Fritz Bracht

Who was Fritz Bracht?

Fritz Bracht was the 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 World War I. Thereafter, he found himself a prisoner of the British, until 1919.

On 1 April 1927, Bracht joined the Nazi Party 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 of the Province of Upper Silesia, and in November 1942 the office of Reich Defence Commissar in his Gau. In 1944, he was also promoted to SA Obergruppenführer. Within Bracht's jurisdiction was the extermination camp Auschwitz.