Odilo Globočnik was born on 21 April 1904 in the Imperial Free City of Trieste, then the capital of the Austrian Littoral administrative region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Italy). He was the second child of Franz Globočnik (also known as Globotschnig), a cavalry lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army who came from a Slovene family from the Upper Carniolan town of Tržič (German: Neumarktl; now in Slovenia). His father was unable to accumulate the money needed to get an officer's marriage permission and had to leave the service.