Josef Meisinger

Germany state institutions Fascists and Nazis Counter-revolutionary forces

1899–1947 ✕ Executed

Gestapo officer who headed the Reich Central Office against homosexuality and abortion and was called the “Butcher of Warsaw”

In 1938 he coached a witness with photographs to brand the army commander Fritsch a homosexual; when the case collapsed in court as mistaken identity, his Gestapo career ended.

An SS officer from the Munich police. He followed Heydrich to the Gestapo in 1934 to handle homosexuality and abortion cases and led the Reich Central Office against them from 1936 to 1938. Removed after the failed Fritsch investigation, he directed mass shootings in Warsaw as the “Butcher of Warsaw”, served as police liaison at the Tokyo embassy, and was executed in Warsaw in 1947.

Also known as: Josef Albert Meisinger

Activities and affiliations

1933–1945

Schutzstaffel (SS)
Security, intelligence and policing
1933–1945

Nazi party and regime
Security, intelligence and policing
1934–1945

Germany state institutionsMain
Security, intelligence and policing

Related historical events

1897.05.15–1935.09.01The German Sexual Reform Movement and Its Destruction by the Nazis (1897–1935)Head of the Reich Central Office against homosexuality and abortionDirected the persecution of homosexuals in 1936–1938 and approved torture.

From the Gestapo homosexuality desk to Warsaw and Tokyo

Born in Munich, he volunteered in the First World War, joined the Freikorps Epp in 1919 to crush the Munich Soviet Republic, and took part in the Hitler Putsch of 1923. After serving in the Munich vice police he joined the SS and the Nazi Party in 1933, and in 1934 followed Heydrich to the Berlin Gestapo, where he handled opponents inside the party and the policing of homosexuality and abortion. From 1936 to 1938 he headed the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion, directing the persecution and openly approving “enhanced interrogation”, that is, torture. He was removed after his investigation of Werner von Fritsch failed in the Blomberg–Fritsch crisis of 1938. In the Second World War, as commander of the Security Police and SD in the Warsaw district, he ordered mass shootings such as those in the Palmiry forest and became known as the “Butcher of Warsaw”. From 1941 to 1945 he was police liaison at the German embassy in Tokyo, spying on Germans in Japan and handing anti-Nazis over to the Japanese military police. Arrested by the Americans in Yokohama in 1945 and extradited to Poland, he was sentenced to death by the Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw and hanged in March 1947.