Albert Ganzenmüller

Albert Ganzenmüller had taken part in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923 while still at Realgymnasium (secondary high school). Afterwards, he became a holder of the Blood Order of the German Nazi Party. After graduating from the Technical College in Munich (now the Technical University of Munich), where he was a member of a student fraternity known as the Corps Rheno-Palatia München, he became an executive with the Deutsche Reichsbahn (German State Railways) in 1931 and joined the Nazi Party and the Sturmabteilung (SA or “brownshirts”). In 1940, he had reached the rank of SA-Standartenführer on the staff of the Supreme SA Leadership. He held a Doctor of Engineering degree.

In 1934, Ganzenmüller became a senior railway executive (Reichsbahn-Rat) in Munich and in 1938 was appointed Senior Government Adviser (Oberregierungsrat). He was subsequently head (Dezernent) of electrical engineering at the central office of the German State Railways in Munich. In 1940, he took over the repair and renewal of the electric railway network in occupied France. The following year, at his own request, he was transferred to the Eastern Division at Poltava in central Ukraine.

Ganzenmüller quickly restored railroad traffic between Minsk and Smolensk. On the recommendation of Albert Speer in May 1942, Ganzenmüller succeeded Wilhelm Kleinmann as Deputy General Director of the German State Railways and State Secretary at the Reich Transport Ministry under Dr. Julius Dorpmüller.