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The Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials were a set of trials of SS concentration camp personnel following World War II, heard by an American military government court at Dachau. Between March 29 and May 13, 1946, and then from August 6 to August 21, 1947, a total of 69 former camp personnel were tried. Among them were some of the former guards at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp system and August Eigruber, a former Gauleiter of Upper Austria.
In 1942, overwhelming reports of German atrocities and large scale massacres against concentration camp inhabitants came to surface from exiled governments and Jewish organizations. With increased tension from the public and overwhelming evidence, the Allied powers being the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union had no choice but to intervene. The Allied powers issued a statement condemning the actions of those involved and promising to bring each and every SS personnel to justice with no chance of dismissal. The Allied nations' foreign ministers met in Russia a year later and were better known as ‘The Big Three’. Those who committed war crimes were broken up into two war crimes categories. These groups were divided by those with no particular geographic location who would be punished by the Allies, and those who committed crimes within a specific location who would be tried in courts within their jurisdiction. The United States involvement within the trials had difficulties ranging from a lack of international policy knowledge and being understaffed, which led to pure chaos. Those sent to investigate the war crimes lacked proper training which yielded reports with sub-par information. The U.S. encountered countless obstacles. Ultimately in 1945, the United States committed to two distinct war crimes trial programs, one under American military jurisdiction and one in collaboration with the Allied powers. [1]
The first trial of personnel from Mauthausen-Gusen took place in the Dachau concentration camp between March 29 and May 13, 1946. Among the accused were 60 former members of the camp's administration and August Eigruber, a former Gauleiter of Upper Austria. Among the defendants were also Viktor Zoller (former commander of the SS-Totenkopfverbande guard battalion), and doctors Friedrich Entress (an SS member and a medic who practiced medical experiments on hundreds of inmates; killing most of them with injections of phenol), Eduard Krebsbach and Erich Wasicky handed the Zyklon B to the person who was responsible for running camp's gas chambers who was Dr. Eduard Krebsbach based on the deathbed confession of Commander Ziereis. The Mauthausen-Gusen commander, Franz Ziereis, was shot several weeks after the liberation of the Mauthausen-Gusen camps and died in former Camp Gusen I on May 24, 1945.
The defendants were charged with "violations of the laws and usages of war," a charge which encompassed among other things murder, torture, beating and starving the inmates. [1] After six weeks all 61 defendants were found guilty. 58 were sentenced to death by hanging (9 were had their sentences were changed to life imprisonment and were later paroled), while three others were sentenced to life imprisonment. All but one of the death sentences were carried out on May 27 and May 28 of 1947 at Landsberg Prison. The sole exception was Otto Striegel, who won a last-minute stay of execution. Striegel was hanged on June 20, 1947. [2]
The defendants of the first Mauthausen camp trial (US v. Hans Altfuldisch, et al.), and their sentences, are as follows:
The second Mauthausen camp trial started on August 6, 1947. Altogether 8 former members of the camp's administration were accused of the same set of crimes as in the former trial. On August 21 the verdict was reached. Four Nazis were sentenced to death by hanging, one for life imprisonment, two for short-term sentences and one was acquitted of all the charges. Three of the death sentences were carried out on November 19, 1948. The death sentence against Michael Heller was reduced to life in prison in 1949.
The defendants of the second Mauthausen camp trial (US v. Franz Kofler, et al. ), and their sentences, are as follows:
An additional 56 trials took place between March and November 1947 within the framework of the Mauthausen cases of individuals or small groups.
Mauthausen was a German Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany. The three Gusen concentration camps in and around the village of St. Georgen/Gusen, just a few kilometres from Mauthausen, held a significant proportion of prisoners within the camp complex, at times exceeding the number of prisoners at the Mauthausen main camp.
German Earth and Stone Works was an SS-owned company created to procure and manufacture building materials for state construction projects in Nazi Germany. DEST was a subsidiary company of Amtsgruppe W of SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (WVHA). Both Amt. W and the WVHA were headed by Waffen-SS generals Oswald Pohl and Georg Lörner.
The subsequent Nuremberg trials were twelve military tribunals for war crimes committed by the leaders of Nazi Germany (1933–1945). The Nuremberg Military Tribunals occurred after the Nuremberg trials, held by the International Military Tribunal, which concluded in October 1946. The subsequent Nuremberg trials were held by U.S. military courts and dealt with the cases of crimes against humanity committed by the business community of Nazi Germany, specifically the crimes of using slave labor and plundering occupied countries, and the war-crime cases of Wehrmacht officers who committed atrocities against Allied prisoners of war, partisans, and guerrillas.
