Josef Müller (27 March 1898 – 12 September 1979), also known as "Ochsensepp" ("Joe Ox"), was a German politician. He was a member of the resistance during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

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 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

and a leading figure in the Catholic resistance to

Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

Early life

Born in

Steinwiesen Steinwiesen is a market town and municipality located in the Upper Franconian district of Kronach, in Bavaria, Germany. The town is situated about 100 km slightly east of due north of Nuremberg, and approximately 10 km northeast of Krona ...

Kingdom of Bavaria The Kingdom of Bavaria ( ; ; spelled ''Baiern'' until 1825) was a German state that succeeded the former Electorate of Bavaria in 1806 and continued to exist until 1918. With the unification of Germany into the German Empire in 1871, the kingd ...

, Müller was a lifelong

. He entered the legal profession after serving as a mortar-man in the

Royal Bavarian Army The Bavarian Army () was the army of the Electorate (1682–1806) and then Kingdom (1806–1918) of Bavaria. It existed from 1682 as the standing army of Bavaria until the merger of the military sovereignty () of Bavaria into that of the German ...

on the Western Front from 1916 to 1919. He was discharged as a senior sergeant. Müller became politically active during the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was the German Reich, German state from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclai ...

as a member of the

Bavarian People's Party The Bavarian People's Party (German: ; BVP) was a principally Catholic christian democratic political party in Bavaria during the Weimar Republic. After the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, it split away from the federal Centre Party and ...

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 (German language, German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', though the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context) ) was the German military intelligence , military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ...

(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. Initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, Canaris t ...

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

and

Hans Oster ''Generalmajor'' 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'' (Ge ...

Missions to Rome

Early in the war (1939–1940), Müller made a number of trips to the

Vatican City Vatican City, officially the Vatican City State (; ), is a Landlocked country, landlocked sovereign state and city-state; it is enclaved within Rome, the capital city of Italy and Bishop of Rome, seat of the Catholic Church. It became inde ...

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 Pope Pius XII (; born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli; 2 March 18769 October 1958) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 2 March 1939 until his death on 9 October 1958. He is the most recent p ...

, 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 British Conservative politician of the 1930s. He h ...

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 (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, 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 F ...

, 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 Jesuit priest from Germany, Professor for Church History at the Gregorian University in Rome from 1930 to 1960. Leiber was the private secretary to Pius XII and, according to the ...

, 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, war correspondent, and historian. His '' The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', a history of Nazi Germany, has been read by many and cited in schol ...

; ''

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 admiral (Germany), German admiral and the chief of the ''Abwehr'' (the German military intelligence, military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944. Initially a supporter of Ad ...

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, ...

, 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, 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 Wordsworth Editions is a British publisher known for their low-cost editions of classic literature and non-fiction works. The firm was founded by Helen Trayler and Michael Trayler in 1987. The firm began to sell paperbacks at £1 in 1992. The f ...

; 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 A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...

Flossenbürg. Unlike fellow inmates Canaris, Oster and

Bonhoeffer Dietrich Bonhoeffer (; 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheranism, Lutheran pastor, Neo-orthodoxy, neo-orthodox theologian and anti-Nazism, Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writin ...

, 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 Johann Rattenhuber (30 April 1897 – 30 June 1957), also known as Hans Rattenhuber, was a German police and SS general (''Gruppenführer'', i. e. Generalleutnant). Rattenhuber was the head of German dictator Adolf Hitler's personal '' Reic ...

who convinced

Ernst Kaltenbrunner Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 October 1903 – 16 October 1946) was an Austrian high-ranking SS official during the Nazi era, major perpetrator of the Holocaust and convicted war criminal. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and a ...

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 stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It bega ...

had hauled off in the final days of the war to

Niederdorf, South Tyrol Niederdorf (; ) 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 The settlement is first mentioned as ...

, 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 Alois Hundhammer (25 February 1900, Forstinning, Moos – 1 August 1974, Munich) was one of the most prominent politicians in Bavaria after World War II. Early life Alois Hundhammer, the first of thirteen children, was born to Alois and Maria (G ...

. 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 of

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

and proposed for

Hans Ehard Hans Ehard (10 November 1887 – 18 October 1980) was a German lawyer and politician, a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU) party. Biography Hans Ehard was born in Bamberg in 1887, the son of a local official, August Ehard. He was marri ...

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 is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Muller, Josef 1898 births 1979 deaths People from Kronach (district) Politicians 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 Leaders of political parties in Germany German political party founders Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime 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