Lothar Neethling

General Lothar Paul Neethling (29 August 1935, East Prussia – 11 July 2005) was chief deputy commissioner (second-in-command) of the South African Police in the apartheid era.

A highly qualified scientist, General Neethling was alleged to have used police forensic laboratories for the production of poisons to kill anti-apartheid activists, and to have developed chemical and biological weapons for use against the black population in South Africa.

He died of lung cancer in Pretoria, aged 69.

In 1948, Afrikaners who were supporters of defeated Nazi Germany in World War II came up with a plan to adopt as many as 10,000 war orphans, in light of the horrendous circumstances they endured after the war. In the event, the German Children's Fund (GCF) managed to finance a group of only 83 orphans who arrived in Cape Town in September 1948. One of them was 13-year-old Lothar Paul Tietz, who was adopted by the GCF chairman, Dr J C Neethling. In turn Lothar Neethling, cutting his ties with Germany soon after his arrival, adopted South Africa as his "new fatherland".

He excelled academically and, having absorbed all the elements of the Boer culture in his teenage years, was fully accepted into the Afrikaner community.

Newspaper reporter Max du Preez claimed Neethling described himself as a "staunch Christian."

Lothar Neethling gained two doctorates in chemistry, one of which was from the University of California. He was a prominent member of the Afrikaans Academy of Arts and Science, which awarded him its gold medal.

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