Josef Bühler , also referred to as Joseph Buehler ( Bad Waldsee , Germany , 16 of February of 1904 - Krakow , Poland , 22 of August of 1948 ) was an official National Socialist , with the position of Secretary of State and Chief of the Governor of Poland Invaded, in the so-called General Government , whose office was in Krakow during World War II . He participated actively in the Holocaust .
Life
Bühler was born in Bad Waldsee, Germany ; In a Catholic family of 12 siblings. His father was a baker . After obtaining the Law Degree he began to work under the supervision of the lawyer Hans Frank , who was Legal Adviser of Adolf Hitler and of the NSDAP , was chosen member of the Reichstag , when Frank was appointed Minister of Justice in Bavaria in 1933 . Buhler became a member of the Nazi Party the 1 of April of 1933 , according to his own testimony at the Nuremberg Trial , and was named Administrator of the Court of Munich . In 1935 , Chief District became Fiscal of Public Prosecutions.
In 1938 , Hans Frank for then Minister of the Reich without portfolio, put it in charge of the Cabinet of his office. After the invasion of Poland , the 1 of September of 1939 by Nazi Germany , sparking the Second World War , Frank was appointed Governor General of Poland and the occupied territories, Bühler accompanied him to Krakow , and assumed the post of Secretary Of State of the General Government, also serving as delegate of Frank. He received the honorary degree of SS Brigadeführer in the SS by the SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler .
Buhler attended the Wannsee Conference on 20 January of of 1942 as Representative of the General Government of Poland . During the conference, where the imposition of the ‘ Final Solution of the Jewish Problem in the Field of German Influence in Europe’ was discussed - Bühler established in various parts of the conference the importance of resolving the ‘Jewish Question in General Government so quickly As possible ‘.
After the war, Bühler testified in defense of Frank at the Nuremberg Trial . After that, he was extradited to Poland and tried by the Supreme Court of that country for crimes against humanity , being condemned to death and confiscated all his assets on July 10, 1948, later executed in Krakow . His death was announced on 22 August of that year by the Polish authorities and was published in the New York Times the following day.
In fiction
Bühler played an important part in the alternative novel Fatherland , written by Robert Harris . In Fatherland , the fictional story of Europe if Nazi Germany had defeated Western allies during World War II . As a result, Bühler continued to serve the General Government of Poland until 1951, when he was wounded by the Polish Resistance by being forced to withdraw.
Bühler, according to the plot in Fatherland , was assassinated by the SS in April 1964 in an attempt to eliminate all evidence of the Final Solution , in which Bühler had helped to instigate. The discovery of Bühler’s body in the Havel River , which initiates an investigation of the SS Sturmbannführer Xavier March that discovers the conspiracy.
In the 2001 HBO film , Conspiracy , which takes place during the Wannsee Conference, Bühler was played by British actor Ben Daniels .
References
- This work contains a derivative translation of Josef Bühler from Wikipedia in English, published by its editors under the GNU Free Documentation License and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license .
- Short biography, House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial Site (English)
- Transcript, Bühler’s testimony at the Nuremberg Trials, IMT Proceedings vol. 12, pp. 64-113
- Summary, the trial Against Buhler, Law Report, United Nations War Crimes Commission, 1949 (English)
- Videoclip, Part I, Bühler testifying at the Nuremberg Trials (in German)
- Videoclip, Part II, Bühler testifying at the Nuremberg Trials (in German)