With the special exhibition Hitlers Exekutive. The Austrian Police and National Socialism, the House of History at the Museum of Lower Austria focuses on a dark chapter in Austria's contemporary history. From October 4, 2025 to February 22, 2026, the exhibition shows how closely the police in Austria were involved in the structures and crimes of the Nazi regime between 1938 and 1945 - and at the same time opens up differentiated perspectives on participation, adaptation and resistance.

The exhibition was created as part of the research project Die Polizei in Österreich. Ruptures and Continuities 1938-1945, initiated by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and carried out by the University of Graz and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War, in cooperation with the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance and the Mauthausen Memorial. Funded by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Future Fund of the Republic of Austria, the presentation in St. Pölten will be expanded to include a special focus on Lower Austria.
Between "order and security" and participation in terror and extermination: the police not only served the Nazi state as an instrument of internal control, but were also actively involved in persecution, deportations, war crimes and the Holocaust in the occupied territories. The exhibition thus impressively shows that "normal" police officers became accomplices of the system - out of conviction, opportunism or a sense of duty.
At the same time, the exhibition also focuses on those few who behaved critically or offered resistance. For Lower Austria, the focus is on the group around the deputy city police director of St. Pölten, Otto Kirchl. Their plan to hand over the city to the Red Army without a fight at the end of the war could have saved countless lives. But the group was betrayed - its members were arrested and executed.
With original documents, photographs and contemporary testimonies, Hitler's Executive makes visible how the police and gendarmerie became pillars of the National Socialist apparatus of rule - and at the same time invites visitors to critically examine questions of responsibility, scope for action and continuities after 1945.
October 4, 2025 to February 22, 2026
www.museumnoe.at