Robert Heinrich Wagner

Robert Wagner was born in Lindach[3] in the German Empire. He was the second of five children of Peter Backfisch and Catherine Wagner, a farming family. After attending elementary school, he enrolled in 1910 in a preparatory school in Heidelberg[3] and later in a Teacher Normal School.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Wagner abandoned his studies (which he never finished) and volunteered for the Army. He fought with Reserve Regiment 110 from 1914 to 1918 in some of the most notorious battles on the Western Front: Flanders, the Battle of Verdun, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Loretto, and the Battle of Champagne. He was promoted to Leutnant and decorated for bravery with the Iron Cross.

After the war, Wagner joined in February 1919 the Second Volunteer Baden Battalion, with whom he participated in the suppression of revolutionary unrest in Mannheim and Karlsruhe. In August 1919, he joined the Reichswehr and was sworn in as an Oberleutnant in Infantry Regiment 14 in Konstanz. There he took, in 1921, the maiden name of his mother (Wagner). The reasons for the name change from his father's (Backfisch, which means "teenage girl" (literally "fried fish")) were probably to avoid teasing by his fellow officers.

In September 1923, he was posted to the Central School of Infantry in Munich, then the principal officer training facility in Germany. While in Munich, Wagner met Hitler and Ludendorff and was immediately captivated by them. The meeting came through his friendship with Ludendorff's stepson, Heinz Pernet. Wagner took part in the Beer Hall Putsch on 9 November 1923.[3] On 26 February 1924 he stood trial with Hitler and seven other men for their part in the putsch. Wagner was convicted, dismissed from the Reichswehr and sentenced to 18 months in prison, of which he served 11 weeks.[3]

Robert Wagner at far right

When the Nazi Party was re-established after having been outlawed in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch, Wagner rejoined (membership number 11,540). On 25 March 1925 he was named Gauleiter of Baden. In October 1929, he was elected to the Baden Landtag. In December 1932 he was temporarily transferred to the Party headquarters in Munich as Deputy to Robert Ley and head of the Hauptpersonalamt (Main Personnel Office).[4]

On 5 March 1933 he was elected to the Reichstag for electoral constituency 32, Baden. Resuming his Gauleiter position, on 11 March he was sent back to take control of the Baden state government as Minister-President. Turning this position over to Walter Köhler, on 5 May he assumed the new, more powerful position of Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of Baden, thus uniting under his control the highest party and governmental offices in his jurisdiction.[5] A dedicated Nazi, Wagner carried out the Party policies regarding persecution of the Jews, enforcement of the Nuremberg Laws, the pogrom of Reichskristallnacht and persecution against the churches.[6] On 22 October 1940 he reported to Berlin,

Baden ist als erster Gau judenfrei. — Baden is the first district to be free of Jews.

After the defeat of France in World War II, Germany incorporated Alsace (Elsaß) into the Greater German Reich and on 2 August 1940 Wagner became Chief of Civil Administration for the region. On 22 March 1941, his Gau was renamed Gau Baden-Elsaß.[5] Wagner's embarked on an aggressive "Germanization" campaign in Alsace, by proclaiming a ban on speaking French in public and by the restoration of the old German place names that existed prior to 1918. He also embarked on a campaign to rid Alsace of Jews, earning the nickname the Butcher of Alsace (Schlächter vom Elsaß). He took part in many trials dictating death sentences. The Jews expelled from both Baden and Alsace were housed under cruel conditions in the Gurs internment camp at the foot of the Pyrenees. Some 2,000 were deported to the Majdanek and Auschwitz concentration camps and murdered in 1942. Of the 4,464 Jews sent to the Camp Gurs, fewer than 800 survived.[3]

On 16 November 1942, Wagner was appointed the Reich Defense Commissioner for his Gau. As the invading Allied forces approached Baden, Wagner escaped across the Rhine river in November 1944. He continued to offer military resistance, mobilizing Volkssturm battalions and distributing leaflets calling for acts of sabotage in areas already occupied by the Allies. He threatened the death penalty to anyone that tried to flee. Following a scorched earth policy, he ordered cities in Baden to destroy their infrastructure to hinder the advance of the Allies.

At the end of the war, Wagner hid out until 29 July 1945 when he was arrested in Stuttgart by American forces, who handed him over to the French. Wagner was brought to trial from 23 April to 3 May 1946, convicted and sentenced to death by the Permanent Military Tribunal in Strasbourg. The sentence was carried out by firing squad on 14 August 1946. Wagner remained an incorrigible Nazi to the end, as his last words before the execution show: "Long live Greater Germany, long live Adolf Hitler, long live National Socialism."[3][7][8]

• Trial of Robert Wagner, Gauleiter and Head of the Civil Government of Alsace during the Occupation, University of West England.
• Vidéo INA, The Trial of Robert Wagner, Les Actualités Françaises, 2 mai 1946.
• The Trial of Robert Wagner, site malgre-nous.eu - pdf.