Odilo Globocnik Character Analysis

As the SS and Police Leader for the Polish district of Lublin, Odilo Globocnik hands down the orders for numerous deportations, ghetto clearings, the judenjagd, and mass executions. Globocnik has a reputation for being especially brutal and cold, and his friendship with Heinrich Himmler only adds to his notoriety. In 1941, Globocnik becomes one of the first to learn that Himmler and Hitler’s Final Solution involves exterminating every single Jew in Europe, not just in Germany. Furthermore, Himmler puts Globocnik in charge of making most of Poland judenfrei, particularly using gas chambers in some of Poland’s notorious extermination camps. It’s either Globocnik or someone in his office who gives Major Trapp orders to kill, deport, and round up Jews from 1942 to 1943, when the events in the book take place. It is a testament to Globocnik’s tenacity and extreme ruthlessness that Himmler gives him so much responsibility for brutal violence, and Globocnik enthusiastically launches into the task, delivering orders for mass executions in some of Poland’s extermination camps, Jewish ghettos, and ordinary towns. Globocnik is a prime example of what Christopher Browning calls a “desk murderer,” or someone who gives orders for mass deportations to death camps and executions from the safety of a desk and does not have to witness the results of these orders firsthand.