A ‘Political Soldier’ and ‘Practitioner of Violence’: The Concentration Camp Commandant Hans Loritz

Abstract

This article builds on the growing body of literature on SS perpetrators. It explores the career of Hans Loritz, one of the most influential commandants of the pre-war nazi camps (and, from 1936, commandant of Dachau). The present article explores Loritz’s career within the small network of senior camp officials — many of whom would become key players of nazi extermination policy in the second world war — that emerged before the war. In addition, the article places Loritz into his social context: in spite of his responsibility for major atrocities, he led a perfectly ‘normal’ life and was not stranded on the margins of society.