Arthur Seyss-Inquart was one of the major figures in the Nuremberg Trials and played a major role in the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, as well as the extermination of Jews. Some admired him as Hitler’s right-hand man in Austria, while others despised him, mockingly referring to him as “six and a quarter”. The Führer retained his faith in Seyss-Inquart until the last day of his life, and the Сourt was equally assured of his guilt.
Lawyer from Moravia
Arthur Seyss was born in 1892 in Stannern, a German-speaking village near the town of Iglau. This community in Moravia, one of the Czech provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a German linguistic island in the middle of a Czech-speaking region. The environment of increasing competition between Germans and Czechs turned Arthur Seyss into a nationalist. There were rumours that only his mother was German, while his father Emil Seyss, a school principal, was Czech and that his real surname was Zajtich. However, there are no documents that confirm this legend.
In 1906, the family adopted the surname of a cousin, historian Heinrich Ritter von Inquart, and from then Arthur was known as Seyss-Inquart. In 1907, the family moved to Vienna. There, the future x Nuremberg defendant entered the University of Vienna to study law, but his studies were interrupted due to World War I. In August 1914, he joined the Austrian army, where he served together with the future Chancellor of Austria, Kurt von Schuschnigg, who would later be removed from power. He was decorated with several honours for bravery. While recovering from wounds in 1917, he completed the final examinations for his degree. After the war, Seyss-Inquart began a law practice. In 1916, he married Gertrud Maschka, with whom he had a son and two daughters.
Vienna lost World War I, shattering the once-great Austro-Hungarian Empire into a group of nation-states centred around ethno-linguistic groups: mostly-Czech Moravia, where Seyss-Inquart was born, became part of Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile, for the first time in its history, Austria became an independent republic.
German Nazism vs Austrofascism
In the early years of the Republic of Austria, Arthur Seyss-Inquart was close to the conservative Fatherland Front under Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, whom he also met during the war.
Dollfuss, who was under pressure from both Austria’s National Socialists and the left (Communists and Social Democrats), attempted to bring the nation together by promoting traditional values. In 1933, Austria turned from a parliamentary republic into a corporate, authoritarian state. The new government embraced a social doctrine being promoted by the Catholic Church which came to be known as Austrofascism, as Austria sought to side with fascist Italy against Hitler’s National Socialist Germany. The Federal State of Austria embraced the principles of solidarity (cooperation between different sectors of society), distributism (broad ownership of the means of production) and subsidiarity (local solutions to problems wherever possible). The Nazi party was banned and its activists were imprisoned. Many of the practices the Austrofascists borrowed from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, although they pursued more lenient policies.
The Nazis did not like the policy of Dollfuss, who sought to preserve Austria's independence and autonomy. Neither did Seyss-Inquart, who had been involved in the pro-German movement since the 1920s and believed that his country should become part of Germany.
A brief civil war between the government and Social Democrat forces in early 1934 led Dollfuss to eliminate the last vestiges of democratic rule, but on 25 July, the Chancellor was assassinated by 10 Austrian Nazis in an coup attempt. However, this was put down with support from Italy; Mussolini stationed troops along Austria’s border and threatened Hitler with war in the event of a German invasion.
The new Chancellor, Schuschnigg, appointed Seyss-Inquart as his State Councillor. Around the same time, Arthur became a supporter of Heinrich Himmler's ideas of racial purity and by 1938 had become a respectable frontman for the Austrian National Socialists, despite not yet being a party member.
At the Nuremberg Trials, US Prosecutor Sydney Alderman quoted a letter from Seyss-Inquart to Hermann Göring, where he confessed to his own hypocrisy in describing the events of 1934-1939:
“I told myself in July 1934 that we must fight this clerical regime on its own ground in order to give the Führer a chance to use whatever method he desires. I told myself that this Austria was worth a mass (a reference to the words “Paris is worth a Mass” by King Henry IV of France, who became Catholic for the crown – Author). I have stuck to this attitude with an iron determination because I and my friends had to fight against the whole political church, Freemasonry, Jewry, in short, against everything in Austria. The slightest weakness which we might have displayed would undoubtedly have led to our political annihilation; it would have deprived the Fuehrer of the means and tools to carry out his ingenious political solution for Austria, as became evident in the days of March 1938. I have been fully conscious of the fact that I am following a path which is not comprehensible to the masses and also not to my Party comrades (of the Fatherland Front – Author). I followed it calmly and would without hesitation follow it again because I am satisfied that at one point I could serve the Führer as a tool in his work, even though my former attitude even now gives occasion to very worthy and honourable Party comrades to doubt my trustworthiness. I have never paid attention to such things because I am satisfied with the opinion which the Führer and the men close to him have of me.”
