Führer's and the Party's orders unconditionally. On 16 November 1942, the jurisdiction of the Reich Defense Commissioners was changed from the Wehrkreis to the Gau level, and Murr remained Commissioner for only his Gau. After the increasing severity of air raids on Stuttgart in 1943, Murr had the first inkling of a nasty end. He secretly prepared evacuation measures for Stuttgart, but remained a faithful spokesman for Hitler and Goebbels in public. Even when late in January 1944 Murr's only son Winfried, deployed with the Waffen-SS in Belgium, shot himself at the age of 21 to forestall court-martial proceedings for rape, Murr did not bring his loyalty to Hitler into question, going so far as to assure the Führer on 1 March that he would continue in his service. The war's end and afterwards When Murr’s nascent evacuation plans for Stuttgart became known in December 1944, which called for the city to be destroyed and the population led on 20-kilometer-per-day marches to the southeast, grumbling ensued and Murr gave up the plan by March 1945. On 10 April he called for the city to be defended to the utmost and forbade destruction of tank traps or the raising of white flags under threat of execution and Sippenhaft (detention of an offender's family). However, Murr himself fled Stuttgart on 19 April under a false name together with his wife and other companions. By way of Schelklingen, Kißlegg, Wangen im Allgäu, Kressbronn am Bodensee and further stops the refugee convoy finally arrived in the Great Walser Valley in the Austrian province of Vorarlberg. Murr, his wife and two aides stayed at the Biberacher Hütte in the Alps until 12 May, then moved into an alpine cabin overlooking Schröcken. There, on 13 May, they were arrested by French troops, to whom Murr identified himself as "Walter Müller". The arrestees were first taken to Schoppernau, then to Egg, in Vorarlberg, where Murr and his wife committed suicide using poison capsules they had carried with them. Both were buried in the graveyard at Egg. The American occupiers had put Murr on their List of Potential War Criminals under Proposed US Policy Directives and were searching for him. The Americans and the French soon came to suspect that Murr might be dead, and with the Württemberg police found evidence that led them to Egg. On 16 April 1946, the grave of "Walter Müller" and his wife