Reichsgau Salzburg, Reichsgau Upper Danube and Reichsgau Tirol-Vorarlberg. With help from SS units he brutally quelled the "Freedom Action Bavaria" ("Freiheitsaktion Bayern") uprising under Captain Dr. Rupprecht Gerngroß in Munich. Reflecting Giesler's fanatically loyal Nazi outlook, he was named Reichsminister for the Interior in Adolf Hitler's will of 29 April 1945, though he never had the chance to assume this post. As American troops approached, Giesler was reported to be planning the murder of the surviving inmates at Dachau concentration camp and several of its satellite camps in March 1945, on the authority of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Chief of the RSHA. In a 20 November 1945 interrogation of Giesler's Gaustabsamtsleiter, Hubertus "Bertus" Gerdes by Special Agent Johannes Imhoff of the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), Nürnberg Sub-Regional Office, Gerdes spoke of his role in sabotaging the plans for mass murder. In August 1946, in testimony given to the International Military Tribunal by Karl von Eberstein, he claimed he was ordered to use his influence with the commandant of Dachau (SS-Obersturmbannführer Eduard Weiter) to have 25,000 prisoners shot when the U.S. approached. If this couldn't be done, then Giesler, in his capacity as a Reich Defense Commissioner, would order the Luftwaffe to bomb the camp. Eberstein refused to order the shooting of the prisoners and stated that it would be impossible to find any Luftwaffe commander to give the order to bomb. Giesler then said he would poison the prisoners; Eberstein claimed he stopped Giesler by obtaining an order from Himmler to simply surrender the camps. Giesler then fired Eberstein on 20 April, on orders of Martin Bormann, for 'defeatism'. During the last days of Nazi Germany, Giesler was behind the worst of the violence directed against "defeatists" and those seeking to surrender their districts without pointless destruction, the Penzberger Mordnacht (Night of Penzberg Murder) being one of the best-known examples of this. When it was reported to Giesler that three people had been shot in another incident in Burghausen he retorted "What, only three?" On 8 May 1945, the day the Nazis capitulated to the Allies, Giesler and his wife and their children committed suicide, fearing capture by American troops as they fled Berchtesgaden. A local doctor practicing in Stanggass, Dr. Gottschalk, certified Giesler's death on 8 May 1945, and he was buried in the cemetery in Berchtesgaden on 10 May 1945. His remains were later disinterred and reburied elsewhere. Giesler, an