21st November 1934
Josef Wagner

Josef Wagner (1899 - 1945)

Josef Wagner was from 1931 the Nazi Gauleiter of Gau Westphalia-South and, as of December 1934, also of Gau Silesia. He was also the Reichskommissar for Pricing from October 1936. In 1941, he was dismissed from his offices, then expelled from the Nazi Party (NSDAP), imprisoned by the Gestapo, and likely executed around the time of end of the war in Europe.

After the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, Wagner became a City Councilor in Bochum on 12th March and was appointed to the Westphalia Landtag, which on 10th April appointed him to the Prussian State Council where he was named First Vice-president until the council was dissolved in July. He was reappointed on 14th September to the reconstituted Council, now stripped of significant legislative functions and merely an advisory body to Prussian Minister-President Hermann Göring. On 25th September 1933, Wagner joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) with the rank of SA-Gruppenführer and was assigned to the SA Westphalia Group. In October 1933, he was made a member of the Academy for German Law. In 1934 he was made a member of the Prussian Provincial Council for Westphalia.

On 12th December 1934, after the removal of Helmuth Brückner, Wagner was also appointed as Gauleiter of Gau Silesia with its capital at Breslau (today Wrocław, Poland). Retaining his Gauleiter position in Westphalia-South, he was one of only a very few Gauleiters to simultaneously head two Gaue. In addition, he succeeded Brückner as Oberpräsident (High President) of the Prussian provinces of Lower Silesia and Upper Silesia. He thus united under his control the highest party and governmental offices in the two provinces. After the two provinces were united into the Province of Silesia on 1st April 1938, Wagner became its Oberpräsident until the province was split again on 27th January 1941. From 12th June 1935 he also served as the President of the Prussian Provincial Council for both Silesian provinces and, during their union, for the united Silesia.

On 29th October 1936, Wagner was appointed Reichskommissar for Pricing, an important position for managing the economy under Göring's Four Year Plan. He was charged with ensuring stable wholesale and retail prices for both raw materials and finished goods, and decreed that after 26th November 1936, any increase in prices was forbidden. However, within a few months he had to back off this absolute mandate due to market forces. As the scarcity of raw materials grew, he had to allow price increases for industries dependent on expensive raw material imports. On 9th November 1937, he was promoted to SA-Obergruppenführer. On the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe on 1st September 1939, he was named Reich Defense Commissioner for Wehrkreis (Military District) VIII, which included not only Gau Silesia, but the eastern sections of Reichsgau Sudetenland. It was headquartered in Breslau. In this position, he had responsibility for civil defence and evacuation measures, as well as administration of wartime rationing and suppression of black market activity.

After the conquest of Poland on 8th October 1939, Germany annexed large parts of the country, with East Upper Silesia being made part of Wagner's Gau of Silesia. Two days later, Wagner conferred with Adolf Eichmann who outlined the ruthless Nisko Plan to deport an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Jews to the Lublin District. Wagner agreed to cooperate with the plan and the first deportations began on 20th October from Kattowitz (today, Katowice). Deportations continued until early 1940, aimed at expropriating Jews and Poles, and resettling the area with Germans.

On 20th April 1940 Wagner was made an Obergruppenführer in the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK). On 15th November 1940, he assumed the responsibility of Housing Commissioner for his two Gaue. Then on 15th January 1941 he was appointed Staatssekretär (State Secretary) to Göring in the Four Year Plan.

Wagner, now at the peak of his career, had made powerful enemies, including SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery. In addition, his Deputy Gauleiter in Silesia, Fritz Bracht, was plotting against him. Bormann began agitating for Wagner's removal as Gauleiter of Silesia as early as December 1939, using the large increase in territory and population resulting from the annexed Polish lands to justify dividing the large Gau. Adolf Hitler at first was hesitant but was eventually persuaded. On 9th January 1941, Wagner was removed as Gauleiter of Gau Silesia and it was divided into two separate Gaue on 27th January. Bracht succeeded him in Gau Upper Silesia and Karl Hanke in Gau Lower Silesia. Wagner was also replaced as Oberpräsident, with Bracht and Hanke succeeding him in this capacity in the two new provinces of Upper and Lower Silesia.

Bormann, one of the most rabidly anti-religious Nazis, opposed Wagner who was known to be a Catholic and who was accused of having ties to Catholic Action, a group opposed to the regime. Relationships with any religious organisations were strictly forbidden for high Party functionaries. In addition, it was known that Wagner had sent his children to Catholic schools. There was a report that his wife had genuflected to the Pope at a Vatican reception. Finally, a letter that Wagner's wife had sent to their pregnant daughter, Gerda, had been brought by Himmler to Bormann's attention. In it, Frau Wagner forbade on religious grounds, her daughter's planned marriage to the child's father, a member of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler who had left the Church. All this ran counter to the Nazi anti-Catholic doctrine, and Bormann used it to attack Wagner. [See Pope Pius XI]

Subsequently, on 9th November 1941 at the annual Beer Hall Putsch anniversary celebration in Munich's Führerbau with all the Gauleiters and Reichsleiters present, Hitler personally dismissed Wagner as Gauleiter of Gau Westphalia-South. After Bormann read the contents of Frau Wagner's letter, Hitler publicly denounced Wagner and ordered him to leave the hall. Wagner requested the floor to defend himself, which further enraged Hitler who announced that he was dismissing Wagner from all his offices, and then had him removed from the hall. Wagner immediately was replaced as Gauleiter in Westphalia-South by Paul Giesler, a functionary in Bormann's Chancellery. Interestingly, Giesler, at Wagner's instigation, had been dismissed as SA-Führer in Westphalia-South in July 1934 and brought up on charges before the Supreme Party Court in connection with the Roehm Purge. On 26th November, Wagner was also expelled from the Reichstag.

On Hitler's orders, Wagner subsequently was brought up on charges before the Supreme Party Court, which was headed by Walter Buch, and which had jurisdiction over matters of Party membership. Wagner put up a persuasive defense and, surprisingly, in a 6th February 1942 decision, the Court acquitted him and refused to expel him from the Party. This infuriated Bormann and Hitler who refused to endorse the decision. The matter, however, was allowed to simmer over the spring and summer until the autumn when Hitler summoned Buch to his headquarters, furiously berated him, and ordered him to reverse the decision immediately. That same day, Buch wrote to Wagner expelling him from the Party effective forthwith, 12th October 1942.

At the direction of Himmler, Wagner was placed under Gestapo surveillance in October 1943. Suspected of involvement in the attempt on Hitler's life at the Wolf's Lair on 20th July 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo in late July and sent to a concentration camp. His name had appeared in a document prepared by the conspirators. It referred to 'upright and capable' individuals who should be approached to be 'convinced of the necessity of such a step and to support it. e.g. Gauleiter Wagner.' Wagner was moved to a police prison in Potsdam and then to the underground prison at Gestapo headquarters on 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin.

The circumstances of Wagner's death are unclear. The most widely accepted account is that he was hanged by the Gestapo in the closing weeks of the war on 22nd April 1945. An observer allegedly informed the family of the execution the same month. An alternative version by a fellow prisoner claims that Wagner survived until the prison was liberated by Red Army forces on 2nd May, but was accidentally shot by a Russian soldier.

Source: Wikipedia

Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page