The Commandant of Auschwitz: Rudolf Höss

Introduction

Rudolf Höß is generally considered one of the greatest mass murderers of the Third Reich. Much has been written about the commander of the death camp of Auschwitz. His willingness to speak openly and extensively about his deeds and to co-operate with the prosecuting authorities of the victorious Allied forces and also of Poland is often emphasized. This recognition is unfounded, however, for Höß in his mind had only done his ‘duty’ as best as he could, just like many perpetrators of the National Socialist system claimed too. If his superiors – foremost Reich Leader SS Heinrich Himmler – had given him another task, he would have made every effort to perform this as well. As he was tasked to expand the Auschwitz concentration camp into the greatest destruction facility of human life of all time, he dedicated himself wholly to this task and showed the Nazi leadership that they could not have found anyone more suitable.

On the occasion of the trial against Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt spoke of the ‘banality of evil’ and called the SS Senior Storm Command Leader who organised the transports to the death camps a ‘normal human being’. In this sense Höß, who in his spare time tended to his family, read fairy tales to his children or went for rides, led a ‘normal’ life, too. It is characteristic of him that he did not suffer from the fact of having made a crucial contribution to the death of millions of people and to have been one of the principal actors in the extermination program of the Jews ordered by Hitler and Himmler. He even dared to say with respect to the atrocities at Auschwitz that he had never condoned them and furthermore that he never personally mistreated or killed a prisoner.¹ Perhaps this statement is partially true for his term as commander at Auschwitz – there he let his SS men kill career criminals and other prisoners and do the ‘dirty work’. Yet it is also attested that he was personally involved in the trial gassing of Soviet prisoners of war in Auschwitz. Equally, in Sachsenhausen he shot the prisoner August Dieckmann by his own hand – as Harry Naujoks describes.

In the isolation of his cell in Cracow in October 1946, Rudolf Höß wrote down from memory the regulations that applied to all concentration camps of the Third Reich and which also bound him. As ‘purpose of the concentration camps’ he formulated the following:

Enemies of the State are to be prevented from their subversive activities among the population and State by secure custody in a concentration camp.

Antisocial elements which until now cause harm to the people as a whole without hindrance are to be turned back into useful people by strict education to order, cleanliness and regular work.

Incorrigible criminals who relapse again and again shall be eliminated from the German people by secure detainment.

At no point did he develop doubts that the prisoners in the concentration camps could be classified into one of the named categories – enemies of the state, antisocial and incorrigible persons. The heads of the National Socialist Party, and hence in view of the equation of the state with the party also the leadership of the state, had categorised these people as such – accordingly they had to be rendered innocuous, in his conviction. He did not need to ponder the legality of it. He was a recipient of orders and executioner and saw his task in protecting the German ‘ethnic totality’ from such elements.

To the former prisoner Vladimir Matejka from the former Czechoslovakian Socialist Republic, who was committed to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen in November 1935, Höß said: ‘You are in a concentration camp. The concentration camp is not a prison, but an educational institution with special methods.’² That these ‘methods’ often resulted in the death of the prisoners Matejka had to painfully experience himself.

In his Autobiographic Notes, Höß claimed that he did not know anything of the atrocities in the concentration camps and rejected them:

I myself have never mistreated a prisoner or even killed him. I have further never tolerated mistreatments at the hands of my subordinates. If I now have to hear in the course of the investigations what awful tortures occurred in Auschwitz and also in the other camps, this sends shivers down my spine.³

Of all people, these sentences were uttered by one of the greatest mass murderers of the Third Reich; of all people the commander of Auschwitz arrogated them for himself. Here Höß proves himself to be a liar, since in the character sketches of his subordinates he speaks very clearly of their misdeeds, even though he allegedly was unable to take steps against this as commander and camp senior:

Unconsciously I had become a cog in the great extermination machine of the Third Reich. The machine has been smashed, the motor has foundered and I have to go with it. The world demands it.

