Johann Breyer (May 30, 1925 – July 22, 2014) was a Czech-American tool and die maker and onetime SS-Totenkopfverbände concentration and death camp guard[1] whom the United States Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations (OSI) unsuccessfully attempted to denaturalize and deport for his teenage service in the SS.

He acknowledged serving as an armed guard and escorting prisoners to their work sites and denied any personal role in or witnessing of any atrocities.

[1] Breyer settled in Philadelphia where he raised three children with his wife and worked as a tool and die maker for an engineering company.

The OSI pressured Congress to place a "singular exception into the statute" to "deny application of the law to anyone who would not have been eligible to enter the United States under the DPA.

"[1] As explained by Senator Ted Kennedy at the introduction of the amendment, this was designed to "prevent the possible development of an anomalous situation" that would result in "gender-based discrimination": "the conferring of citizenship on an individual", born abroad to a U.S. citizen mother, "whose wartime activities on behalf of the Nazis could be considered by a federal court to have resulted in his or her" loss of U.S. citizenship had he or she instead been "born abroad of a U.S. citizen father.

[4] It also quoted Holocaust scholar Helmut Krausnick's commentary that any person volunteering to join the SS after 1934 (other than perhaps its almost exclusively military arm, the SS-Verfugungstruppe) would have been aware that he was joining an organization where he would carry out orders that were illegal in nature, and would be committing culpable actions effectively furthering a totalitarian ideology at odds with ethical and lawful behavior and free democratic society.

Under U.S. law in 1942, loyalty oaths and military service with foreign powers were not expatriating if the individual was a minor, as held by the district court.

"Breyer testified that he had done everything possible to be excused from service," he refused the SS blood group tattoo, he deserted in August 1944 and returned "only because he feared he might be killed if he failed to do so.

[1]: 182 The OSI appealed but the Third Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling noting "deserting his unit under what he believed to be penalty of execution suggests that Breyer's service was not voluntary.

"[12] On June 17, 2013, the District Court of Weiden, Germany issued an arrest warrant for Breyer for being an accessory to murder while a guard at Auschwitz.