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Dachau camp trial
The Dachau camp trial (German: Dachau-Hauptprozess) was the first mass trial of the Dachau trials, a series of trials against war criminals held by the United States Army on the premises of the Dachau concentration camp. The main trial took place from 15 November to 13 December 1945. Forty people were charged with war crimes in connection with the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps. The trial ended with 40 convictions, including 36 death sentences, of which 28 were carried out. The official name of the case was United States of America vs. Martin Gottfried Weiss et al. - Case 000-50-2. The main trial served as a "parent case" for 123 subsequent cases. In the subsequent trials, all crimes that were established in the main trial were taken as proven, significantly shortening their duration relative to the parent case. The Dachau trials consisted of 6 total parent trials, each with their own subcases, and were held between 1945 and 1948. In total, there were 489 Dachau trials, of which 394 were held within the confines of the camp itself.
When the United States Army advanced into German-occupied territory during the final phase of the Second World War, its troops were often confronted, sometimes in the middle of battles, with traces of the crimes committed in concentration camps. The care of the mostly emaciated and seriously ill "Muselmänner", and the burial of the thousands of prisoners who had died by exhaustion during death marches or by shooting proved to be a difficult task for the US Army.
Shortly before the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, which took place on 29 April 1945, US soldiers had already reached the satellite camps, including the Kauferinger Camp Complex. Like other subcamps, the subcamp Kaufering IV had been evacuated shortly before the invasion of the US Army on 28 April 1945. During the evacuation, SS men set fire to the barracks. American soldiers found the corpses of about 360 prisoners in Kaufering IV; it is not certain whether these incapacitated marchers were burned alive or had been murdered before. In the main camp, the soldiers first encountered the Buchenwald death train, which had arrived at Dachau on the night of 27–28 April after a 20-day journey from Buchenwald concentration camp. During the journey many of the prisoners had starved to death, and the bodies of approximately 2,000 dead prisoners remained aboard the 40-odd wagons of the train when it was examined by the arriving US soldiers. Members of the US Army also discovered many unburied bodies inside the camp. These and other final phase crimes committed in the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps led to numerous deaths in the last weeks of the war. Even after liberation, more than 2,200 former prisoners died as a result of concentration camp detention and the still rampant typhoid epidemic.
Against this background, American investigators, operating in the framework of the War Crimes Program, began investigations to establish the perpetrators of these crimes. The investigations commenced on 30 April 1945, just one day after the camp's liberation, and were completed on 7 August 1945. Investigators interviewed witnesses, secured evidence and took photographs of the crimes. Many perpetrators were soon caught and interned, including Martin Weiß, predecessor of the last camp commander Eduard Weiter. The investigation report, simply titled Dachau, was completed on 31 August 1945 and formed the basis for the arraignment and thus the Dachau camp trial.
The charge was based on Directive JCS 1023/10 which was issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 15 July 1945. The directive, later replaced by Control Council Law No 10 of 20 December 1945, empowered the American commander-in-chief Dwight D. Eisenhower to conduct military court trials of war criminals in occupied territories. Further decrees regulated jurisdiction and the rights of the accused in military court trials.
The indictment, which was drawn up on 2 November 1945 and subsequently served to the defendants, comprised two main charges, which were brought together under the heading "violation of the customs and laws of war". The defendants were charged with war crimes committed against Allied civilians and (Allied) prisoners of war in the Dachau concentration camp and its satellite camps from early January 1942 to the end of April 1945. Initially, only crimes committed against citizens of the Allies of World War II were prosecuted; German crimes against German citizens were not prosecuted in the aftermath of the war and generally only tried later in German courts. The defendants were accused of having participated unlawfully and intentionally in the mistreatment and killing of Allied civilians and prisoners of war in a coordinated action. In addition to the general participation in the crimes committed in the Dachau Concentration Camp, the bill of indictment also listed specific Exzesstaten that were attributed to individual defendants.
The defendants were accused of joint action (common design), which assumed an approving participation in a system of killings, mistreatment and inhuman neglect. Therefore, the prosecution had to prove that "each of the accused was aware of this system, that he knew about what was happening to the prisoners, and it had to prove to everyone that in his place of administration, the organisation of the camp, he supported this system through his behaviour, his activity, the functioning of this system, he participated in this functioning". If this evidence was provided, the individual sentencing varied according to the nature and extent of an individual's participation. This legal construct, which did not require that individual proof of the offence be provided for a conviction, was foreign to the European legal tradition.
Originally, 42 members of the former camp administration were to be indicted in the Dachau camp trial. However, since Hans Aumeier and Johannes Baier were not present and the indictment could not be served on them, they were removed from the list of defendants at the beginning of the trial. Beier was later sentenced to death in a side trial, but the sentence was commuted to prison. Aumeier was sentenced to death in the Auschwitz trial, following his extradition to Poland. He was executed in Krakow in January 1948. The remaining group of 40 accused comprised 32 members of the camp team, five doctors and three prisoner functionaries who had held leading positions in the camp. Among the 32 members of the camp team were former camp commander Martin Weiß, his adjutant Rudolf Suttrop and Johann Kick, head of the Politische Abteilung. The accused doctors included Claus Schilling, three camp doctors and a military doctor. With the exception of the Austrian Fridolin Karl Puhr and Johann Schöpp, a Volksdeutscher from Romania, all the accused were German citizens.