(…) The public may continue to see in me the bloodthirsty beast, the cruel sadist, the millionfold murderer – for the masses cannot imagine the commander of Auschwitz to be otherwise. They would never understand that he had a heart, too, that he was not evil.⁴

Höß implemented Himmler’s instructions in a quite businesslike manner. The structure and the administration of a concentration camp, the organisation and execution of the mass murder of the Jews was for him always just the ‘job’ to be done. The murder of hundreds of thousands of prisoners did not cause any moral problems for Höß, especially since he saw most of them not as ‘humans’ anyway. Towards Jews he had this attitude without exception. Höß had thus internalised Himmler’s demand to silence any form of sympathy while executing the mass murder of the Jews and made it his own.

It is probably little known that the hundred thousands of prisoners who had to experience the terrors of Auschwitz owed the tattooing of the prisoner’s number exclusively to Höß. In order to make bookkeeping easier, he asked his superior department for permission to undertake this additional humiliation of the prisoners.⁵ Customarily the prisoners’ numbers were fixed to the clothing; only in Auschwitz was it tattooed onto the left forearm. The tattoos would eliminate any confusions of undressed corpses as well as enable the identification of escaped and retrieved prisoners.

Characteristic of Höß – as well as for other perpetrators of the Nazi regime – are the terms in which he described his murders. He called it an ‘improvement’ on the death camp of Treblinka that in Auschwitz a gas chamber with a capacity of 2,000 victims was built, while elsewhere they had to ‘make do’ with smaller ones in which just 200 victims could be gassed simultaneously. Höß further boasted that the victims in Auschwitz were ‘fooled’ on their way to the gas chambers by being told that they would be taking part in a delousing operation.

Höß was downright pedantic, and he was a perfectionist. During the trial before the Supreme National Court in Warsaw, the former Austrian concentration camp prisoner Heinrich Dürmayer appeared as a witness. He stated that SS henchmen had told him that only 10, at the most 15, per cent of the prisoners had gone to the camp and that the others had been killed immediately. Höß piped up and according to Dürmayer corrected him with an ‘uncanny calm’, declaring: ‘The witness is wrong. It was only 70 per cent who went into the gas and not 80 or 90 per cent.’⁶

For Höß everything had to have its order. While hundreds of thousands of prisoners were sent directly from the train to the gas chambers at the Birkenau ramp, he took heed as commander that the gardens within the SS settlement were laid out and maintained as uniformly as possible. After a briefing with the director of central construction management in Auschwitz, SS Storm Command Leader Karl Bischoff, Höß instructed the director of the agrarian enterprises, SS Storm Command Leader Joachim Caesar, to procure 600 foliage trees as well as 1,000 different covering shrubs. Höß wanted to create with them a ‘green belt as a natural border to the camp’ along the crematoria I and II.⁷

Höß was ambiguous in his behaviour without this burdening him. On the one hand he gave orders according to which he prohibited any form of corruption or enrichment, on the other hand he contravened those himself, employed prisoners at his villa and had them procure scarce and consequently valuable consumer goods for him as well as manufacture objects of art. According to statements by prisoners who were employed by Höß at his official villa, which before the German invasion had belonged to the Polish Soja family, one might conclude that it was his wife Hedwig who exercised a particularly unwholesome influence on her husband and further was driven by ambition. When, for example, Höß travelled to Hungary for the preparation of Operation Reinhardt, the mass murder of the Hungarian Jews, Hedwig proudly called her husband the ‘special commissioner for the extermination of the Jews in Europe’. According to her, his enemies had failed to destroy him, quite to the contrary: he was now given a significantly more important task and an even more distinguished mission was entrusted to him.⁸ Höß had become ‘Special commissioner for the resettlement of the Jews’ in October 1943, when he became head of Department D I of the Office Group D in the SS Central Economic-Administrative Office [WVHA = Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt der SS] in place of Arthur Liebehenschel and he then returned to Auschwitz in order to personally oversee the extermination of the Jews on the RSHA [= Reichssicherheitshauptamt = Reich Security Main Office] transports. The so-called Hungarian transports, which were the responsibility of SS Storm Command Leader Adolf Eichmann, arrived between May and late summer 1944 virtually without pause. More than 2 million Jews died just in the context of this operation. Höß was camp senior of Auschwitz during this time, while normally this function was performed by the camp commander of Camp A I.

