Liebehenschel was born in Posen. He studied economics and public administration. Too young to serve in World War I, in 1919 he was in the Freikorps "Grenzschutz Ost"; he served as a sergeant major in the German Reichswehr afterwards. In 1932, he joined the Nazi Party, and in 1934 joined the Schutzstaffel, where he served in the Totenkopfverbände. Liebehenschel became the adjutant in the Lichtenburg concentration camp, and two years later was transferred to the inspectorate of the concentration camps in Berlin. In 1942, when the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office was founded, Liebehenschel was assigned to the new Amtsgruppe D as head of Office D I. On 1 December 1943, Liebehenschel was appointed commandant of Auschwitz I concentration camp, succeeding Rudolf Höss, and adjutant Robert Mulka. While continuing mass executions, he made some minor "improvements" including removing the standing cells and halting the selections to gas chambers among regular prisoners. According to Hermann Langbein, a prisoner at Auschwitz infirmary: "in general one could establish that even those SS members who were very bloodthirsty before became a bit more reserved because they realized that their fanaticism would not necessarily be tolerated anymore." When Höss returned to Auschwitz, Liebehenschel was replaced as commandant on 8 May 1944, and appointed commandant of the already emptied Majdanek camp on19 May 1944, succeeding Martin Gottfried Weiss. The camp was evacuated because of the Soviet advance into German-occupied Poland. Liebehenschel relocated to Trieste, Italy to the office of Odilo Globocnik, Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer for Operational Zone Adriatic Coast. Liebehenschel became head of the SS Manpower Office there.
Liebehenschel had one son and three daughters by his first wife, Gertrud, the youngest of whom, Barbara Cherish, now lives in the United States. In 2009, Cherish published her book My Father, the Auschwitz Commandant, in which she outlined actions by Liebehenschel that improved the prisoners' lives, but also discussed his participation in a genocidal system. Together with another daughter, Antje, she was interviewed in 2002 by ZDF, the German television channel, about living with their father's guilt. Liebehenschel had a son by his second wife, Anneliese. Liebehenschel's first wife, whom he left during the war, suffered from mental health issues after the war and committed suicide in a hospital for the mentally ill in 1966.
