He was also headed the National Political Institutes of Education, a network of elite secondary boarding schools established to train future leaders of the Nazi state.

On the outbreak of the First World War, he left school and joined the Royal Prussian Army as a one-year volunteer in August 1914.

[1] Heissmeyer joined the Grenzschutz Ost [de], a border defense force, for a short while and then left military service in February 1919.

He worked as a laborer in a wool products factory and then joined the Marine-Brigade von Loewenfeld [de], a Freikorps unit, between March and August 1920.

Between 1920 and 1922, he took courses in law and economics at the universities of Göttingen, Kiel and Frankfurt but due to financial difficulties did not complete his degree.

[2] Between 1928 and 1931, Heissmeyer continued to work at various jobs, including as a sales representative for a fruit tree company, at the Siemens-Schuckert aircraft engine plant and as an instructor at a driving school.

Commissioned as an SS-Sturmführer in March 1931, he was rapidly promoted and by November he was in command of SS-Standarte 12 "Niedersachsen" with headquarters in Braunschweig.

In February 1936, Heissmeyer was also made Inspector of the National Political Institutes of Education (Napolas), a network of elite secondary boarding schools to train future leaders of the Nazi state.

On the night of 25 April, the defenders were decimated by a Red Army assault and the survivors fled west over the Havel river via the Charlotten Bridge.

They destroyed their identity papers and uniforms, and after Germany's surrender, they briefly were interned in a Soviet prisoner of war camp near Magdeburg in the summer of 1945.

[10] With the assistance of Princess Pauline of Württemberg, Heissmeyer and Scholtz-Klink went into hiding in Bebenhausen near Tübingen where they worked as domestic servants.

Put on trial for possession of false identity papers, they were convicted in April 1948 and sentenced to 18 months in prison in Rottenburg am Neckar before being released in August 1949.

After his release, Heissmeyer lived in Schwäbisch Hall and became the director of a West German Coca-Cola bottling plant.