In January 2015 the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the former Red Army was commemorated. Höß once stated in an affidavit that 2.5 million people were ‘exterminated’ there, another time he even gave the number of 3 million, but both estimates do not hold up to scrutiny. Yet even the attested 1.1 million murdered in Auschwitz represent a dimension exceeding any human imagination. This gargantuan killing machine is essentially the work of Rudolf Höß. Any form of sympathy was alien to him – any order was executed by him dutifully. The machine had to run. Difficulties were not allowed to stop it. Prisoner clerk Hermann Langbein describes that in 1944 children were thrown alive into large fires burning beside the crematoria. He reported this to the camp doctor SS Storm Command Leader Eduard Wirths, but the latter did not want to believe him. The next day Wirths merely said: ‘This was an order by camp commander Höß. It was given because there had not been enough gas.’⁹

When it was time to destroy the traces of the mass murder, Höß revealed himself to be a perfectionist. SS Standard Leader Paul Blobel, as head of task force 1005, took part in the attempt to cover up the crimes. Among other ideas, he wanted to destroy the corpses with dynamite. Höß investigated such trials carried out in Chelmo and found that the results were inadequate:

Blobel had had various makeshift furnaces erected and fired them with wood and gasoline residue. He tried further to destroy the corpses through explosions, but this succeeded only very imperfectly.¹⁰

Therefore other means were employed:

The ashes were scattered across the extensive woodland area, after they had been ground to dust in a bone mill. (…) The labour itself was carried out by Jewish detachments who after finishing their section were shot. The concentration camp of Auschwitz had to provide Jews constantly for the Task Force 1005.¹¹

In the solitude of his cell in Cracow shortly before his execution, Höß found religion again, which he had quit at thirteen years of age. The Polish Jesuit priest Wladyslaw Lohn from Wadowice near Cracow made the sign of the cross above Höß’ head and said, ‘I forgive you your sins.’ After confession and creed Höß received the ‘viaticum’, the Catholic Eucharist in the hour of death. Höß had had a religious upbringing like many leading National Socialists and SS functionaries, and had even wanted to become a missionary.

If Höß described his actions within National Socialism like no other, if he called the extermination of the Jews wrong, then it was not because he repented his deeds, but he was being pragmatic because through this Germany had drawn the hatred of the world onto itself by such actions.

Höß was more than just a ‘cog’ in the Nazi system, as he himself wrote in a downplaying manner to his wife in his farewell letter. Without him – or rather without men like him or Eichmann – the Holocaust could have never happened in this brutality. He was given ‘a truly sad lot’, as he pitied himself, and how fortunate had been ‘the comrades who were allowed to die an honest soldier’s death’. As commander of Auschwitz he only learned during the investigation and the trial what terrible things had happened there, and it was indescribable how he had been deceived and how his orders had been twisted. ‘How tragic,’ said he, ‘I who am by nature soft, good-natured and always obliging have become the greatest destroyer of human life who executed each order to exterminate coldly and to the last consequence.’

In his functions within the SS, Höß never showed himself to be ‘soft and good-natured’. Even his superior, SS Group Leader Oswald Pohl, supposedly saved some prisoners – of Höß the like is not known, with one exception. Stanislaw Dubiel, whom he employed at his official villa, reported that he had been released from the so-called bunker on Höß’ instigation and struck from the death list on more than one occasion. The first time Dubiel was supposed to be led to the courtyard of Block 11 and shot together with another 170 prisoners on 12 June 1942 on the behest of the Political Department, in particular its head, Grabner. Höß won through that Dubiel could return to his post. Dubiel wrote: ‘In the afternoon of the same day Grabner, in the company of Höß’ adjutant and Hößler, entered Höß’ garden, where I was working, and demanded my rendition in order to be shot. Höß and especially his wife refused this categorically and asserted their will.’¹² Later Dubiel was once more on the list of persons to be shot in July [probably on 14 July 1942 when around 200 Poles were murdered at the so-called death wall in the courtyard of Block 11]. Another time he was supposed to be shot on 28 October together with 280 prisoners from the Lublin region. This time Höß saved Dubiel’s life too. Yet to conclude from this that Höß and his wife had shown sympathy would be wholly amiss. Both hated everything Polish, but did not want to do without Dubiel’s services.

In the context of Auschwitz much has been written about Höß. As the author of a biography of Höß, I cannot avoid repeating some of it.

