[2] Because of the egregiousness of her alleged actions, including that she had selected tattooed prisoners for death in order to fashion lampshades and other items from their skins, her 1947 U.S. military commission court trial at Dachau received worldwide media attention, as did the testimony of survivors who ascribed sadistic and perverse acts of violence to Koch – giving rise to the image of her as "the concentration camp murderess".

However, the most serious of these allegations were found to be without proof in two different legal processes, one conducted by an American military commission court at Dachau in 1947,[3] and another by the West German Judiciary at Augsburg in 1950–1951.

[4] Harold Kuhn and Richard Schneider, two U.S. Army lawyers tasked with conducting the official review of her conviction at Dachau, noted that "in spite of the extravagant statements made in the newspapers, the record contains little convincing evidence against the accused...

[2] Following the war, she was accused of having selected tattooed prisoners to be killed, in order to have decorative objects such as lampshades and book bindings made from their skins.

For example, two inmates, Josef Ackermann and Gustav Wegerer, testified in 1950 that they had witnessed (circa August 1941) a lampshade being prepared from human skin to be presented to Ilse Koch.

[19] While various objects fashioned from human skins were discovered in Buchenwald's pathology department at liberation, their connection to Koch was tenuous, given that she had not been at the camp since the summer of 1943.

The more likely culprit was SS doctor Erich Wagner, who wrote a dissertation while serving at Buchenwald on the purported link he saw between habitual criminality and the practice of tattooing one's skin.

In 1941, Josias von Waldeck-Pyrmont, SS and Police Leader for Weimar, began an internal investigation into Karl-Otto Koch's governance of Buchenwald, as rumors of corruption and embezzlement reached his office.

[21] Morgen's indictment, issued 17 August 1944, formally charged Karl Koch with the "embezzlement and concealing of funds and goods in an amount of at least 200,000 RM," and the "premeditated murder" of three inmates - ostensibly to prevent them from giving evidence to the SS investigatory commission.

Following the trial, Ilse Koch was released after sixteen months in the Gestapo prison in Weimar, and moved with her two children into a small flat in Ludwigsburg.

[23] Following her arrest by American occupation authorities, Koch was chosen to stand trial alongside 30 other defendants accused of having committed war crimes at Buchenwald.

The defendants would be tried by an American military court at Dachau in 1947 and be prosecuted by Lt. Col. William Denson for the single charge of "participating in a common design to commit war crimes.

"[24] According to this expansive charge, the prosecution was not required to show that Koch or any of her codefendants had committed any specific act of violence or atrocity, but only that they had in some fashion aided and abetted the functioning of the murderous criminal enterprise that was Buchenwald.

[3] Following Koch's conviction at Dachau, her sentence was subjected to various levels of mandatory judicial review, before going to Gen. Lucius D. Clay, the interim military governor of the American Zone in Germany, for final approval.

First to review Koch's case were two lawyers in the office of the Deputy Judge Advocate for War Crimes, Harold Kuhn and Richard Schneider.

"[30] The reduction of Koch's sentence to four years resulted in an uproar, when it was made public on 16 September 1948, but Clay stood firm by his decision.

Editorial pages in major newspapers asked whether the US Army had lost its capacity for sound judgment, while continuing to assert that Koch was a sexual deviant who had killed prisoners for their skins.

"[32] Ed Sullivan, writing for the New York News, pondered whether "the Army reduced [Koch's] sentence... so she could get back into the lampshade business.

Rallies were organized by both veterans associations and the American Jewish Congress,[2] while General Clay, who visited the United States in the midst of the controversy, was picketed by protesters, some of whom carried lampshades and demanded his removal from European command.

The Senate investigation, led by Homer S. Ferguson, culminated in hearings at which major participants at Koch's Dachau trial were called to testify.

"[36] It was, the report concluded, "highly important that Ilse Koch receive the just punishment she so justly deserves without further doing violence to long-established safe-guards of democratic justice..."[37] At the urging of the U.S. government, the West German judiciary put Koch on trial for crimes against German nationals, something over which the American military court at Dachau had not had jurisdiction.

[43] In its written judgment, the Augsburg court labeled Koch's crimes at Buchenwald particularly egregious because she "consciously suppressed any feeling of compassion and pity she had as a woman...," but instead gave "free rein to her pursuit of power and prestige, her arrogance and her selfishness.

[46] In addition, Ilse Koch conceived another child with a fellow German war crimes internee under murky circumstances while awaiting her trial at Dachau.