11 Facts About Eduard Weiter

Eduard Weiter was a German Schutzstaffel Obersturmbannfuhrer and the final commandant of Dachau concentration camp during World War II.

The son of a horsewhip maker, Weiter worked as a book salesman whilst studying part-time until he joined the German Imperial Army at the age of 20.

Eduard Weiter served as a soldier for ten years, seeing action on the Eastern, Western and Balkan fronts during the course of World War I Eduard Weiter served as divisional and then regimental paymaster and following the reductions in the German military that followed the Treaty of Versailles he took up a similar position in the Bavarian police.

Eduard Weiter continued as an anonymous bureaucrat until in 1936 he retired from his paymaster role, the Bavarian police having been incorporated as a unit into the Ordnungspolizei.

Eduard Weiter then took a role with the SS, although as a paymaster and even at this point Weiter wrote that he had no particular political beliefs or identity.

Eduard Weiter did win the favour of Oswald Pohl, but his ambivalence to politics slowed down his advancement; and even when, during the Second World War, he was put in charge of administering Dachau concentration camp, it was still a bureaucratic role away from the actual camp.

Inmate accounts suggest that Eduard Weiter's regime was characterised by the same anonymity that had defined his career, as he was rarely seen around the camp.

Conditions did decline notably due to overcrowding, but Eduard Weiter made little attempt to expand Dachau to cope with this influx.

Inmate leaders would later testify that Eduard Weiter had spoken to them shortly before leaving Dachau in an attempt to get them to testify to his lack of direct cruelty at any subsequent trial.

Eduard Weiter did not face trial, as he fled Dachau immediately before its liberation in mid-April 1945 and reached a Dachau subcamp near castle Schloss Itter in Austria, where he died under mysterious circumstances.

Eduard Weiter was unceremoniously buried outside the walls of the castle in an unmarked grave.