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Dachau camp trial
The Dachau camp trial (German: Dachau-Hauptprozess) was the first mass trial of the Dachau trials, a series of trials against war criminals held by the United States Army on the premises of the Dachau concentration camp. The main trial took place from 15 November to 13 December 1945. Forty people were charged with war crimes in connection with the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps. The trial ended with 40 convictions, including 36 death sentences, of which 28 were carried out. The official name of the case was United States of America vs. Martin Gottfried Weiss et al. - Case 000-50-2. The main trial served as a "parent case" for 123 subsequent cases. In the subsequent trials, all crimes that were established in the main trial were taken as proven, significantly shortening their duration relative to the parent case. The Dachau trials consisted of 6 total parent trials, each with their own subcases, and were held between 1945 and 1948. In total, there were 489 Dachau trials, of which 394 were held within the confines of the camp itself.
When the United States Army advanced into German-occupied territory during the final phase of the Second World War, its troops were often confronted, sometimes in the middle of battles, with traces of the crimes committed in concentration camps. The care of the mostly emaciated and seriously ill "Muselmänner", and the burial of the thousands of prisoners who had died by exhaustion during death marches or by shooting proved to be a difficult task for the US Army.
Shortly before the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, which took place on 29 April 1945, US soldiers had already reached the satellite camps, including the Kauferinger Camp Complex. Like other subcamps, the subcamp Kaufering IV had been evacuated shortly before the invasion of the US Army on 28 April 1945. During the evacuation, SS men set fire to the barracks. American soldiers found the corpses of about 360 prisoners in Kaufering IV; it is not certain whether these incapacitated marchers were burned alive or had been murdered before. In the main camp, the soldiers first encountered the Buchenwald death train, which had arrived at Dachau on the night of 27–28 April after a 20-day journey from Buchenwald concentration camp. During the journey many of the prisoners had starved to death, and the bodies of approximately 2,000 dead prisoners remained aboard the 40-odd wagons of the train when it was examined by the arriving US soldiers. Members of the US Army also discovered many unburied bodies inside the camp. These and other final phase crimes committed in the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps led to numerous deaths in the last weeks of the war. Even after liberation, more than 2,200 former prisoners died as a result of concentration camp detention and the still rampant typhoid epidemic.
Against this background, American investigators, operating in the framework of the War Crimes Program, began investigations to establish the perpetrators of these crimes. The investigations commenced on 30 April 1945, just one day after the camp's liberation, and were completed on 7 August 1945. Investigators interviewed witnesses, secured evidence and took photographs of the crimes. Many perpetrators were soon caught and interned, including Martin Weiß, predecessor of the last camp commander Eduard Weiter. The investigation report, simply titled Dachau, was completed on 31 August 1945 and formed the basis for the arraignment and thus the Dachau camp trial.
The charge was based on Directive JCS 1023/10 which was issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 15 July 1945. The directive, later replaced by Control Council Law No 10 of 20 December 1945, empowered the American commander-in-chief Dwight D. Eisenhower to conduct military court trials of war criminals in occupied territories. Further decrees regulated jurisdiction and the rights of the accused in military court trials.
The indictment, which was drawn up on 2 November 1945 and subsequently served to the defendants, comprised two main charges, which were brought together under the heading "violation of the customs and laws of war". The defendants were charged with war crimes committed against Allied civilians and (Allied) prisoners of war in the Dachau concentration camp and its satellite camps from early January 1942 to the end of April 1945. Initially, only crimes committed against citizens of the Allies of World War II were prosecuted; German crimes against German citizens were not prosecuted in the aftermath of the war and generally only tried later in German courts. The defendants were accused of having participated unlawfully and intentionally in the mistreatment and killing of Allied civilians and prisoners of war in a coordinated action. In addition to the general participation in the crimes committed in the Dachau Concentration Camp, the bill of indictment also listed specific Exzesstaten that were attributed to individual defendants.
The defendants were accused of joint action (common design), which assumed an approving participation in a system of killings, mistreatment and inhuman neglect. Therefore, the prosecution had to prove that "each of the accused was aware of this system, that he knew about what was happening to the prisoners, and it had to prove to everyone that in his place of administration, the organisation of the camp, he supported this system through his behaviour, his activity, the functioning of this system, he participated in this functioning". If this evidence was provided, the individual sentencing varied according to the nature and extent of an individual's participation. This legal construct, which did not require that individual proof of the offence be provided for a conviction, was foreign to the European legal tradition.
Originally, 42 members of the former camp administration were to be indicted in the Dachau camp trial. However, since Hans Aumeier and Johannes Baier were not present and the indictment could not be served on them, they were removed from the list of defendants at the beginning of the trial. Beier was later sentenced to death in a side trial, but the sentence was commuted to prison. Aumeier was sentenced to death in the Auschwitz trial, following his extradition to Poland. He was executed in Krakow in January 1948. The remaining group of 40 accused comprised 32 members of the camp team, five doctors and three prisoner functionaries who had held leading positions in the camp. Among the 32 members of the camp team were former camp commander Martin Weiß, his adjutant Rudolf Suttrop and Johann Kick, head of the Politische Abteilung. The accused doctors included Claus Schilling, three camp doctors and a military doctor. With the exception of the Austrian Fridolin Karl Puhr and Johann Schöpp, a Volksdeutscher from Romania, all the accused were German citizens.
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