He joined the Nazi Party in 1930, and, when they gained power with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, he became Governor of Hesse-Nassau. However, he fell out with the Nazis, was arrested in 1943, dismissed as governor the following year and then was sent to the Flossenbürg concentration camp, then Dachau, where he remained until being transported to Tyrol by the SS, where he was liberated by Wehrmacht forces on 30 April 1945[1] and then arrested by U.S. forces on 4 May 1945, being interned until 1947.[2]