Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Ernst Kaltenbrunner, an Austrian lawyer and a high-ranking SS officer, was a key figure in the Holocaust and was later convicted as a war criminal. Following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and after a short interim under Heinrich Himmler, Kaltenbrunner became the second head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in January 1943. This agency oversaw the Gestapo, the Criminal Police (Kripo), and the Security Service (SD). He held this post until the end of World War II in Europe and also served as president of Interpol during the same period. At the Nuremberg trials, he was the most senior SS member to stand trial, was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and was executed by hanging on 16 October 1946.

Kaltenbrunner was born on 4 October 1903 in Ried im Innkreis, Austria-Hungary. He was close to his mother, Theresia Utwardy, while his father Hugo was a lawyer. He spent his early years in Raab and later attended the Realgymnasium in Linz. Raised in a nationalist household, his worldview was shaped by the völkisch Pan-Germanism movement, which his father supported. Kaltenbrunner’s own Pan-Germanism, which included antisemitism and a belief that politics was a racial struggle, developed through nationalist student fraternities called Burschenschaften. Contrary to some claims, there is no credible evidence that he was a childhood friend of Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer who later helped implement the "Final Solution."

After finishing gymnasium in 1921, Kaltenbrunner initially studied chemistry at the University of Graz, where his father had studied, but switched to law in 1923. At Graz, he joined the Arminia fraternity, was active in student politics, and took part in demonstrations against Marxism and clerical influence. He earned his law doctorate in 1926. He then worked at a law firm in Salzburg for a year before opening his own practice in Linz. He had deep scars on his face, reportedly from student dueling, though some sources say they came from a drunk-driving accident. By 1928, historian Peter Black notes, Kaltenbrunner was bored and unfulfilled. His work as a provincial lawyer in Linz led him to right-wing gymnastic circles, where he joined the Deutsch-Volkischer Turnverein, an organization linked to the paramilitary Austrian Heimwehr. Black described this group as a training ground for the illegal Nazi SA and SS.