Paul-Werner Hoppe



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

Biography
Hoppe joined the Nazi Party with membership number 1,596,491. He joined the SS in 1933 (membership number: 116,695). In 1936, he married Charlotte Baranowski, the daughter of Hermann Baranowski who was the commandant of first Dachau and then Sachsenhausen from 1938–1940.

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 Waffen-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 severe leg wound in fighting the Red Army near Lake Ilmen in the Demyansk Pocket in Novgorod Oblast, U.S.S.R.

After convalescing he was assigned to the SS-Totenkopfverbände then 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 Glucks, Eickes successor as Inspector of Concentration Camps. 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.

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 January 25, 1945 at 0500. The evacuation began an hour later under the command of SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Teodor Meyer. The destination of the “death march” was a subcamp of Stutthof near Lauenburg in Pomerania about 87 miles (140 km) west southwest from 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 February 12, 1945 to May 2, 1945 when it was liberated by the American army.

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 a P.O.W. camp in Saxony which was in the British zone of occupation in West Germany.

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 April 17, 1953 in Witten, West Germany. He was tried and convicted as an accessory to murder in 1955. On June 4, 1957 the district court in Bochum resentenced Hoppe to 9 years, he was released in 1960.

Nazi awards and decorations

 * SS Honor Ring
 * SS Honor Sword