Paul-Werner Hoppe

"Werner Hoppe" redirects here. For the Red Army Faction member, see Petra Schelm.
Paul-Werner Hoppe
Official portrait
Born(1910-02-28)28 February 1910
Berlin, German Empire
Died15 July 1974(1974-07-15) (aged 64)
Bochum, West Germany
AllegianceNazi Germany Nazi Germany
Service / branch Waffen SS
Totenkopfverbände
RankSS-Obersturmbannführer
Entrance to Stutthof
American soldiers patrol perimeter of the Woebbelin concentration camp.

Paul-Werner Hoppe (28 February 1910 – 15 July 1974) was an SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) and was the commandant of Stutthof concentration camp from September 1942 until April 1945.

Hoppe joined the Nazi Party with membership number 1,596,491. He joined the SS in 1933 (membership number: 116,695).[1] In 1936, he married Charlotte Baranowski, the daughter of Hermann Baranowski, a concentration camp commandant.[2]

Hoppe was assigned to the Concentration Camps Inspectorate (Inspektion der Konzentrationslager) under SS-Obergruppenführer Theodor Eicke. He was instrumental in helping Eicke form the Totenkopf Division of the SS in the fall of 1939 and served as Eicke's adjutant. In April 1941, he was given command of an infantry company. In the spring of 1942, he received a serious leg wound in fighting the Red Army near Lake Ilmen in the Demyansk Pocket in Novgorod Oblast, U.S.S.R.[3]

After convalescing, he was assigned to the SS-Totenkopfverbände and sent to Auschwitz as head of a guard detachment in July 1942. He was recommended for the position of camp commandant of Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig by SS-Gruppenführer Richard Glücks, Eicke's successor as Inspector of Concentration Camps.[4] A promotion to SS-Sturmbannführer and Commandant of Stutthof were approved and he arrived at Stutthof in September 1942 to take up his new position.[2]

As the Soviets advanced westward, it was decided by Albert Forster, Gauleiter of Danzig and the SS Higher and Police Leader Fritz Katzmann of military district XX, headquartered in Danzig to evacuate Stutthof. The formal evacuation order "Einsatzbefehl No 3" was signed by Hoppe on 25 January 1945 at 0500. The evacuation began an hour later under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Teodor Meyer. The destination of the “death march” was a sub-camp of Stutthof near Lauenburg in Pomerania about 87 miles (140 km) west-southwest of Stutthof.

After the mass evacuation, Hoppe became commandant of Wöbbelin concentration camp, a temporary camp set up to take prisoners evacuated from camps about to be overrun by the Red Army. Wöbbelin was only in existence from 12 February 1945 to 2 May 1945 when it was liberated by the American army.[5][6]

Hoppe was captured by the British in April 1946 in Holstein. He was sent to Camp 165 in Watten, Scotland in August 1947 until January 1948 when he was sent to an internment camp in Fallingbostel which was in the British zone of occupation in West Germany.[7]

While awaiting extradition to Poland, Hoppe escaped and made his way to Switzerland where he worked as a landscape gardener under a false identity for 3 years before returning to West Germany. He was arrested by the West German authorities on 17 April 1953 in Witten, West Germany. He was tried and convicted as an accessory to murder on 16 December 1955. Initially sentenced to five years and three months imprisonment, on 4 June 1957, the district court in Bochum increased Hoppe's sentence to nine years and he was released from prison in late 1960.[8][9][10] Hoppe died in 1974.[11][12]

In 2021, Hoppe's former Stutthof secretary Irmgard Furchner would be charged with 11,412 counts of accessory to murder and 18 additional counts of accessory to attempted murder.[11][13][14] Furchner, who was then 96 years of age, would also serve five days in pre-trial detention.[12][15] She would be convicted in December 2022,[16][17] with her conviction later being upheld by the German Federal Court of Justice in August 2024.[18][19]

  1. ^ Ailsby, Christoper (1997). SS: Roll of Infamy. Motorbooks Intl., p. 76. ISBN 0760304092
  2. ^ a b Bartrop, Paul R.; Grimm, Eve E. (2019). "Hoppe, Paul-Werner (1910–1974)". Perpetrating the Holocaust: Leaders, Enablers, and Collaborators. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 155. ISBN 978-1-4408-5897-0.
  3. ^ Ailsby, Christoper (1997). SS: Roll of Infamy. p. 76
  4. ^ Ailsby, Christoper (1997). SS: Roll of Infamy. p. 76
  5. ^ Baganz, Carina; Oesterlin, Volker (2005). Ten Weeks Concentration Camp Wöbbelin: A Concentration Camp in Mecklenburg/Germany in 1945. Wöbbelin: Mahn- und Gedenkstätten. OCLC 535997993. [translation of Zehn Wochen KZ Wöbbelin: ein Konzentrationslager in Mecklenburg 1945 (2000).
  6. ^ Wobbelin Concentration Camp, recently captured by troops of the 82nd Airborne Division. Many prisoners were found nearly starved to death. Here former prisoners are being taken to a hospital for medical attention. Germany, 05/04/1945 [Military press photographs of the liberation of Wöbbelin and other concentration camps], Alexander Street, 4 May 1945, OCLC 1404384124
  7. ^ Andrej Angrick; Peter Klein (2009). The "final Solution" in Riga: Exploitation and Annihilation, 1941-1944. Berghahn. p. 449. ISBN 9781845456085.
  8. ^ Klee, Ernst (2005). Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich: Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. ISBN 3-596-16048-0
  9. ^ Campbell, Valerie (2007). Camp 165 Watten: Scotland's Most Secretive POW Camp. Whittles Publishing. ISBN 978-1904445609
  10. ^ Sydnor, Charles W. (1990). Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933–1945. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1568658346
  11. ^ a b Rising, David (5 February 2021). "German prosecutors charge secretary to Nazi camp commandant". Associated Press. Retrieved 20 August 2024.
  12. ^ a b Sommerlad, Joe (2021-10-27). "The 96-year-old alleged Nazi war criminal on trial in Germany". The Independent. Archived from the original on 7 November 2021. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  13. ^ Connolly, Kate (2021-10-19). "Former Nazi camp secretary goes on trial over murders of 11,000 people". the Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 November 2021. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  14. ^ "Nazi Stutthof camp secretary flees as German trial starts". BBC. September 30, 2021. Archived from the original on 10 November 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2024.
  15. ^ Connolly, Kate (19 October 2021). "Former Nazi camp secretary who fled trial appears in court". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 19 October 2021. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  16. ^ "Imrgard Furchner: Nazi typist guilty of complicity in 10,505 murders". BBC News. 2022-12-20. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  17. ^ "97-year-old former Nazi secretary sentenced for involvement in more than 10,000 murders". CNN. 2022-12-20. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  18. ^ von Richtfofen, Luisa (20 August 2024). "German court upholds ex-Nazi camp secretary conviction". Duetsche Welle. Retrieved 20 August 2024.
  19. ^ "Court upholds 99-year-old Nazi camp worker's murder conviction". Reuters. 20 August 2024. Retrieved 20 August 2024.