DuringWorld War I, Seyss-Inquart fought for theAustro-Hungarian Army with distinction. After the war he became a successful lawyer, and went on to join the governments ofChancellorsEngelbert Dollfuss andKurt 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 Germany, and Austria subsequently became the German province ofOstmark, with Seyss-Inquart as its governor (Reichsstatthalter).
DuringWorld War II, Seyss-Inquart served briefly as the Deputy Governor General inoccupied Poland and, following the fall of theLow Countries in 1940, he was appointedReichskommissar of theoccupied Netherlands. He was a member of theSchutzstaffel (SS) and held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer. He instituted a reign of terror, with Dutch civilians subjected to forced labour and the vast majority of Dutch Jews deported and murdered.[2]
Seyss-Inquart was born in 1892 inStannern (Czech:Stonařov), a German-speaking village in the neighbourhood of the predominantly German-speaking town ofIglau (Czech:Jihlava). This area constituted a German linguistic island in the midst of a Czech-speaking region; this may have contributed to the outspoken national consciousness of the family, and the young Arthur in particular. Iglau was an important town inMoravia, one of theCzech provinces of theAustro-Hungarian Empire, in which there was increasing rivalry betweenGermans andCzechs. His parents were the school principal Emil Zajtich (who changed his surname to Seyss-Inquart) and Augusta Hirenbach. His father was Czech and his mother was German.[5]
The family moved toVienna in 1907. Seyss-Inquart later studiedlaw at theUniversity of Vienna. At the beginning ofWorld War I in August 1914 Seyss-Inquart enlisted with theAustrian Army and was given a commission with theTyroleanKaiserjäger, subsequently serving inRussia,Romania andItaly. He was decorated for bravery on a number of occasions, and while recovering from wounds in 1917, he completed his final examinations for his degree. Seyss-Inquart had five older siblings: Hedwig (born 1881), Richard (born 3 April 1883, became a Roman Catholic priest, but left the priesthood, married in a civil ceremony and becameOberregierungsrat [senior government counsel] and prison superior by 1940 in theOstmark), Irene (born 1885), Henriette (born 1887) and Robert (born 1891).
In 1911, Seyss-Inquart met Gertrud Maschka. The couple married in December 1916 and had three children: Ingeborg Carolina Augusta Seyss-Inquart (born 18 September 1917), Richard Seyss-Inquart (born 22 August 1921) and Dorothea Seyss-Inquart (born 7 May 1928).
Seyss-Inquart went into law after the war and in 1921 set up his own practice. During the early years of theAustrian First Republic, he was close to theFatherland Front. A successful lawyer, Seyss-Inquart was invited to join thecabinet of ChancellorEngelbert Dollfuss in 1933. Following Dollfuss' murder in 1934, he became a State Councillor from 1937 underKurt Schuschnigg. A keen mountaineer, Seyss-Inquart became the head of the German-Austrian Alpine Club. He later became a devotee ofHeinrich Himmler's concepts of racial purity and sponsored various expeditions toTibet and other parts of Asia in hopes of provingAryan racial concepts and theories. Seyss-Inquart was not initially a member of theAustrian National Socialist party, though he was sympathetic to many of their views and actions.[6] By 1938, however, Seyss-Inquart knew which way the political wind was blowing and became a respectable frontman for the Austrian National Socialists.
In February 1938, Seyss-Inquart was appointed AustrianMinister of the Interior by Schuschnigg, after Hitler had threatened Schuschnigg with military actions against Austria in the event of non-compliance. On 11 March 1938, faced with a German invasion aimed at preventing aplebiscite on independence, Schuschnigg resigned as Austrian Chancellor. Under growing pressure from Berlin, PresidentWilhelm Miklas reluctantly appointed Seyss-Inquart his successor. On the next day, German troops crossed the border of Austria at thetelegraphed invitation of Seyss-Inquart. This telegram had actually been drafted beforehand and was released after the troops had begun to march, so as to justify the action in the eyes of the international community. Before his triumphant entry intoVienna, Hitler had planned to leave Austria as a pro-Nazi puppet state headed by Seyss-Inquart. However, the acclamation for the German army from the majority of the Austrian population led Hitler to change course and opt for a fullAnschluss, in which Austria was incorporated intoNazi Germany as the province ofOstmark. Only then, on 13 March 1938, did Seyss-Inquart join the Nazi Party.[7]
Seyss-Inquart drafted the legislative act reducing Austria to a province of Germany and signed it into law on 13 March. With Hitler's approval, he became Governor (Reichsstatthalter) of the newly named Ostmark, thus becoming Hitler's personal representative in Austria.Ernst Kaltenbrunner served as chief minister andJosef Burckel as Commissioner for the Reunion of Austria (concerned with the "Jewish Question"). On 10 April 1938, Seyss-Inquart was elected as a deputy to theReichstag from Ostmark and would retain this seat until May 1945.[8] He also received an honorarySS rank ofGruppenführer and in May 1939 he was made aReichsministerwithout Portfolio inHitler's cabinet. Almost as soon as he took office, he ordered the confiscation of Jewish property and sent Jews to concentration camps. Late in his regime, he collaborated in the deportation of Jews from Austria.
