Obergeneralarbeitsführer Victor Band

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Obergeneralarbeitsführer Victor Band

New directory coming soon

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Obergeneralarbeitsführer Viktor Band

Arbeitsgau XXXV Niederdonau

Victor Band, also Viktor Band, (December 4, 1897 in St. Leonhard (Grödig) †– October 31, 1973 in Vienna)

Band was the son of a senior inspector of the Austrian Federal Railways. From 1904 to 1916 he attended the elementary school, the lower middle school and the infantry cadet school in Vienna-Breitensee. From 1916 he was an ensign in the First World War. Initially with the k.u.k. Infantry Regiment No. 34, he was deployed at the front in Russia and Italy and was wounded several times. After the armistice, Band joined the "German-Österreichische Volkswehrbataillon XXII", a right-wing extremist paramilitary force, from which he voluntarily retired as a first lieutenant at the end of 1919.

After studying electrical engineering at the Technical University in Vienna, Band worked between 1927 and 1933 as a graduate engineer in Austria, the USA and the Soviet Union. In the latter, he worked in the Lenin telephone factory in Gorky. From 1919 Band belonged to the SDAP for ten years. He was also a member of the Social Democratic Federation of Industrial Employees.

From 1929 Band turned to the NSDAP. According to his own statements, he joined the party on 1 September 1932. When he officially applied for admission on 20 June 1938, he was admitted retroactively to 1 May of the same year (membership number 6,199,262). Although his early membership was recognized, his application for a correspondingly lower membership number was rejected by the Reich leadership of the NSDAP, as he had not been registered with the party before 1938.

In June 1933, Band became a volunteer in the National Socialist voluntary "Austrian Labour Service" (ÖAD), which was affiliated to the SA and was active there as a member of the state leadership in a leading position before the ÖAD was dissolved by the Austrian government in 1934. In addition, he became a member of the Vienna SA itself, in which he quickly advanced and whose leader he became in April 1934.

After the failed coup d'état of the Austrian National Socialists, Band was arrested in July 1934 and sentenced to life imprisonment for high treason by the Vienna Military Tribunal on 25 May 1935. Evidence suggests that he drew up the plans for the attack on the Austrian Federal Chancellery in the course of the July putsch, in which Engelbert Dollfuß was murdered. He served his sentence until the amnesty of February 1938 adopted in the course of the Berchtesgaden Agreement.

After the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, Band was released. In the SA he reached his highest rank at this time with the promotion to Brigadeführer with effect from 12 March 1938. In the Reichstag election of 10 April 1938, Band also received a mandate for the National Socialist Reichstag, to which he belonged until the end of Nazi rule. In 1940 he was awarded the "Blood Order" of the NSDAP.

From 1939 to 1945 Band Arbeitsgauführer of Arbeitsgau XXXV in Vienna. He initially had the rank of Oberstarbeitsführer in the Reich Labor Service, later he was promoted to Obergeneralarbeitsführer. In 1944 he became alderman of the city of Vienna.

Band was also one of five high ranking RAD officials that oversaw the inspections of the Arbeitsdienstlagers:

Establishment of RAD inspections

With effect from 1 July 1944, the Reich Labour Leader issued 5 RAD inspecktionen in the territory of the Reich for the Reich Labour Service (manner).

Generalarbeitsführer Eisenbeck for RAD Inspection I (Nordost)
Generalarbeitsführer zur Loye for RAD Inspection II (Nordwest)
Generalarbeitsführer Simon for RAD Inspection III (Mittel)
Generalarbeitsführer Schmückle for RAD Inspection IV (Sudwest)
Generalarbeitsführer Band for RAD inspection V (Sudost)



After the war, Band was interned in the Glasenbach camp near Salzburg. From 27 June 1947 he was temporarily imprisoned in the prison of the Regional Court I in Vienna. Band died in Vienna in October 1973.

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From my photographic archives