges over the Rhine.

Kershaw posits that Karl Wahl could have made such a suggestion as a means of affirming loyalty to the regime in its final months, when reprisals against defeatist sentiment were at their height.

Apart from being Gauleiter of Swabia, Karl Wahl held the following offices and memberships within the Nazi organisation:.

Karl Wahl published an autobiography in Augsburg in 1954, being the first former Gauleiter to do so after the war:.

Karl Wahl later published a second book in Offenbach am Main in 1973:.