August Meyszner
August Edler von Meyszner was an Austrian Gendarmerie officer, right-wing politician, and senior Ordnungspolizei officer who held the post of Higher SS and Police Leader in the German-occupied territory of Serbia from January 1942 to March 1944, during World War II. He has been described as one of Heinrich Himmler's most brutal subordinates.
Meyszner began his career as an officer in the Gendarmerie, served on the Italian Front during World War I and reached the rank of Major der Polizei by 1921. He joined the Austrian Nazi Party in September 1925 and became a right-wing parliamentary deputy and provincial minister in the Austrian province of Styria in 1930. Due to his involvement with the Nazis, Meyszner was forcibly retired in 1933 and arrested in February 1934, but released after three months at the Wöllersdorf concentration camp. That July, he was rearrested following an attempted coup, but escaped police custody and fled to Nazi Germany, where he joined the Ordnungspolizei and then the Allgemeine SS. After police postings in Austria, Germany and occupied Norway, Himmler appointed Meyszner as Higher SS and Police Leader in Serbia in early 1942. He was one of few Orpo officers to be appointed to such a role.
Meyszner's time in Belgrade was characterised by friction and competition with German military, economic and foreign affairs officials, and by his visceral hatred and distrust of Serbs. During his tenure, he oversaw regular reprisal killings and sent tens of thousands of forced labourers to the Reich and occupied Norway. His Gestapo detachment used a gas van to kill 8,000 Jewish women and children who had been detained at the Sajmište concentration camp. In April 1944, his outspoken complaints about a reduction in reprisals against civilians allowed his enemies within the German occupation regime in Serbia to have him removed. Himmler transferred him to Berlin with the task of establishing a Europe-wide Gendarmerie. After the war, he fell into the hands of the Allies and was interrogated by the United States Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Extradited to Yugoslavia, he was tried for war crimes, along with many of his staff from his time in Serbia. He was found guilty by a Yugoslav military court and executed by hanging in January 1947.
Early life and World War I service
August Edler von Meyszner was born in Graz, Austria-Hungary, on 3 August 1886, the son of Rudolf Edler von Meyszner, an Oberstleutnant in the Imperial-Royal Landwehr who had been knighted two years earlier, and his wife Therese. His uncle was Feldmarschalleutnant Ferdinand von Meyszner. He completed primary and secondary schooling in Graz, before attending a cadet school in Vienna. In 1908, he was posted to the 3rd Imperial-Royal Landwehr Infantry Regiment in Graz as an officer candidate and on 1 May 1908 was commissioned as a Leutnant in the Leoben Battalion. Until 30 April 1913 he was a company officer with the signals and telephone detachment, and was also responsible for the ski training of the battalion. On 1 May 1913, he was transferred to the provincial Gendarmerie at his own request, initially stationed at Triest. In 1914 he underwent an examination for his new duties as a gendarmerie officer, and on 1 May 1914 he was formally accepted into the Austrian Gendarmerie Service.He was initially appointed to command the 5th Gendarmerie Detachment in Görz. On 23 June 1914 he was promoted to Gendarmerie-Oberleutnant. In August he was appointed to command the coastal gendarmerie section at Grado and the following month he was transferred to the border guard section based at Tolmein, in modern-day Slovenia. A few days after the outbreak of World War I, Meyszner married Pia Gostischa from Marburg an der Drau ; the couple eventually had one daughter and one son. On 19 May 1915, Meyszner was posted as the commander of a gendarmerie company on the Italian Front. Later that year he was appointed as the commander of the 12th Alpine Company. On 1 August 1916, he was promoted to Rittmeister with effect from 11 August. During 1916–1917, Meyszner was a gendarmerie section commander, and in 1917 he served as an alpine advisor to the 15th Mountain Brigade. In August 1917 he was recalled to gendarmerie duties in Triest. In November 1918 he was transferred to the Styrian gendarmerie command in Graz. He was wounded once, and was also awarded several decorations for his service during the war, including the Order of the Iron Crown 3rd Class, Military Merit Cross 3rd Class, Military Merit Medal with Swords and War Decoration, Karl Troop Cross and Red Cross Decoration 2nd Class. With the collapse of the Habsburg Empire at the end of the war, Meyszner also lost his aristocratic title, a significant loss of social status.