Franz Xaver Ziereis was the commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp from 1939 until the camp was liberated by the American forces in 1945.
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.
August Eigruber was an Austrian-born Nazi Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Reichsgau Oberdonau and Landeshauptmann of Upper Austria. He was convicted of war crimes at Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and hanged.
The Stutthof trials were a series of war crime tribunals held in postwar Poland for the prosecution of Stutthof concentration camp staff and officials, responsible for the murder of up to 85,000 prisoners during the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in World War II. None of the Stutthof commandants were ever tried in Poland. SS-Sturmbannführer Max Pauly was put on trial by a British military court in Germany but not for the crimes committed at Stutthof; only as the commandant of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg. Nevertheless, Pauly was executed in 1946.
Eduard Krebsbach was a former German physician and SS doctor in the Nazi concentration camp in Mauthausen from July 1941 to August 1943. He was executed for atrocities committed at the Mauthausen camp.
Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe, abbreviated DWB, was a project launched by Nazi Germany in World War II. Organised and managed by the Allgemeine SS, its aim was to profit from the use of slave labour extracted from the Nazi concentration camp inmates.
The two Treblinka trials concerning the Treblinka extermination camp personnel began in 1964. Held at Düsseldorf in West Germany, they were the two judicial trials in a series of similar war crime trials held during the early 1960s, such as the Jerusalem Adolf Eichmann trial (1961) and the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials (1963–65), as a result of which the general public came to realize the extent of the crimes that some two decades earlier had been perpetrated in occupied Poland by German bureaucrats and their willing executioners. In the subsequent years, separate trials dealt with personnel of the Bełżec (1963–65), Sobibor (1966), and Majdanek (1975–81) extermination camps.
The Dora Trial, also the "Dora"-Nordhausen or Dachau Dora Proceeding was a war crimes trial conducted by the United States Army in the aftermath of the collapse of the Third Reich. It took place between August 7 and December 30, 1947, on the site of the former Dachau concentration camp, Germany.
The Majdanek trials were a series of consecutive war-crime trials held in Poland and in Germany during and after World War II, constituting the overall longest Nazi war crimes trial in history spanning over 30 years. The first judicial trial of Majdanek extermination camp officials took place from November 27, 1944, to December 2, 1944, in Lublin, Poland. The last one, held at the District Court of Düsseldorf began on November 26, 1975, and concluded on June 30, 1981. It was West Germany's longest and most expensive trial, lasting 474 sessions.
Friedrich Karl Hermann Entress was a German camp doctor in various concentration and extermination camps during the Second World War. He conducted human medical experimentation at Auschwitz and introduced the procedure there of injecting lethal doses of phenol directly into the hearts of prisoners. He was captured by the Allies in 1945, sentenced to death at the Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials, and executed in 1947.
Hans Maršálek was an Austrian typesetter, political activist, detective, historian, and suspected spy for the Soviet Union. A devout socialist and active in the resistance, he was arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp. After the war, he joined the Austrian political police and was instrumental in tracking down and convicting numerous Nazi criminals. He also became the main chronicler of the camp's history, helped establish the Mauthausen Memorial Museum, and published several books.
Adolf Zutter was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer at Mauthausen concentration camp, who was tried and executed for war crimes. Zutter, a member of the NSDAP and the SS, was from 27 September 1939 to the beginning of May 1945 a member of the camp staff of KZ Mauthausen. From 27 September 1939 to the spring of 1942 he worked as Kommandoführer in Wien Graben and then as commander of the guards until June 1942. From June 1942 to early May 1945, he was adjutant under the Nazi concentration camp commandant Franz Ziereis in Mauthausen concentration camp.
Gusen was a subcamp of Mauthausen concentration camp operated by the SS between the villages of Sankt Georgen an der Gusen and Langestein in the Reichsgau Ostmark. Primarily populated by Polish prisoners, there were also large numbers of Spanish Republicans, Soviet citizens, and Italians. Initially, prisoners worked in nearby quarries, producing granite which was sold by the SS company DEST.
The Dachau camp trial 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.
Wilhelm Jobst, aka Willi Jobst and Willibald Jobst, was a German physician and convicted Nazi war criminal who held the rank of SS Hauptsturmführer as a concentration camp doctor.
Emil Erwin Mahl was a Kapo in the crematorium of the Nazi Dachau concentration camp. Known as "the Hangman of Dachau", he was sentenced to death after the war, but this was commuted to a 10-year prison sentence.