The Dachau Defendants

The Dachau Defendants PDF Author: Fern Overbey Hilton
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786417684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
In the 489 Dachau trials, 1700 criminals of Nazi Germany faced American justice. Held in the old administration building of the defunct concentration camp, they began just weeks after the capitulation in 1945 and were completed on December 30, 1947. The defendants varied from major figures in the Reich, to doctors, engineers, and teachers, to farmers, students, and villagers. The crimes include the abuse or murder of downed American airmen and atrocities committed against victims of all nationalities in the concentration camps and transports. This study concentrates on a selection of the trials that show a broad group of representative crimes and lend themselves to an understanding of World War II German culture. In proving that the average citizen could be as devoted a contributor to the Nazi cause as Hitler, it hopes to reveal something about those who would not stand up to him, who tolerated him, or who joined him. It addresses the disturbing reality that most atrocities committed in the Hitler era were the result of personal decisions made by others than the dictator. Written from primary source documents such as letters, testimony, petitions, military records, physical evidence, and the official files and reviews of the trials, the case descriptions also provide defendants' personal details: upbringing, family life, education, career choices, their behavior during the trials, and their lives afterward. The study concludes with an appendix of all cases by number and defendant, divided by series, and a bibliography. It is illustrated with mug shots of the defendants and photographs of relevant sites and events.

The Dachau Defendants

The Dachau Defendants PDF Author: Fern Overbey Hilton
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786417684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
In the 489 Dachau trials, 1700 criminals of Nazi Germany faced American justice. Held in the old administration building of the defunct concentration camp, they began just weeks after the capitulation in 1945 and were completed on December 30, 1947. The defendants varied from major figures in the Reich, to doctors, engineers, and teachers, to farmers, students, and villagers. The crimes include the abuse or murder of downed American airmen and atrocities committed against victims of all nationalities in the concentration camps and transports. This study concentrates on a selection of the trials that show a broad group of representative crimes and lend themselves to an understanding of World War II German culture. In proving that the average citizen could be as devoted a contributor to the Nazi cause as Hitler, it hopes to reveal something about those who would not stand up to him, who tolerated him, or who joined him. It addresses the disturbing reality that most atrocities committed in the Hitler era were the result of personal decisions made by others than the dictator. Written from primary source documents such as letters, testimony, petitions, military records, physical evidence, and the official files and reviews of the trials, the case descriptions also provide defendants' personal details: upbringing, family life, education, career choices, their behavior during the trials, and their lives afterward. The study concludes with an appendix of all cases by number and defendant, divided by series, and a bibliography. It is illustrated with mug shots of the defendants and photographs of relevant sites and events.

Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials

Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials PDF Author: John J. Dunphy
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476695407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
The U.S. Army 7708 War Crimes Group investigated atrocities committed in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. These young Americans--many barely out of their teens--gathered evidence, interviewed witnesses, apprehended suspects and prosecuted defendants at trials held at Dachau. Their work often put them in harm's way--some suspects facing arrest preferred to shoot it out. The War Crimes Group successfully prosecuted the perpetrators of the Malmedy Massacre, in which 84 American prisoners of war were shot by their German captors; and Waffen-SS commando Otto Skorzeny, aptly described as "the most dangerous man in Europe." Operation Paperclip, however, placed some war criminals--scientists and engineers recruited by the U.S. government--beyond their reach. From the ruins of the Third Reich arose a Nazi underground that preyed on Americans, especially members of the Group.

