Hans Hofmeyer led the "criminal case against Mulka and others"[This quote needs a citation] (reference number 4 Ks 3/63) as chief judge.

SS-Sturmbannführer Richard Baer, the last camp commandant, died in detention while still under investigation as part of the trials.

Proceedings began in the Bürgerhaus Gallus, in Frankfurt am Main, which was converted into a courthouse for that purpose, and remained there until their conclusion.

Hessian State Attorney General (Generalstaatsanwalt) Fritz Bauer, himself briefly interned in 1933 at the Heuberg concentration camp, led the prosecution.

Bauer was concerned with pursuing individual defendants serving at Auschwitz-Birkenau; only 22 SS members were charged of an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 thought to have been involved in the administration and operation of the camp.

[7] The term executive decision-maker was thus defined by the courts to apply only to the highest levels of the Reich leadership during the National Socialist period, and that all who just followed orders when killing were just accomplices to murder.

[6] Bauer is said to have been opposed in the former purpose by the young Helmut Kohl, then a junior member of the Christian Democratic Union.

[citation needed] The historians from the institute that served as expert witnesses for the prosecution were Helmut Krausnick, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Hans Buchheim, and Martin Broszat.

[6] Bauer wrote that the way that the media had portrayed the trial had supported the,[6] wishful fantasy that there were only a few people with responsibility ... and the rest were merely terrorized, violated hangers-on, compelled to do things completely contrary to their true nature.Furthermore, Bauer charged that the judges, in convicting the accused, had made it appear that Germany in the Nazi era had been an occupied country, with most Germans having no choice but to follow orders.

[9] From 1966 to 1966, three more SS men who had served at Auschwitz were tried: Wilhelm Burger, [de ] Josef Erber, and Gerhard Neubert.

[10] In September 1977, an additional trial was held in Frankfurt against two former members of the SS, Unterscharführer Horst Czerwinski  [de] and Sturmmann Josef Schmidt, for killings in the Auschwitz satellite camp of Lagischa (Polish: Łagisza), and on the so-called "evacuation" (i.e. death march) from Goleszów (Golleschau) to Wodzisław Śląski (Loslau).