Joachim Hoffmann (SS member)

Joachim Hoffmann during his time as a political refugee in Central America (1931)

Joachim Theodor Adolf "Jochen" Hoffmann (born May 28, 1905 in Stettin ; † June 30, 1934 in Berlin-Lichterfelde ) was a German SS leader and Gestapo employee. He was best known as the commandant of the Stettin-Bredow concentration camp (1933-34) and one of those killed in the so-called Röhm Putsch .

Live and act

Hoffmann joined the Ehrhardt Marine Brigade while attending secondary school in Breslau in 1919 . From 1924 he studied at the universities of Tübingen and Greifswald law . During the semester break, Hoffmann worked as a rider at the circus and as a warehouse porter. He was also a co-owner of an arts and crafts workshop in Berlin . During his studies, which he obtained in 1930 with the doctorate to Dr. jur. graduated, he became a supporter of the NSDAP in Greifswald .

In 1931 Hoffmann appeared for the first time as a Gauredner for the NSDAP . Soon afterwards he had to flee Germany because of "activities against the republic". As a dishwasher and steward on a ship, he made his way to Central America. There he worked as a trader in Honduras , as a meat transporter in Guatemala , as a tractor driver on a sugar cane plantation and as a supervisor on a coffee plantation.

In 1932 he returned to Germany, continued his agitation for the NSDAP and joined the Schutzstaffel (SS). He now earned his living as a syndic of a Berlin meat wholesaler and as a functionary in the staff of the SS group east in Berlin. After the " seizure of power " in the spring of 1933, Hoffmann was accepted into the police force. In the same year he was assigned the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer in Stettin to the Gestapo office there, where he was entrusted with the processing of " protective custody matters". At times he took over the management of the Gestapo in Stettin.

Under Hoffmann's aegis, the “wild” Bredow concentration camp was built on the demolition site of the Stettiner Vulkan shipyard in Bredow . As the de facto commandant of the camp, he distinguished himself by the cruelty with which he had the prisoners in his care tortured and mistreated ("vulcanized"). Hoffmann released prisoners in return for large "monetary donations".

At the end of March 1934, Hoffmann and several other detectives entrusted with the Stettin-Bredow concentration camp were arrested and charged with prisoner abuse. The criminal chamber of the regional court in Stettin sentenced Hoffmann on April 6, 1934 ("Bredow trial") to a thirteen-year prison sentence with forfeiture of civil rights to five years.

After his conviction, Hoffmann appealed and was taken to Berlin-Moabit prison for custody until further notice . On June 26, 1934, the inaccurate rumor circulated at times that he and his fellow convicts had been released prematurely from prison.

On June 30, 1934, Hoffmann and his former subordinates, the SS men Gustav Fink and Fritz Pleines , were taken out of prison and penitentiary on orders from Heinrich Himmler and taken to the Secret State Police Office in Berlin. From there they were transferred to the barracks of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler in Berlin-Lichterfelde in the early evening of the same day . There they were placed one after the other in front of the SS firing squads in a separate courtyard of the barracks and shot. The executions took place in the course of the Röhm affair , the major domestic political cleansing of the Nazi government in early summer 1934, which was mainly directed against the Sturmabteilung (SA). Himmler had personally chosen the three SS men who had struck him negatively because of the scandal surrounding the Bredow concentration camp that had damaged the reputation of the SS, in order to counter the impression of an action directed unilaterally against the SA. Apart from Othmar Toifl and Anton von Hohberg and Buchwald, Hoffmann, Fink and Pleines were the only five SS members who were killed in the course of the purge, while more than fifty SA members were fused from the ranks of the SA. The killing of Fink, Hoffmann and Pleines was officially justified by the “prisoner abuse” they committed. In his Reichstag speech of July 13, 1934, Hitler justified the shooting of Hoffmann and his assistants briefly with the words: " Finally three SS members who were guilty of shameful mistreatment of prisoners were shot."

The head of the Central Public Prosecutor's Office in the Prussian State Ministry, Werner von Haacke , who was involved in the arrest of Hoffmann in 1934, later described him as a fanatical , sadistic intellectual with an emotional coldness that he had never encountered before.

Hoffmann's widow Gisela and their daughter received a monthly pension from the SS Reich leadership until May 31, 1936, amounting to 350 RM. After Hoffmann's wife remarried, the daughter received a pension from the Reich Ministry of the Interior until 1945.

Fonts

The criminal liability of fraud in order to obtain criminally obtained things and in the context of immoral or illegal contracts , Greifswald 1930. (Dissertation; published under the name Jochen Hoffmann )

literature

Klaus Drobisch , Günther Wieland : System of Nazi concentration camps. 1933-1939. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-000823-7 .

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Otto Gritschneder : “The Führer has sentenced you to death ...” Hitler's “Röhm Putsch” murders in court. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37651-7 , p. 134.
^ Johannes Tuchel : Concentration Camp. Organizational history and function of the "inspection of ..." . P. 177 states that Hoffmann was shot in Stettin.
↑ Heinz Höhne : Mordsache Röhm . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1984, pp. 122 ( online ).
^ Lothar Gruchmann : Justice in the Third Reich 1933-1940 . 2001, p. 352.
^ Heinz Höhne: The Order of the Death's Head. The Story of Hitler's SS , 1969, p. 188. Höhne's English is: "A fanatical, sadistic intellectual with an absence of feeling such as I had never experienced before." (The German original formulation: "Hofmann was a man-smoker after Himmler's heart. Haacke said of him: 'I heard Obersturmführer Dr. Hofmann several times for many hours. The guy interested me, like a particularly nauseating reptile, an interest mixed with curiosity and horror Dr. Hofmann was not a corporal nature, but a fanatical, sadistic intellectual with a feeling of coldness that I had never seen before. I have only met one person who was me in essence, even in his movements and gestures, from the very first moment reminded him: Heydrich. ‹“ Rudolf Diels: Lucifer Ante Portas… The first head of the Gestapo, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1950, p. 396 speaks).

personal data
SURNAME	Hoffmann, Joachim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Hoffmann, Joachim Theodor Adolf (full name); Hoffmann, Jochen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German SS leader and Gestapo employee
DATE OF BIRTH	May 28, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH	Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH	June 30, 1934
Place of death	Szczecin

[Gritschneder-1] Otto Gritschneder : “The Führer has sentenced you to death ...” Hitler's “Röhm Putsch” murders in court. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37651-7 , p. 134.

[2] Johannes Tuchel : Concentration Camp. Organizational history and function of the "inspection of ..." . P. 177 states that Hoffmann was shot in Stettin.

[3] Heinz Höhne : Mordsache Röhm . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1984, pp. 122 ( online ).

[4] Lothar Gruchmann : Justice in the Third Reich 1933-1940 . 2001, p. 352.

[5] Heinz Höhne: The Order of the Death's Head. The Story of Hitler's SS , 1969, p. 188. Höhne's English is: "A fanatical, sadistic intellectual with an absence of feeling such as I had never experienced before." (The German original formulation: "Hofmann was a man-smoker after Himmler's heart. Haacke said of him: 'I heard Obersturmführer Dr. Hofmann several times for many hours. The guy interested me, like a particularly nauseating reptile, an interest mixed with curiosity and horror Dr. Hofmann was not a corporal nature, but a fanatical, sadistic intellectual with a feeling of coldness that I had never seen before. I have only met one person who was me in essence, even in his movements and gestures, from the very first moment reminded him: Heydrich. ‹“ Rudolf Diels: Lucifer Ante Portas… The first head of the Gestapo, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1950, p. 396 speaks).