Dora trial
The Dora Trial, also the "Dora"-Nordhausen or Dachau Dora Proceeding was a war crimes trial conducted by the United States Army in the aftermath of the collapse of the Third Reich. It took place between August 7 and December 30, 1947, on the site of the former Dachau concentration camp, Germany.
In the proceedings, officially known as the United States of America vs. Kurt Andrae et al., 19 men were accused of war crimes committed in the operation of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, its many subcamps, and the Mittelwerk armaments plant located near Nordhausen, Germany. The main trial ended with 4 acquittals and 15 convictions, including 1 death sentence. Dora was the last of a sequence of proceedings which took place in the context of the Dachau Trials relating to wide-ranging war crimes uncovered by the United States in its zone of occupation at the end of World War II. Those convicted in the Dora Trial served their sentences at Landsberg Prison.
Additional Dora-related proceedings were held both during and after the Dora Trial. Between late-October and mid-December 1947, short trials were held against 14 lower-level defendants, mostly SS-TV Guards. These resulted in 4 convictions and 1 acquittal, with the remaining 9 cases dropped for lack of evidence or available witnesses. Violent crimes still extant in the body of the facts resulted in several more trials of individual cases in both West Germany and East Germany. The most public and important occurred in Essen between 1968 and 1970, resulting in 2 convictions.
Background
Of the more than 60,000 prisoners who passed through the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp complex, with its catastrophic working and living conditions, at least 20,000 died of hunger, exposure, disease and abuse. When American troops reached Mittelbau on 11 April 1945, they found nearly 2,000 dead bodies. Only several hundred prisoners were found alive, mostly sick or dying, as the Mittelbau and its sub-camps had already been forcibly evacuated by the SS-Totenkopfverbände on April 6, 1945.During the "evacuation", approximately 36,500 prisoners were sent on death marches and over 8,000 died from starvation, exposure and summary executions. In one infamous example, about 400 prisoners led by Erhard Brauny left the Rottleberode subcamp on 4 April 1945 in a plan to move them to Neuengamme concentration camp, which was still operational. When the transport reached the town of Gardelegen, the prisoners were joined by additional "evacuation transports". The prisoners, now numbering over 1000, could be moved no further due to damaged railway lines. There they were simply murdered by their captors at Isenschnibber Barn on 13 April 1945.
Investigating Team 6822, part of the U.S. War Crimes Program to create legal standards and judicial systems to prosecute Nazi crimes, quickly began to identify the perpetrators. By May 25, 1945, the investigations were complete and a report was sent to General Simpson, Supreme Commander of United States 9th Army. Many of the suspects were quickly captured and interned. Recorded testimony and photographic evidence formed the basis of the indictments. The process became complicated after the withdrawal of American forces from Thuringia on July 1, 1945, when the Mittelbau-Dora complex wound up in the Soviet occupation zone. On September 3, 1946, an exchange of detainees and evidence failed, as no Soviet military representatives appeared at a previously agreed meeting point on the frontier. Corresponding demands to the Soviet military administration remained mostly unanswered. Why Soviet authorities did not cooperate on Dora was unclear, since evidence presented to them on the Gardelegen Massacre resulted in the transfer of 22 suspects. The notebook of an American investigator indicates the possibility that due to unclear responsibilities among the Soviet investigators and their managers, they could not make a decision. Those Mittelbau-Dora suspects and evidence that were in U.S. custody were finally incorporated into the framework of the Dachau Trials.
Prior to the start of the Dora Trial, 12 former members of the SS administration at Mittelbau-Dora had already been convicted of war crimes under British military jurisdiction in the Belsen Trial. There, 4 defendants were sentenced to imprisonment and 5 acquitted. Protective Custody Camp Leader Franz Hößler, commander of the Kleinbodungen subcamp Franz Stofel and his deputy Wilhelm Dörr were all sentenced to death and executed by hanging on 13 December 1945 in. Josef Kollmer, the commander of Dora's SS guard battalion from October, 1943 to May, 1944, was executed in Kraków on January 28, 1948, following his conviction by Poland's Supreme National Tribunal in the First Auschwitz Trial. Former camp commandant Otto Förschner was executed by U.S. military authorities at Landsberg Prison on May 28, 1946, following his conviction for war crimes that occurred during his tenure as commander of the Dachau subcamp of Kaufering. His successor, former Auschwitz commandant Richard Baer was arrested by West German authorities in 1960, but died of natural causes in 1963, before he was able to appear as a defendant in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials. Helmut Bischoff, SS security chief for the V-weapons program and commander of the Sicherheitsdienst detachment in Mittelbau-Dora, was arrested by Soviet occupation forces in January, 1946 and held in military detention in East Germany, and later Siberia, until 1955. Karl Kahr, the former SS Camp Physician, was not charged due to his relatively good reputation among the prisoners. He became a witness for the prosecution in the Dora Trial.
Legal basis and indictment
The legal basis of the proceedings was established in March 1947 with the adoption of the Legal and Penal Administration under the Office of Military Government for Germany. The indictment, which was served on the defendants on 20 June 1947, consisted of two main charges brought together under the title "Violation of the Customs and Laws of War". The content of the application covered war crimes committed in the operation of Mittelbau-Dora and its subcamps from 1 June 1943 to 8 May 1945 upon non-German civilians and prisoners of war. This was a decisive change from other Dachau Trials, because it now covered not only war crimes committed against Allied nationals, but also against stateless persons, Austrians, Slovaks and Italians. German perpetrators of crimes on German victims remained long unpunished and were usually only later heard in German courts.All the defendants were charged in a Common Design of unlawfully and intentionally participating in abuses and killings of prisoners of war and non-German civilians. By the institution of the Common Design approach, specific criminal offenses did not have to be proven individually; rather, by participation in the operation of a concentration camp and membership in the criminal organization of the SS, a war crime had already been committed. The degree of individual responsibility in the Common Design was determined by acts of excess and rank of the accused. This also influenced the verdict and degree of punishment.
Participants
Judges
Colonel Frank Silliamn III took over the chairmanship of a Military tribunal consisting of seven American officers, including Colonel Joseph W. Benson, Colonel Claude O. Burch, Lieutenant Colonel Louis S. Tracy, Lieutenant Colonel Roy J. Herte, Major Warren M. Vanderburgh, and the lawyer Lieutenant Colonel David H. Thomas.Prosecution team
The prosecution consisted of Chief Prosecutor William Berman, Captain William F. McGarry, Captain John J. Ryan, Lieutenant William F. Jones, and investigators Jacob F. Kinder and William J. Aalmans. Aalmans, a Dutch citizen serving with the U.S. Army, served as a translator during the liberation of the central camp complex. He also heard the testimony of the accused as a member of the investigative team. Aalmans produced a booklet entitled the "Dora"-Nordhausen Labor-Concentration Camps.Defense team
The accused were defended by two American Army officers, Major Leon B. Poullada and Captain Paul D. Strader, and German legal advisers Konrad Max Trimolt, Emil Aheimer, and Louis Renner. From 31 October 1947, Milton Crook supported the defense team after a request by Poullada.Defendants
The defendants consisted of 14 members of the SS, 4 Kapos and 1 civilian: Georg Rickhey, Director-General of the Mittelwerk GmbH. SS-Obersturmführer Kurt Mathesius, who had commanded the subcamp of Boelke Kaserne, was slated to appear as the 20th defendant at trial, but committed suicide while in US custody in May, 1947. The highest-ranking defendant was the former camp physician, SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Schmidt.The Dora Defendants in June, 1947