Josef Leopold

Josef Leopold was the Nazi Party Gauleiter of Lower Austria from 1927 to 1938, as well as the Party's Landesleiter and the head of the Sturmabteilung (SA) for all of Austria from 1935 to 1938. He belonged to the faction within Austrian Nazism that supported an independent Austrian Nazi state rather than a union with Germany. Adolf Hitler removed him from office just before the Anschluss with Germany. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Leopold joined the German Army and was killed during the invasion of the Soviet Union.