Following the invasion ofPoland in 1939, Seyss-Inquart was named as theChief of Civil Administration for Southern Poland, but did not take up that post before theGeneral Government was created, in which he became Deputy to theGovernor GeneralHans Frank, remaining in this position until 18 May 1940.[9] He fully supported the heavy-handed policies put into effect by Frank, including persecution of Jews. He was also aware of theAbwehr's murder of Polish intellectuals.
Following the capitulation of theNetherlands on 15 May 1940, Seyss-Inquart was appointedReichskommissar for the Occupied Netherlands. He directed the civil administration, imposed complete economic subordination to Germany, and carried out Nazi policies. In April 1941, he was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer.[10] Among the Dutch people he was mockingly referred to as "Zes en een kwart" ("six and a quarter"), a play on his name, and the fact that Seyss-Inquart suffered from a limp. He supported the DutchNSB and allowed them to create the paramilitaryNederlandse Landwacht, which acted as an auxiliary police force. Other political parties were banned in late 1941 and many former government officials were imprisoned atKamp Sint-Michielsgestel. The administration of the country was controlled by Seyss-Inquart and he answered directly to Hitler.[11] He oversaw the politicisation of cultural groups from theNederlandsche Kultuurkamer "right down to the chessplayers' club", and set up a number of other politicised associations.
He introduced measures to combat resistance, and when there was a widespread strike inAmsterdam,Arnhem andHilversum in May 1943, specialsummary court-martial procedures were brought in, and a collective fine of 18 millionguilders was imposed. During the occupation, Seyss-Inquart authorized about 800 executions, although some reports put the total at over 1,500. These included executions under the so-called "Hostage Law", the killing of political prisoners who were close to being liberated[clarification needed], thePutten raid, and the reprisal executions of 117 Dutchmen for the attack on SS and Police LeaderHanns Albin Rauter. Although the majority of Seyss-Inquart's powers were transferred to the military commander in the Netherlands and theGestapo in July 1944, he remained a force to be reckoned with. It is thought he met withHaj Amin al-Husseini, an exiled leader of Palestinian Arabs,Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, somewhere in Germany in 1943.[12]
There were threeconcentration camps in the Netherlands: the smallerKZ Herzogenbusch nearVught,Kamp Amersfoort nearAmersfoort, andWesterbork transit camp (a "Jewish assembly camp"); there were a number of other camps variously controlled by the military, the police, the SS, or Seyss-Inquart's administration. These included a "voluntary labour recruitment" camp atOmmen (Camp Erika). In total around 530,000 Dutch civilians were forced to work for the Germans, of whom 250,000 were sent to factories in Germany. There was an unsuccessful attempt by Seyss-Inquart to send only workers aged 21 to 23 to Germany, and he refused demands in 1944 for a further 250,000 Dutch workers and in that year sent only 12,000 people.
Objectsridiculing Seyss-Inquart, including a cigarette extinguisher made of coins adding up to 61⁄4 cents. Zes-en-een-kwart (six-and-a-quarter) was a commonly usednickname for Seyss-Inquart. The quarter also refers to his crippled leg.
Seyss-Inquart was an unwaveringanti-Semite; within a few months of his arrival in the Netherlands, he took measures to remove Jews from the government, the press and leading positions in industry. Anti-Jewish measures intensified after 1941: approximately 140,000 Jews were registered, a "ghetto" was created in Amsterdam and a transit camp was set up atWesterbork. In February 1941, 600 Jews were sent toBuchenwald, a concentration camp located within Germany's borders, and toMauthausen, located in Upper Austria. Later, the Dutch Jews were sent toAuschwitz, the notorious complex operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. As Allied forces approached in September 1944, the remaining Jews at Westerbork were removed toTheresienstadt, the SS-established concentration camp/ghetto in the Nazi German-occupied region of Czechoslovakia. Of the 140,000 registered, only 30,000Dutch Jews survived the war.
