This article is about the 1945–1947 series of trials held in Germany. For the 1947–1949 trials held in Slovenia, see Dachau trials (Slovenia). For the first trial against Dachau camp officials, see Dachau camp trial.
Ex-SS-Sturmbannführer Friedrich Wetzel, who was the officer in charge of distributing food and clothing in the Dachau concentration camp, testifies during the Dachau camp trial.
The Dachau trials, also known as the Dachau Military Tribunal, handled the prosecution of almost every war criminal captured in the U.S. military zones in Allied-occupied Germany and in Allied-occupied Austria, and the prosecutions of military personnel and civilian persons who committed war crimes against the American military and American citizens. The war-crime trials were held within the compound of the former Dachau concentration camp by military tribunals authorized by the Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Third Army.
The Nazi war criminals were held and tried at the Dachau concentration camp since the camp had buildings adequate to housing the many personnel required for and involved in the legal proceedings of a war-crimes trial, and since the Dachau prison camp had many jail cells in which to hold the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS officers and soldiers accused of war crimes. The American Military Tribunal for the war-crime trials at Dachau featured the JAG attorney William Denson as the chief prosecutor,[1] and the attorney Lt. Col. Douglas T. Bates Jr., an artillery officer, as the chief defense counsel.[1]
Proceedings
Unlike the international military trials in Nuremberg that prosecuted the major Nazi war criminals under the jurisdiction of the four Allied Occupying Powers, the Dachau tribunals were held exclusively by the United States military between August 1945 and December 1947. The proceedings were similar to the 12 post-1946 Nuremberg trials that were also conducted solely by the United States. All the hearings were held within Dachau because it was, at the time, the best known of the Nazi concentration camps and it would act as a backdrop for the trials by underlining the moral corruption of the Nazi regime. They were held by the American Military Tribunal, without a jury, but instead by a panel of seven men, one of whom was versed in international military law. The prosecution was different from most trials, in that the burden of proof was on the defense. The term used by Ben Ferencz was "quick trials".[2]
The first trial was that of Franz Strasser in August 1945.[3] The mass trials started in November 1945 and were adjourned the following month. By December 13, 1947 when the trials adjourned once more, roughly 1200 defendants had been tried with roughly a 73% conviction rate. During the almost three years in total, the American military tribunals tried 1,672 German alleged war criminals in 489 separate proceedings. In total 1,416 former members of the Nazi regime were convicted; of these, 297 received death sentences and 279 were sentenced to life in prison. All convicted prisoners were sent to War Criminals Prison #1 at Landsberg am Lech to serve their sentences or to be hanged.[4]
The Dachau camp trials: 40 officials were tried; 36 of the defendants were sentenced to death on 13 December 1945. Of these, 28 were hanged on 28 May and 29 May 1946, including the former commandant Martin Gottfried Weiss and the camp doctor Claus Schilling. Smaller groups of Dachau camp officials and guards were included in several subsequent trials by the U.S. court. On 21 November 1946 it was announced that, up to that date, 116 defendants of this category had been convicted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment.
The Mauthausen camp trials: 61 officials of this camp were tried by a U.S. military court at Dachau in March/April, 1946; 58 defendants were sentenced to death on 11 May 1946. Those executed included the commandant of the SS-Totenkopfverbände.
The Flossenbürg camp trial: 52 officials and guards of this camp were tried between 12 June 1946 and 19 January 1947. Of the defendants, 15 were sentenced to death and 25 to terms of imprisonment. However, one of those who received a prison sentence in the main Flossenbürg trial, Erich Muhsfeldt, was later extradited to Poland. He was sentenced to death in the Auschwitz trial, and executed in 1948.
The Buchenwald camp trial: between April and August, 1947, 31 defendants were found guilty. Of these 22 were sentenced to death; 9 to imprisonment.
The Mühldorf camp trial: five officials were sentenced to death by a U.S. war crimes court at Dachau on 13 May 1947 and seven to imprisonment.
Eduard Krebsbach: Ex SS-Sturmbannführer and chief medical officer of Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp (1941–1943). Convicted on 11 May 1946 of killing hundreds of ill and disabled inmates by administering lethal injections of the chemical compound Benzene. Executed on 28 May 1947.
Hermann Pister: Ex SS-Oberführer and commandant of Buchenwald concentration camp (1942–1945). Sentenced to death in August 1947 but died of natural causes in prison on 28 September 1948, before sentence could be carried out.
