Alfred Proksch

Who was Alfred Proksch?

Alfred Proksch was an Austrian Nazi Party official.

Proksch enrolled in the Kaiser Infantry Regiment No. 1 of the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1910 and then the Railway Academy in Linz in 1912 before taking a job with the government railways. He returned to the army in 1914 with the Infantry Regiment No. 91 and saw action during the First World War in Poland and Russia. He first became involved in politics in 1912 when he joined the German Workers' Party and worked on behalf of the party in Silesia and Moravia.

After his war service Proksch settled in the now much smaller Austria and returned to politics by rejoining the renamed Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei. Proksch met Adolf Hitler in his earliest years as a Nazi and became a loyal follower of the German from then on. Proksch launched the Nazis in Upper Austria, where he would serve as Gauleiter, and founded both the party newspaper Volksstimme and the NSP-Verlag publishing house. He also served on Linz City Council for the party from 1923 to 1932.