In 1941, he was dismissed from his offices, then expelled from the Nazi Party (NSDAP), imprisoned by the Gestapo, and likely executed around the time of end of the war in Europe.

Beginning in the summer of 1913 he attended the teachers' seminary in Wittlich until 1917 when he entered military service as a one-year volunteer in the Imperial German Army.

[1] He returned to Germany in August 1919, by way of Switzerland, completed his last year of training at a teacher seminary in Fulda and passed his teaching examinations in October 1920.

[3] When the Nazi Party was outlawed in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, Wagner joined the Völkisch-Social Bloc, a Nazi-oriented electoral alliance, becoming its leader in the Westphalia Industrial District.

In 1930, he founded a weekly Nazi newspaper, Westfalenwacht (Westphalia Awakes); this was followed in 1931 by a daily paper, Rote Erde (Red Earth).

He was reappointed on 14 September to the reconstituted Council, now stripped of significant legislative functions and merely an advisory body to Prussian Minister-President Hermann Göring.

[5] On 12 December 1934, after the removal of Helmuth Brückner, Wagner was also appointed as Gauleiter of Gau Silesia with its capital at Breslau (today Wrocław, Poland).

[6] On 29 October 1936, Wagner was appointed Reichskommissar for Pricing, an important position for managing the economy under Göring's Four Year Plan.

On the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe on 1 September 1939, he was named Reich Defense Commissioner for Wehrkreis (Military District) VIII, which included not only Gau Silesia, but the eastern sections of Reichsgau Sudetenland.

[8] In this position, he had responsibility for civil defense and evacuation measures, as well as administration of wartime rationing and suppression of black market activity.

Two days later, Wagner conferred with Adolf Eichmann who outlined the ruthless Nisko Plan to deport an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Jews to the Lublin District.

[10] Wagner, now at the peak of his career, had made powerful enemies, including SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery.

In it, Frau Wagner forbade on religious grounds, her daughter's planned marriage to the child's father, a member of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler who had left the Church.

Interestingly, Giesler, at Wagner's instigation, had been dismissed as SA-Führer in Westphalia-South in July 1934 and brought up on charges before the Supreme Party Court in connection with the Roehm Purge.

Wagner put up a persuasive defense and, surprisingly, in a 6 February 1942 decision, the Court acquitted him and refused to expel him from the Party.

The matter, however, was allowed to simmer over the spring and summer until the autumn when Hitler summoned Buch to his headquarters, furiously berated him, and ordered him to reverse the decision immediately.