German soldier and Nazi partisan who served as commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp (1940–45), during a period when as many as 1,000,000 to 2,500,000 inmates perished there.

After serving in World War I, Hoess joined conservative cliques, was arrested and imprisoned (1923–28), and then joined the Nazi Party, becoming a member of the SS. In 1934 he began serving on the staff at Dachau concentration camp and in 1940 was given command of Auschwitz, where he devised increasingly efficient methods of mass gassing and cremation. In 1945 he was made a deputy inspector of all concentration camps. In 1947 he was tried and sentenced by a Polish court in Warsaw and hanged at Auschwitz.