Hans Hüttig

Who was Hans Hüttig?

Hans Hüttig was a German Schutzstaffel officer and Nazi concentration camp commandant.

The son of a carpenter, Hüttig's father would eventually open a shop selling photographic equipment and this became the family trade, with Hans Hüttig's brother a founder of Zeiss Ikon. Sent to a boarding school in south Germany he attempted to enter the army in 1911 but failed the exam and returned home to work as a salesman in his father's shop. Early in 1914 he left the shop to take a post with an import-export company in German East Africa.

Following the outbreak of the First World War Hüttig enlisted in the German Imperial Army, seeing action in the East African Campaign and eventually rising to the rank of Feldwebel. Wounded in December 1917 the military hospital was captured soon afterwards by the British Army and he was sent to a POW camp in Cairo where he was held for two years.

He returned to Germany in March 1920, working initially at the shop again before filling on a number of clerical jobs. He joined the right-wing Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten in 1925 although he claimed that this was largely to feel a sense of belonging rather than because of any deep political convictions.