Karl Hass

Karl Hass (5 October 1912 – 21 April 2004) was a German Lieutenant-Colonel in the SS whose involvement in the Ardeatine massacre while serving in Italy led to allegations of war crimes. Hass was not charged with or convicted of war crimes following the war, but the reprisal killings of some 335 Italians following a partisan attack on German troops in Rome is one of the most notorious events of World War II. His involvement as a witness in the Erich Priebke trial led him to being tried and convicted in Italy for the Ardeatine killings in 1998.

Hass was born in Kiel. In 1934, Hass joined the Sicherheitsdienst, the SS's intelligence service, where his ruthlessness brought promotion. After the downfall of Benito Mussolini and the occupation of Italy by Nazi Germany, Karl Hass was sent to Rome to set up a network of radio operators and to organize saboteurs behind the invading Allied lines. While in Rome, under SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant-Colonel) Herbert Kappler, Karl Hass aided in the deportation of more than 1,000 Jews to Auschwitz.

Hass was also the officer who had Princess Mafalda of Savoy, the daughter of King Vittorio Emanuele III of Italy, placed into German military custody, which eventually resulted in her death. He reputedly lured her to his headquarters in Rome by the suggestion that there was a message from her husband who was then being held in Berlin. On her arrival at the German command, Hass had the princess arrested and sent for questioning to Munich in Germany. She was subsequently sent to Berlin and then to Buchenwald concentration camp, where she was later wounded in an Allied bombing raid. Despite receiving medical attention at the camp, she died following an operation to amputate her infected arm.

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