Interwar period
Police and political career in Austria
In December 1919, Meyszner was placed in charge of the border gendarmerie at the Styrian town of Judenburg, on the frontier with the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and was involved in fighting there. That year, he had become involved with the German-nationalist sporting association Deutsch-Völkischen Turnvereins and was made a leader in the right-wing paramilitary Steirischen Heimatschutz. He later used his senior position in the gendarmerie to funnel arms to the Home Guard.Meyszner remained stationed at Judenburg for the next nine years, although he was sent on several detachments. In 1921, he was promoted to Major der Polizei. While commanding a gendarmerie detachment sent to oversee the unification of Burgenland with Austria in August 1921, Meyszner was shot in the leg by local Hungarians rebelling against the transfer. In 1922, his unit subdued significant labour unrest in the Judenburg region and in 1927 it quelled a strike in the aftermath of the July Revolt of 1927. Meyszner joined the Austrian Nazi Party on 5 September 1925, and was allocated membership number 10,617. In May 1927 he was granted an audience with Adolf Hitler, along with two of his Home Guard comrades, Walter Pfrimer and Hanns Albin Rauter. On 1 January 1929, Meyszner was transferred to Graz where he came into contact with more right-wing organisations.
In 1930, Meyszner became a right-wing deputy in the Styrian provincial parliament representing the Heimatblock, the political wing of the Heimatschutz, and because of the Styrian system of proportional representation he also became a minister of the provincial government. According to the German historian Martin Moll, Meyszner's governmental responsibilities meant that he was unable to take an active part in the abortive coup d'état led by the Home Guard Landesleiter Pfrimer in 1931 but while claiming he knew nothing of the putsch beforehand, he openly stated in the Landtag that he approved of it. According to Moll, the putsch leaders Pfrimer and Konstantin Kammerhofer went into hiding, and in the short term, Meyszner was the leader of the Home Guard. In contrast, the historian Ruth Birn writes that Meyszner was a major participant in the putsch and was arrested, brought to trial, and acquitted, along with Pfrimer and Kammerhofer. Following the trial, Kammerhofer replaced Pfrimer as the Landesleiter, and pursued an even more radical ideology of taking power by force and adoption of anti-Semitic principles. Initially, under Kammerhofer the Home Guard was strongly opposed to the Austrian Nazi Party, but this quickly changed, and he led a shift to a close association.
Meyszner continued his Home Guard activities and together with Rauter supported Kammerhofer's push for closer links with the Austrian Nazi Party, holding several meetings with Hitler's delegate in Austria, Theodor Habicht. In late 1933 the negotiations would culminate in the so-called Venice Agreement, by which Home Guard was transferred into the Nazi Party. The fact that Meyszner had completely adopted Nazi ideology was demonstrated by his anti-Jewish diatribe in the Landtag in April 1933, which reinforced his speeches advancing the anti-semitic policy of the Home Guard under Kammerhofer. From March 1933, the authoritarian Fatherland Front government of Engelbert Dollfuss prorogued parliamentary government and in June they banned the Austrian Nazi Party and the Home Guard. A few days before this, public servants who were members of the Austrian Nazi Party were classified as subversive. Based on these decrees, Meyszner was also denied his seat in parliament and forcibly retired from the gendarmerie in September 1933 at the age of 47.
As a result of his meetings with Habicht, Meyszner was appointed deputy leader of the Central Styria Sturmabteilung-Brigade, with the rank of SA-Obersturmbannführer. The Sturmabteilung was the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. He travelled widely, meeting Nazi leaders in Hungary and Yugoslavia. On 2 February 1934 Meyszner was arrested, and was interned in the Wöllersdorf concentration camp for three-and-a-half months for Nazi activities. Following a hunger strike and half-hearted prison revolt, he was released. Soon after, the leaders of the Styrian Home Guard were arrested and Meyszner took control of the organisation. Arrested shortly after the abortive July Putsch was launched, during which Dollfuss was assassinated, Meyszner escaped police custody on 27 July, and four days later fled to Yugoslavia. Kammerhofer also escaped from Austria in the wake of the attempted coup. Austrian authorities suspected that Meyszner had encouraged participation and provided supplies to the conspirators. His exact role in the July Putsch remains in question. The Styrian Home Guard and Styrian SA brigades played significant parts in the attempted putsch. According to the Austrian historian Hans Schafranek, Meyszner, along with Rauter and Kammerhofer, who led the Upper Styrian SA-Brigade, conspired with Habicht and the SS against the SA, effectively bypassing the leadership of the Austrian SA when they quickly supported the coup. Meyszner was very proud of the violence he had been involved in as part of his political activities in Austria.
In Yugoslavia, Meyszner was no longer able to access his pension and had few assets, and worked as the cultural policy chief of the centre for Nazi fugitives. He travelled to Germany by sea in November 1934. He first went to the camp for Nazi fugitives at Rummelsburg in Pomerania, before transferring to a similar facility in Berlin. Once in Germany, he submitted his résumé to the Allgemeine SS. At the time, the Allgemeine SS was a relatively new paramilitary arm of the German Nazi Party that was overtaking the SA in importance. In his résumé, he emphasised his experience as a political organiser and speaker and suggested that a purely military task would not make best use of his knowledge and skills.