Karl Heinrich Wilhelm Koppe (15 June 1896 – 2 July 1975) was a German Nazi Party politician and an SS-Obergruppenführer and a General of the Waffen-SS.

He held several high-level commands, including as the Higher SS and Police Leader in Reichsgau Wartheland and in the General Government during the German occupation of Poland in World War II.

[2] Koppe joined the Nazi Party on 1 September 1930 (membership number 305,584) and in December became the press advisor for Ortsgroup (local group) Harburg-Wilhelmsburg.

By 19 October, he was in command of SS-Abschnitt XXVI in the Free City of Danzig where he remained until taking up the post of chief of staff in SS-Oberabschnitt "Ost" in Berlin on 1 November 1935.

Nominally subordinate to Greiser, Koppe possessed a high degree of independence as the commander of all SS and police forces in the Warthegau.

He declared Jews and Polish intellectuals to be criminal elements that would have to be removed from the territory to ensure security and to provide jobs for the new settlers.

[9] He immediately put into place a plan for the deportation of Poles and Polish Jews from the Warthegau to ghettos in the General Government to make room for ethnic German settlers.

[10] Koppe also was involved in the Aktion T4 euthanasia program as the overall commander of Special Detachment (Sonderkommando) Lange, an SS squad which used gas vans to murder 1,558 mentally disabled asylum patients at the Soldau concentration camp in nearby Gau East Prussia during May and June 1940.

He also staged numerous public executions, such as ordering the hanging of 15 Poles in the village of Tuchorza on 9 June 1942, in retaliation for the killing of a German police officer.

After the Russians swept into Kraków in January 1945, Koppe was transferred to a staff position with Army Group Vistula, which was under Himmler's direct command.

[15] The trial was halted, however, when Koppe's physicians attested that he suffered from circulatory disease, high blood pressure and vascular sclerosis, making him bedridden for most of the time.