Herbert Kappler

Herbert Kappler
Born	23 September 1907 Stuttgart, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire
Died	9 February 1978 (aged 70) Soltau, Lower Saxony, West Germany
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Service/branch	SS
Years of service	1932–1945
Rank	Obersturmbannführer
Unit	Gestapo
Commands held	Chief of the SiPo and SD; Police Chief of Rome

Herbert Kappler (23 September 1907 – 9 February 1978) was the head of German police and security services (Sicherheitspolizei and SD) in Rome during the Second World War. He was responsible for the Ardeatine massacre as well as dealing with Vatican City over its wartime neutrality.

Kappler was born to a middle-class family in Stuttgart in the German Empire. During his childhood, Kappler witnessed World War I, and came of age in the Weimar Republic during the 1920s. Kappler attended four years of elementary school (Volksschule) followed by four more of high school and graduated in 1925. He next attended a technical college and spent seven semesters studying electrical engineering. By 1929, he was a certified electrician, still living in Stuttgart.

Kappler's activities between 1929 and 1931 are little known, except that he was living in Stuttgart, occasionally performing work as an electrician. Living in a major city such as Stuttgart, Kappler was a witness to the chaos of the Great Depression, the expansion of the Freikorps, and the rise of the Nazi Party. In 1931, Herbert Kappler became a Nazi Party member.

Herbert Kappler joined the Nazi Party on 1 August 1931 at the age of twenty three. At the same time, he became a stormtrooper in the Sturmabteilung (SA) and served as an SA-Mann from 1 August 1931 to 1 December 1932. His Nazi Party membership number was 594,899.

Upon leaving the SA, Kappler was accepted as a prospective candidate into the Schutzstaffel (SS) and appointed to the entry level probation rank of SS-Anwärter. He underwent six months of indoctrination training, and was sworn into the SS on 8 May 1933. During Kappler's probationary period, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, meaning that Kappler did not have the "honour" of full SS membership prior to the Nazis' assumption of power. Even so, due to his membership in the SA and Nazi Party dating from 1931, Kappler was considered an Alter Kämpfer and awarded the Honour Chevron for the Old Guard in 1934.

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