Rudolf Hoess is remembered in History for
his role as the commandant of Auschwitz, in which he oversaw the mass murder of over 1
million people.

At the Nuremberg Trials he was brought forward to testify as a defence
witness for Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and he made a remarkable statement which encapsulated
the horrific mass murder machine of the Holocaust.

He stated, ‘I commanded Auschwitz until
the 1st December 1943 and estimate that at least 2 and a half million were executed and
exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed
to starvation and disease, making the total about 3 million dead.

’ When he said this,
he spoke coldly with no emotion or remorse.

Hoess ultimately was sentenced to death for
his crimes and involvement in mass murder, and was executed on a specially built gallows
inside of the camp he once oversaw.

Join us today as we look at, ‘The Despicable Crimes
of Rudolf Hoess – The Commandant of Auschwitz.

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Rudolf Hoess was hanged on the 16th April
1947, but what were his crimes that he committed? He joined the SS on the 1st April 1934, responding
to Himmler’s call to action, and within a year he moved into the notorious Deaths
Head Units.

The SS Totenkopfverbande as they were known, or the SS-TV were ultimately the
ones who were involved in the running of concentration and extermination camps across Germany and
during the Second World War territory occupied by the Germans following invasion.

Hoess’
first role inside a concentration camp was at Dachau where he worked as a block leader,
under Theodore Eicke who he viewed as a mentor.

Whilst here, he was promoted a number of times,
and was known to have been very loyal to Heinrich Himmler and his murderous intentions.

Hoess
then was drafted to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp where he worked as an assistant and adjutant
to Hermann Baranowski, who was noted to himself have been a sadistic killer at the camp.

But
whilst at Sachsenhausen, Hoess was placed in charge of firing squads, and on the 15th
September 1939 on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, he was in charge of the soldiers who shot
August Dickman, a Jehova’s witness who became the first conscientious objector executed
during World War 2.

Hoess was the one who following the shooting
delivered a final shot from his pistol into Dickman’s head.

He then joined the Waffen
SS following the Invasion of Poland and gained more promotions, he remained inside of the
SS.

He was working as the Head of the Protective Custody Camp at Sachsenhaus, and whilst here
Hoss was incredibly brutal.

He ordered on a number of occasions prisoners not assigned
to work groups to stand outside in temperatures around minus 30 degrees Celsius.

Many of the
inmates had no coats, and some had frozen to death, during one time he did this 78 prisoners
died, and 67 prisoners died that evening.

He even denied prisoners the chance to go
to the infirmary, and ordered that the hospital doors should be closed.

It was this murderous
intent and personality that made him the perfect candidate within the SS and the Nazi Party
to oversee a concentration camp that would become the deadliest in the whole of the Holocaust.

He was clearly well thought of by Himmler,
and was tasked with considering how feasible it would be to make a concentration camp in
Western Poland.

Hoess’ report ultimately led to the creation of Auschwitz, and the
camp was built around the site of an old Austro-Hungarian and Polish Army barracks.

The camp began life
initially as rather modest in its size, but then it became colossal during the time in
which Hoess acted as the camps commandant.

Hoess was the one with all the power at Auschwitz,
and he was at the top and he expanded the camp into a huge network of sub camps, and
it was he who was responsible for the creation of the killing chambers and the gas chambers.

Hoess had intended to do things differently any Auschwitz, and he wished to make the camp
as efficient as it possibly could, and became obsessed with production quotas, and ultimately
he would become obsessed with the destructive figures that would show the daily death and
destruction there.

Whilst inside of Auschwitz, Hoess lived in
relative luxury inside a huge villa nearby with his wife and his five children.

Whilst
these were living extremely comfortable, within just a short distance people were being killed
and burned inside of the crematoria.

It’s likely that the family would have smelt the
smoke from their villa.

Hoess would instil a reign of fear into the camp which was perpetuated
by guards that he made sure would treat the prisoners violently and with contempt.

He
set up Block 11, the notorious torture centre at Auschwtiz where prisoners would be forced
into tiny cells, and between Block 11 and 10 was the death wall, where thousands of
prisoners were executed by firing squad there.

Hoess claimed that he was summoned to Berlin
in June 1941 to meet with Heinrich Himmler in person to receive important orders.

It
was said at this meeting that Himmler informed Hoess that Hitler had ordered the final solution,
and Himmler had chosen Auschwitz as a major site for the extermination of Europe’s Jews.

This was done allegedly due to it’s links and access by rail, and also due to the large
site and fact it was rather isolated at the time.

Hoss was ordered not to speak about
it, and he later would inform his wife of Auschwitz’ true purpose at the end of 1942,
confirming after she had already found out what was happening.

It was said Adolf Eichmann
would give Hoess his orders, but over time he began to test and trial different methods
of mass murder in September 1941.

He wished for Auschwitz, his camp to become the most
efficient murder site used by the Nazis to carry out the final solution, and during these
sick trials thousands would be killed in different ways.

Hoess instigated the rules which today are
so familiar with the practices of Asuchwitz.

Once prisoners disembarked off trains, they
were sorted into those who would be admitted into the camp, and those who would be selected.

