Rudolf Toussaint


Rudolf Toussaint was a German Army (Wehrmacht)|Army] officer. Toussaint saw action in both World Wars. During World War II he was appointed Commissioner of the German army in the office of the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia.

Biography

He was born on 2 May 1891 in Egglkofen. He joined the Royal Bavarian Army on 21 September 1911 in the rank of Fahnenjunker. He was commissioned as a Leutnant on 25 October 1913 and assigned to the 18th Royal Bavarian Infantry Regiment. He fought in World War I, where he was wounded, and was awarded the Iron Cross and the Iron Cross in 1914. After the war, he remained in the army and, on 1 December 1935 was promoted to Oberstleutnant; on 1 April 1938 he was promoted further to the rank of Oberst.
From 1 April 1939 till 1941 he served as a military attaché in the German embassy in Rome. After that, he was promoted on 1 October 1941 as Generalmajor and on 1 October 1942 as Generalleutnant.
In September 1943, as General der Infanterie, he became commissioner of the German army in Italy. On 26 July 1944, he was replaced in this position by SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff and Toussaint became commissioner of the German army in the office of the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, replacing Ferdinand Schaal and, simultaneously, held the position of Commander of the Military District of Bohemia and Moravia. As such, he was the last Nazi commander of Prague. After World War II, he was captured by US troops in Plzeň and, on 19 April 1947, he was transferred into Czechoslovakia, where on 26 October 1948 he was condemned to life imprisonment for the murder of civilians in the Prague uprising.
In 1955, he agreed to collaborate with Czechoslovak State Security, but the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia refused to consent to his release from prison. While still in prison, he provided them information relating to the West German military leaders and political figures. In 1961, as part of an exchange for two communist agents, he was released to West Germany, where he died in 1968.

Awards