Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was a German SS officer and the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II, he lived under a false name until discovered by the British, who then turned him over to Polish authorities. Höss was convicted in Poland and executed for war crimes committed on the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp and for his role in the Holocaust.
Höss was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. He tested and implemented means to accelerate Hitler's order to systematically exterminate the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the Final Solution. On the initiative of one of his subordinates, Karl Fritzsch, Höss introduced the pesticide Zyklon B to be used in gas chambers, where over a million people were killed.
Höss was hanged in 1947 following a trial before the Polish Supreme National Tribunal. During his imprisonment, at the request of the Polish authorities, Höss wrote his memoirs, released in English under the title Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess.
Early life
Höss was born in Baden-Baden into a strict Catholic family. He lived with his parents, Lina and Franz Xaver Höss. Höss was the eldest of three children and the only son. He was baptized Rudolf Franz Ferdinand on 11 December 1901. Höss was a lonely child with no companions of his own age until entering elementary school; all of his associations were with adults. Höss claimed in his autobiography that he was briefly abducted by Romanies in his youth. Franz was a former army officer who served in German East Africa and ran a tea and coffee business. He brought his son up on strict religious principles and with military discipline, having decided that he would enter the priesthood. Höss grew up with an almost fanatical belief in the central role of duty in a moral life. During his early years, there was a constant emphasis on sin, guilt, and the need to do penance.Youth and World War I
Höss began turning against religion in his early teens after an episode in which, he said, his priest broke the Seal of the Confessional by telling his father about an event at school wherein Höss had pushed another boy down the stairs, breaking the boy’s foot. Höss also felt betrayed by his father, because he had used the information against him. Höss had described this event during his confession. Soon afterward, Höss's father died, and Höss began moving toward a military life.When World War I began, Höss briefly served in a military hospital and then, at age 14, he was admitted to his father's and his grandfather's old regiment, the 21st Regiment of Dragoons. When Höss was 15, he and the Ottoman Sixth Army fought at Baghdad, at Kut-el-Amara, as well as in Palestine. While stationed in the Ottoman Empire, Höss rose to the rank of Feldwebel, and at 17 was the youngest non-commissioned officer in the army. Wounded thrice and a victim of malaria, Höss was awarded the Iron Crescent, the Iron Cross first and second class, and other decorations. He also briefly commanded a cavalry unit. When the news of the armistice reached Damascus, where Höss was serving at that time, he and a few others decided not to wait for Allied forces to capture them as prisoners of war. Instead, they decided to attempt to travel all the way back to their homeland of Bavaria. This attempt forced them to traverse through the enemy territory of Romania, but they eventually reached Bavaria.
''Freikorps'' fighting and joining the Nazi Party
After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, Höss completed his secondary education and soon joined some of the emerging nationalist paramilitary groups, first the East Prussian Volunteer Corps, and then the Freikorps unit associated with the Baltic area, Silesia and the Ruhr—the Roßbach Freikorps. Höss recalled this early mission into the Baltic in his autobiography:The fighting in the Baltic States was more savage and more bitter than any I had experienced World War... There was no real front, for the enemy was everywhere. When it came to a clash, it was a fight to the death, and no quarter was given or expected... set on fire and burned the occupants to death. On innumerable occasions I came across this terrible spectacle of burned-out cottages containing the charred corpses of women and children...Although later on I had to be the continual witness of far more terrible scenes, yet the picture of those half-burned-out huts at the edge of the forest beside the Dvina, with whole families dead within them, remains indelibly engraved on my mind.
Höss participated in the armed terror attacks on Polish people during the Silesian uprisings against the Germans, and on French nationals during the French Occupation of the Ruhr. The Roßbach Freikorps transformed into a feeder group for the early Nazi movement once its activities were unequivocally banned following their participation in the Third Silesian Uprising. The group's leader, Gerard Rossbach, became the first adjutant of the SA. After hearing a speech by Adolf Hitler in Munich, Höss joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and renounced his affiliation with the Catholic Church.
On 31 May 1923, in Mecklenburg, Höss and members of the Freikorps attacked and beat to death local schoolteacher Walther Kadow on the wishes of farm supervisor Martin Bormann, who later became Hitler's private secretary. Kadow was believed to have tipped off the French occupational authorities that Freikorps paramilitary soldier Albert Leo Schlageter was carrying out sabotage operations against French supply lines. Schlageter was arrested and executed on 26 May 1923; soon afterwards Höss and several accomplices, including Bormann, took their revenge on Kadow. In 1923, after one of the killers confessed to a local newspaper, Höss was arrested and tried as the ringleader. Although he later claimed that another man was actually in charge, Höss accepted the blame as the group's leader. He was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Bormann received a one-year sentence.
