Commandant of concentration camps and of SS Totenkopfverbande (Death's-Head Units). Born in Huddingen, Eicke served in the German army from 1909 to the end of World War I and then became a police informant. He joined the Nazi party and the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) in 1928, and in 1930 transferred to the SS. Eicke was close to SS chief Heinrich Himmler and rose rapidly in the formation's chain of command. In June 1933 he was appointed commandant of the Dachau concentration camp, with the rank of Oberfuehrer. In this post he introduced his own methods in the administration of the camp, the torture of prisoners, and the manner in which the Totenkopfverbande camp guards conducted them. These methods, which were exceptionally cruel, became standard for all the concentration camps in Germany. Eicke played a key role in the "Night of the Long Knives" (Nacht der langen Messer) on June 30, 1934, when the top echelon of the SA was liquidated, and it was he who shot the SA chief, Ernst Roehm, after the latter refused to commit suicide. The following month, Eicke was appointed chief of the concentration camps' administration and of the SS guard formations, and was promoted to the rank of Brigadefuehrer. In November 1939 he became commander of the "Totenkopf" Division of the Waffen-SS. Under his command, it took part in the fighting in France and on the eastern front and had many great crimes on its record; its first criminal action was the murder of some one hundred British prisoners of war in France on May 26, 1940. Eicke was killed on the eastern front on February 16, 1943, while serving as an SS-Obergruppenfuehrer in the Waffen-SS.
