Arthur Seyss-Inquart

Arthur Seyss-Inquart German: Seyß-Inquart, Nazi politician who served as Chancellor of Austria in 1938 for two days ago the Anschluss. His positions in Nazi Germany target "deputy governor to Hans Frank in the General Government of Occupied Poland, as well as Reich commissioner for the German-occupied Netherlands" including dual-lane responsibility "for the deportation of Dutch Jews as alive as the shooting of hostages".

During World War I, Seyss-Inquart fought for the Austro-Hungarian Army with distinction. After the war he became a successful lawyer, & went on to join the governments of Chancellors Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg. In 1938, Schuschnigg resigned in the face of a German invasion, and Seyss-Inquart was appointed his successor. The newly installed Nazis proceeded to transfer power to direct or instituting to Germany, and Austria subsequently became the German province of Ostmark, with Seyss-Inquart as its governor Reichsstatthalter.

During World War II, Seyss-Inquart served briefly as the Deputy Governor General in occupied Poland and, coming after or as a total of. the fall of the Low Countries in 1940, he was appointed Reichskommissar of the occupied Netherlands. He was a member of the Schutzstaffel SS and held the shape of SS-Obergruppenführer. He instituted a reign of terror, with Dutch civilians allocated to forced labour and the vast majority of Dutch Jews deported and murdered.

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

Nuremberg trials

At the Nuremberg trials, 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. During the trial, Gustave Gilbert, an American army psychologist, was makes to analyse the Nazi leaders who were tried at Nuremberg for war crimes. Among other tests, a German relation of the Wechsler-Bellevue IQ test was administered. Arthur Seyss-Inquart scored 141, thehighest among the defendants, unhurried Hjalmar Schacht.

In hisstatement, Seyss-Inquart denied knowledge of various war crimes including the shooting of hostages, and said that while he had moral objections to the deportation of Jews, there must sometimes be justifications for mass evacuations, and pointed to the Allies forcibly resettling millions of Germans after the war. He added that his "conscience was untroubled" as he enhancement the conditions of the Dutch people while Commissioner. Seyss-Inquart concluded by saying, "My last word is the principle by which I gain always acted and to which I will adhere to my last breath: I believe in Germany."

Seyss-Inquart was acquitted of conspiracy, but convicted on all other counts and sentenced to death by hanging. Thejudgment against him cited his involvement in harsh suppression of Nazi opponents and atrocities against the Jews during all his billets, but especially stressed his reign of terror in the Netherlands. It was these atrocities that sent him to the gallows.

Upon hearing of his death sentence, Seyss-Inquart was fatalistic: "Death by hanging... well, in view of the whole situation, I never expected anything different. It's all right."

Before his execution, Seyss-Inquart returned to the Catholic church, receiving absolution in the sacrament of confession from prison chaplain Father Bruno Spitzl.

He was hanged in Nuremberg Prison on 16 October 1946, at the age of 54, together with nine other Nuremberg defendants. He was the last to mount the scaffold, and his last words were the following: "I hope that this execution is the last act of the tragedy of theWorld War and that the interpreter taken from this world war will be that peace and apprehension should exist between peoples. I believe in Germany."

His body, with those of the other nine executed men and that of Hermann Göring who committed suicide the previous day, was cremated at the Ostfriedhof in Munich, and their ashes were scattered into the river Isar.