Internment camp Dachau

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The Dachau internment camp was established by the US Army after the Dachau concentration camp was liberated at the end of April 1945 . Alleged were collected in this internment NS - war , concentration camp -Personal, members of the security police and persons to whom the murder notgelandeter American airman was accused. After the internment camp for war criminals in the flak barracks in Ludwigsburg was closed in mid-1946, these groups of people were brought together centrally in Dachau. The camp was the last in the US zone and only after the Nuremberg trials in September 1948 was the responsibility of the German authorities handed over to them.

prehistory

In cooperation with the prisoner committee Comité International de Dachau , the US Army first had to continue the organizational operation of the camp between April and August 1945, stop overcrowding in the apartment blocks, relocate some of the former prisoners to other locations and restore hygienic conditions. The Americans initially ensured the supply of food and medicine. The most difficult task was managing the high mortality rate and containing the epidemics . Inmate doctors and US soldiers vaccinated all inmates against typhus , isolated some of the apartment blocks and created a narrow passage. Here all people passing through were sprayed with DDT . Little was known about its harmfulness. The lice as the carriers of the disease disappeared and the epidemic could be contained.

Internment in the US zone

A total of 46 internment sites were established in the US zone , including 37 internment camps , two internment prisons and seven internment hospitals. As a place of detention for alleged war criminals, Dachau held a special position. Well-known Nazi functionaries and people were interned as a preventive measure. This happened in connection with the democratization of the country, which had to be protected from the “Nazis”, and with the final smashing of National Socialism . These preventive detentions by the US Army were later compared, partly with defamatory intent, to preventive detention and so-called protective detention under the Nazi regime.

In historical research, the Americans are considered to be the allies with the greatest "democratic sense of mission" . They are seen as pioneers of denazification . Even before the end of the war, they had arrested suspects without any joint decisions by the Allies . The occupying power proceeded consistently, which the high occupancy figures show. By December 1945 alone, a total of 117,512 people were arrested. From the beginning, her practice was criticized for the fact that her imprisonment was not based on individual guilt, but based on schematic criteria such as a leading position in NSDAP organizations.

Functional areas

There were four functional areas within the warehouse:

  • From July 1945 to June 1946 the first functional area existed, the “SS Compound”, also known as “Cage 1” or “Freilager”. This section of the camp was on the former prisoner's area in the wooden barracks and was inhabited by between 10,000 and 13,000 people. They were the people imprisoned according to the " automatic arrest ", such as SS and Waffen SS people and former NSDAP functionaries . In January 1946 those men were released who had a low SS rank or were only transferred to the SS in 1944. A large number of these prisoners were released by May 1946. From May 27, 1946, this area was slowly dissolved and the remaining prisoners up to the rank of NCOs were brought to the American camp in Bad Aibling (see also Bad Aibling Station ), the higher ranks came to Plattling . From August 1947, the US camp administration gradually transferred this area to German responsibility. As a German internment and labor camp, it existed until August 1948.
  • From July 1945 to June 1946 there were members of the Wehrmacht , German generals and Hungarians in the second part of the camp . The area was then redesigned to become a release camp for German prisoners of war . This area was dissolved in October 1947.
  • The third part was the "War Crimes Enclosure", these were several special camps. They were located in the northern prisoner's area of ​​the wooden barracks, but also in the former SS area. From the first two camps, the American intelligence service Counter Intelligence Corps selected individuals suspected of having committed serious war crimes. This camp area existed from summer 1945 to January 1948. Since July 11, 1946, this was the only war crimes camp in the US zone. In March 1946 there were still 5,000 prisoners in this area; in November of the same year there were already 12,000. The concentration camp guards, members of the General Staff, the Waffen SS and the SS divisions “Das Reich” and “ Adolf Hitler ” were here. The preliminary investigation into whether an indictment should be made was lengthy. People who were unwilling to cooperate and who had refused to testify as witnesses in war crimes trials (“unfriendly witnesses”) were also here. Those already convicted waited here to be transferred to the Landsberg war crimes prison .
  • In an earlier part of the "free camp" ("Cage 1"), the US camp administration set up a civilian internment camp from May 1946, it was called "Camp 29". "War Crimes Suspect" , ie people whose guilt could not be proven in interrogations, were admitted here for denazification by a German court .