When theAllies advanced into the Netherlands in late 1944, the Nazi regime had attempted to enact ascorched earth policy, and some docks and harbours were destroyed. Seyss-Inquart, however, was in agreement with Armaments MinisterAlbert Speer over the futility of such actions, and with the open connivance of many military commanders, they greatly limited the implementation of the scorched-earth orders.[7]
Before Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, he named a new government headed by Grand AdmiralKarl Dönitz in hislast will and testament, in which Seyss-Inquart replacedJoachim von Ribbentrop, who had long since fallen out of favour, as Foreign Minister. It was a token of the high regard Hitler felt for his Austrian comrade, at a time when he was rapidly disowning or being abandoned by so many of his other key lieutenants. Unsurprisingly, at such a late stage in the war, Seyss-Inquart failed to achieve anything in his new office.
He remained in his posts until 5 May 1945, when, after a meeting with Dönitz to confirm his rescission of the scorched earth orders, he was arrested on theElbe Bridge inHamburg by two soldiers of theRoyal Welch Fusiliers, one of whom was Norman Miller (birth name: Norbert Mueller), a German Jew from Nuremberg who had escaped to Britain at the age of 15 on aKindertransport.[14] The Anglo-Dutch art dealerEdward Speelman was also involved in Seyss-Inquart's arrest.[15][16]
At theNuremberg 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 allowed to examine the Nazi leaders who were tried at Nuremberg for war crimes. Among other tests, a German version of theWechsler-BellevueIQ test was administered. Arthur Seyss-Inquart scored 141, the second highest among the defendants, behindHjalmar Schacht.
In his final statement, 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 theAllies forcibly resettling millions of Germans after the war. He added that his "conscience was untroubled" as he improved the conditions of the Dutch people whileCommissioner. Seyss-Inquart concluded by saying, "My last word is the principle by which I have always acted and to which I will adhere to my last breath: I believe in Germany."[17][better source needed]
Seyss-Inquart was acquitted of conspiracy, but convicted on all other counts and sentenced to death by hanging. The final judgment against him cited his involvement in harsh suppression of Nazi opponents and atrocities against the Jews during all his billets, but particularly 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."[18]
Seyss-Inquart 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 hislast words were the following: "I hope that this execution is the last act of the tragedy of the Second World War and that the lesson taken from this world war will be that peace and understanding should exist between peoples. I believe in Germany."
His body, with those of the other nine executed men and that ofHermann Göring (who had committed suicide the previous day), was cremated at theOstfriedhof inMunich, and their ashes were scattered into the RiverIsar.[20][21][22]
InDoris Orgel's children's novel,The Devil in Vienna, the narrator refers to Seyss-Inquart’s rise as she observes the changing political atmosphere in her Vienna. InOtto Preminger's movieThe Cardinal, Seyss-Inquart is played byErik Frey.
In the mangaHellsing (and its anime adaptation Hellsing Ultimate) the Major names one of his Zeppelins for Seyss-Inquart.
^Biondi, Robert (2000).SS Officers List: SS-Standartenführer to SS-Oberstgruppenführer (As of 30 January 1942).Schiffer Publishing. p. 7.ISBN978-0764310614.
^Tom."Max J. Friedländers bevrijdende zomer van 1945".RKD Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis (in Dutch). Retrieved28 January 2022.Niet minder opgetogen was hij over de ontvangst van de Engelse uitgave van zijn boek Von Kunst und Kennerschaft uit handen van de Engelse kunsthandelaar Edward Speelman. Het manuscript, dat door Bruno Cassirer stiekem mee naar Engeland was genomen en daar in 1942 als On Art and Connoisseurship was uitgegeven, kreeg Friedländer nu voor het eerst onder ogen. Wat de overhandiging extra bijzonder maakte, was het feit dat Speelman, die tijdens de oorlog in het Britse leger had gediend, een belangrijke rol had gespeeld bij de arrestatie van Arthur Seyss-Inquart, de voormalige Rijkscommissaris van het bezette Nederland.
Koll, Johannes:Arthur Seyß-Inquart und die deutsche Besatzungspolitik in den Niederlanden (1940–1945). Böhlau, Wien [u. a.] 2015,ISBN978-3-205-79660-2.
Koll, Johannes:From the Habsburg Empire to the Third Reich: Arthur Seyß-Inquart and National Socialism. In:Günter Bischof, Fritz Plasser, Eva Maltschnig (Hrsg.):Austrian Lives (= Contemporary Austrian Studies, Bd. 21). University of New Orleans Press/Innsbruck University Press, New Orleans/Innsbruck 2012, S. 123–146,ISBN978-3-902811-61-5.
Manvell, Roger (2011).Goering : the rise and fall of the notorious Nazi leader. London: Frontline Books.ISBN978-1-61608-109-6.OCLC787859366.
Zebhauser, Helmuth:Alpinismus im Hitlerstaat. Gedanken, Erinnerungen, Dokumente. Dokumente des Alpinismus, Band 1. Rother, München 1998,ISBN3-7633-8102-3.
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