The Dachau camp trial (German: Dachau-Hauptprozess) was the first mass trial of the Dachau trials, a series of trials against war criminals held by the United States Army on the premises of the Dachau concentration camp. The main trial took place from 15 November to 13 December 1945. Forty people were charged with war crimes in connection with the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps. The trial ended with 40 convictions, including 36 death sentences, of which 28 were carried out. The official name of the case was United States of America vs. Martin Gottfried Weiss et al. - Case 000-50-2. The main trial served as a "parent case" for 123 subsequent cases. In the subsequent trials, all crimes that were established in the main trial were taken as proven, significantly shortening their duration relative to the parent case. The Dachau trials consisted of 6 total parent trials, each with their own subcases, and were held between 1945 and 1948. In total, there were 489 Dachau trials, of which 394 were held within the confines of the camp itself.
Background
When the United States Army advanced into German-occupied territory during the final phase of the Second World War, its troops were often confronted, sometimes in the middle of battles, with traces of the crimes committed in concentration camps. The care of the mostly emaciated and seriously ill "Muselmänner", and the burial of the thousands of prisoners who had died by exhaustion during death marches or by shooting proved to be a difficult task for the US Army.
Shortly before the , which took place on 29 April 1945, US soldiers had already reached the satellite camps, including the Kauferinger Camp Complex. Like other subcamps, the subcamp Kaufering IV had been evacuated shortly before the invasion of the US Army on 28 April 1945. During the evacuation, SS men set fire to the barracks. American soldiers found the corpses of about 360 prisoners in Kaufering IV; it is not certain whether these incapacitated marchers were burned alive or had been murdered before. In the main camp, the soldiers first encountered the , which had arrived at Dachau on the night of 27–28 April after a 20-day journey from Buchenwald concentration camp. During the journey many of the prisoners had starved to death, and the bodies of approximately 2,000 dead prisoners remained aboard the 40-odd wagons of the train when it was examined by the arriving US soldiers. Members of the US Army also discovered many unburied bodies inside the camp. These and other committed in the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps led to numerous deaths in the last weeks of the war. Even after liberation, more than 2,200 former prisoners died as a result of concentration camp detention and the still rampant typhoid epidemic.
Against this background, American investigators, operating in the framework of the , began investigations to establish the perpetrators of these crimes. The investigations commenced on 30 April 1945, just one day after the camp's liberation, and were completed on 7 August 1945. Investigators interviewed witnesses, secured evidence and took photographs of the crimes. Many perpetrators were soon caught and interned, including Martin Weiß, predecessor of the last camp commander Eduard Weiter. The investigation report, simply titled Dachau, was completed on 31 August 1945 and formed the basis for the arraignment and thus the Dachau camp trial.
Legal basis and indictment The charge was based on Directive JCS 1023/10 which was issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 15 July 1945. The directive, later replaced by Control Council Law No 10 of 20 December 1945, empowered the American commander-in-chief Dwight D. Eisenhower to conduct military court trials of war criminals in occupied territories. Further decrees regulated jurisdiction and the rights of the accused in military court trials.; ;
The indictment, which was drawn up on 2 November 1945 and subsequently served to the defendants, comprised two main charges, which were brought together under the heading "violation of the customs and laws of war". The defendants were charged with war crimes committed against Allied civilians and (Allied) prisoners of war in the Dachau concentration camp and its satellite camps from early January 1942 to the end of April 1945. Initially, only crimes committed against citizens of the Allies of World War II were prosecuted; German crimes against German citizens were not prosecuted in the aftermath of the war and generally only tried later in German courts. The defendants were accused of having participated unlawfully and intentionally in the mistreatment and killing of Allied civilians and prisoners of war in a coordinated action. In addition to the general participation in the crimes committed in the Dachau Concentration Camp, the bill of indictment also listed specific Exzesstaten that were attributed to individual defendants.;
The defendants were accused of joint action (common design), which assumed an approving participation in a system of killings, mistreatment and inhuman neglect. Therefore, the prosecution had to prove that "each of the accused was aware of this system, that he knew about what was happening to the prisoners, and it had to prove to everyone that in his place of administration, the organisation of the camp, he supported this system through his behaviour, his activity, the functioning of this system, he participated in this functioning". If this evidence was provided, the individual sentencing varied according to the nature and extent of an individual's participation. This legal construct, which did not require that individual proof of the offence be provided for a conviction, was foreign to the European legal tradition.