According to the prosecution, these lines sufficed to demonstrate Seyss-Inquart “as one whose loyalty to Hitler, a foreign dictator, and to the aims of the Nazi conspiracy, led him to fight for the Anschluss with all the means at his disposal”.
Chancellor Schuschnigg was inferior to Dollfuss in his determination, but tried to prevent the Third Reich from taking over Austria. In order to appease Germany, several thousand Austrian Nazis were granted amnesty, the state undertook to follow German foreign policy, and many Hitler supporters were given administrative posts in Austria. But the German Führer did not limit himself to half measures and was determined to annex the neighbouring state.
To the Middle Ages and Beyond
On 12 February 1938, under the threat of German invasion, Schuschnigg accepted Germany's ultimatum. One of the conditions stipulated for the appointment of Seyss-Inquart as Minister of the Interior and Public Security. On 17 February, he was at an appointment with Hitler and openly discussed the Nazi invasion plans. Nevertheless, the chancellor was still hoping to save the country. On 9 March he scheduled a plebiscite on Austria's independence for the coming Sunday. The next day, Hitler, again threatening with invasion, demanded that the vote be cancelled. On 11 March, Schuschnigg was forced to agree and resign. Seyss-Inquart became the new leader of the country. On the same night, German troops entered Austria. Officially, they were invited by a government telegram sent by the Chancellor, but Seyss-Inquart himself had learned about it only post factum. During the Nuremberg Trials, this episode was closely examined.
On 12 March, Hitler arrived in Austria via his hometown of Braunau and Linz, where he spent his youth. On his way, he was greeted by crowds of people. The next day, the Führer arrived in Vienna. On the same day, the law “On the Reunification of Austria with the German Reich” was published, according to which Austria was declared “one of the lands of the German Reich” and henceforth became known as the “Ostmark” (the 9th-12th century name for this territory). All of Austria's government agencies, including the post of chancellor, were abolished. Seyss-Inquart became Reichsstatthalter or Governor of the so-called Ostmark. On the same day, he joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and received the title of Gruppenführer (Lieutenant General) of the SS.
On 10 April, Germany and Austria held a plebiscite about the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany). According to official data, 99.08% of residents voted for the Anschluss in Austria, 99.75% of the vote in Austria.
“That a majority of Austrians, who undoubtedly would have said Ja to Schuschnigg on 13 March, would say the same to Hitler on 10 April was a foregone conclusion,” American journalist and war correspondent William L. Shirer, who worked in Hitler's Germany and then in Nuremberg, wrote in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. “Many of them sincerely believed that ultimate union with any kind of Germany, even a Nazi Germany, was a desirable and inevitable end, that Austria (…) could not in the long run exist decently by itself, that it only could survive as part of the German Reich.”
Anschluss was a controversial event for both Austrians and the international community. On the one hand, after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the transformation of Germany into a republic, the unification of the two German-speaking states seemed logical. On the other hand, Germany had become a totalitarian state by 1938, where many minority ethnic groups were being categorically persecuted. Although Hitler himself was Austrian, he saw the new lands not as a homeland that had finally been reunited with Germany, but as a resource base and a platform for unleashing aggression.
In April 1939, this became evident when the federal states of Ostmark were reorganised into seven administrative subdivisions (Reichsgaue) that had no unified administration and were directly subordinate to Berlin. Later, in January 1942, even the name Ostmark was forgotten. Instead, they started to say “The Alpine and Danube Reichsgaue of the Greater Germanic Reich” to avoid recalling Austria's former independence.
‘Six-and-a-Quarter’ Reichskommissar
Austria lost all remaining autonomy, and Seyss-Inquart lost his position. But the Fuhrer found a new place for him. In April 1939 Seyss-Inquart was made a Reichsminister without Portfolio in Hitler's cabinet, and in October he was appointed Deputy Governor General of the Polish Occupied Territory. He was responsible for the organisation of the Jewish ghettos and "extraordinary measures" in suppressing the Polish resistance.
