The Dachau Trials were proceedings against minor war criminals found in the United States sectors of occupation in Germany and Austria, and those accused of committing war crimes against American citizens and military personnel. The trials were conducted by the Dachau Military Tribunal, set up after World War II by the Judge Advocate Department of the U.S. Third Army. The chief prosecutor was William Denson, a 32 year-old US Army lawyer.^[1] Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Shoulder Sleeve Insignia of the U.S. Third Army. ... The United States Army is the largest branch of the armed forces of the United States. ...

Less well known than the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg which tried major German war criminals, the American Military Tribunal at Dachau tried 1,672 German alleged war criminals in 489 separate proceedings. Like the 12 Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, the Dachau trials were overseen exclusively by the United States. They were not part of the International Military Tribunal process, which had judges and prosecutors from the four Allied Occupying Powers. The Nuremberg Trials is the general name for two sets of trials of Nazis involved in World War II and the Holocaust. ... Nuremberg (German: Nürnberg, Polish: Norymberga) is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. ... The main entrance just after the liberation Memorial at the camp, 1997. ... Chief prosecutor Telford Taylor opens the prosecution case in the Krupp Trial The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials (or, more formally, the Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT)) were a series of twelve U.S. military trials for war crimes against surviving members of the military, political, and... The Süddeutsche Zeitung announces The Verdict in Nuremberg. ...

The location of the court, within the Dachau concentration camp, is one of best known of the Nazis' infamous concentration camps, underline the moral corruptness of the regime under which those found guilty of war crimes had operated. The most highly publicised trials at the time and the best remembered are the Malmedy massacre trial when seventy-three Waffen-SS soldiers were found guilty of shooting eighty-four American soldiers during the second day of the Battle of the Bulge; and the trial of Otto Skorzeny and 9 others, all officers in the 150th Panzer Brigad, who were found not guilty of war crimes, arising from members of the brigade who had dressed themselves in American military uniforms to confuse the enemy during the same battle^[2]. The main entrance just after the liberation Memorial at the camp, 1997. ... National Socialism redirects here. ... The Malmedy massacre The Malmedy massacre trial () was held in May–July 1946 in the Dachau concentration camp to try the German Waffen-SS soldiers accused of the Malmedy massacre of December 17, 1944. ... Waffen-SS recruitment poster; Volunteer to the Waffen-SS The Waffen-SS was the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel. ... Combatants United States United Kingdom Germany Commanders Dwight D. Eisenhower Bernard Montgomery Omar N. Bradley George S. Patton, Jr. ... After Operation Greif, Otto Skorzeny was labelled the most dangerous man in Europe Otto Skorzeny (June 12, 1908 - July 6[1] 1975) was an Obersturmbannführer in the German Waffen-SS during World War II. After fighting on the Eastern Front, he is known as the commando leader who rescued...

Some other notable trials by the U.S. military court at Dachau included^[3]:

• The Buchenwald Camp Trial, In this trial, during April, August, 1947, 31 members of the staff of the Buchenwald camp were found guilty of atrocities and 22 were sentenced to death; the rest to imprisonment.
• The Dachau Camp Trials: Forty officials were tried; 36 of the defendants were sentenced to death (13 December 1945), of whom 23 were hanged on either the 28 May or 29 May 1946, including the former commandant Gottfried Weiss and the camp doctor Schilling. Smaller groups of Dachau camp officials and guards were included in several subsequent trials by the U.S. court at Dachau. On 21 November 1946 it was announced that, up to that date, 116 defendants of this category had been convicted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment.
• The Dora-Nordhausen Camp Trial, Twenty-two ex-officials of this camp were placed on trial on 31 July 1947
• The Flossenburg Camp Trial, Fifty-two officials and guards of this camp were tried between 12 June 1946 and 19 January 1947. Forty of the defendants were found guilty; 15 of these were sentenced to be hanged, and 25 to terms of imprisonment.
• The Mauthausen Camp Trials, Sixty-one officials of this camp were tried by a U.S. military court at Dachau in March/April, 1946; 58 defendants were sentenced to death (11 May 1946) and were executed, including the commandant of the Todtenkopf guard.
• The Muehldorf Concentration Camp Trial, five officials of this camp were sentenced to death by a U.S. war crimes court at Dachau on 13 May 1947 and 7 others to imprisonment.
• Viktor Zoller: Ex-commander of the guards at Mauthausen concentration camp. Tried and Sentenced to death in April, 1946; hanged 21 May 1947.
• Josef Kisch: SS-Gruppenführer and former official of Mauthausen camp. Tried and sentenced to death 15 September 1947 for murders of Allied paratroops.
• Hans Moeser: Former commandant of Nordhausen concentration camp. Tried and sentenced to death on 30 December, 1947.
• Kurt Mathesius: Former commandant of Nordhausen. Hanged himself while awaiting trial by a U.S. court at Dachau, May, 1947.
• Jürgen Stroop: he was sentenced to death by the Dachau International Military Tribunal for the summary executions of the Allied airmen in Germany, but extradited to Poland, found guilty of war crimes and executed in Warsaw by the Polish authorities in 1952.

May 28 is the 148th day of the year (149th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... May 29 is the 149th day of the year (150th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... July 31 is the 212th day of the year (213th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... June 12 is the 163rd day of the year (164th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... January 19 is the 19th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... The Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials were a set of two consecutive trials of the German World War II criminals, carried over by the Dachau International Military Tribunal. ... May 11 is the 131st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (132nd in leap years). ... May 13 is the 133rd day of the year (134th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... May 21 is the 141st day of the year (142nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1947 calendar). ... SS-Gruppenführer collar patch SA-Gruppenführer rank insignia Volkssturm Gruppenführer insignia Gruppenführer was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party, first created in 1925 as a senior rank of the SA. Translated as “Group Leader”, a Gruppenführer was typically in charge of large numbers... is the 258th day of the year (259th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1947 calendar). ... December 30 is the 364th day of the year (365th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 1 day remaining. ... Jürgen Stroop in custody Jürgen Stroop, (born Josef Stroop, September 26, 1895 in Detmold – March 6, 1952 in Warsaw), was an SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS und Polizei, who served as the SS and Police Leader of the Poland-Warsaw area during the Warsaw Ghetto...

Notes and references

1. ^ Greene, Joshua (2003). Justice At Dachau: The Trials Of An American Prosecutor. New York: Broadway, 400 pp. ISBN 0767908791. 
2. ^ The trial of Otto Skorzeny and others in the General Military Government Court of the U.S. Zone of Germany.
3. ^ Some Noteworthy War Criminals Source: History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Development of the Laws of War. United Nations War Crimes Commission. London: HMSO, 1948

External links

• Dachau Trials
• United States Law and Practice Concerning Trials of War Criminals by Military Commissions and Military Government Courts. United Nations War Crimes Commission.