[3] In the summer of 1926 he joined the Nazi Party and founded a chapter of the SA and of the HJ with two friends in Weiden.

He said they were sentenced to death by order of Heinrich Himmler and the Reich Security Main Office.

[citation needed] This contradicted the statement of Johann Kicks,[9] and was also a violation of the rules of the concentration camps Lagerordnung.

Weiss was appointed commandant of Majdanek after his predecessor Hermann Florstedt was charged with wholesale theft from the Third Reich in order to enrich himself.

On 3 November 1943, one of the worst massacres happened there; more than 17,000 Jewish people were murdered during Aktion Erntefest over the course of one day.

There Organisation Todt built two underground plants for the production of fighter planes with the forced assistance of prisoners from Dachau.

Because the Luftwaffe was suffering severe losses in the air war against the RAF, the forced labour contingent was driven hard.

At the end of April 1945, Weiss was in Dachau, perhaps in order to relieve the commandant, Eduard Weiter.

Weiss was apprehended in Munich on 29 April 1945 by corporal Henry Senger of the US Army 292nd Field Artillery Observation Battalion,[11][12] and was tried during the Dachau Trials beginning on 13 November 1945.

After being found guilty of "violating the laws and usages of war," Weiss was executed by hanging at Landsberg prison on 29 May 1946.