However, crucial are numerous new emphases and corrections of previous publications. For example, sketches are published in this book with which Höß characterised superiors and subordinates during the last weeks of his life and with whom he ultimately wanted to absolve himself.

In many aspects his résumé has to be corrected, starting with the year of his birth as 1901, and not 1900. Britons and Poles who interrogated Höß after the war showed themselves to be pleased by the apparent ‘openness’ with which he spoke about his activities as commander of Auschwitz. As they did not know the contents of numerous important documents at that stage, they could not always verify the truthfulness of Höß’ statements when he seemed to differ agreeably from the denial or inability to remember of other Nazi defendants. Yet as it has been shown, significant concessions have to be made time and again regarding the truthfulness or the attention to detail of these statements.

It is important to the author of this book to pursue as many primary sources as possible. For my research the following archives were consulted among others: official archive Gransee, the Central State Archive Brandenburg, Federal Archive Berlin-Lichterfelde, Federal Archive Ludwigsburg Branch, the Library of the German Bundestag, Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR (BStU), the Commissioner of the Federal Government for Culture and Media, Archive of the Cathedral Chapter Brandenburg, Municipal Administration/Registry Office/Trade Office Neukirch/ Lausitz, Municipality of St. Michaelisdonn, Local Heritage Society Buberow, Institute for Contemporary History Munich (IfZ), International Tracing Service Bad Arolsen (ITS), State Archive Berlin, State Archive Schleswig-Holstein, State Court Schwerin, Political Archive Foreign Office, State Library Berlin, Town Archives Baden-Baden and Dachau; Registry Offices Dachau, Flensburg, Ludwigsburg, Mannheim, Schwerin, Stuttgart, Office for Public Order (Department Old Files) as well as Centre for Historical Research Berlin of the Polish Academy of Sciences. With regards to the 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, the Archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute proved itself to be very productive. Furthermore, online research in the archives of the Archiwum Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau (APMO) and the Institute for Contemporary History Munich (IfZ) was very helpful.

During my research I was struck by the fact that in the archive of the memorial site of the concentration camp Dachau there are hardly any references to Höß, and also in the archive of Sachsenhausen the body of source material is scarce in this respect. Yet with the aid of the archivists of all the mentioned institutions it became possible to draw a picture of the greatest mass murderer of all times, which in many respects stands in contrast to the traditional portrayals.

I have attached special importance to the fact that this book does not deal with the history of the death camp Auschwitz, even though the name Höß stands for this like no other. Gaps were mainly closed in Höß’ biography outside his years as a concentration camp commander. A biography is presented that shall show through sources and statements by his contemporaries that have been unknown so far who this person was, who without any empathy viewed the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people as mere ‘work’ that he had to execute according to orders.

Chapter 1

The Life Lies of Rudolf Höß

Childhood and Youth

In an interrogation by British military authorities on 14 March 1946, Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höß explained: ‘I was born on the 25th of November 1900. I am the son of the merchant Franz Xaver Höß in Baden-Baden. I have two married sisters who are currently living in Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.’ Höß had been warned at the beginning of the consequences of untruthful statements, but here already he had stated a falsehood, a behaviour that accompanied his whole life.

His parents, Franz Xaver Höß and Lina, née Speck, had married on 10 November 1900. If his statements had been true, his mother would have been nine months pregnant with Rudolf at the time of their wedding and would have given birth two weeks later. Yet this is odd. According to the birth certificate kept in the town archive of Baden-Baden, the date of birth is without doubt 25 November 1901 and not 1900. One has to wonder why Höß made himself one year older and clung to this falsehood his whole life.

In a so-called leader questionnaire Höß later stated that his father, who had registered himself on 22 March 1895 at Weinbergstraße 6, Baden-Baden coming from Moos – today a part of Bühl – was a merchant. In reality, however, he was a simple shop servant. In Mannheim address books he is often simply listed as servant. Until 1904 the family lived at Gunzenbachstraße 20 (today no. 46) and in 1907 were listed under the address Hardtstraße 16. In 1907 the family moved to Mannheim. Rudolf Höß was six years old at the time. The family did not find a fixed abode in Mannheim, either, and changed addresses several times, but always lived in rented accommodation, including in the Lindenhof quarter.

