Background
Josef Burckel was born on 30 March 1894 in Lingfield, in the Palatinate.
Josef Burckel was born on 30 March 1894 in Lingfield, in the Palatinate.
After serving for four years during World War I, Burckel became a teacher, abandoning his post in 1926 to become Gauleiter of the Nazi Party in the Rheinpfalz. Elected to the Reichstag in 1930 he represented the NSDAP in the Saar region, succeeding von Papen four years later as Plenipotentiary for the Saar Palatinate. In 1935, after the Saar plebiscite, he was appointed Reich Commissioner for the territory. Named Gauleiter of Vienna after the union between Germany and Austria, Burckel was promoted to Reich Commissary on 23 April 1938 and ordered to accomplish ‘the political, economic and cultural incorporation of Austria' into the Reich within a year. Burckel was reported to have committed suicide on 28 September 1944.
A talented organizer and shrewd politician, Burckel sought to bring to a halt the orgy of violence and indiscriminate robbery against Jews, which accompanied the Anschluss, by issuing decrees requiring all Nazi commissars who had taken control of Jewish businesses to report their actions. In some cases he even instituted criminal proceedings against those who had stolen assets for themselves. As the top Nazi leader in Austria, Burckel was nonetheless responsible for applying systematic and ruthless pressure leading to the Jewish deportations from Vienna in 1939-40. Transferred to the Saarland-Lorraine, he was also responsible (together with Gauleiter Robert Wagner, for the sudden deportation of more than 6,500 Jews without warning from the districts of Baden and Saarpfalz (Saar Palatinate) into unoccupied France on 22-23 October 1940.