Josef Müller (27 March 1898 – 12 September 1979), also known as "Ochsensepp" (“Joe Ox”), was a German

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

. He was a member of the resistance during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and afterwards one of the founders of the Christian Social Union (CSU). He was a devout

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

and a leading figure in the Catholic resistance to

Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...

Early life

Born in Steinwiesen,

Upper Franconia Upper Franconia (german: Oberfranken) is a '' Regierungsbezirk'' (administrative 'Regierungs''region 'bezirk'' of the state of Bavaria, southern Germany. It forms part of the historically significant region of Franconia, the others being Middle ...

, Müller was a lifelong

. He entered the legal profession after serving as a mortar-man on the Western Front from 1916 to 1919. He was discharged as a senior sergeant. Müller became politically active during the

Weimar Republic The German Reich, commonly referred to as the Weimar Republic,, was a historical period of Germany from 9 November 1918 to 23 March 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is also r ...

as a member of the

Bavarian People's Party The Bavarian People's Party (german: Bayerische Volkspartei; BVP) was the Bavarian branch of the Centre Party, a lay Roman Catholic party, which broke off from the rest of the party in 1918 to pursue a more conservative and more Bavarian partic ...

Third Reich

During the Nazi period he worked as an attorney defending many Nazi opponents. He also was part of the Catholic resistance and was in contact with resistance figures in the

Abwehr The ''Abwehr'' ( German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', but the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context; ) was the German military-intelligence service for the '' Reichswehr'' and the ''Wehrmacht'' from 1920 to 1944. ...

(German military intelligence) such as

Admiral Canaris Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and the chief of the ''Abwehr'' (the German military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi re ...

, Hans von Dohnanyi and

Hans Oster Hans Paul Oster (9 August 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a general in the ''Wehrmacht'' and a leading figure of the anti-Nazi German resistance from 1938 to 1943. As deputy head of the counter-espionage bureau in the ''Abwehr'' (German military inte ...

Missions to Rome

Early in the war (1939–1940), Müller made a number of trips to the Vatican under the identity "X". He carried correspondence between the German resistance and British intelligence that sought co-operation in a coup to replace Hitler's regime with an anti-Nazi civilian government supported by the German military. The correspondence and related intelligence passed through an intermediary to the hands of Pope Pius XII, who would review it and in turn forward it to

Lord Halifax Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, (16 April 1881 – 23 December 1959), known as The Lord Irwin from 1925 until 1934 and The Viscount Halifax from 1934 until 1944, was a senior British Conservative politician of the 193 ...

in Britain. Dohnanyi summarized the material into a report, containing list of individuals slated to assume roles in a post-coup civilian government. Despite Müller's urgings, Dohnanyi failed to destroy this document and during the purges following the failed assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944, it fell into the hands of the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one or ...

, which led to the arrests, trials and executions of many resistance members. The Pope's Private Secretary,

Robert Leiber Robert Leiber, S.J. (10 April 1887 – 18 February 1967) was a close advisor to Pope Pius XII, a Jesuit priest from Germany, and Professor for Church History at the Gregorian University in Rome from 1930 to 1960. Leiber was, according to Pius's b ...

, acted as the intermediary for Pius and met with Müller, who visited Rome in 1939 and 1940. The Vatican considered Müller to be a representative of Colonel-General Beck and agreed to offer the machinery for mediation between the German Resistance and the Allies.Peter Hoffmann; ''The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945''; 3rd Edn (First English Edn); McDonald & Jane's; London; 1977; p.160

William L. Shirer William Lawrence Shirer (; February 23, 1904 – December 28, 1993) was an American journalist and war correspondent. He wrote ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly w ...

; ''

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany'' is a book by American journalist William L. Shirer in which the author chronicles the rise and fall of Nazi Germany from the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1889 to the end of World W ...

''; Secker & Warburg; London; 1960; p648-9

Wilhelm Canaris Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and the chief of the ''Abwehr'' (the German military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi re ...

and

Hans von Dohnányi Hans von Dohnanyi (; originally ''Johann von Dohnányi'' ; 1 January 1902 – 8 or 9 April 1945) was a German jurist. He used his position in the Abwehr to help Jews escape Germany, worked with German resistance against the Nazi régime, a ...

