Arthur Rödl

Who is Arthur Rödl?

Arthur Rödl was a German Standartenführer in the Waffen-SS and a Nazi concentration camp commandant.

Rödl was born into a Catholic family, his father working as a messenger and his mother running a newsstand. The stand closed when Rödl was ten and he was told by his mother that it had shut down as she could not compete with a nearby stand run by a Jew. The incident helped to instill a sense of anti-Semitism in the young Rödl, who was involved in extreme nationalist groups from an early age. Rödl was apprenticed to a blacksmith when World War I broke out. He soon enlisted in the German Imperial Army by forging his age on his documents after initially being rejected for being only 16. He was injured seriously at least once during the war and was demobbed at the age of 20, eventually working for the post office.

Rödl also quickly return to far right activism and joined the Bund Oberland in 1920. His activities brought him frequent reprimands at work, for taking time off to travel with other Bund members to fighting with Poles in Upper Silesia to using his window at the post office to hand out propaganda leaflets. When it became clear that he had participated in the Beer Hall putsch he was dismissed by the post office.