← Back to the front page

Throwing Slaves Overboard to Drown and Other Dark Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan July 26, 2020 35 min

Plateau - Slave ship — Slave ship hold. History Channel

13. The Dark Baron

Baron Otto Gustav von Wachter (1901 – 1949) was an Austrian aristocrat and fervent Nazi. A member of the SS as well as a practicing lawyer, he represented Austrian Nazis until 1934. Then he took part in a failed coup that included the assassination of Austria’s Chancellor and was forced to flee to Germany. Von Wachter returned to Austria in 1938 after it was annexed by Germany, and ran a commission that oversaw the firing or compulsory retirement of all Austrian officials who did not conform to the Nazi regime.

In 1940, von Wachter was made governor of Krakow in the recently conquered Poland. Things immediately took a dark turn for the locals. In his capacity as governor, von Wachter ordered the killing of numerous Poles in retaliation for partisan activities. He also directed the expulsion of tens of thousands of Jews from their homes, and their forcible relocation to the Krakow Ghetto.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.