By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 23 July 2026

Rudolf Höss, the commandant at Auschwitz death camp, was called to testify at Nuremberg on 15 April 1946 as a defence witness for Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the successor to Reinhard Heydrich as head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the key institution of Heinrich Himmler’s SS-police complex, which was the most individually powerful element of the Nazi regime after 1941.