Höß, baptised in the Catholic faith, received his First Communion in St Joseph’s Church of Mannheim. From 11 September 1912 onwards he visited the humanist Karl-Friedrich Grammar School, according to his account ‘until the 10th grade’. This statement is wrong. Höß withheld the fact that he was not transferred after finishing seventh grade due to poor performance and had to leave the school on 27 July 1915. Instead he stated in context with the Parchim vigilante murder [Fememord] – Höß, as a member of the Free Corps Roßbach, had taken part in the murder of Walter Kadow, a member of the radical right German National Freedom Party, on 31 May 1923 – during interrogations on 22 August 1923 in Leipzig:

I visited the grammar school in Mannheim until the 10th grade and left the same in 1916 because I did not want to follow my father’s wish to later study theology, but wanted to become a soldier.¹

Höß mixes here – like so often – truth and lie.

To their credit, the students of the Karl-Friedrich Grammar School Mannheim, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of their school in the academic year 2005/06, addressed Höß and his performance at school in depth. On 11 September 1912 his daily school life started at the Karl-Friedrich Grammar School. He was not only the second oldest student of his class, but also always belonged to the poorest performers of his year. ‘At the end of the 5th grade he held the 28th place of 29 transferred students, at the end of 6th grade the 27th place of 27 students so that it is not surprising that he did not make the grade at the end of 7th grade.’²After the death of his father in 1914 his mother therefore took her only now almost fourteen-year-old son from school in summer 1915 and sent him to do an apprenticeship.

His father, Franz Xaver, had allegedly made a vow according to which Rudolf should become a priest. In any case, the Höß household seems to have been very religious. Clergy from all circles went in and out, as Höß described it. Particularly festive occasions for him were those days ‘when one of the old, bearded Africa padres who my father knew from East Africa came to visit us. Then I did not move in order not to lose a single word of the conversation.’³ His father took him on pilgrimages, both at home and to Lourdes and Einsiedeln. He was deeply religious at that time and his father ‘prayed for heavenly blessing for me so that I would become a divinely gifted priest some day’.⁴ His break with the church occurred at the age of thirteen, when a confessor who was friends with his father did not keep the confessional secret and he felt betrayed and deceived. Only shortly before his execution did Höß return into the fold of the church.

Höß answered the American court psychologist Gustave M. Gilbert in an informal setting during the International Military Tribunal 1946 to his question whether he had had a religious upbringing as a child:

Yes, I grew up in a very strict Catholic tradition. My father was a true bigot, very strict and fanatic. I learned that when my youngest sister was born he had made a religious vow and dedicated me to God and priesthood: after that he led a Josephite marriage (celibacy). He directed my entire education as a child towards the goal of turning me into a priest. I had to pray and go to church endlessly, had to make penance for the smallest offences – pray as a punishment for any tiny unkindness against my sister or similar trivialities.

What made me so stubborn and later probably caused me to close myself off from other people, was his manner to let me feel that I had done him a personal injustice and that he – since I was intellectually much beneath him – was responsible for my sins before God. And I could only pray in order to repent my sins. My father was a kind of higher being to whom I could never get close. And thus I retreated onto myself – and I could not open myself to others. I believe that this bigoted education was to blame for me becoming so withdrawn. My mother was living under the pressure of this fanatical piety, too.⁵

Höß became more and more estranged from the Catholic church, until he broke completely with it in 1922. After he had made this decision, he quite obviously replaced religion with the National Socialist ideology. For him the anti-Semitic propaganda of the National Socialists had been as irrefutable as a church dogma, he said to Gilbert.⁶

In his Autobiographical Notes, Höß often creates the impression that his family employed domestics. In this context also belong his later references to the fact that he was allegedly taught by a private tutor, first visited the primary school in Mannheim and then the Grand Ducal Karl-Friedrich Grammar School, which he left with his O-levels:

In particular it was always pointed out to me that I had to carry out or follow wishes or instructions of my parents, teachers, priests etc., indeed of all adults down to the servants immediately and ought not to let myself be deterred from this by anything.⁷

With this statement Höß apparently wanted to justify that he had already been trained for unconditional obedience from his earliest childhood onward and accordingly carried out later kill orders immediately and fastidiously, too. Not by chance, he further alleged that his father, though a ‘fanatical Catholic and staunch opponent of the Reich government’, had been of the conviction that despite all opposition the laws and orders of the state had to be followed absolutely.⁸ Exactly this attitude then defined Rudolf Höß’ later life.

