Franz Kutschera

Franz Kutschera (22 February 1904 – 1 February 1944) was an Austrian Nazi politician (gardener by trade), SS-Brigadeführer and war criminal. During World War II, as SS and Police Leader in German occupied Warsaw, the capital of Poland, he was sentenced to death by the Polish Home Army resistance movement in agreement with the Polish government in exile and executed in front of the SS headquarters in a special action by the combat-sabotage unit (predecessor of Battalion Parasol) of Kedyw mainly manned by members of scouting and guiding Gray Ranks.

Kutschera was born in Oberwaltersdorf, Lower Austria (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and was the son of a professional gardener. After elementary school he served as a ship boy in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1918–19 and later attended machinists school in Budapest before training to become a gardener. Between the 1920 and 1928 Kutschera resided in Opava and Karlovy Vary in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.