Originally, 42 members of the former camp administration were to be indicted in the Dachau camp trial. However, since Hans Aumeier and were not present and the indictment could not be served on them, they were removed from the list of defendants at the beginning of the trial. Beier was later sentenced to death in a side trial, but the sentence was commuted to prison. Aumeier was sentenced to death in the Auschwitz trial, following his extradition to Poland. He was executed in Krakow in January 1948. The remaining group of 40 accused comprised 32 members of the camp team, five doctors and three prisoner functionaries who had held leading positions in the camp. Among the 32 members of the camp team were former camp commander Martin Weiß, his adjutant and , head of the Politische Abteilung. The accused doctors included Claus Schilling, three camp doctors and a military doctor. With the exception of the Austrian and , a Volksdeutscher from Romania, all the accused were German citizens.
Trial and judgment
On 30 October 1945, U.S. Army headquarters ordered the establishment of a military tribunal to conduct the Dachau trial. The tribunal was set up on 2 November 1945. It was presided by major general John M. Lentz, who, like his seven associate judges, wore a uniform during the trial. The prosecution, led by Attorney General William Denson, was composed of a total of four American officers. The defence was supported by five American officers and the German lawyer Hans von Posern. Since the language of the court was English, interpreters had to translate the proceedings. Trial observers from Allied states were to take part in the proceedings.;
The proceedings were opened on 15 November 1945 at 10 a.m., with the prosecution outlining the allegations against the accused. The military judges then established the lawfulness of the court and its jurisdiction over the defendants. The conclusion of the initial phase of the trial was interrupted by two motions for dismissal by the defence. The first motion challenged the jurisdiction of the court. The second claimed that the period during which the crimes had been committed was not defined precisely enough. A third motion referred to the small number of defence lawyers relative to the 40 defendants, claiming that in the case of individual defendants making incriminating statements about their co-defendants, the establishment of an effective defence strategy would be significantly impeded. Hence, they asked for the trial to be split into individual trials. The tribunal dismissed all three motions. It held that the court's jurisdiction was based on the defendants' status as war criminals who were not covered by laws governing the treatment of prisoners of war because the crimes had been committed before they were taken into custody. The second motion was rejected on the grounds that the accused were not primarily charged with individual crimes, but with jointly committing a crime. The motion for division of the proceedings into individual trials was dismissed for the same reason.;
The chairman then read out the indictment and explained the rights of the accused in the proceedings. When asked how they plead, the defendants all answered "not guilty". The prosecution then outlined its view of facts of the case and presented evidence. Among the 139 pieces of admitted evidence were 60 photographs, the camp's death books from 1941 and 1942, other incriminating documents and the defendants' testimony. Among the 69 witnesses for the prosecution were former prisoners and officers of the U.S. Army who had been involved in the liberation of Dachau concentration camp and the documentation of the crimes committed there. The officers testified to the bodies in the evacuation train from Buchenwald and the catastrophic conditions in the main camp at the time of liberation. Former prisoners then testified to the inhumane living conditions the camp, including , nutrition, accommodation, forced labour, epidemics, medical experiments, selections and executions, mistreatment and killings. In addition to the conditions in the main camp, the catastrophic living conditions in the satellite camps were described.;
The defence responded with 93 witnessesincluding the accusedand 27 admitted pieces of evidence. Both the defence and prosecution cross-examined witnesses.
Those defendants who had been members of the camp staff were accused of mistreating and sometimes killing prisoners; another set of crimes included participation in executions and crimes related to the camp evacuation. The camp doctors and medical staff were charged with taking part in executions by declaring the deaths of the executed and in some cases by participating in the selection, mistreatment, and killing of prisoners. The commandant's staff were accused of bearing the primary responsibility for the disastrous conditions in the camp, thus enabling the system of killings, mistreatment and inhumane neglect. Two of the three prisoner functionaries were accused of mistreating and killing prisoners. The other was accused of participating in executions. The defendants minimised the crimes, invoking Befehlsnotstand or denying that they were at the scene of the crimes while they were committed.;
Special attention was paid to 74 year old Claus Schilling, who was by far the oldest defendant in the Dachau camp trial. Schilling, who was neither a member of the NSDAP nor of the SS, held a doctorate and habilitation in tropical medicine. A respected physician, he had studied under Robert Koch and specialised in malaria research beginning in 1898. Even after his retirement in 1936, Schilling continued his research work and was able to convince Heinrich Himmler of the necessity of developing a malaria vaccine for the war. Soon afterwards, Schilling was provided with an experimental station in the Dachau concentration camp to conduct his malaria studies. From February 1942 to early April 1945, 1,000 to 1,200 concentration camp prisoners were deliberately infected with malaria and subsequently treated with drugs on a trial basis. More than 100, but possibly up to 400, prisoners died as a result of these experiments.;