Martin Weiss: SS Commandant Who Ran Some of Nazi Germany's Deadliest Camps

World History: True Stories of the 20th Century · Jun 12, 2026 · 11m

Martin Gottfried Weiss was a German SS officer and one of the most important concentration camp commandants in Nazi Germany. During World War II, he held senior positions at Dachau, Neuengamme, Majdanek, and Mühldorf, helping oversee forced labor, deportations, executions, and the broader machinery of Nazi persecution.

Born in 1905 in Weiden in der Oberpfalz, Weiss joined the Nazi Party and the SS during the early years of the movement. He began his concentration camp career at Dachau, the first regular concentration camp established by the Nazi regime, where he rose through the ranks from…