Gerhard Klopfer

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Gerhard Klopfer (18 February 1905 – 29 January 1987) was a German lawyer and a high-ranking Nazi official. He served as State Secretary in the Party Chancellery, acting as the chief deputy to Martin Bormann, and he held the rank of SS-Gruppenführer.

Klopfer was born in Schreibersdorf in the Prussian Province of Silesia. He studied law and economics at the University of Breslau and the University of Jena, earned a doctorate in 1929, and began his legal career in Breslau and Düsseldorf. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and soon after the party’s paramilitary SA. He also joined the Gestapo and held various government roles, including work in the Prussian agriculture ministry and later in the Deputy Führer’s office.

In 1935 he joined Rudolf Hess’s staff at the Party headquarters in Munich and rose through the ranks. By 1938 he was involved in the Aryanization program, questions about mixed marriages between Gentile and Jewish Germans, and other issues related to occupied territories. By 1941 he was Ministerialdirektor, coordinating work between the Nazi Party and the state ministries.

Klopfer became a close associate of Martin Bormann, who led the Party Chancellery. In January 1942 he represented Bormann at the Wannsee Conference, where plans for the Final Solution were discussed. On 22 November 1942 Hitler appointed him State Secretary of the Party Chancellery, a position that gave him substantial influence over party appointments and patronage. He also joined the SS and was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer in November 1944.

In the final months of World War II, Klopfer helped push a call to arms for the Volkssturm, the Nazi militia, including young and old men aged 16 to 60.

After the war, Klopfer was arrested in 1946 and testified at the Nuremberg Ministries Trial in 1948, where he denied knowledge of the Holocaust. The case against him was dropped due to lack of evidence and because he was deemed not to have enough power to shape Nazi policy. In 1949 he underwent denazification and was classified as a minor offender, receiving a fine and probation.

He later worked as a carpenter and, from 1952, as a tax advisor in Ulm, returning to the legal profession in 1956. A later investigation into his involvement in the Wannsee Conference was closed in 1962. Klopfer died in 1987; he was the last surviving attendee of the Wannsee Conference. His death notice sparked public outcry for praising a life “for the benefit of all under his influence,” which many saw as insulting to Holocaust victims.