1. Viktor Lutze was employed by the Reichspost from 1907 until he joined the Prussian Army in 1912.
21 Facts About Viktor Lutze
1. 2.
Viktor Lutze served with the 55th Infantry Regiment and then fought in the 369th Infantry Regiment and 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment during the First World War.
3.
Viktor Lutze served as a platoon leader and a company commander and lost an eye in combat.
4.
Viktor Lutze joined the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1922, and the SA in 1923.
5.
Viktor Lutze became an associate of Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, the first leader of the SA.
6.
Viktor Lutze worked with Albert Leo Schlageter in the resistance and the sabotage of the Belgian and French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923.
7.
Viktor Lutze became the deputy Gauleiter for the Ruhr in 1926.
8.
Viktor Lutze rose through the ranks and by 1933 was a SA-Obergruppenfuhrer.
9.
Viktor Lutze played an important part in the Night of the Long Knives.
10.
On 20 July 1934, Viktor Lutze was appointed to Rohm's position as a Reichsleiter, the second-highest political rank in the Nazi Party.
11.
Shirer described Viktor Lutze as possessing a shrill unpleasant voice, and thought that the "SA boys received him coolly".
12.
Alone among the speakers, Viktor Lutze receives the dramatic low-angle shots while he stands solo at the podium.
13.
In September 1938, SA Stabschef Viktor Lutze travelled to Passau to welcome Nazis who had returned from the Reichsparteitag in Nuremberg.
14.
Viktor Lutze stayed at "Veste Oberhaus" and seized the opportunity to meet Johann Nepomuk Kuhberger, who had once helped to save Hitler from drowning in the Inn River.
15.
In February 1939, Viktor Lutze reviewed a parade of 20,000 Blackshirts in Rome and then set off for a tour of Italy's Libyan border with Tunisia.
16.
Viktor Lutze maintained his position in the weakened SA until his death.
17.
On 1 May 1943, his son Viktor was driving a car with Lutze and his entire family on the Reichsautobahn en route to Berlin.
18.
Viktor Lutze was badly injured and his older daughter Inge was killed.
19.
Viktor Lutze died during an operation in a hospital in Potsdam the next evening.
20.
Goebbels, in his diaries, had described Viktor Lutze as a man of "unlimited stupidity" but upon his death decided that he was a decent fellow.
21.
At the time of the accident, Viktor Lutze was 52 years old.