Otto Wächter

Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter (July 8, 1901, in Vienna, Austria – July 14, 1949, in Rome, Italy) was an Austrian lawyer and Nazi politician and administrative officer. During World War II, he was head of the Civil Administration in the Kraków and Galicia districts in the General Government (part of occupied Poland), before being appointed as head of the German Military Administration in Fascist Italy. For the last two months of the war he was responsible for the non-German forces at the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) in Berlin. Although he finished his career with the honorary rank of an SS-Gruppenführer (lieutenant general), his duties were confined to an administrative role, and he was never part of the SS and Police forces in any of the occupied territories.

1901–1934 Early life and Nazi activist

Otto Wächter was the third child and only son of Martha Pfob, daughter of the owner of the Graben Hotel in Vienna Centre. His father Joseph Freiherr von Wächter, was born in northern Bohemia and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army. In the last year of the First World War, Joseph Freiherr von Wächter was decorated with the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Maria Theresia, that earned him the title of Freiherr (Baron). In 1922, after the first Austrian Republic was established, he was twice nominated as Minister of Defence in the Cabinet of Monsignor Dr. Ignaz Seipel.