Odilo Globocnik

Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globocnik (21 April 1904 – 31 May 1945) was a Nazi Party official from Austria and a perpetrator of the Holocaust.

A high-ranking leader of the SS, Globocnik played a leading role in Operation Reinhard, the organized murder of around one and a half million Jews, mostly of Polish origin, during the Holocaust in the Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec extermination camps.

Historian Michael Allen described him as "the vilest individual in the vilest organization ever known".

Globocnik killed himself shortly after his capture and detention by British soldiers.

Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globočnik was born on 21 April 1904 in the Imperial Free City of Trieste, then the capital of the Austrian Littoral administrative region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Italy).

He was the second child of Franz Globočnik, a Slovenian cavalry lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army.

Because Globocnik was a leading Nazi official, and perpetrator of not only the Holocaust but the ethnic cleansing of millions of Poles and other Slavs, historians have been interested in accounts of Globočnik's Slavic ancestry – his surname is Slovenian – with his father being Slovenian while his mother was half-Serbian and half- Croatian.

His father was unable to save enough money required to get an officer's marriage permission and had to leave the service.

As was the practice at this time, he was given a job in the Imperial and Royal Mail.

Odilo's mother Anna, née Petschinka, was born in Versecz, Kingdom of Hungary (now Vršac, Serbia); she was half-Serbian and half-Croatian.

In 1914, the family left Trieste for Cseklész, where Franz Globočnik was recalled to active duty after the outbreak of the First World War.

The same year, Globočnik joined the army, via a military school.

The war ended his military education prematurely.

He moved with his family to Klagenfurt in Carinthia.

There as a teenager, he joined the pro-Austrian volunteer militia fighting Slovene volunteers and, later, the Yugoslav Army during the Carinthian War (1918–19).

In 1920, he worked as an underground propagandist for the Austrian cause during the Carinthian Plebiscite.

He later enrolled at the Höhere Staatsgewerbeschule (a higher vocational school for mechanical engineering), where he passed his Matura (the Austrian equivalent of the German Abitur) and graduated with honours.

He worked as a porter at the railway station, among other jobs, to help financially support his family.

Globočnik first became politically active in 1922, when he became a prominent member of pre-Nazi Carinthian paramilitary organisations and was seen wearing a swastika.

At the time, he was a building tradesman, introduced to his job while engaged to Grete Michner.

Her father, Emil Michner, had talked to the director of KÄWAG (Kärntner Wasserkraftwerke AG), an electricity distribution company of Carinthia, and secured Globočnik a job as a technician and construction supervisor.

After he entered politics, Globočnik faced ridicule from the German and international media for his Slavic surname and ancestry, in light of the Nazis' (including Globočnik's) extreme racism against Slavs.

Globočnik would assiduously maintain that he was of "Germanic ancestry".

This was important since Slavs were considered sub-human (Untermenschen) and eventually subjugated to slave labor and genocide by Nazi Germany.

He said that his paternal grandfather was an "Aryan" who was "culturally Slavicized", but maintained his "Germanic blood".

Historians have often dismissed this as a ruse.

He was arrested due to his public support for the Nazi Party (NSDAP), as he had become a member of the party in 1931 while he was in Carinthia.

His first documented activity for the NSDAP occurred in 1931 when he was documented as distributing propaganda for the party.

By this point, he had nearly abandoned his work as a building tradesman, and attached himself very closely to the NSDAP.

He was assigned to develop a courier and intelligence service for the NSDAP, which channelled funds from the German Reich into Austria.

In August 1933, Globočnik was arrested for the first time, for his attempt to contact imprisoned Nazis in Klagenfurt.

In the same year, he became a member of the Austrian SS.

Although he was arrested four times between 1933 and 1935, he served just over a year in jail on various political charges.

Heinrich Himmler intervened on his behalf, after two years of arguments between Globočnik and the authorities.

In his 2004 biography of Globočnik, historian Gregor Joseph Kranjc devoted the entire first chapter to the debate concerning Globočnik's ancestry.

He says that Globočnik was ridiculed by other Nazis for his surname, because the Nazis classified Slavs as sub-human (Untermenschen).

However, with Globočnik having a powerful and high-ranking ally such as Heinrich Himmler, he was protected from other Nazis, and Himmler defended him by claiming that he was of Aryan origin and that his surname was a result of "Slavicization".

In 2004, historian Joseph Popzeczny argued in his biography of Globocnik that the story might have been credible, citing Austro-Hungarian census data from 1910 indicating that the Globočniks were ethnic Germans.

However, this claim is dubious as Austro-Hungarian censuses did not record ethnicity from its inhabitants but rather native languages to exaggerate how much German is spoken and subsequently downplay non-German languages and ethnicities within the Empire, which meant that the Globočniks may have just been German speaking Slavs, especially considering they were living under Habsburg rule and their proximity to Austria.

At the time of his birth, the Slovene Lands were ruled directly from Vienna and divided into parts of the duchies of Carniola and Styria and the Austrian Littoral.