Paul Werner Hoppe

Paul Werner Hoppe (born February 28, 1910 in Berlin , † July 15, 1974 in Bochum ) was a German SS leader and commander of the Stutthof and Wöbbelin concentration camps .

Career

Hoppe's father was an architect who died in 1912, so Hoppe grew up under the influence of his godfather, who was assigned to educated , bourgeois , democratic circles. After high school and gardening apprenticeship, Hoppe began to study gardening and landscaping at the Technical University of Berlin in autumn 1931.

On June 1, 1932, Hoppe joined the National Socialist German Student Union and fell out with his uncle, who had provided him with accommodation and support up until then. Hoppe joined the student SA , took part in paramilitary courses and became a member of the SS in early 1933. He did not complete his studies.

In the fall of 1934 Hoppe was registered for SS driver training and began a preparatory infantry course. In April 1935 he was admitted to the SS Junker School in Braunschweig. Hoppe then completed a course in Dachau , was accepted into the SS leadership corps in April 1936 and was a platoon leader of the guards at the Lichtenburg concentration camp .

In 1936 he married Charlotte Baranowski, a daughter of the commandant of Lichtenburg and later of Sachsenhausen , Hermann Baranowski . From 1938 Hoppe was active in a leading position in the expansion of the SS-Totenkopfverband , after he had already been promoted to adjutant of the 1st SS-Totenkopfstandarte "Upper Bavaria" in July 1937. In November 1938 he became adjutant to Theodor Eicke , the inspector of the concentration camps in Dachau.

After the outbreak of World War II , Hoppe von Eicke was appointed Divisional Adjutant of the SS Totenkopf Division and initially probably took part in the attack on Poland and then in the " Western Campaign ". From 1941 Hoppe was deployed on the Eastern Front. In the spring of 1942 he was wounded near Demyansk . After the hospital stay, Hoppe, who was no longer considered fit for use in the war, was deployed as a commandant in the Stutthof concentration camp from September 1, 1942 . With this transfer he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer . Richard Glücks , inspector of the concentration camps since November 1939, justified the decision to appoint Hoppe as camp commandant as follows:

“Hoppe was platoon leader and regimental adjutant for the former SS-Totenkopfstandarte Oberbayern. In this position he got to know the internal and external service in a concentration camp from the ground up. As an adjutant to SS-Obergruppenführer Eicke, when he was still the inspector of the concentration camps, he took a look at all issues relating to the concentration camps. For this reason I consider him particularly suitable for use as a camp commandant. SS-Hauptsturmführer Hoppe is personally well known to me from the time when he was serving in the 1st SS-Totenkopfstandarte Oberbayern and especially when he was adjutant to SS-Obergruppenführer Eicke. Hoppe is an extraordinarily talented and well above average intelligent SS man. He has always performed his duties to the satisfaction of his superiors. I would like to emphasize that because of his seriousness of character and the fact that he is free from weaknesses, he seems to me particularly suitable for the position of a camp commandant. "

From the summer of 1944, 47,000 Jewish prisoners came to Stutthof from eastern camps. Hoppe often sent Jews who were “unable to work” on to Auschwitz. Others he had in his own "Jewish camp" select and lethal injection or back of the neck murder. In the autumn of 1944, a railroad car was converted into a gas chamber and used briefly for killing.

From the beginning of 1945 Hoppe played an important role in the evacuation of the concentration camps in the northern part of the Reich. As the person in charge, he had the Wöbbelin concentration camp prepared as an alternative camp for the Neuengamme concentration camp and ordered the evacuation of the camp in Stutthof. The last prisoners were taken from there by sea to the Lübeck Bay and fell victim to a massacre near Neustadt (Holstein) . Shortly before the end of the war , Hoppe was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer .

After the end of the war

At the beginning of May 1945 Hoppe fled via the Rattenlinie Nord to Flensburg, where he apparently received forged papers and went into hiding. He was caught in April 1946, but was able to escape from the internment camp in Switzerland in autumn 1949 . He returned to Germany in December 1952 and was arrested in April 1953. Hoppe denied involvement in the Neustadt massacre and was sentenced to nine years in prison in 1957 in the second instance for his work in Stutthof .

Hoppe was released from prison in late 1960 and led an inconspicuous life until his death in 1974.

literature

• Ulrich Herbert , Karin Orth , Christoph Dieckmann : The National Socialist Concentration Camps. Fischer (Tb.), Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-596-15516-9
• Ernst Klee : The personal lexicon for the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005. ISBN 3-596-16048-0
• Carina Baganz: Ten weeks of the Wöbbelin concentration camp - A concentration camp in Mecklenburg 1945. , (Ed.) Wöbbelin 2000 memorials and memorials
• "LG Bochum June 4, 1957". In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German convictions for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, vol. XIV, ed. by Irene Sagel-Grande, HH Fuchs and CF Rüter. Amsterdam: University Press, 1976, No. 446, pp. 147-234

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Letter from the head of the Office Group D Glücks of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office to the head of the SS Personnel Main Office in Berlin on July 24, 1942. Quoted in: [Carina Baganz: Ten Weeks KZ Wöbbelin - A concentration camp in Mecklenburg 1945, Wöbbelin, 2000 ].
2. ^ Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth, Christoph Dieckmann: The National Socialist Concentration Camps. Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-596-15516-9 , Vol. 2, p. 769.
3. ↑ Ulrich Herbert u. a .: The National Socialist concentration camps. P. 770.
4. ↑ Stephan Link: "Rattenlinie Nord". War criminals in Flensburg and the surrounding area in May 1945. In: Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Hrsg.): Mai '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 22 ff.