Jürgen Stroop
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Jürgen Stroop, (born Josef Stroop, September 26, 1895 in Detmold – March 6, 1952 in Warsaw), was an SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS und Polizei, who served as the SS and Police Leader of the Poland-Warsaw area during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.
[edit] Life and death
Jürgen Stroop was the son of a policeman. After receiving only a elementary education, he became an apprentice with the land register in his home town of Detmold, where he worked until the start of the First World War, when he joined the German Army as a volunteer. At the end of the war, he held the rank of a vice staff sergeant. After the war, he returned to work at the land register.
Stroop joined both the SS and the NSDAP in 1932. His career took off during the election campaign of the same year. In 1933, he was appointed leader of the state Auxiliary Police. One year later, he was promoted from the rank of SS-Oberscharführer to the rank of Hauptsturmführer. Subsequently he worked for the SS-administration in Münster and Hamburg. In autumn 1938, he was promoted again, this time to the rank of SS-Standartenführer (colonel). After the invasion of Poland, he served as commander of the SS-section in Gnesen (Gniezno). In May 1941, he changed his name from Josef to Jürgen for ideological reasons.
In April 1943, Heinrich Himmler replaced the chief of the SS and police in the Warsaw district, Obergruppenführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, with Jürgen Stroop. A veteran of World War I, Stroop had more recently been involved in operations against Soviet partisans in the Ukraine and was familiar with the latest techniques in counter insurgency warfare.
One of Stroop's most historically prominent roles was the supression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, an action which cost the lives of tens of thousands. As his forces were forced back by heavy resistance, he ordered the entire Ghetto burned down, building by building, and kill or deport to extermination camps all of its inhabitants. Afterwards, in an elaborately prepared report to Himmler, now referred to as "The Stroop Report", he boasted that "the Warsaw Ghetto is no more". This report would later be used as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials.
He was subsequently SS and Police Leader in Greece from September until November 1943. The local civilian administration found his methods and behaviour unacceptable and withdrew cooperation, forbiding the local Orpo to have anything to do with him, which made his position untenable. consequentially he was removed and appointed SS and Police Leader in the Rhine area until the close of the war. After the end of the Second World War, Stroop was found guilty of war crimes and executed in Warsaw by the Polish authorities in 1952.
[edit] Legacy
While awaiting prosecution for these war crimes charges, he was placed in the same cell as Kazimierz Moczarski, a former Polish resistance fighter. Moczarski later wrote a book based on the conversations he had with Stroop, titled Rozmowy z katem or "Conversations with an Executioner".
In the 2001 film Uprising, Jürgen Stroop is depicted by actor Jon Voight. In the film The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Jürgen Stroop is portrayed by German actor Joachim Hansen (the character is simply referred to as "Herr Gruppenführer" and not by Stroop's actual name, although in the source novel by Jack Higgins, Stroop's name is used).
