Walter Buch (24 October 1883-12 September 1949) was Chairman of the Supreme Party Court of the Nazi Party from 1927 to 1945.
Biography[]
Walter Buch was born in Bruchsal, Grand Duchy of Baden, German Empire in 1883, and he served as a company commander in the Imperial German Army during World War I. He left the army in 1918 with the rank of major after refusing to swear allegiance to the new Weimar Republic, and he was a member of the DNVP from 1919 to 1922, as well as the German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation. In December 1922, he joined the NSDAP due to its virulent anti-Semitism, and he joined the SA in January 1923 and became leader of the SA in Franconia that August. He participated in the November 1923 Beer Hall Putsch before going into hiding, and he maintained contact between the imprisoned Hitler and the illegal DNSAP leadership in Austria. He served as the SA leader in Munich from 1925 to 1927 and Chairman of the Supreme Party Court from 1927 to 1945, settling intra-party problems and disputes. He also supported the "Night of the Long Knives" purge in 1934 after collecting evidence of Ernst Rohm and many of his colleagues' homosexuality. Buch also served in the Reichstag from 1933 to 1945. In 1948, he was sentenced to five years in a labor camp following the end of World War II, but he was released in September 1949 and committed suicide by slitting his wrists and throwing himself into the Ammersee lake in Bavaria.