Franz Stangl

Franz Paul Stangl (26 March 1908 – 28 June 1971) was an Austrian police officer and commandant of the Nazi extermination camps Sobibor and Treblinka in World War II.

Stangl, an employee of the T-4 Euthanasia Program and an SS commander in Nazi Germany, became commandant of the camps during the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust.

Stangl was born in 1908 in Altmünster, located in the Salzkammergut region of Austria.

He was the son of a night watchman and had such an emotionally distressing relationship with his father that he was deeply frightened by and hated the sight of the elder Stangl's Habsburg Dragoons uniform.

Stangl claimed his father died of malnutrition in 1916.

To help support his family, Franz learned to play the zither and earned money giving zither lessons.

Stangl completed his public schooling in 1923.

In his teens, he secured an apprenticeship as a weaver, qualifying as a master weaver in 1927.

Concerned that this trade offered few opportunities for advancement – and having observed the poor health of his co-workers – Stangl sought a new career.

He moved to Innsbruck in 1930 and applied for an appointment in the Austrian federal police.

Stangl later suggested that he liked the security and cleanliness that the police uniforms represented to him.

He was accepted in early 1931 and trained for two years at the federal police academy in Linz.

Stangl became a member of the Austrian Nazi Party in 1931 when it was an illegal association for an Austrian police officer at that time.

After the war, he denied having been a Nazi since 1931 and claimed that he had enrolled as member of the party only to avoid arrest following the Anschluss of Austria into Nazi Germany in May 1938.

Records suggest that Stangl contributed to a Nazi aid fund but he disavowed knowing about the intended party purpose of the fund.

Stangl had Nazi Party number 6,370,447 and SS number 296,569.

In 1935, Stangl was accepted into the Kriminalpolizei as a detective in the Austrian town of Wels.

After Austria's Anschluss, Stangl was assigned to the Schutzpolizei (which was taken over by the Gestapo) in Linz, where he was posted to the Jewish Bureau (Judenreferat).

Stangl joined the SS in May 1938.

He ultimately reached the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain).

After the onset of World War II, in early 1940, Stangl was instructed to report for work at the Public Service Foundation for Institutional Care (Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Anstaltspflege), a front organization of the T-4 Euthanasia Program.

Stangl purposely solicited for a job in the newly created T-4 program in order to escape difficulties with his boss in the Linz Gestapo.

He travelled to the RSHA in Berlin, where he was received by Paul Werner, who offered Stangl a job as supervisor in charge of security at a T-4 facility, and in the language commonly used during recruitment, described Action T4 as a "humanitarian" effort that was "essential, legal, and secret".

Next Stangl met with Viktor Brack, who offered him a choice of work between Hartheim and Sonnenstein killing centres; Stangl picked Hartheim, which was near Linz.

Through a direct order from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler issued in November 1940, Stangl became the deputy office manager (Police Superintendent) of the T-4 Euthanasia Program at Hartheim Euthanasia Centre, and in late summer 1941 at Bernburg Euthanasia Centre, where people with mental and physical disabilities, as well as political prisoners, were sent to be killed.

At Hartheim, Stangl served under Christian Wirth as an assistant supervisor in charge of security.

When Wirth was succeeded by Franz Reichleitner, Stangl stayed on as Reichleitner's deputy.

During his brief posting to Bernburg Euthanasia Centre Stangl reorganized the office at that T-4 facility.

In March 1942, Stangl was given a choice to either return to the Linz Gestapo or be transferred to Lublin for work in Operation Reinhard.

Stangl accepted the posting to Lublin in the General Government, where he would manage Operation Reinhard under Odilo Globočnik.

Stangl was appointed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to be the first commandant of Sobibor extermination camp.

Stangl was Sobibor's commandant from 28 April until the end of August 1942, at the rank of SS-Obersturmführer.

He claimed that Odilo Globočnik initially suggested that Sobibor was merely a supply camp for the army and that the true nature of the camp became known to him only when he himself discovered a gas chamber hidden in the woods.

Globočnik told him that if the Jews "were not working hard enough" he was fully permitted to kill them and that Globočnik would send "new ones".

Stangl studied the camp operations and management of Bełżec, which had commenced extermination activity.

He then accelerated the completion of Sobibor.

Around that time Stangl also had further dealings with Wirth, who was running extermination camps at Bełżec and Chelmno.

After the war he fled to Brazil, where he worked for Volkswagen do Brasil before he was arrested in 1967, extradited to West Germany and tried there for the mass murder of one million people.

In 1970, he was found guilty and sentenced to the maximum penalty, life imprisonment.

He died of heart failure six months later.