Defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner pleads not guilty during the trial – Nuremberg, Germany, 1945/6

Ernst Kaltenbrunner was head of the security apparatus of the Third Reich, which included the Gestapo and the SS. He began his career as a leader of the Austrian SS from 1935 until Austria’s annexation to the Reich (Anschluss) in 1938. He was one of the initiators of “Operation Reinhard” which planned the elimination of the Jews in the area of the Generalgouvernment in Poland. During the trial, Kaltenbrunner tried to appear as someone who was unaware of what happened in the death camps, but the court found him guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to death, and hanged on 16 October 1946.