Dachau camp trial
[3] 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",[a] 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.
These and other final phase crimes [de] committed in the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps led to numerous deaths in the last weeks of the war.
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.
[8] 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 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[b] that were attributed to individual defendants.
[9] The defendants were accused of joint action (common design), which assumed an approving participation in a system of killings, mistreatment and inhuman neglect.
However, since Hans Aumeier and Johannes Baier [de] 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.
We expect the evidence to show that the victims of this planned extermination were civilians and prisoners of war, individuals unwilling to submit themselves to the yoke of Nazism.
Further, we expect to show that during the time that Germany overran Europe, these people were subjected to utterly inhuman treatment, and that each of these accused constituted a cog in this machine of extermination.
Among the 69 witnesses for the prosecution were former prisoners and officers of the U.S. Army who had been involved in the liberation of Dachau concentration camp and the documentation of the crimes committed there.
Former prisoners then testified to the inhumane living conditions the camp, including clothing [de], nutrition, accommodation, forced labour, epidemics, medical experiments, selections and executions, mistreatment and killings.
The commandant's staff were accused of bearing the primary responsibility for the disastrous conditions in the camp, thus enabling the system of killings, mistreatment and inhumane neglect.
Even after his retirement in 1936, Schilling continued his research work and was able to convince Heinrich Himmler of the necessity of developing a malaria vaccine for the war.
From February 1942 to early April 1945, 1,000 to 1,200 concentration camp prisoners were deliberately infected with malaria and subsequently treated with drugs on a trial basis.
[20] The defence lawyers attacked the allegation of common design, stating that it was not part of European legal tradition and claiming that it had been applied to the defendants in an arbitrary manner.
They further claimed that in some cases false witness statements had been used in court and that the fact that some defendants had been involuntarily called to serve in the camp had not been taken into account.
According to some of the petitions for clemency, Schilling was a passionate researcher who had not deliberately planned the death of test subjects during his series of experiments, but on the contrary had wanted to save lives.
In the review proceedings, the defence sought an acquittal for the defendants Mahl, Becher, Knoll, Schöpp, Gretsch, Lausterer, Betz, Suttrop, Puhr, Witteler and Eisele.
[23] During the cassation proceedings, which went through two review bodies, the individual participation of the accused in the acts committed jointly played a significant role.
In the case of Mahl, his comprehensive willingness to testify taken into account; the courts also considered his participation in the crimes to be less severe than for the other two prisoner functionaries.
The trials were intended to initiate a process of collective reflection among the German population in order to establish a culture of rule of law and democracy in post-war Germany.
The highly symbolic site of Dachau, the collective shock of the news and recordings of the violent crimes in the concentration camps had a re-educative effect during the early post-war period in Germany, as is evidenced in contemporary media publications.
However, the initial shock at the atrocities in the concentration camps was followed by repression and a sense of solidarity with the Landsberg prisoners in large sections of the German population.
The trials mainly dealt with the mistreatment and killing of Allied prisoners committed in Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps.
[30] Three of the 121 secondary proceedings require special attention, as they concerned a former camp commander and his adjudant, an SS doctor as well as a Rapportführer whose death sentence attracted nationwide attention: Georg Schallermair war als Führer eines Rollkommandos direkt für die Gefangenen in Mühldorf, einem Nebenlager von Dachau, verantwortlich.
Von 300 Menschen, die im Herbst 1944 in das Lager gebracht wurden, waren nach vier Monaten nur 72 am Leben.
Täglich besuchte er mit einem gefangenen Zahnarzt das Leichenhaus, um den Toten die Goldzähne auszubrechen.
Es gibt keine Tatsachen oder Argumente, die in diesem Falle Gnade in irgendeiner Weise rechtfertigen könnten.
