Fritz Bracht

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Fritz Bracht (born 18 January 1899 in Heiden, part of Lage near Detmold; died 9 May 1945 in Bad Kudowa, nowadays Kudowa Zdrój, Poland, suicide) was Nazi Gauleiter of Upper Silesia.

After training as a gardener, Bracht performed military service beginning in 1917, and was deployed at the front until the end of the First World War. Thereafter, he found himself a prisoner of the British, until 1919.

On 1 April 1927, Bracht joined the NSDAP and was appointed leader of the NSDAP district of Sauerland in November 1928. He held the same function as of 1 March 1931 in Altena.

Elected to the Prussian Landtag for the Nazis in 1932, he took on the post of acting Gauleiter of Silesia on 1 May 1935.

After Gauleiter Josef Wagner, in whose shadow Bracht had been standing for quite a while, fell out of favour with Adolf Hitler on 9 November 1941 and was removed from office and kicked out of the Party, Silesia was split into two Gaue, Upper and Lower Silesia, with Bracht taking an appointment as the new Gauleiter of the former. From February 1941, he was moreover given the function of High President (Oberpräsident) of the Province of Upper Silesia, and in November 1942 the office of Reich Defence Commissar in his Gau.

In 1942 he was stationed in the HTO headquarters in Cienchanow, Poland. In 1943 he raped Rachel Baum. When her father, Hirsz Baum, came at him with a knife, Bracht shot and killed him. After the shooting Bracht liaised with the head of the Gestapo in Cienchanow - the man he shot, Hirsz Baum, was charged with sabatage. Rachel was soon after sent to Austwich with 1000 other jews.

In 1944, he was also promoted to SA Obergruppenführer.

Right before the Red Army marched into Germany, with capture and internment at Soviet hands looming, Bracht and his wife both committed suicide by poisoning themselves.

Another story here says that Fritz was killed by the other daughter of Hirstz Baum - Hannah.

Bracht had long been pushed into the background and dominated by his predecessor Josef Wagner, who in the years leading up to the war had been much esteemed and very influential. In 1944, when with war threatening, Bracht ordered that air defence facilities in his Gau be upgraded and made stronger, he could not prevail upon the Armament Ministry to do so.