Innocent at Dachau

Innocent at Dachau PDF Author: Joseph Halow
Publisher: Legion for the Survival of Freedom
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
"American teenager Joe Halow was still a boy when he sailed to war-ravaged Germany in late 1946. The year he spent there, taking part in some of the most sensational of the war-crime trials of the defeated Nazis, turned him into a man. Innocent at Dachau is Joe Halow's account of his year in postwar Germany, above all his work as a court reporter during the U.S. Army courts-martial at Dachau. There Halow witnessed, recorded and transcribed some of the most gripping testimony from some of the most sensational trials of the postwar years: of SS guards from Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Dora/Nordhausen; of the inmates who carried out their orders as kapos (prisoner trusties); and of German villagers who attacked and murdered downed American fliers in the last phase of the Allies' terrifying air war. Armed with an ironclad faith in American righteousness when he arrived, young Halow soon saw the flaws and the abuses in the Dachau trials: reliance on ex post facto law and broad conspiracy theories; abuse of prisoners during interrogation; and the shocking tolerance, even encouragement, of perjured testimony by concentration camp survivors. The teenaged American court reporter came to sympathize with the plight of the accused, particularly those convicted, sentenced or executed unjustly. Innocent at Dachau is Joe Halow's story of his coming of age, his loss of innocence, in the Dachau courts. And it's the human drama of how he came to terms with his own anti-German feelings as he loved and worked in a Germany still heaped with rubble and ruled by the black market, in the shadow of the looming Iron Curtain and the approaching Cold War. Innocent at Dachau is also the story of how, four decades later, Joe Halow went back - back to the long-classified records of the Army's trials at Dachau, where he found astounding confirmation, from official sources, of his own misgivings about the trials; and back to Germany, for a moving visit with one of the German SS men Joe Halow watched testify about his role at the Nordhausen concentration camp."--Provided by publisher.

Justice at Dachau

Justice at Dachau PDF Author: Joshua Greene
Publisher: Broadway Books
ISBN: 0307419053
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
The world remembers Nuremberg, where a handful of Nazi policymakers were brought to justice, but nearly forgotten are the proceedings at Dachau, where hundreds of Nazi guards, officers, and doctors stood trial for personally taking part in the torture and execution of prisoners inside the Dachau, Mauthausen, Flossenburg, and Buchenwald concentration camps. In Justice at Dachau, Joshua M. Greene, maker of the award winning documentary film Witness: Voices from the Holocaust, recreates the Dachau trials and reveals the dramatic story of William Denson, a soft-spoken young lawyer from Alabama whisked from teaching law at West Point to leading the prosecution in the largest series of Nazi trials in history. In a makeshift courtroom set up inside Hitler’s first concentration camp, Denson was charged with building a team from lawyers who had no background in war crimes and determining charges for crimes that courts had never before confronted. Among the accused were Dr. Klaus Schilling, responsible for hundreds of deaths in his “research” for a cure for malaria; Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen, a Harvard psychologist turned Gestapo informant; and one of history’s most notorious female war criminals, Ilse Koch, “Bitch of Buchenwald,” whose penchant for tattooed skins and human bone lamps made headlines worldwide. Denson, just thirty-two years old, with one criminal trial to his name, led a brilliant and successful prosecution, but nearly two years of exposure to such horrors took its toll. His wife divorced him, his weight dropped to 116 pounds, and he collapsed from exhaustion. Worst of all was the pressure from his army superiors to bring the trials to a rapid end when their agenda shifted away from punishing Nazis to winning the Germans’ support in the emerging Cold War. Denson persevered, determined to create a careful record of responsibility for the crimes of the Holocaust. When, in a final shocking twist, the United States used clandestine reversals and commutation of sentences to set free those found guilty at Dachau, Denson risked his army career to try to prevent justice from being undone. From the Hardcover edition.

The Malmedy Massacre

The Malmedy Massacre PDF Author: Steven P. Remy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674971957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
During the Battle of the Bulge, Waffen SS soldiers shot 84 American prisoners near Malmedy, Belgium—the deadliest mass execution of U.S. soldiers during World War II. Drawing on newly declassified documents, Steven Remy revisits the massacre and the most infamously controversial war crimes trial in American history, to set the record straight.

The Mauthausen Trial

The Mauthausen Trial PDF Author: Tomaz Jardim
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674264738
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Shortly after 9:00 a.m. on May 27, 1947, the first of forty-nine men condemned to death for war crimes at Mauthausen concentration camp mounted the gallows at Landsberg prison near Munich. The mass execution that followed resulted from an American military trial conducted at Dachau in the spring of 1946—a trial that lasted only thirty-six days and yet produced more death sentences than any other in American history. The Mauthausen trial was part of a massive series of proceedings designed to judge and punish Nazi war criminals in the most expedient manner the law would allow. There was no doubt that the crimes had been monstrous. Yet despite meting out punishment to a group of incontestably guilty men, the Mauthausen trial reveals a troubling and seldom-recognized face of American postwar justice—one characterized by rapid proceedings, lax rules of evidence, and questionable interrogations. Although the better-known Nuremberg trials are often regarded as epitomizing American judicial ideals, these trials were in fact the exception to the rule. Instead, as Tomaz Jardim convincingly demonstrates, the rough justice of the Mauthausen trial remains indicative of the most common—and yet least understood—American approach to war crimes prosecution. The Mauthausen Trial forces reflection on the implications of compromising legal standards in order to guarantee that guilty people do not walk free.

Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust

Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust PDF Author: Michael J. Bazyler
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479886068
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
"In the wake of the Second World War, how were the Allies to respond to the enormous crime of the Holocaust? Even in an ideal world, it would have been impossible to bring all the perpetrators to trial. Nevertheless, an attempt was made to prosecute some. Most people have heard of the Nuremberg trial and the Eichmann trial, though they probably have not heard of the Kharkov Trial--the first trial of Germans for Nazi-era crimes--or even the Dachau Trials, in which war criminals were prosecuted by the American military personnel on the former concentration camp grounds. This book uncovers ten "forgotten trials" of the Holocaust, selected from the many Nazi trials that have taken place over the course of the last seven decades. It showcases how perpetrators of the Holocaust were dealt with in courtrooms around the world--in the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, Israel, France, Poland, the United States and Germany--revealing how different legal systems responded to the horrors of the Holocaust. The book provides a graphic picture of the genocidal campaign against the Jews through eyewitness testimony and incriminating documents and traces how the public memory of the Holocaust was formed over time. The volume covers a variety of trials--of high-ranking statesmen and minor foot soldiers, of male and female concentration camps guards and even trials in Israel of Jewish Kapos--to provide the first global picture of the laborious efforts to bring perpetrators of the Holocaust to justice. As law professors and litigators, the authors provide distinct insights into these trials. "--

Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials

Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials PDF Author: P. Weindling
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230506054
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
This book offers a radically new and definitive reappraisal of Allied responses to Nazi human experiments and the origins of informed consent. It places the victims and Allied Medical Intelligence officers at centre stage, while providing a full reconstruction of policies on war crimes and trials related to Nazi medical atrocities and genocide.

Doctors from Hell

Doctors from Hell PDF Author: Vivien Spitz
Publisher: Sentient Publications
ISBN: 1591810329
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
A chilling story of human depravity and ultimate justice, told for the first time by an eyewitness court reporter for the Nuremberg war crimes trial of Nazi doctors. This is the account of 22 men and 1 woman and the torturing and killing by experiment they authorized in the name of scientific research and patriotism. Doctors from Hell includes trial transcripts that have not been easily available to the general public and previously unpublished photographs used as evidence in the trial. The author describes the experience of being in bombed-out, dangerous, post-war Nuremberg, where she lived for two years while working on the trial. Once a Nazi sympathizer tossed bombs into the dining room of the hotel where she lived moments before she arrived for dinner. She takes us into the courtroom to hear the dramatic testimony and see the reactions of the defendants to the proceedings. This landmark trial resulted in the establishment of the Nuremberg code, which set the guidelines for medical research involving human beings. A significant addition to the literature on World War II and the Holocaust, medical ethics, human rights, and the barbaric depths to which human beings can descend.

Dachau

Dachau PDF Author: Colonel William W. Quinn
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786254476
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Book Description
Written by the staff of the U.S. 7th Army soon after its liberation, this report stands as evidence of some of the worst crimes of the Holocaust. The images contained within also document the inhuman suffering inflicted at Dachau. “DACHAU, 1933-1945, will stand for all time as one of history’s most gruesome symbols of inhumanity. There our troops found sights, sounds and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind. DACHAU and death were synonymous. No words or pictures can carry the full impact of these unbelievable scenes but this report presents some of the outstanding facts and photographs in order to emphasize the type of crime which elements of the SS committed thousands of times a day, to remind us of the ghastly capabilities of certain classes of men, to strengthen our determination that they and their works shall vanish from the earth. The sections comprising this report were prepared by the agencies indicated. They remain substantially as they were originally submitted in the belief that to consolidate this material in a single literary style would seriously weaken its realism.”-Foreword.