Relocations took place constantly within the camp, so that the four camp areas were constantly changing. The occupancy of the internment camp varied widely. The quarters of the "normal" internees were considered overcrowded, in contrast to those of the war criminals.

The camp was initially under American administration, headed by a camp commandant. The guards were the occupation troops, and from November 1945 also Polish soldiers . When parts of the camp were placed under German responsibility, there were German guards here, and the escape rate rose. An inspection report shows that these guards were poorly paid and were therefore considered to be corruptible . The American camp management knew about these abuses, but they did not intervene as long as the escape rates remained low and the discipline in the camp was not endangered.

living conditions

The American military government made every effort to ensure that there was no food shortage in the internment camp despite the sometimes severe supply bottlenecks. On the one hand, comparisons were drawn between the internment camp and the Dachau concentration camp ; on the other hand, efforts were made to meet a minimum of living conditions for heavily burdened prisoners of war. It so happened that the US zone was the only area of ​​the four occupying powers in which allegedly no internee died of starvation. In the other two western zones, there were isolated cases where internees died from poor nutrition. The official death rate in the Soviet zone was 36 percent. About 43,000 people died there. The Americans were criticized on the one hand because of the concentration camp-like conditions, on the other hand they saw themselves exposed to the criticism of "pampering Nazi functionaries." Nutrition turned out to be a major problem, as the Americans had expected larger German stocks.

After the harvest in autumn, the situation eased from around October 1945. However, in January 1946 there were renewed supply emergencies. A zone-wide control of the internees' weight and the amount of calories was introduced. The result was that the cause was poor organizational distribution of the amount of calories. From now on, the calories were divided into non-workers, light-workers and hard-working people. Despite the reallocation of food distribution, some malnutrition occurred . In November, 600 people in the Dachau internment camp suffered from malnutrition, even though there was sufficient food.

There were also bottlenecks in clothing and soap, and the hygienic conditions in the warehouse were anything but satisfactory.

From August 1945 clergy took care of the pastoral care of the internees. They met with considerable resistance due to the negative attitude of the National Socialists towards the churches. This was especially true for former Gestapo members , SS leaders and SS doctors accused in the Dachau trials , many of whom had left the church and described themselves as " believers in God ".

On August 31, 1948, the US internment camp was closed and the site was handed over to the Bavarian State Office for Asset Management and Reparation.

The Bavarian authorities released the last prisoners from the camp on September 29, 1948. People who were released that day without further investigation were Joachim Ruoff ( First General Staff Officer in the SS Leadership Main Office), Helmut Sündermann (Head of Staff of the Reich Press Chief), Fritz Reinhardt (State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance ), Max Köglmaier (State Secretary in the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior ), Dr. Hartmann (doctor from Birnbach im Rottal) and a few others. Werner Grothmann ( Himmler's first adjutant to the Waffen SS) had been released the day before. In contrast, the former director of the University of Munich, Walther Wüst , was on his way to the Ungererstraße labor camp.

Summary

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Although there were supply problems, the US occupying forces created a functioning detention center that was not a legal vacancy and where those found guilty were treated according to American humanitarian standards. With this work, the US Army set a positive example for dealing with political prisoners. The German prisoners emphasized the hardships in the US internment camp, compared it with the concentration camp and found procedural errors and shortcomings. Although the care of the inmates was in fact only sufficient or inadequate, in contrast to the former concentration camp regulations, there were no corporal punishments and no sole jurisdiction of the camp commandant. There were democratic and legal procedures, also in the treatment of prisoners. The mortality in the camp was the same as the mortality rate for the rest of the population.

Requests for mercy

During the time of the American administration, the US military tribunal received numerous requests for clemency in relation to the trials, for example from members of the concentration camp staff and from NSDAP functionaries themselves. Written requests of the opposite nature were also received:

Munich, 29.I.46

General McNarney!

I have just read in the press about three pardons from the executioners of Dachau, which were issued by Lieutenant General Truscott. [!] Allow me, Herr General, an unhappy mother whose son is known as a pol. Opponent arrested in 1933, brought to Dachau, and all these years without a [!] Sign of life from him, please give no confirmation of the pardon, Mr. General. Get rid of these kinds of people. For twelve years I was ashamed to be German when a work-shy, stateless impostor was placed at the head of the German Empire. And should one pardon his followers, who brought so much misery to the people? Please, General, don't do it. [...]

