World War II Database

Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was born in Baden-Baden, Germany into a strict Catholic family. His father, an army veteran who had served in German East Africa, ran a tea and coffee business. His father had decided early on that he would enter priesthood, but he rebelled against religion during his later teenage years (he would later renounce his Catholicism in 1922) and joined the military. During WW1, he served briefly in a military hospital and then was assigned to the 21st Regiment of Dragoons in 1914. He fought in the Ottoman Empire and by 1917 he had become the youngest non-commissioned officer in the German Army. He won the Iron Cross first and second class medals during WW1.

During the inter-war years, Höss completed his secondary education, and then joined the para-military organizations East Prussian Volunteer Corps then Freikorps Rossbach. In the 1920s, he had participated in guerrilla attacks against French occupation forces in the Ruhr region as well as against Polish forces in the Silesia region. He joined the Nazi Party as member number 3,240 after hearing Adolf Hitler speak in Munich, Germany. On 31 May 1923, he was one of the few Nazi Party members responsible for carrying out the orders of Martin Bormann to kill by beating the suspected communist Walther Kadow to death in Mecklenburg in northern Germany; this action was carried out as a revenge for the recent arrest and execution of Nazi saboteur Albert Leo Schlageter. For this killing, he was arrested as the leader of this murder; on 15 May 1924, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison while Bormann received a one-year sentence. He was released in Jul 1928 as the result of a general amnesty. On 17 Aug 1929, he married Hedwig Hensel, with whom he would have five children: Ingebrigitt, Klaus, Hans-Rudolf, Heidetraut, and Annegret.

In 1934, Höss joined the SS organization of the Nazi Party. In the same year, he became a member of SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head Units). In Dec 1934 he was assigned to Dachau Concentration Camp as a Blockführer; his autobiography stated that, during his time at Dachau, witnessing and carrying out the brutality of the treatment of prisoners, he felt some regret for leaving the religious career that his parents planned for him. In 1938, he was promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer and was made the adjutant of Hermann Baranowski of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. In 1939, he became a member of the Waffen-SS.

On 1 May 1940, Höss was made the first commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp and all of its sub-camps in Poland. In Jun 1941, he traveled to Berlin, Germany and met with SS leader Heinrich Himmler, who gave him a secret order to begin exterminating Jew at Auschwitz; he later admitted that he did leak this secret order to one person in late 1942, his wife. After studying methods of extermination that were already in place at Treblinka Concentration Camp, he implemented his own methods of extermination which would prove to be more efficient. Among other things, he had developed the methodology of sending unfit-for-work prisoners directly to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival; the disguise of gassing chambers as shower rooms was also accredited to him. He held command of Auschwitz until 30 Nov 1943; in the three and a half years at the helm of the concentration camp system, more than a million people were killed. On 1 Dec 1943, he became the head of Amt D I in Amtsgruppe D (in charge of concentration camps) of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (Main SS Economic and Administrative Department). On 8 May 1944, he returned to Auschwitz to supervise an operation known as Aktion Höss, during which 430,000 Hungarian Jews were killed over a period of 56 days.

In the final days of the war, Höss was advised by Himmler to disguise himself among German Navy personnel, but was eventually arrested by British troops on 11 Mar 1946 after his wife informed British authorities as an attempt to safeguard their son Klaus; at the time of his arrest, he was living under the pseudonym Franz Lang and had lived as a farmer. He initially denied his identity, but eventually admitted after being repeatedly beaten by his interrogators. During the Nuremberg Trials, he appeared as a witness against Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Oswald Pohl, and the I. G. Farben Corporation. On 25 May 1946, he was handed over to Polish authorities; the Polish Supreme National Tribunal would later put him on trial for the murder of Polish people. He was accused of murdering 3,500,000 people, but, upon hearing this charge, he commented that the count had only been 2,500,000; the remaining 1,000,000 died of disease and starvation, to which he refused responsibility. He was sentenced to death on 2 Apr 1947. He completed his autobiography while awaiting his execution; it was published in 1958 under the title of Kommandant in Auschwitz; autobiographische Aufzeichnungen in German and later in English as Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz. On 10 Apr 1947, he sent a message to the state prosecutor who had worked against him during his trial; part of the message read:

Höss was executed 14 days later next to the crematorium of Auschwitz I concentration camp.

Rudolf Höss Timeline

Photographs

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Visitor Submitted Comments

1. Asrael says:
   30 Mar 2011 01:07:43 AM
   
   The NAme from this man was rudolf Hess not Höss
2. Bill says:
   1 Aug 2011 07:05:46 PM
   
   Above photograph, is not that of Rudolf Hess
   Deputy Fuhrer, and the third most powerful man in Nazi Germany. Got your Rudolf's mixed
   up, But that of Rudolf Hoss please read above information.
   

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