In May 1940, he received a new promotion. Following the capitulation of the Low Countries, Seyss-Inquart was appointed Reichskommissar for the Occupied Netherlands. He first formed a Dutch government, but then disbanded it and subordinated all the governing bodies to himself. Industry and the economy were reorganised to meet the needs of the German army. Under the leadership of Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart, paramilitary organisations (Landwacht) of local National Socialists appeared and the country was actively Germanised. The Führer’s apprentice was personally responsible for suppressing the anti-Nazi uprisings, including the 1941 strikes in Amsterdam and Arnhem. In total, he confirmed around 800 death sentences during his rule (some sources give the figure of 1,500).
In the Hague, Seyss-Inquart spoke out as a supporter of tough anti-Semitic measures. He advocated the “special treatment of Jews” in the Netherlands, namely “the complete elimination of Jews from the Dutch national community”. The radicalism of his statements was perfectly in line with the realities of German occupation policy. According to Seyss-Inquart, persecution of Jews was even more important than introducing the Dutch to the ideas of National Socialism. Since 1941, there was mass registration of Jews, a ghetto was established in Amsterdam, and a detention and transit camp was set up in Westerbork. At that time, Jews were sent to concentration camps in Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen, and then to death camps in Sobibor and Auschwitz. In September 1944, as the Allied forces advanced, all Westerbork prisoners were transferred to the ghetto-concentration camp Theresienstadt (Terezin). As a result, of 140,000 Dutch Jews, between 27,000 and 35,000 survived the war. Apart from that, between 430,000 and 530,000 Dutch were brought to work in Germany, including up to 250 000 exported to the Reich. Anna Frank, a Jewish girl who spent two years in Amsterdam hiding from persecution before being caught, sent to a concentration camp and executed, portrayed the atmosphere of that time in her diary, which was published posthumously.
Berlin gave the Reichskommissar a lot of leeway. “This allows the opportunity for a fresh look at people who claimed after the war ended that they were just a cog in a huge machine,” writes German historian Ludger Josef Heide. According to him, Seyss-Inquart could be called a full-fledged “wheel” of the Nazi machine.
However, for the sake of justice, it is worth noting that Seyss-Inquart resisted certain orders. In 1944, he sent only 12,000 workers to the Reich instead of the 250,000 initially planned. During his retreat from the Netherlands, the Reichskommissar, acting in concert with the Reichminister of Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer, sabotaged Berlin's “Scorched Earth Decree”. At the end of 1944, he imposed a food embargo on the occupied provinces of Holland, but towards the end of the “Hunger Winter”, which occurred because of his order, he agreed not to interfere with the humanitarian operations of the Allies, who airdropped food in the deprived areas.
The Dutch themselves turned to sarcasm to deal with the occupation governor. People produced and shared objects that mocked Seyss-Inquart, such as ashtrays made from six and a quarter-cent coins: his surname sounded to many like “Zes-en-een-kwart”, i.e. “six-and-a-quarter”.
Between Führer and Nuremberg
On 30 April 1945, Hitler committed suicide. The day before his death, he signed his last will and political testament, in which he named a new government. Seyss-Inquart was appointed Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs – the Führer probably had no doubts about his loyalty until his death.
Although the Dutch coast was patrolled by Allied ships, the Reichskommissar arrived in Flensburg at night in a torpedo boat; the newly appointed Cabinet of the Reich President, Karl Dönitz, had settled in the city. There, Seyss-Inquart stated that he refused to take up his position in the government because he had to work in Holland. “My place is there”, Speer quoted him as saying in his book “Memories”. “I will be arrested immediately after my return.” And so it happened. On 4 May 1945, German troops stationed in the Netherlands capitulated, and the Reichskommissar was taken prisoner.
In Austria the image of Seyss-Inquart as a respectable Catholic gentleman persists, one of a reserved and refined intellectual whose chief fault was his sympathy for Nazism. However, researchers, including his biographer Johannes Kohl, show that Seyss-Inquart became a die-hard National Socialist in the 1930s, and his role in crimes against humanity cannot be understated.
By Daniil Sidorov
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