Gerhard Klopfer was an official of the Nazi Party and assistant to Martin Bormann

Martin Bormann

Martin Ludwig Bormann was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler...

 in the Office of the (Nazi) Party Chancellery

Party Chancellery

Party Chancellery , until 1941 Staff of the Deputy Führer , was the name of the head office of the German Nazi Party .-Organization:...

.

Klopfer was born in Schreibersdorf

Pisarzowice

Pisarzowice may refer to the following places in Poland:*Pisarzowice, Greater Poland Voivodeship *Pisarzowice, Kamienna Góra County in Lower Silesian Voivodeship...

, Silesia

Province of Silesia

The Province of Silesia was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1815 to 1919.-Geography:The territory comprised the bulk of the former Bohemian crown land of Silesia and the County of Kladsko, which King Frederick the Great had conquered from the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy in the 18th...

 (now in Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

), in 1905. He studied law and economics and in 1931 became a judge in Düsseldorf, Germany. When the Nazis came to power

Machtergreifung

Machtergreifung is a German word meaning "seizure of power". It is normally used specifically to refer to the Nazi takeover of power in the democratic Weimar Republic on 30 January 1933, the day Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, turning it into the Nazi German dictatorship.-Term:The...

 in 1933, he joined the Nazi Party and the SA (Sturmabteilung

Sturmabteilung

The Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...

) along with the Gestapo

Gestapo

The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

 (Secret State Police) the following year. In 1935, he became a member of Rudolf Hess

Rudolf Hess

Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s...

's staff and the SS (Schutzstaffel

Schutzstaffel

The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...

) with the honorary SS rank of Oberführer

Oberführer

Oberführer was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party dating back to 1921. Translated as “Senior Leader”, an Oberführer was typically a Nazi Party member in charge of a group of paramilitary units in a particular geographical region...

 (Brigadier General/Senior Colonel). In 1938, he became responsible for the seizing of Jewish businesses for questions about mixed marriages between Gentile and Jewish Germans and general questions about occupation of foreign states.

As State Secretary of the Parteikanzlerei (Party Chancellery), Klopfer represented Bormann, who was head of the Parteikanzlei, at the Wannsee Conference

Wannsee Conference

The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference was to inform administrative leaders of Departments responsible for various policies relating to Jews, that Reinhard Heydrich...

 on January 20, 1942 in which the details of the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" were formalized, policies that culminated in the Holocaust. Along with Helmuth Friedrichs

Helmuth Friedrichs

Helmuth Friedrichs was a German Nazi Party official. He was an important figure in the Office of the Deputy Führer and its successor the Nazi Party Chancellery.-Early years:...

 Klopfer was the highest ranking bureaucrat behind Bormann in the Chancellery. This position gave him extensive power of patronage within the Nazi Party as Bormann often left appointments to party positions to Klopfer and Friedrichs.

As the Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 closed in on Berlin

Battle of Berlin

The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, was the final major offensive of the European Theatre of World War II....

 in 1945, Klopfer fled the city. He was captured and imprisoned and was charged with war crime

War crime

War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...

s but was released for lack of evidence. He became a tax advisor in the city of Ulm

Ulm

Ulm is a city in the federal German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at 120,000 , forms an urban district of its own and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau district. Ulm, founded around 850, is rich in history and...

 (Baden-Württemberg

Baden-Württemberg

Baden-Württemberg is one of the 16 states of Germany. Baden-Württemberg is in the southwestern part of the country to the east of the Upper Rhine, and is the third largest in both area and population of Germany's sixteen states, with an area of and 10.7 million inhabitants...

). He was the last surviving attendee of the Wannsee Conference, dying in 1987.

Klopfer was portrayed by Ian McNeice

Ian McNeice

Ian McNeice is a prolific English screen, stage, and television character actor.-Early life:McNeice was born in Basingstoke in Hampshire. McNeice's acting training started at the Taunton School in Somerset, followed by two years at the Salisbury Playhouse...

 in the BBC/HBO

Home Box Office

HBO, short for Home Box Office, is an American premium cable television network, owned by Time Warner. , HBO's programming reaches 28.2 million subscribers in the United States, making it the second largest premium network in America . In addition to its U.S...

 made-for-cable movie Conspiracy in 2001 as the morbidly obese embodiment of vileness, laughing at the physical results of gassing Jews and displaying a lack of tact foul enough to make even the other Nazis uncomfortable.