Re-education

In the course of the democratization policy, the Americans pursued the educational goal of confronting the German people with the events and locations of the National Socialist terror. Brochures about the Dachau camp and other concentration and extermination camps were created and distributed. A documentary film “The Mills of Death” was put together and it was released in theaters in January 1946. An American report states: “The large number of visitors in the cinemas clearly shows that the Germans by and large did not avoid watching this accusation by the German nation. Apparently, more than any other attempt, the film succeeded in making the Germans become aware of the great guilt of the Hitler regime. ”The American officers registered the people's reactions to this film. On the one hand, there was an embarrassed attitude from viewers who did not doubt the truthfulness of the film. On the other hand, statements were made that the Nazi atrocities were only part of the story, that the bombing of German cities should also be considered, that the fate of German prisoners of war should not be forgotten and the expulsion of the civilian population from the eastern regions of the German Reich.

literature

  • Reinhard Grohnert: Denazification in Baden 1945–1949. Concepts and practice of "epuration" using the example of a country in the French zone of occupation. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-17-011507-3 ( Publications of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg , Series B, Research , 123; also: Freiburg (Breisgau), Univ., Diss., 1989).
  • Gabriele Hammermann: The Dachau internment camp 1945–1948. In: Dachauer Hefte , 19, 2003, ISSN  0257-9472 , pp. 48-70.
  • Christa Horn: The internment and labor camps in Bavaria 1945–1952. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1992, ISBN 3-631-44789-2 ( Erlangen historical studies , 16; also: Erlangen, Nürnberg, Univ., Diss., 1990).
  • Kathrin Meyer: The internment of Nazi functionaries in the US zone of Germany. In: Dachauer Hefte. 19, 2003, pp. 25-47.
  • Lutz Niethammer : Denazification in Bavaria. Purge and rehabilitation under American occupation. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-10-052402-0 (also: Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 1971), (Unchanged new edition: Die Mitläuferfabrik. Denazification using the example of Bavaria. Dietz, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3- 8012-0082-5 ).
  • Christa Schick: The internment camps. In: Martin Broszat , Klaus-Dietmar Henke , Hans Woller (eds.): From Stalingrad to currency reform. On the social history of upheaval in Germany. 2nd Edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-486-54132-3 , pp. 301-325 ( sources and representations on contemporary history 26).
  • Robert Sigel: Requests for clemency and exemptions. War criminals in the American zone of occupation. In: Dachauer Hefte. 10, 1994, pp. 214-224.
  • Michael Stiller : In the end we all became beggars. The misery after liberation. In: Dachauer Hefte. 10, 1994, pp. 154-166.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Benz : Potsdam 1945. Occupation and rebuilding in four-zone Germany . Munich 1986, p. 164.
  2. ^ Gabriele Hammermann: The Dachau internment camp 1945–1948 . In: Dachauer Hefte , 19, "Between Liberation and Displacement", 2003. P. 55.
  3. ↑ Natalja Jeske: Care, illness, death in the special camps . In: Soviet special camps in Germany . Berlin 1998.
  4. ↑ Kathrin Meyer: The internment of Nazi functionaries in the US zone of Germany . In: Dachauer Hefte , 19, “Between Liberation and Displacement”, 2003. p. 33.
  5. ^ Gabriele Hammermann: The Dachau internment camp 1945–1948 . In: Dachauer Hefte , 19, "Between Liberation and Displacement", 2003. P. 69.
  6. ^ Gabriele Hammermann: The Dachau internment camp 1945–1948 . In: Dachauer Hefte , 19, "Between Liberation and Displacement", 2003, p. 68.
  7. ↑ See: Robert Sigel: Requests for Grace and Releases. War criminals in the American zone of occupation . In: Dachauer Hefte , No. 10, perpetrators and victims, 1994.
  8. ↑ Source: USA versus Martin Gottfried Weiß, BayHStA Munich, OMGUS Dachauer War Criminal Trials, Microfilm 1/5 --- Source and text taken from: Robert Sigel: “Gnadengesuche und Gnadenerlasse.” P. 214. In: Dachauer Hefte , No. 10 , Perpetrator and victim, 1994. The brackets, ie: [!], Were taken over according to the source.
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel : Public and concentration camps - what did the population know? In: Dachauer Hefte , issue 17, 2001, p. 2