But back to his résumé: Höß registered on 31 December 1917 in the at that time still independent village of Friedrichsfeld. In view of the regulations to be settled, he hence could only become a soldier in 1918 at the earliest, but always claimed – also towards the British interrogators:

On 1st August 1916 I joined as a volunteer the 21st Baden Dragoon Regiment, replacement squadron, at Bruchsal, Baden. After a short training period I came to the Asia Corps in Turkey and stayed until the end of 1917 in Mesopotamia and then was at the Palestine front until the armistice. I was wounded twice, suffered from Malaria and received several decorations.

From 2 October 1916 until 6 March 1917, according to Höß’ statement, he had been deployed in the 6th Turkish Army at the Iraq front and taken part in the battles of Kut-el-Amarna and Baghdad. On 17 February 1917 he received the Iron Cross Second Class, on 6 October 1917 the Iron Crescent and on 19 December 1917 the Baden Medal for Merit. As further decorations, Höß mentioned the Iron Cross First Class (16 May 1918), the Baltic Cross (4 January 1920), the Silesian Eagle (9 June 1921), as well as commemorative medals (1 October 1938 and 27 September 1939) and the Badge of the Wounded Second Class (20 April 1941). He had served since 30 January 1919 in the intelligence department of the East Prussian Volunteers Corps and since 13 September 1919 in the Free Corps Roßbach.

These statements are at odds with the truth, too. Rather it is correct that Höß became a soldier in 1918, thus could not have been wounded in Turkey one year earlier and also could not have received the decorations mentioned by him on the dates given.

Unmistakably his origin and his inadequate school education caused the later concentration camp commander considerable problems. Otherwise it is hardly comprehensible that he often stressed that over many generations his paternal ancestors had been officers, his grandfather had fallen in 1870 leading a regiment and that his father had also been a dedicated soldier. His mother had wanted him to first pass his A-levels, then they could speak about his wish to become a soldier.⁹ However, there could be absolutely no talk about A-levels, since Höß had not even managed the transfer to the eighth grade.

In the Free Corps Roßbach

After his stint as a soldier, Höß joined the Free Corps Roßbach,¹⁰ one of the many free corps formed after the First World War. Here – or rather in the Roßbach Committee – Höß came into close contact with National Socialist ideology. The members of the free corps considered themselves soldiers who followed a political idea, and not as mere mercenaries. As such they were evidently considered, however, by the later minister for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who noted in his diaries under the entry dated 13 May 1926 that he had sat together with Roßbach’s ‘mercenaries’ in Wroclaw.¹¹

Among other places, the Free Corps Roßbach fought in the Baltic states and in Upper Silesia. In October 1919 the minister for the Reichswehr Noske had just announced that he would have anyone shot who tried to reach the Baltic states, but still many formations managed to get there.¹² When Roßbach was supposed to be stopped at the Prussian border, he had some machine guns made ready to fire unceremoniously. The border patrol officers saluted and declared that unfortunately they had to yield to violence.

The fight of the free corps against the Soviet Bolshevists, who had advanced into the Baltic states, and after their retreat against Latvians and Estonians was carried out with unprecedented cruelty. Höß said at that time:

Countless times I saw the harrowing images of burnt out huts and of charred or scorched corpses of women and children. I believed then that an increase of the human craze for destruction would not be possible after that.¹³

Yet Höß himself later was largely responsible for such an ‘increase’.

The Parchim Vigilante Murder

Rudolf Höß always presented himself during interrogations after the war and in his memoirs as somebody who as a member of the SS had only carried out orders and into whose mind the thought never penetrated to refuse obeying an order. Regardless of the 2.5 million people – actually it was probably c.1.1 million – for whose death he was directly responsible according to his own statements, he did not see himself as a ‘murderer’. If at all, then the SS as whole was guilty of murder – that was at least his opinion stated after the war.

With such a