Fritz Dietrich: Former SS police chief of Liepāja. Responsible for ordering the Liepāja massacres. Sentenced to death for the illegal executions of 7 American airmen. Executed on 22 October 1948.
Heinrich Schmidt: Ex SS-Hauptsturmführer and medical officer in the Dachau and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps. Indicted by US authorities in August 1947 for suspected war crimes committed during his service as chief physician of the Nordhausen sub-camp of Mittelbau-Dora (March–April 1945). Acquitted due to insufficient evidence on 30 December 1947. Later indicted at the Third Majdanek trial by the District Court of Düsseldorf in November 1975 for alleged crimes against humanity perpetrated during his service as a medical officer in the Majdanek concentration camp (1942–1943). Again acquitted due to lack of evidence on 20 March 1979, after what became the longest and most expensive criminal trial in German history. Died 2000.
After the verdicts, the manner in which the court had functioned was disputed, first in Germany (by former Nazi officials who had regained some power due to anti-Communist positions with the occupation forces), then later in the United States, including by Senator Joseph McCarthy. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which made no decision. The case then came under the scrutiny of a sub-committee of the United States Senate.[10] This drew attention to the trial and the judicial irregularities that had occurred during the interrogations that preceded the trial. But, before the United States Senate took an interest in this case, most of the death sentences had been commuted, because of a revision of the trial carried out by the US Army.[11] The other life sentences were commuted within the next few years. With the exception of one person who died in prison, all of those convicted in the Malmedy massacre trial were released during the 1950s, the last one to leave prison being Hubert Huber in January 1957.[12][13]
A distinct case about the war crimes committed against civilians in Stavelot was tried on July 6, 1948, in front of a Belgian military court in Liège, Belgium. The defendants were 10 members of Kampfgruppe Peiper; American troops had captured them on December 22, 1944, near the spot where one of the massacres of civilians in Stavelot had occurred. One man was discharged; the others were found guilty. Most of the convicts were sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment; two officers were sentenced to 12 and 15 years.
Towards the end of his life, Joachim Peiper settled in Traves, Haute-Saône, in eastern France. In 1976 a Communist historian obtained the file on Joachim Peiper from the Gestapo document archive in East Germany, and used the information to denounce the presence of a Nazi war criminal living in France. In June 1976, there appeared political flyers denouncing the presence of SS-Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper in the village of Traves. Later, a newsmagazine article the left-wing L'Humanité identified Peiper's presence and residence in Traves, and he received threats of death. In the early morning of 14 July 1976, Peiper's house was set afire, and killed him.[14]
↑ Some Noteworthy War CriminalsArchived 2005-12-13 at the Wayback Machine Source: History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Development of the Laws of War. United Nations War Crimes Commission. London: HMSO, 1948
↑ Franklin, Thomas (1987). American in Exile, An: The Story of Arthur Rudolph. Huntsville: Christopher Kaylor Company. p.150.
↑ Malmedy massacre Investigation–Report of the Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services. United States Senate Eighty-first Congress, first session, pursuant to S. res. 42, Investigation of action of Army with Respect to Trial of Persons Responsible for the Massacre of American Soldiers, Battle of the Bulge, near Malmedy, Belgium, December 1944. 13 October 1949.
The Malmedy massacre was a German war crime committed by soldiers of the Waffen-SS on 17 December 1944 at the Baugnez crossroads near the city of Malmedy, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge. Soldiers of Kampfgruppe Peiper summarily killed eighty-four U.S. Army prisoners of war (POWs) who had surrendered after a brief battle. The Waffen-SS soldiers had grouped the U.S. POWs in a farmer's field, where they used machine guns to shoot and kill the grouped POWs; many of the prisoners of war who survived the gunfire of the massacre were killed with a coup de grâce gunshot to the head. A few survived.
Joachim Peiper was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and war criminal convicted for the Malmedy massacre of U.S. Army prisoners of war (POWs). During the Second World War in Europe, Peiper served as personal adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, and as a tank commander in the Waffen-SS. German historian Jens Westemeier writes that Peiper personified Nazi ideology, as a purportedly ruthless glory-hound commander who was indifferent to the combat casualties of Battle Group Peiper, and who encouraged, expected, and tolerated war crimes by his Waffen-SS soldiers.
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