The prisoners were separated by men and women and children, and the elderly, sick, children
and those women who were deemed not useful to work were usually sent straight to the
gas chambers to be killed.

Gassing using Zyklon B was the chosen method at Auschwitz, as it
was deemed to have been the most efficient, and at first small gassing bunkers were set
up in the woods under the cover of the tres, but later Hoess expanded the gas chambers,
and over time 4 huge death chambers were made along with crematoria that made the killing
process more efficient.

Hoess later said, ‘Technically [it] wasn’t
so hard—it would not have been hard to exterminate even greater numbers.

.

.

.

The killing itself
took the least time.

You could dispose of 2,000 head in half an hour, but it was the
burning that took all the time.

The killing was easy; you didn’t even need guards to drive
them into the chambers; they just went in expecting to take showers and, instead of
water, we turned on poison gas.

The whole thing went very quickly.

’ Hoess had his
deputies test different methods, and Zyklon B was selected as the pesticide used, as it
took between 3 to 15 minutes for someone to die.

However, Hoess fell from grace rather
shockingly, as he was sacked after having an affair with a political prisoner at the
camp, who was then imprisoned whilst she was pregnant in a standing cell.

She was forced
to have a termination, and only just escaped being sent to the gas chambers.

Hoess was
replaced by Arthur Liebehenschel not he 10th November 1943, but he would return in the
following May to continue his barbaric crimes and execution work.

Hoess was invited back to his camp to oversee
Operation Hoess, a huge killing mission that saw 430,000 Hungarian Jews killed in 56 murderous
days.

The sheer amount of killings inside the gas chambers was a problem for Auschwitz,
and there was simply not enough time and space to dispose of the huge volume of bodies.

Because
of this, Hoess ordered that camp staff should burn the thousands of bodies in huge open
pits.

10,000 people were being gassed each day during Operation Hoess, and many were
shot quickly by the SS before being thrown into the fires, and weren’t even gassed.

He saw out the end of the war at Ravensbruck,
and he continued gassings.

Whilst at the all female camp, following the completions of
the gas chambers, he forced more than 2000 women and girls into them, having them killed
barbarically.

Rudolf Hoess’ long list of crimes would eventually catch up with him.

He was told by Himmler to disguise himself as the war turned against the Germans and
he did escape for around a year, but was arrested in March 1946.

He tried to take his own life
biting into a cyanide capsule, but this attempt failed.

He was beaten by the men who apprehended
him with axe handles, but he was surprisingly called to testify at the Nuremberg Trials.

He was not a defendant, but was seen as a defence witness for Ernst Kaltenbrunner.

His
testimony amazed as he would admit the murderous actions of himself and his crimes that were
carried out at Auschwitz, and he spoke of them with almost a bursting pride, and with
no sense of remorse.

He did not care for those millions of victims
he had sent to their deaths, and he simply was proud of the efficiency that he believed
he had performed his job with.

He said of the 3 million dead that, ‘This figure represents
about 70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected
and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries.

Included among the executed
and burnt were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out
of Prisoner of War cages by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports
operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men.

The remainder of the total number of
victims included about 100,000 German Jews, and great numbers of citizens (mostly Jewish)
from The Netherlands, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other
countries.

We executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944.

’ He was prompted and accused of murder 3 and
a half million, but he then replied with ‘Only 2 and a half million,’ claiming that the
rest were killed by disease, starvation and the conditions of his camp.

He later revised
his death toll whilst in Polish custody, but was ultimately sentenced to death for his
horrific crimes.

Polish survivors of Asuchwitz lobbied for Hoess’ execution to take place
within the Auschwitz on a specially constructed gallows that stood at the location of the
camp’s Gestapo quarters.

Shortly before his death, Rudolf Hoess acknowledged his crimes
stating ‘My conscience compels me to make the following declaration.

In the solitude
of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against
humanity.

As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible
for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the ‘Third Reich’ for human destruction.

In
so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity.

I caused unspeakable suffering
for the Polish people in particular.

I am to pay for this with my life.

May the Lord
God forgive one day what I have done.

I ask the Polish people for forgiveness.

In Polish
prisons I experienced for the first time what human kindness is.

Despite all that has happened
I have experienced humane treatment which I could never have expected, and which has
deeply shamed me.

May the facts which are now coming out about the horrible crimes against
humanity make the repetition of such cruel acts impossible for all time.

’ The admission of guilt Hoess made about his
time as the commandant of Auschwitz did nothing to appease or make up for the horror that
he was responsible of whilst overseeing the death camp.

Hoess was a despicable man who
was motivated by causing as much death and destruction as possible, and his actions were
driven by the Nazi race laws and ideology that he subscribed to.

He was someone who
wished to please Hitler and more so Himmler by efficiently causing mass devastation and
death.

He should also be held account for the actions of those guards who served under
him who carried out horrific acts of brutality and violence, but also he should be responsible
for the starvation, disease and horrific conditions inside the camp.

The crimes of Rudolf Hess
are endless, and today many of them remain untold.

Thanks for watching.

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