In 1949, he was given refuge by anti-communist Austrian bishop Alois Hudal in the Vatican where he died the same year, aged 48, reportedly from kidney disease.

[2] Otto Gustav von Wächter was the third child and only son of Martha (née Pfob), daughter of the owner of the Graben Hotel in the centre of Vienna.

[3] In 1922, after the First Austrian Republic was established, he was twice nominated two times as Minister of Defence in the Cabinets of Johann Schober (in the first replacing Carl Vaugoin).

[8] The government body he headed known as the "Wächter-Kommission", and responsible for the dismissal and/or compulsory retirement of all Austrian officials who did not conform with the Nazi regime.

[12][13] In his capacity as Governor, an execution warrant for 52 Poles in Bochnia was issued 18 December 1939 under Wächter's signature, as reprisal for killing two Viennese police officers.

The family lived in a pseudo-Romanesque villa in Przegorzaly on a steep slope above the Vistula outside Kraków, which belonged to Professor Szyszko-Bohusz, head of the restoration measures of the Royal Wawel.

The first German governor was Karl Lasch [de], an intimate friend of Frank, who was later arrested and shot for extensive black market activities on orders of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler.

With his assistance, Wächter endeavored to promote a greater degree of co-operation among the occupying Germans and the ethnic elements in the district of Galicia.

Consequently, he immediately found himself in conflict with SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the Reichsführer's representative in the General Government and executor of his planned large scale resettlement programs.

Wächter selected men with liberal views for the key posts in his administration, notably his department heads Otto Bauer and Ludwig Losacker [de], whom he consulted before deciding all important issues.

On his return in December 1942, he sent a secret ten page letter to Martin Bormann in the Führer Headquarters in Berlin, criticizing the serious mistakes made in the handling of the Ukrainians.

The Justice Department also maintains a document from Heinrich Himmler to Wilhelm Stuckart, the State Secretary to the Reich Minister of the Interior in Berlin, on Wächter's future, dated August 25, 1942.

[23] This document implies Wächter willingly wanted to stay in Lemberg for the implementation of Operation Reinhard and directly refutes Horst's claim that his father "had no chance to leave the system.

After 75,000 Jews died in the first month during Operation Reinhard, Hans Frank made a speech in the Parliament of Galicia praising Wächter's job for "making Lemberg a proud city.

[28] On September 28, 1946, the Polish government sent a document to the Military Governor of the American occupation zone in Germany requesting "that Wächter be delivered to Poland for trial for mass murder, shooting and executions.

The division was organized as a part of a program of creating foreign (e.g., Estonian, Latvian) formations of the Waffen-SS to fight with the Germans on the Soviet front.

[32] In organizing Waffen-SS Galizien, Wächter worked closely with the head of the Ukrainian Central Committee in Cracow, Volodymyr Kubijovyč.

[31] Modern Ukraine remains divided on the legacy of World War II, although nationalists, hardcore rightists and neo-Nazis continue to honor the Waffen-SS Galizien today through yearly celebrations.

[33] With the loss of the entire District of Galicia on 26 July 1944 to the advancing Red Army, Wächter sought to be released from his administrative obligations in the General Government so that he could take up a position in the Waffen-SS.

[34] In response, Himmler agreed to order his release on the basis that he assume a new commission as "Chief of the Military Administration to the Plenipotentiary General of the German Wehrmacht in Italy headed by SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Wolff.

In so doing, on 30 January 1945, Himmler appointed Wächter as subsidiary head of the Group D of the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin,[38] which sought to utilize and combine the Russian Liberation Army of General Andrey Vlasov and the newly formed Ukrainian National Army which included the 1st Ukrainian Division (formerly the SS 14th Galician Division), the creation of which he had instigated.

"[40] In Zell am See, amidst the German collapse, his wife burned a crate full of documents he had methodically collected to justify his deeds, which should demonstrate "that he had done everything to help so many people".

Together with a young member of the 24th Waffen-Gebirgs-(Karstjäger-) Division of the Waffen-SS, he successfully hid for four years, sustained by his wife who supplied both men with food and equipment from secret pick-up points.

[44] His son, Horst, has claimed that his father "was against the racial ideology of putting other races below Aryan Germans" and maintains he never made an anti-Semitic speech.