SS men prosecuted for gassing prisoners at Mauthausen, but not at Dachau

After World War II, staff members of the concentration camps in Germany and Austria were prosecuted by an American Military Tribunal which was held at Dachau.  The charge against all of the accused in all of the AMT proceedings was that they had participated in a “common plan” to violate the Laws and Usages of War under the Geneva Convention of 1929 and the Hague Convention of 1907.

In all of the proceedings of the AMT, only crimes committed against the Allies during World War II were included.  Since the names and nationality of the prisoners who were allegedly gassed at Dachau were unknown, there could be no testimony, during the proceedings against the Dachau staff, about any citizen of an Allied country, or an Allied soldier, who had been killed in the gas chamber at Dachau.  

In the “Dachau trials” there were no charges of Crimes against Humanity, as at the Nuremberg IMT.  Crimes against Humanity was an ex post facto law that was created specifically for the German war criminals; this new law included crimes against any citizen of any country.

After the first proceedings, against Martin Gottfried Weiss and 39 others at the Dachau camp, ended with the conviction of all of the men, the next proceedings were against 61 men associated in some way with the Mauthausen camp.  In these proceedings, there was testimony that Soviet POWs had been killed in the gas chamber at Mauthausen and American Navy Lt. Jack Taylor testified that American soldiers had also been gassed.

At the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, which started in November 1945, there were sworn affidavits which claimed that prisoners were gassed at Dachau, but these affidavits were not introduced into the proceedings of the American Military Tribunal at Dachau, which also began in November 1945.

The affidavits were signed by James B. Donovan, Lt. Col. Calvin A. Behle of the Judge Advocate General’s Department and Lt. Hugh C. Daly of the 42nd Rainbow Division of the US Seventh Army which liberated Dachau. The affidavits were included in Nuremberg Document 2430-PS which was read in court, but Donovan, Behle and Daly were not present and the defense had no opportunity to cross-examine them.

Donovan, Behle and Daly did not take the stand at the AMT proceedings to testify against the Dachau staff.  If they had testified that prisoners were gassed at Dachau, the defense attorney would have said, “Oh yeah, what were their names?”   At the proceedings against the Mauthausen staff, Lt. Jack Taylor named names, and when he testified at the Nuremberg IMT, he showed the dog tags of the Americans who had been gassed.

Yes, you read that right.  Lt. Jack Taylor had in his possession the dog tags of the Americans who were gassed at Mauthausen.  In fact, Lt. Taylor himself had been scheduled FOUR TIMES to be gassed, but the other prisoners saved him by changing the schedule.  The American liberators arrived just in time to save him from his last scheduled time to be gassed.

Lt. Jack Taylor on the witness stand at Dachau

But it wasn’t just the testimony of Lt. Jack Taylor that convicted the staff at Mauthausen; many of the accused men at the Mauthausen proceedings had signed sworn affidavits in which they confessed that they had been involved in the gassing of prisoners at Mauthausen.

The defense attorney for the Mauthausen SS men noticed that the confessions were remarkably similar.  He was suspicious that the confessions might have been obtained by torture.

Strangely, there were no confessions by Dachau staff members regarding the Dachau gas chamber, although some of the Dachau accused did confess to making leather goods out of human skin and other atrocities. The lack of confessions about the Dachau gas chamber might have been because none of the accused were interrogated about the gassing of prisoners.  What good is a confession if you don’t have the names of the prisoners who were gassed?

If the charges by the American Military Tribunal at Dachau had included Crimes against Humanity, then the Dachau gas chamber could have been put into evidence at the Dachau proceedings because Crimes Against Humanity were crimes against ANY CIVILIAN POPULATION, not necessarily against civilians in countries at war with the German Reich.

Although the American public had been told that there was a gas chamber at Dachau, none of the accused at the American Military Tribunal, held at Dachau, was specifically charged with any crimes involving the Dachau gas chamber. The prosecution did not mention the existence of the gas chamber in its opening statement, nor in its closing statement. Neither was the gas chamber mentioned in the judgment of the Tribunal. None of the accused was asked any questions about the gas chamber.

By the time that the Dachau proceedings began, a small museum had already been set up in the crematorium building by Erich Preuss, a former prisoner, and on the orders of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, as many American soldiers as possible were being brought to view the gas chamber.  As far as I know, none of these soldiers ever said, “Oh yeah, what were their names?”

Now Bradley Smith goes around to colleges and asks for the name of one person who was gassed.  Good luck finding a name, Bradley.