A high-ranking leader of the SS, Globocnik played a leading role in Operation Reinhard, the organized murder of around one and a half million Jews, mostly of Polish origin, during the Holocaust in the Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec extermination camps.

Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globočnik was born on 21 April 1904 in the Imperial Free City of Trieste, then the capital of the Austrian Littoral administrative region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Italy).

Odilo's mother Anna, née Petschinka, was born in Versecz, Kingdom of Hungary (now Vršac, Serbia); she was half-Serbian and half-Croatian.

[10] He later enrolled at the Höhere Staatsgewerbeschule (a higher vocational school for mechanical engineering), where he passed his Matura (the Austrian equivalent of the German Abitur) and graduated with honours.

Her father, Emil Michner, had talked to the director of KÄWAG (Kärntner Wasserkraftwerke AG), an electricity distribution company of Carinthia, and secured Globočnik a job as a technician and construction supervisor.

The DNA studies conducted by the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School as part of the John Templeton Foundation Human Atlas project has ironically demonstrated in 2019 that the Slavic population were, in reality, descended from the Yamnaya population, once called Aryans, more directly than the Germanic peoples, as carriers of the Y-haplogroup R1a chromosomal variation, as is found among the Brahmin in India and the upper classes of Persia.

[17][18][19][20] In 2004, historian Joseph Poprzeczny argued in his biography of Globocnik that the story might have been credible, citing Austro-Hungarian census data from 1910 indicating that the Globočniks were ethnic Germans.

At the time of his birth, the Slovene Lands were ruled directly from Vienna and divided into parts of the duchies of Carniola and Styria and the Austrian Littoral.

[28] In his early tenure as Gauleiter, Globočnik espoused Nazi anti-Jewish philosophy: "I will not recoil from radical interventions for the solution of Jewish questions."

As punishment, Himmler transferred Globočnik to the Waffen-SS, in the rank of junior sergeant (Unterscharführer), where he served with SS Standarte "Germania" during the Polish campaign.

"[36][37] In the following years, Globočnik was responsible for: Globocnik is reported to have taken great joy in killings and organizing killings of Jews, stating that, in Höss' rendition, Globocnik "wanted to be in the forefront with his exterminations"[38] even when transportation capacities did not allow for it and then he "carried out executions at his own discretion"[39] There are indications that Globočnik, along with a chief accomplice Christian Wirth, may have originated the concept of the extermination camp and industrialised murder, and suggested the concept to Himmler.

[40][41][42] Shortly beforehand, in September 1941, Globočnik had been visited by Philipp Bouhler and Viktor Brack, the top officials in the Fuhrer Chancellery responsible for the Aktion T4 "euthanasia" program, which had been using gas chambers disguised as shower rooms to execute many of its victims.

[46][49] On 14 October 1941 – the day after he had met with Globočnik – Himmler held a five-hour meeting with Reinhard Heydrich to discuss "executions", following which other extermination camp gassing sites were built.

Globočnik was complicit in the extermination of more than 1.5 million Jews of Polish, Czech, Dutch, French, Russian, Slovak, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Spanish and Austrian origin, as well as a smaller number of non-Jews, in the death camps under his control.

[54] From 1942 to 1943, he also oversaw the beginning of the Generalplan Ost, the plan to expel Poles from their lands and resettle those territories with German settlers (see Zamość Uprising).

[11] After the Armistice of Cassibile, Globočnik was appointed as Higher SS and Police Leader of the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral of Italy on 13 September 1943.

[56] With him he brought to Trieste a large number of experienced killers who had distinguished records from various extermination operations in Germany, the Soviet Union and the death camps in occupied Poland at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.

Together, they converted an old rice mill on the outskirts of the city into a detention centre complete with a crematorium, known as Risiera di San Sabba (in Slovene: Rižarna).

At San Sabba, thousands of Italian Jews, partisans and other political dissidents were interrogated, tortured and murdered under the direction of these men after the 1943 downfall of Benito Mussolini and the German takeover of the country.

[57] With the advance of Allied troops, Globočnik retreated into Austrian Carinthia and finally went into hiding high in the mountains near Weissensee, still in the company of his closest staff members.

[citation needed] The latter claim is based on an "official US document signed by US CIC S/A Operations Officer Andrew L. Venters, dated 27 October 1948, more than three years after his supposed death".

[60] Globočnik is a key antagonist in the Robert Harris alternative-history novel Fatherland; in the book set in 1964, a character based on Globocnik is still alive and a top SS official.

In the Harry Turtledove alternate-history novel In the Presence of Mine Enemies, set in 2010, a former Reichskommissar for Ostland Affairs called Odilo Globočnik (likely an analogue rather than the historical figure) is briefly installed as Führer in an SS-backed coup d'état against the reformist Heinz Buckliger; after the coup fails due to popular opposition, Globočnik is lynched.