Editing Josef Meisinger (section)

==Biography==
Meisinger was born in Munich. He enlisted in the German army on 23 December 1916 and was awarded the Iron Cross and Bavarian Military Merit Cross for service in [[World War I]]. He joined the Freikorps in 1919 and later participated in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]], a failed 1923 insurrection by the Nazi Party. 

After the Nazi Party's rise to power, Meisinger joined the SS paramilitary organization and was officially inducted into the Nazi Party on 9 March 1933. When [[Reinhard Heydrich]] was appointed chief of the Gestapo he transferred to the Berlin office and took with him several trusted colleagues, including Meisinger, [[Heinrich Muller]] and [[Franz Josef Huber]]. Meisinger was placed in charge of uncovering and prosecuting cases of homosexuality, abortion and intimate relationships between Jews and non-Jews. He was also in charge of hunting down opponents of the Nazi regime such as Catholic politician Erich Klausener, who was shot in his office by [[Kurt Gildisch]] on Meisinger's orders during the [[Night of the Long Knives]].

In 1936 Meisinger was promoted to head of the [[Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion]], the office in charge of tracking down and punishing homosexual men. Meisinger was in charge during the peak of Nazi persecution of homosexuals from 1936 - 1939 during which around 95, 000 men suspected of being homosexual were arrested and either jailed or sent to [[concentration camps]] to be tortured and experimented on in an attempt to "cure" them of homosexuality. Many were killed in experiments that served no real purpose other than to kill homosexuals. At least 174 homosexual men were castrated during this period. 

In 1938, [[Adolf Hitler]] directly ordered Meisinger to find a reason to dispose of Defence Minister [[Werner von Blomberg]]. An investigation by Meisinger found that Blomberg's wife was a prostitute and pornographic actress. Blomberg resigned over the scandal and was succeeded by [[Werner von Fritsch]]. However, Meisinger believed Fritsch to be homosexual; he had discovered allegations against him in 1936 but had been ordered by Hitler to ignore them. [[Hermann Goring]], not wishing to be subordinate to Fritsch, ordered Meisinger to re-open the investigation. Meisinger interrogated criminal Otto Schmidt, the leader of a gang that specialized in blackmailing homosexuals, and learned that a Nazi official named Fritsch had engaged in sexual acts with male prostitutes. Hoping to gain advancement by ending Fritsch's career, Meisinger convinced Schmidt to testify that the official was Werner von Fritsch. An investigation determined that the man was in fact a minor officer named Achim von Frisch and Fritsch was acquitted of all charges. Meisinger was demoted and transferred to Poland as punishment. 

In Poland, Meisinger was swiftly promoted to unit leader in the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'', the Nazi [[death squad]]s that carried out the mass murder of Jews in occupied territory. On 1 January 1940 he was promoted to Commander of the Warsaw State Police after [[Lothar Beutel]] was sacked for corruption. Meisinger was known for his brutality in this position, earning him the nickname "The Butcher of Warsaw" (a nickname also given to [[Heinz Reinefarth]] and [[Oskar Dirlewanger]]). He authorized the [[Palmiry Massacre]], during which 1700 Polish prisoners were shot. He also ordered the execution of 55 Jews in retaliation for the murder of a Polish policeman on 22 November 1939. On 20 December he ordered the public execution of 107 Poles in retaliation for the murders of two Germans. Meisinger also likely oversaw the construction of the [[Warsaw Ghetto]], where the Jewish residents of Warsaw were imprisoned awaiting deportation to concentration camps, although he always maintained he was out of Warsaw at the time and knew nothing about it. Reports of atrocities by Meisinger appalled many of his superiors, and he was ultimately placed under investigation. However, Heydrich intervened and ensured that Meisinger was never charged. Afterwards Meisinger was quietly transferred to Japan as Gestapo liaison.

From 1 April 1941 Meisinger served as Gestapo liaison to intelligence agents based in the German embassy in Tokyo. He ran a network of informants both in Germany and Japan whose job it was to identify and denounce enemies of the Nazi regime. Meisinger himself was assigned to observe Russian spy Richard Sorge, but he soon became a constant drinking companion of Sorge, who got him drunk and probed him for information that he then passed on to the Soviets. Meisinger also liaised with the [[Imperial Japan|Imperial Japanese]] government on matters concerning the Jews. In 1941 he attempted to convince the Japanese to exterminate approximately 18,000–20,000 Jews who had escaped from Austria and Germany and were living in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. His proposals to set up a concentration camp on Chongming Island or starve them to death by cutting off food shipments were rejected, but the Japanese eventually agreed to establish the [[Shanghai Ghetto]] and place all Shanghai Jews there. 2000 Jews are known to have died in the Shanghai Ghetto.

On 6 September 1945, Meisinger turned himself in to Allied forces. He was questioned for two weeks before being transferred to a prison in Germany pending investigation into his actions in Poland. In 1946 he was extradited to face trial for war crimes and placed on trial alongside Governor of Warsaw [[Ludwig Fischer]], ''[[Ordnungspolizei]]'' commander [[Max Daume]] and Plenipotentiary [[Ludwig Leist]] for their role in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. All four were convicted; Meisinger, Fischer and Daume were sentenced to death whereas Leist received a prison sentence. Meisinger was executed by hanging on 7 March 1947 at Mokotow Prison. 
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