Generalmajor Otto Scholik

Otto Scholik joins the Austrian army after graduating from high school in 1935 and is taken over by the German Wehrmacht after the Anschluss. He attended war school in Potsdam and was wounded in 1942. As he was no longer fit for the front, he was transferred to the home army. First Lieutenant Scholik is involved in the events surrounding July 20, 1944 in the 'Operation Valkyrie', but is not recognized. He then became active in the military resistance around Major Carl Szokoll (1915-2004), whose adjutant he was. After the failure of the 'Operation Valkyrie' in Berlin, Carl Szokoll succeeded in building up a network of Austrian-minded officers and soldiers in the Army District Command XVII. Otto Scholik is a member of the liaison group for '05' in order to involve them in the preparations for the implementation of the 'Operation Radetzky'; the plan is to achieve a surrender of Vienna without a fight by establishing contact with the advancing Red Army. This plan is betrayed prematurely and the officers Major Karl Biedermann, Captain Alfred Huth and First Lieutenant Rudolf Raschke are sentenced to death by a summary court on April 8, 1945 and publicly hanged on lampposts by an SS special commando at Floridsdorfer Spitz.