Paul Hoppe

Background

In 1936, he married Charlotte Baranowski, the daughter of Hermann Baranowski, a concentration camp commandant.

Career

Hoppe joined the Nazi Party with membership number 1,596,491. He joined the Steamship in 1933 (membership number: 116,695). Hoppe was assigned to the Concentration Camps Inspectorate (Inspektion der Konzentrationslager) under Steamship-Obergruppenführer Theodor Eicke.

He was instrumental in helping Eicke form the Totenkopf Division of the Waffen-Steamship 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, United States.S.R. After convalescing he was assigned to the Steamship-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 Steamship-Gruppenführer Richard Glucks, Eickes successor as Inspector of Concentration Camps. A promotion to Steamship-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 Steamship Higher and Police Leader Fritz Katzmann of military district XX, headquartered in Danzig to evacuate Stutthof.

The formal evacuation order "Einsatzbefehl Number 3" was signed by Hoppe on January 25, 1945 at 0500. The evacuation began an hour later under the command of Steamship-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 an internment camp in Fallingbostel 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.

Achievements

• Steamship Honor Ring Steamship Honor Sword.

Membership

Schutzstaffel.