Harry Haffner

Who was Harry Haffner?

Harry Haffner was a German lawyer and the last Judge-President of the Nazi People's Court.

Haffner was born in Uslar, Lower Saxony. He graduated in law in 1926 and worked as a prosecutor. He joined the Nazi Party and SA on 1st May 1933, he was then Head of Staff at the federal National Socialist German Jurists of NSV. In 1934, he was appointed a prosecutor in Celle, in 1936 he was appointed senior prosecutor to the Prosecutor General of Kassel and in 1938, he was a representative of the General Prosecutor in Hamm. On 1st January 1944, Haffner became the General Prosecutor of Katowice in occupied Poland where the Auschwitz concentration camp fell within his remit – he visited the camp on 28th June 1944.

On 12 March 1945 following the death of Roland Freisler in an air raid he succeeded him as the last Judge-President of the Volksgerichtshof People's Court. He held this office until 24 April 1945 when the court finally ceased its activity only two weeks before the German surrender.

From 1946 he lived under the name of Heinrich Hartmann in the town of Sontra where he ran a shop with his wife. In 1953 he turned himself in to the authorities in Kassel and the prosecutor made his past public, but the investigations against him were dismissed. He died in Hornberg aged 69.