Habicht, Theodor (Theo) Otto August Wilhelm

Local group leader of the NSDAP

Born: 04.04.1898 in Wiesbaden

Died: 31.01.1944 near the village of Sobakino (Soviet Union)

Habicht enlisted as a 17-year-old in the First World War in 1915, received the Iron Cross 2nd Class after an injury and returned to Wiesbaden in 1920, where he joined the Wiesbaden branch of the NSDAP in 1926. Habicht became local group leader and was put in charge of publishing the National Socialist newspaper "Nassauer Beobachter", which incited hatred against Jews, SPD members and the city administration. In 1928, he entered the Wiesbaden city parliament and became leader of the NSDAP parliamentary group. In 1931, he was also a member of the Nassau municipal state parliament and the provincial state parliament of Hesse-Nassau.1931 Habicht was threatened with arrest, but was able to flee and was appointed state inspector of the NSDAP in Austria by Hitler. In the "Deutschösterreichische Tages-Zeitung", Habicht called for new elections in Austria on February 23, 1933.

In July 1934, he deployed 15,000 SA men on the Bavarian-Austrian border and organized an attempted coup: 150 National Socialists stormed the government building in Vienna on 25 July 1934, during which the Chancellor of Austria, Engelbert Dollfuß, was shot dead. Hitler subsequently distanced himself from the failed action. Habicht was largely withdrawn from the "public eye". From 1937-39, Habicht held the office of Lord Mayor in Wittenberg and Koblenz. He was drafted into the Wehrmacht until Reich Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop made him Ministerial Director and Undersecretary of State in the Foreign Office. Von Ribbentrop ordered him back from an assignment in Norway to set up a propaganda department due to his unauthorized initiatives. Habicht then enlisted for military service. He rose to the rank of battalion commander and was killed in action in the Soviet Union in 1944. As part of the project "The Habicht Diaries. National Socialism and War, 1914-1944" at the University of Mainz, Habicht's extensive war diary is the subject of historical research.