Ernst Kaltenbrunner was an Austrian Nazi leader and a high-ranking SS officer born on October 1, 1903, in Ried im Innkreis, Austria. He came from a nationalist family, and his father was a lawyer. He was educated at the Royal Gymnasium, the most advanced secondary school system in Germany at the time.
During his school years, Kaltenbrunner became a childhood friend of Adolf Eichmann, the infamous SS officer who later played a key role in implementing the Nazis' Final Solution against Europe's Jews. After completing gymnasium, Kaltenbrunner earned a PhD in law and political science at the University of Graz in 1926.
He worked as a lawyer in Salzburg and later opened his own law office in Linz in 1928. He stood six feet four inches tall and had deep facial scars from dueling during his student days, though some sources attribute the scars to a car accident.
Kaltenbrunner joined the Austrian Nazi Party on October 18, 1930, and joined the SS on August 31, 1931. He served as the district speaker for the Nazi Party in Upper Austria, and in 1933 he became head of the National Socialist Lawyers League in Linz.
He married Elisabeth Eder on January 14, 1934, who was also a Nazi Party member. The couple had three children. Kaltenbrunner also had twins, Ursula and Wolfgang, with his longtime mistress Gisela Gräfin von Westarp. All of his children survived the war.
In January 1934, Kaltenbrunner was briefly imprisoned at the Kaisersteinbruch detention camp with other Nazis for conspiracy by the Dollfuss government. He was imprisoned again in 1934 on suspicion of high treason in the assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss. That accusation was dropped, but he was sentenced to six months in prison for conspiracy and lost his license to practice law.
In 1937, he was arrested again by Austrian authorities on charges of heading the illegal Nazi Party organization and was released in September. On March 13, 1938, Kaltenbrunner assisted in the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany.
After the Anschluss, Adolf Hitler promoted Kaltenbrunner to SS Brigadeführer and then, on September 11, 1938, to the rank of SS Gruppenführer. He helped establish the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp near Linz. Mauthausen was the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Austria following the Anschluss.
The Nazis viewed Jews as a problem, which they called the Jewish question. To carry out the Final Solution to the Jewish question, the Nazis created killing centers to carry out mass murder. They began to systematically commit mass killings of Jews after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, using gas chambers and mobile gas vans to mass murder Jews.
Kaltenbrunner was a committed anti-Semite. According to SS Sturmbannführer Hans Georg Mayer, Kaltenbrunner was present at a meeting between Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and Heydrich in December 1940 where it was decided to gass all Jews who were unfit for work.
After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in June 1942, Kaltenbrunner replaced Heydrich as chief of the Reich Security Main Office in January 1943. The RSHA included the offices of the Gestapo and the security police. He held this position until the end of World War II.
On July 20, 1944, an assassination attempt was made on Hitler's life but failed. Kaltenbrunner was assigned to begin the investigation into who was responsible. The conspirators were soon identified, and an estimated 5,000 people were eventually executed, with many others sent to concentration camps.
Kaltenbrunner was one of Hitler's loyalists and was described as committed to Hitler to the bitter end. He was awarded the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords on November 15, 1944, and was also awarded the Nazi Party Golden Party Badge.
On April 18, 1945, three weeks before the end of the war, Himmler appointed Kaltenbrunner commander-in-chief of the German forces in southern Europe. As the Soviet Red Army advanced on Berlin, he was present at the Führerbunker. Realizing that the end of the war was near, he fled Berlin after Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945.
Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on May 7, 1945. On May 15, 1945, Kaltenbrunner was captured by a U.S. intelligence team. He was found hiding in a remote cabin at the top of the Totes Gebirge mountains in Austria.
He was tried at Nuremberg, charged with conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. He was also charged with involvement in the murder of 50 British prisoners of war who escaped from a prison camp but were later recaptured.
He was absent from the early stages of the Nuremberg trials due to a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which required several weeks of recovery. After his recovery, he was brought to court in a wheelchair. He pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
Kaltenbrunner argued in his defense that his position as chief of the RSHA existed only theoretically. He claimed that Himmler, as his superior, was the person responsible for the atrocities committed during his tenure as chief of the RSHA. He said he was only active in matters of espionage and intelligence.
He also claimed that all decrees in legal documents that bore his signature were rubber stamped and filed by his assistant. He asserted that he had no knowledge of the Final Solution before 1943 and that he protested against the ill treatment of the Jews to Himmler and Hitler.
The International Military Tribunal found Kaltenbrunner not guilty of crimes against peace but guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to death by hanging.
Kaltenbrunner was executed on October 16, 1946, around 1:15 a.m. in Nuremberg, along with the nine other condemned defendants from the first Nuremberg Trial. On the scaffold, asked if he had any last words, Kaltenbrunner said, "I have loved my German people and my Fatherland with a warm heart. I have done my duty by the law of my people and I am sorry my people were led this time by men who were not soldiers and that crimes were committed of which I had no knowledge."
As the black hood was placed on his head, Kaltenbrunner said in a low voice, "Germany, good luck." His body, like those of the other nine executed men, was cremated at a cemetery in Munich, and the ashes were scattered in a tributary of the river Isar.