Höss served out his prison sentence in the Brandenburg penitentiary. Due to his exemplary behavior while an inmate there, he gained privileges such as the light in his cell being kept on after 10 PM lights out, being allowed to write letters to relatives every two weeks, and a job in the prison's administration. These privileges were in part due to him being considered a "delinquent motivated by conviction" and partly because of prison officials who sympathized with Höss's cause and his political views.
Höss was released from prison in July 1928 as part of a general amnesty and joined the Artaman League, an anti-urbanization movement, or back-to-the-land movement, that promoted a farm-based lifestyle. On 17 August 1929, Höss married Hedwig Hensel, whom he met in the Artaman League. Between 1930 and 1943, they had five children: two sons and three daughters. Klaus, Höss's eldest son, was born in 1930; Heidetraut, Höss's eldest daughter, was born in 1932; Inge-Brigitt was born on a farm in Pommern in 1933; Hans-Jürgen, Höss's younger son, was born in 1937; and Annegret, the youngest child, was born at Auschwitz in November 1943.
During this time, Höss worked and lived at a farm in Sallentin, whose owner wanted to establish a horse stable, and his experience with horses from being in the cavalry in World War I gave him the necessary experience to do so. Höss would later join the cavalry squadron of the Schutzstaffel on 30 September 1933, and become a SS-Anwärter. Also during this time, Höss was noticed by Heinrich Himmler during an inspection of the SS in Stettin. They also were previously acquainted from their Artaman League days, although other sources claim they knew each other from Höss's involvement in the Nazi party in the 1920s.
SS career
On 1 April 1934, Höss joined the SS, on Himmler's effective call-to-action, and moved to the SS-Totenkopfverbände that same year. Höss was assigned to the Dachau concentration camp in December 1934, where he held the post of Block leader. His mentor at Dachau was the then SS-Brigadeführer Theodor Eicke, the reorganizer of the Nazi concentration camp system. In 1938, Höss was promoted to SS-captain and was made adjutant to Hermann Baranowski in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. There, Höss led the firing squad that, on Himmler's orders on 15 September 1939, killed August Dickmann, a Jehovah's Witness who was the first conscientious objector to be executed after the start of the Second World War. Höss fired the finishing shot from his pistol. He joined the Waffen-SS in 1939 after the invasion of Poland. Höss excelled in that capacity and was recommended by his superiors for further responsibility and promotion. By the end of his tour of duty there, Höss was serving as administrator of prisoners' property. On 18 January 1940, as head of the protective custody camp at Sachsenhausen, Höss ordered all prisoners not assigned to work details to stand outside in frigid conditions reaching. Most of the inmates had no coats or gloves. When block elders dragged some of the frozen inmates to the infirmary, Höss ordered the infirmary doors to be closed. During the day, 78 inmates died, and another 67 died that night.Auschwitz command
Höss was dispatched to evaluate the feasibility of establishing a concentration camp in western Poland, a territory Germany had incorporated into the province of Upper Silesia. His favorable report led to the creation of the Auschwitz camps and his appointment as commandant. The camp was built around an old Austro-Hungarian army barracks near the town of Oświęcim; its German name was Auschwitz. Höss commanded the camp for three and a half years, during which he expanded the original facility into a sprawling complex known as Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Höss had been ordered "to create a transition camp for ten thousand prisoners from the existing complex of well-preserved buildings," and he went to Auschwitz determined "to do things differently" and develop a more efficient camp than those at Dachau and Sachsenhausen, where he had previously served. Höss lived at Auschwitz in a villa with his wife and five children.The earliest inmates at Auschwitz were Soviet prisoners-of-war and Polish prisoners including peasants and intellectuals. Some 700 arrived in June 1940 and were told that they would not survive more than three months. At its peak, Auschwitz comprised three separate facilities: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Auschwitz III-Monowitz. These included many satellite sub-camps, and the entire camp complex was built on about that had been cleared of all inhabitants. Auschwitz I was the administrative centre for the complex; Auschwitz II Birkenau was the extermination camp where most of the murders were committed; and Auschwitz III Monowitz was the slave-labour camp for I.G. Farbenindustrie AG, and later other German industries. The main purpose of Monowitz was the production of a form of synthetic rubber called "buna" and synthetic oil.
Most infamous at Auschwitz I, the original camp, was Block 11 and the courtyard between Blocks 10 and 11. High stone walls and a massive wooden gate shielded Nazi brutality from observers. Condemned prisoners were led from Block 11, naked and bound, to the Death Wall at the back of the courtyard. A member of the Political Department then shot the prisoners in the back of the head, using a small-caliber pistol to minimize noise. As punishment, Höss also employed standing cells in Block 11. On many occasions, he condemned 10 random prisoners to death by starvation in a Block 11 cell in retaliation for the escape of one inmate.