Leonhard Anselm Eichberger

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Leonhard Anselm Eichberger interned in America. Photo from 1945.

Leonhard Anselm Eichberger (born January 22, 1915 - † May 29, 1946 in Landsberg am Lech ) was a German SS Hauptscharführer and report leader in the Dachau concentration camp . After the end of the war, Eichberger was a defendant in the main Dachau trial and was executed as a war criminal .

Life

Eichberger joined the SS on April 1, 1935 . From November 1937 to June 1941 he was a soldier in the Wehrmacht . In January 1943 he returned from the front as a "war disabled" ( amputated left lower leg) and was posted to the Dachau concentration camp, where he performed the function of a report leader and worked in the administration of the protective custody camp . His duties initially included recording executions and questioning political prisoners. From May 1944 until the concentration camp was liberated in April 1945, Eichberger was involved in the executioninvolved by inmates. According to his own statements, he shot five or six of the 90 Soviet prisoners of war who were murdered in the second half of 1944. He also shot about 15 other prisoners, according to Eichberger in a statement made after the end of the war.

After the end of the war, Eichberger and 39 other members of the camp staff were accused in the main Dachau trial on November 15, 1945 , which took place as part of the Dachau trials . The US Military Tribunal was charged with "violating the laws and customs of war" against civilians and prisoners of war alike. The term “ common design ” played a central role in the prosecution : not only the individual acts of the concentration camp personnel were viewed as criminal, but the concentration camp system itself. In the course of the preliminary investigations it had proven difficult to assign individual crimes to the accused, as the concentration camp inmates only partially survived, their statements lacked the necessary precision due to the traumatization and they only partially knew the names of the perpetrators.

Eichberger's defense essentially relied on an alleged imperative to order . On December 13, 1945, all of the defendants were found guilty and Eichberger and 35 other defendants were sentenced to death by the court . In the judgment, Eichberger took part in interrogations and 150 to 200 executions as well as the preparation of reports on executions as individual acts of excess. The judgment was confirmed on April 5, 1946 by the Commander-in-Chief of the American Armed Forces in Europe , who had received a recommendation from a so-called "Review Board" of the army. A second review of Eichberger's case came to the conclusion that the death penalty was justified in view of the atrocities he committed voluntarily. The sentence was carried out on May 29, 1946 in the Landsberg War Crimes Prison .

literature

  • Holger Lessing: The first Dachau trial (1945/46). Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1993, ISBN 3-7890-2933-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eichberger's affidavit before the start of the Dachau trial, English translation in the review (pdf, 40 MB), p. 30.
  2. ↑ On "Common Design": Robert Sigel: In the interest of justice. The Dachau war crimes trials 1945-1948. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 3-593-34641-9 , p. 42ff.
  3. ↑ Lessing, Prozess , p. 319.
  4. ↑ Summary of the review on Kramer: Review (pdf, 40 MB), p. 146. Ibid, p. 164, the recommendation to maintain the death penalty in Eichberger's case.
  5. ↑ Review and Recommendations of the Deputy Theater Judge Advocate (pdf, 29.4 MB) at the International Research and Documentation Center for War Crimes Trials (ICWC), p. 65.
personal data
SURNAME Eichberger, Leonhard Anselm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Hauptscharführer
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1915
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1946
Place of death Landsberg am Lech