Fritz Popp (police officer)

Fritz Popp as a witness at the Nuremberg trials.

Fritz Popp , full name Friedrich Hans Adolf Popp , (born June 30, 1882 in Nuremberg , † March 17, 1955 in Regensburg ) was a German lawyer, police officer and SS leader.

Live and act

After attending school, Popp studied law in Munich and Erlangen . He then entered the administrative service. He worked for a number of years for authorities in Nuremberg and Ansbach before taking part in the First World War with the Bavarian Army from August 1914 to December 1918 . After leaving the army - with the rank of Rittmeister - he returned to the government in Ansbach. In 1927 Popp took over the management of the police department at the regional president of Upper and Middle Franconia. In 1931 he became a consultant for political police affairs .

During the Nazi era , Popp was Police President of Regensburg from 1933 and, from autumn 1937, also head of the local secret state police . He retained this dual position until mid-March 1945. While in the police service he reached the rank of police director and criminal adviser , he joined the SS (member 351,620), of which he had been a member since January 1, 1940, as SS-Obersturmbannführer . Before that, he was storm leader of the SA from 1933 to 1940 . Since 1935 he was also a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 3.60.422).

When the war ended Popp fell into Allied captivity. He was questioned as a witness in the Nuremberg trials . Popp died in 1955 shortly before he was to answer before the Regional Court of Regensburg because of his role in the implementation of the order No. 8 of July 17, 1941, which dealt with the state-ordered mass murder of Soviet prisoners of war.

literature

• Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2002. ISBN 3-16-147687-5 .
• LG Regensburg, July 27, 1955 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. XIII, edited by Irene Sagel-Grande, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1975, No. 418, pp. 251–260 Subject matter of the proceedings: Inspection of thousands of Russian prisoners of war in the POW camps in the area of ​​military district commands XIII (Nuremberg) and VII (Munich) by a task force of the Regensburg state police station in accordance with 'Einsatzbefehl Nr.8 'of the chief of the security police and the SD, according to which the' Bolshevik forces' and Jews were to be singled out and transferred to the concentration camps for the purpose of killing. As part of this action, several hundred prisoners of war were brought to KL Dachau and Flossenbürg and killed there (trial against Luitpold Kuhn)

Web links

• Minutes of an interrogation by Fritz Popp (PDF; 276 kB)
• Bayerische Landesbibliothek Online : Minister of State, senior administrative officials and (NS) officials in Bavaria from 1918 to 1945