Arthur Seyss-Inquart was an Austrian Nazi leader who served as chancellor of Austria after it was annexed by Germany in 1938. Seyss-Inquart also served as a deputy governor in occupied Poland and commissioner of the occupied Netherlands. In this last position Seyss-Inquart enacted and administered anti-Jewish legislation. After Germany's defeat in 1945, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) charged him with war crimes for his actions in Austria and the Netherlands.

Seyss-Inquart was born on July 22, 1892 in Stannern, which then was part of the Austria-Hungary empire and as of 2001 was part of the Czech Republic. He studied law in Vienna but left to serve in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. After the war he practiced law in Vienna but politics soon became his consuming passion in his life. During the 1920s and early 1930s he advocated the political unification of Germany and Austria, though at this time he was...