SS general who built the Nazi concentration camp system as Dachau commandant and camp inspector, and shot Ernst Röhm
On 1 July 1934, during the Night of the Long Knives, he and his adjutant Michael Lippert shot SA chief Ernst Röhm in his cell after Röhm refused to kill himself; days later Himmler named him Inspector of Concentration Camps.
Born in Hampont in Alsace-Lorraine, he volunteered for the Bavarian Army and fought in the First World War. A policeman from 1920, he was dismissed in 1923 for his hostility to the republic. He joined the Nazi Party and the SA in 1928, then the SS, and fled to Italy after being sentenced in 1932 for preparing bomb attacks. Made commandant of Dachau in June 1933, he devised the regime of discipline and guarding copied by later camps. In the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 he personally shot SA chief Ernst Röhm and was then named Inspector of Concentration Camps and commander of the Death’s Head units. From 1939 he commanded the SS Division Totenkopf and was killed when his plane was shot down near Kharkiv in February 1943.
Activities and affiliations
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1920–1923
Security, intelligence and policing
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1928–1943
Security, intelligence and policing
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1933–1939
Schutzstaffel (SS)Inspector of Concentration CampsMain
Security, intelligence and policing -
1939–1943
Schutzstaffel (SS)Commander, SS Division Totenkopf
Military command