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Jürgen Stroop

Surname Stroop Given Name Jürgen Born 26 Sep 1895 Died 6 Mar 1952 Country Germany Category Government Gender Male

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseJosef Stroop was born in Detmold, Principality of Lippe, German Empire to chief of police Konrad Stroop and devout Catholic homemaker Katherine Stroop. He was an apprentice with the land register in Detmold in the 1910s. In 1914, after the start of WW1, he enlisted in the German Army. During WW1, he was wounded in action near La Bassée in northern France in Oct 1914. After recuperating at home in Detmold for eight months, he was sent to the Eastern Front in Jul 1915, seeing action in Russia (now Poland), Lithuania, Galicia, and Romania before the end of the war. In 1923, he married Katharina B., the daughter of a minister from the Protestant Church of Lippe; they would have a daughter (Renate, Feb 1928) and two sons (Jürgen, 1934; Olaf, Feb 1936). He had many episodes of infidelity, but his wife remained with him nonetheless. In the 1920s, he joined the Tannenbergbund movement and converted to Germanic paganism. In 1932, he joined the Nazi Party and the Schutzstaffel (SS). In 1933, he was made the leader of the state auxiliary police. In 1934, he was promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer and was assigned to Münster and then Hamburg. In Sep 1938, he was promoted to the rank of SS-Standartenführer and was assigned to Liberec in the recently annexed Czechoslovakian territory of Sudetenland.

ww2dbaseAfter the outbreak of the European War, Stroop served as the commanding officer of SS occupation troops in Gniezno, Poland (German: Gnesen). Shortly after, he was transferred to Poznan, Poland (German: Posen) to oversee the Selbstschutz, a militia consisted of ethnic-German people of Poland. In May 1941, he changed his name to Jürgen in honor of his first son, who had passed away in his infancy. Between Jul and Sep 1941, he saw combat with the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf as an infantry officer, and was awarded a Clasp to his Iron Cross 2nd Class and an Infantry Assault Badge in Bronze. In Sep 1942, he was promoted to the rank of SS-Brigadeführer and was made Inspector of the SiPo and SD of the Higher SS and Police Leader for Russia South. In this role, he helped secure supply routes for troops on the front through southern Soviet territories. In Oct 1942, he commanded SS personnel at Kherson in southern Ukraine. In Feb 1943, he was made the SS and Police Leader (SSPF) for Lviv, Ukraine (German: Lemberg). In Apr 1943, he was personally transferred to Warsaw, Poland, an order given personally by Heinrich Himmler based on Stroop's past efficiency in dealing with unwated populations in occupied territories. His primary task was to suppress the imminent Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (which would officially begin two days after his assignment). With two battalions of Waffen-SS troops, 100 Army personnel, and police forces at his disposal, he brutally suppressed the uprising, destroying entire city blocks and conducting mass executions and mass deportations. The uprising was put down in mid-May after 50,000 Jews of the ghetto were killed. Shortly after, Stroop ordered the destruction of Warsaw's Great Synagogue to symbolize the end of Jews in Warsaw, although many Jews were still in the city in hiding. In Jun 1943, he was made the SS and Police Leader of Warsaw and was awarded Iron Cross 1st Class. In Sep 1943, he was transferred to Greece as the Higher SS and Police Leader of the country. Clashing with the existing SS administration in Greece thus making him an ineffective leader, he was transferred to Wiesbaden in southwest Germany in Nov 1943 to command a SS district; he would remain in this role for the remainder of the European War. In Apr 1945, he proclaimed, in person in a meeting with Himmler, that he would loyally lead Werwolf resistance fighters against Allied occupation forces. He led a group of teenage Hitler Youth cadets to southern Germany, but along the way, he had a change of heart surrendered to US troops in southern Germany under the false identity of Reserve Captain Reserve Josef Straup. He would reveal his true identity in Jul 1945.

ww2dbaseStroop was tried by a US military tribunal at Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany for the execution of nine US prisoners of war during the war, and was found guilty. In late May 1947, he was turned over to the People's Republic of Poland, which found him guilty of mass murder of Polish peoples, both Jews and Gentiles, in 1951. He was hanged at the Mokotów Prison in Warsaw, Poland at 1900 hours on 6 Mar 1952.

ww2dbaseSource: Wikipedia

Last Major Revision: Apr 2015

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