Wilhelm Dörr was born in the town of Merenberg, Hesse on February 9, 1921, and raised in Emmerichenhain (Rennerod) where he worked primarily as a farmhand.

At Kleinbodungen, Dörr helped manage roughly 620 camp inmates used as slave-laborers in Mittelwerk, the armaments production facility used to manufacture Germany's V-2 ballistic missiles.

Dörr was one of 45 SS men who led a brutal death march of hundreds of Kleinbodungen inmates to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony.

During the journey the SS conducted numerous summary executions of prisoners who attempted to escape or otherwise slowed the progress of the march.

Dörr was tried along with 45 other alleged war criminals before a British military court in Lüneburg as part of the so-called Belsen Trial.