, backed by Beck, told Müller to ask Pius to ascertain whether the British would enter negotiations with the German opposition which wanted to overthrow Hitler. The British agreed to negotiate, provided the Vatican could vouch for the opposition's representative. Pius, communicating with Britain's

Francis d'Arcy Osborne Francis D'Arcy Godolphin Osborne, 12th Duke of Leeds, (16 September 1884 – 20 March 1964), known between 1943 and 1963 as Sir D'Arcy Osborne, was a British diplomat. Early life and career Osborne was the eldest son of Sidney Francis Godolph ...

, channelled communications back and forth in secrecy. The Vatican agreed to send a letter outlining the basis for peace with England and the participation of the Pope was used to try to persuade senior German Generals Halder and Brauchitsch to act against Hitler.

John Toland John Toland (30 November 167011 March 1722) was an Irish rationalist philosopher and freethinker, and occasional satirist, who wrote numerous books and pamphlets on political philosophy and philosophy of religion, which are early expressions ...

; ''Hitler''; Wordsworth Editions; 1997 Edn; p.760 Negotiations were tense, with a Western offensive expected, and on the basis that substantive negotiations could only follow the replacement of the Hitler regime. The British government had doubts as to the capacity of the conspirators. Nevertheless, the resistance were encouraged by the talks, and Muller told Leiber that a coup would occur in February. Pius appeared to continue to hope for a coup in Germany into March 1940. The negotiations ultimately proved fruitless. Hitler's swift victories over France and the Low Countries deflated the will of the German military to resist Hitler. Muller was arrested during the Nazis first raid on Military Intelligence in 1943. He spent the rest of the war in concentration camps, ending up at Dachau.

Imprisonment

After his arrest in 1943 he was interned at the

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...

Flossenbürg. Unlike fellow inmates Canaris, Oster and

Bonhoeffer Dietrich Bonhoeffer (; 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti- Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world h ...

, who were executed in April 1945, Müller was spared at the last moment, at the foot of the scaffold, through the intervention of Johann Rattenhuber who convinced

Ernst Kaltenbrunner Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 October 190316 October 1946) was a high-ranking Austrian SS official during the Nazi era and a major perpetrator of the Holocaust. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and a brief period under Heinric ...

that keeping Müller alive might help Germany negotiate more favourable surrender terms. Instead, Müller was transferred to Tyrol in late April 1945 along with 138 other "special prisoners" (''Sonderhäftlinge'') and "kin prisoners" ('' Sippenhäftlinge''), persons of prominence the

Nazi SS The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe dur ...

had hauled off in the final days of the war to

Niederdorf, South Tyrol Niederdorf (; it, Villabassa ) is a municipality in South Tyrol in northern Italy, about northeast of Bolzano. Geography Niederdorf borders the following municipalities: Prags, Toblach, Welsberg-Taisten, and Gsies. History Coat-of-arms The emb ...

, where they were to be hidden and used as bargaining chips. They were liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army on 5 May 1945.Peter Koblank:
Die Befreiung der Sonder- und Sippenhäftlinge in Südtirol
', Online-Edition Mythos Elser 2006

Later life

After the war, he advocated forming a new Christian party of both Catholics and Protestants. With Adam Stegerwald, he was one of the founders of the Christian Social Union (CSU), serving as the party's first chairman from 1946 to 1949. Müller belonged to the more liberal wing of the party and was the main opponent of the more conservative wing under Alois Hundhammer. He was one of the patrons of the young

Franz Josef Strauß Franz Josef Strauss ( ; 6 September 1915 – 3 October 1988) was a German politician. He was the long-time chairman of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) from 1961 until 1988, member of the federal cabinet in different positions between ...

. After the CSU had won the first postwar elections in 1946, Hundhammer opposed Müller's nomination as

minister-president A minister-president or minister president is the head of government in a number of European countries or subnational governments with a parliamentary or semi-presidential system of government where they preside over the council of ministers. I ...

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total l ...

and proposed for Hans Ehard to be elected as a compromise candidate instead. Once elected, Ehard appointed Hundhammer as minister of culture, but in 1947, Müller entered the cabinet as well as minister of justice. From 1950 onwards, he also was deputy prime minister. He resigned from the government in 1952. He died on 12 September 1979, in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Muller, Josef 1898 births 1979 deaths People from Kronach (district) People from the Kingdom of Bavaria German Roman Catholics Bavarian People's Party politicians Ministers of the Bavaria State Government Christian Social Union in Bavaria politicians Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime members German resistance members 20th-century German lawyers Roman Catholics in the German Resistance German conservatives in the German Resistance Knights Commander of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany