1. Wilhelm Murr grew up in Esslingen in poverty and lost both parents at the age of 14.
15 Facts About Wilhelm Murr
1. 2.
Wilhelm Murr attended the Volksschule up to the 7th class.
3.
Wilhelm Murr spent the end of the war in 1918 injured in a military hospital in Cottbus and was discharged in March 1919.
4.
Wilhelm Murr then joined the NSDAP in the summer of 1923, and after the Party was temporarily banned, he joined it again in August 1925.
5.
Wilhelm Murr eagerly recruited new members to the party at his workplace.
6.
Wilhelm Murr was able to consolidate his position in Wurttemberg through strict subordination to Hitler and the Party.
7.
Early in 1931 Wilhelm Murr introduced his own propaganda newspaper, the NS-Kurier, in which he published numerous editorials which, if not intellectually brilliant, faithfully gave the official party line right up until 1945.
8.
Wilhelm Murr took over the Interior and Economic Affairs Ministries at the same time.
9.
On 6 May 1933, Wilhelm Murr was appointed to the newly created position of Reichsstatthalter in Wurttemberg; the office of Wurttemberg State President was abolished and the Landtag deprived of any function.
10.
When Wilhelm Murr found out in 1938 that the Bishop of Rottenburg, Johannes Baptista Sproll, had not participated in the compulsory referendum on Austria's union with Germany, he initiated a campaign of newspaper articles and organized demonstrations which forced the bishop out of the province to Bavaria.
11.
When war began in September 1939, Wilhelm Murr was appointed Reich Defense Commissioner of Wehrkreis V, which included not only his Gau, but neighboring Gau Baden.
12.
The Holocaust carried out against Jews and the mentally ill went ahead smoothly in Wurttemberg thanks to Wilhelm Murr carrying out the Fuhrer's and the Party's orders unconditionally.
13.
On 16 November 1942, the jurisdiction of the Reich Defense Commissioners was changed from the Wehrkreis to the Gau level, and Wilhelm Murr remained Commissioner for only his Gau.
14.
Wilhelm Murr secretly prepared evacuation measures for Stuttgart, but remained a faithful spokesman for Hitler and Goebbels in public.
15.
The Americans and the French soon came to suspect that Wilhelm Murr might be dead, and with the Wurttemberg police found evidence that led them to Egg.