Otto Hofmann (16 March 1896 – 31 December 1982) was a German SS-Obergruppenführer in Nazi Germany who was the head of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office.

Shortly after the Nazi seizure of power, he left his wine business in April 1933 when he became a full-time SS functionary, attached to SS-Gruppe Süd in Munich as adjutant to the chief of the auxiliary political police.

He was named Pancke's successor as RuSHA Chief on 9 July 1940, and was appointed to hold the post "for the duration of the war".

[6] As RuSHA chief, Hofmann played a leading role in the "Germanisation" of the captured territory of Poland and the Soviet Union.

Hoffman also was responsible for conducting official race tests on the population of the occupied territories for racial categorization and selection.

"[7] Hofmann was a participant at the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942, called to develop plans for the implementation of the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".

He knew many of the other attendees, including SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, who chaired the meeting and with whom Hofmann had previously worked on issues of Germanisation in the occupied eastern territories.

Moreover, Hofmann's RuSHA office for years had compiled and maintained an index of individuals with partly Jewish origins, in order to assist in tracking down such persons not only in Germany but in other areas of Europe.

On the issue of launching the final solution in Hungary, for example, he offered to send personnel from his office to assist with orientation when the time came.

During the war years, the pressures of increased recruitment for the Waffen-SS meant that RuSHA had to limit its background investigations to officers and their spouses or fiancées.

[9] When his organization had difficulty keeping up with the volume of racial examinations due to a lack of manpower, Hofmmann was removed as RuSHA Chief by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler on 20 April 1943, and he was transferred to Stuttgart as the chief of SS-Oberabschnitt Südwest and the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) for southwestern Germany (Gau Württemberg-Hohenzollern and Gau Baden-Alsace).

He had now advanced to the highest levels of the SS military and police hierarchy but, on 29 November 1944, he was reprimanded for cowardice by Himmler, who accused him of an overly hasty retreat before the US Army's assault on Alsace.

He then destroyed his uniform and identity card and, making his way to Munich, went underground where he hid out with the assistance of his father and a family friend.

The first was a case in 1959–60 brought by the public prosecutor in Heilbronn, charging him with extrajudicial killings in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp when he was HSSPF in Stuttgart.