Hans Josef Kieffer (4 December 1900-26 June 1947) was the German Sicherheitsdienst chief in occupied Paris during World War II.
Biography[]
Hans Josef Kieffer was born in Offenburg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Nazi Germany on 4 December 1900, and he became a policeman in Karlsruhe before joining the Nazi Party in the 1920s. In 1933, he joined Heinrich Himmler's Criminal Police, and he became an SS-Obersturmfuehrer on 12 September 1937 and a Hauptsturmfuehrer on 14 July 1940. He went on to serve as a military field police officer and headed the Sicherheitsdienst in Paris, conducting counter-espionage activities against the French Resistance and SOE. He destroyed the SOE's Prosper network, as well as overseeing the interrogation of Noor Inayat Khan, who, unlike previous captured agents, proved impervious to interrogation. In July 1944, he had five captured SAS soldiers executed under Hitler's "Commando Order" to shoot commandos on sight. On Germany's surrender in May 1945, Kieffer said goodbye to his dying wife (ill with cancer) and children before going into hiding in Garmisch and working as a cleaner at a hotel; he was captured by British Army soldiers in January 1947. In March 1947, he was tried at Wuppertal for the execution of five prisoners, and, while one of Kieffer's interpreters and a former SOE prisoner testified that Kieffer did not mistreat his prisoners, he was found guilty and was hanged on 26 June 1947.