Stroop, Jürgen Josef

SS and Police Leader, General

Born: 26.09.1895 in Detmold

Died: 06.03.1952 in Warsaw

After leaving primary school, Stroop began training at the land registry office in 1910. During the First World War, he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class. In July 1932, he joined the SS and then the NSDAP.

On 01.01.1933, he took command of an SS battalion and became involved in the subsequent state election campaign. In 1934, he transferred to the SS administration, took part in training at the Führer School (in Dachau concentration camp) in 1938 and was promoted to SS-Standartenführer. His first combat mission was with the Czech partisan movement in the "returned" Sudetengau. Stroop built up the SS in the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia", organized the so-called Selbstschutz in Poznan after the invasion of Poland and subsequently commanded the SS section Gnesen (Wartheland).

When the Jewish inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto rebelled against deportation to extermination camps on April 19, 1943, Heinrich Himmler commissioned Major General Stroop of the Waffen SS to combat the uprising. Over 60,000 people were killed during the brutal nine-day destruction of the ghetto. Stroop was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class and promoted to SS-Gruppenführer.

On September 13, 1943, he was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader of Greece, but was ordered to Wiesbaden on November 9, 1943 - as Higher SS and Police Leader Rhine-West Mark, Deputy General of Military District XII and at the same time Lieutenant General of the Waffen SS. His duties in Wiesbaden included the expansion of the satellite concentration camp commando on the Unter den Eichen SS grounds. On 24.03.1945, he had some of his Wehrwolf troops, including 14-year-old children, marched off in the direction of the "Alpine Fortress" and moved his residence from the "Aryanized" Villa Nerotal 46 to Kransberg Castle near Usingen.

After a report to Himmler in Berlin, he drove towards the Alps to go into hiding, but was arrested on May 8, 1945 and sentenced to death by the US military court in Dachau on March 21, 1947 for executing US airmen. During his reign in Rhein-Westmark, over 400 Americans were executed or lynched by the population on his orders. Stroop was handed over to the Polish judiciary and executed on March 6, 1952.