The Einsatzgruppen Trial (or, officially, The United States of America vs. Otto Ohlendorf, et. al.) was the ninth of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).

Contents

1 The case 2 Indictment 3 Defendants 4 Quotes 5 See also 6 References

The case

The Einsatzgruppen were special units of the SD, the Reichssicherheitsdienst. These were veritable death squads, operating in general behind the frontline in eastern Europe. They indiscriminately killed Jews and non-cooperating civilians in large numbers. From 1941 to 1943 alone, they murdered more than one million Jews and tens of thousands of "partisans", Roma, disabled persons, political commisars, and others. The 24 defendants in this trial were all officers (all but three commissioned officers) of these Einsatzgruppen and faced severe mass murder charges. The tribunal stated in its judgement:

"... in this case the defendants are not simply accused of planning or directing wholesale killings through channels. They are not charged with sitting in an office hundreds and thousands of miles away from the slaughter. It is asserted with particularity that these men were in the field actively superintending, controlling, directing, and taking an active part in the bloody harvest." —[1]

The judges in this case, heard before Military Tribunal II-A, were Michael A. Musmanno (presiding judge) from Pennsylvania, John J. Speight from Alabama, and Richard D. Dixon from North Carolina. The Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was Telford Taylor; the Chief Prosecutor for this case was Benjamin B. Ferencz . The indictment was filed initially on July 3 and then amended on July 29, 1947 to also include the defendants Steimle, Braune, Hänsch. Strauch, Klingelhöfer, and von Radetzky. The trial lasted from September 29, 1947 until April 10, 1948.

Indictment

1. Crimes against humanity through persecutions on political, racial, and religious grounds, murder, extermination, imprisonment, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations, including German nationals and nationals of other countries, as part of an organized scheme of genocide.
2. War crimes for the same reasons, and for wanton destruction and devastation not justified by military necessity.
3. Membership in criminal organizations, the SS, the SD, or the Gestapo, which had been declared criminal organizations previously in the international Nuremberg Military Tribunals.

All defendants were charged on all counts. All defendants pleaded "not guilty". The tribunal found all of them guilty on all counts, except Rühl and Graf, who were found guilty only on count 3.

Defendants

Name	Function	Sentence
Otto Ohlendorf	SS Gruppenführer; member of the SD; commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe D	Death by hanging; executed June 7, 1951
Heinz Jost	SS Brigadeführer; member of the SD; commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe A	Lifetime imprisonment; reduced in 1951 to 10 years
Erich Naumann	SS Brigadeführer; member of the SD; commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe B	Death by hanging; executed June 7, 1951
Otto Rasch	SS Brigadeführer; member of the SD and the Gestapo; commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe C	Removed from the trial on February 5, 1948 due to medical reasons
Erwin Schulz	SS Brigadeführer; member of the Gestapo; commanding officer of Einsatzkommando 5 of Einsatzgruppe C	20 years; reduced in 1951 to 15 years
Franz Six	SS Brigadeführer; member of the SD; commanding officer of Vorkommando Moscow of Einsatzgruppe B	20 years; reduced in 1951 to 15 years
Paul Blobel	SS Standartenführer; member of the SD; commanding officer of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C	Death by hanging; executed June 7, 1951
Walter Blume	SS Standartenführer; member of the SD and the Gestapo; commanding officer of Sonderkommando 7a of Einsatzgruppe B	Death by hanging, commuted in 1951 to 25 years' imprisonment
Martin Sandberger	SS Standartenführer; member of the SD; commanding officer of Sonderkommando 1a of Einsatzgruppe A	Death by hanging; commuted in 1951 to lifetime imprisonment
Willy Seibert	SS Standartenführer; member of the SD; Deputy Chief of Einsatzgruppe D	Death by hanging; commuted in 1951 to 15 years' imprisonment
Eugen Steimle	SS Standartenführer; member of the SD; commanding officer of Sonderkommando 7a of Einsatzgruppe B and of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C	Death by hanging; commuted in 1951 to 20 years' imprisonment
Ernst Biberstein	SS Obersturmbannführer; member of the SD; commanding officer of Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C	Death by hanging; commuted in 1951 to lifetime imprisonment
Werner Braune	SS Obersturmbannführer; member of the SD and the Gestapo; commanding officer of Sonderkommando 11b of Einsatzgruppe D	Death by hanging; executed June 7, 1951
Walter Hänsch	SS Obersturmbannführer; member of the SD; commanding officer of Sonderkommando 4b of Einsatzgruppe C	Death by hanging; commuted in 1951 to 15 years' imprisonment
Gustav Nosske	SS Obersturmbannführer; member of the Gestapo; commanding officer of Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppe D	Lifetime imprisonment; commuted in 1951 to 10 years' imprisonment
Adolf Ott	SS Obersturmbannführer; member of the SD; commanding officer of Sonderkommando 7b of Einsatzgruppe B	Death by hanging; commuted in 1951 to lifetime imprisonment
Eduard Strauch	SS Obersturmbannführer; member of the SD; commanding officer of Einsatzkommando 2 of Einsatzgruppe A	Death by hanging2; handed over to Belgian authorities; died in hospital.
Emil Haussmann	SS Sturmbannführer; member of the SD; officer of Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppe D	Committed suicide before the arraignment on July 31, 1947
Waldemar Klingelhöfer	SS Sturmbannführer; member of the SD; officer of Sonderkommando 7b of Einsatzgruppe B	Death by hanging; commuted in 1951 to lifetime imprisonment
Lothar Fendler	SS Sturmbannführer; member of the SD; Deputy chief of Sonderkommando 4b of Einsatzgruppe C	10 years3; reduced to 8 years in 1951
Waldemar von Radetzky	SS Sturmbannführer; member of the SD; Deputy chief of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C	20 years; released 1951
Felix Rühl	SS Hauptsturmführer; member of the Gestapo; officer of Sonderkommando 10b of Einsatzgruppe D	10 years4; released 1951
Heinz Schubert	SS Obersturmführer; member of the SD; officer in Einsatzgruppe D	Death by hanging; commuted in 1951 to 10 years' imprisonment
Mathias Graf	SS Untersturmführer; member of the SD; officer in Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe D	Time already served5

Rasch had to be removed from the courtroom during the arraignment due to his poor health; he was arraigned separately on September 22, 1947.

Note 2: Strauch suffered an epileptic attack during the arraignment on September 15, 1947. His defense later tried to get him removed from the trial on medical grounds, but the tribunal dismissed this, stating that Strauch's testimonies (which he did give subsequently) were coherent and showed no reason why he shouldn't be mentally capable to stand trial.

Note 3: While Fendler was found guilty on all counts, the tribunal considered the evidence presented insufficient to prove that he ordered or helped plan the killings. He seems to have held primarily an office post.

Note 4: Rühl was found guilty only on count 3; regarding counts 1 and 2, the tribunal found him not guilty, stating that as a subaltern officer, he was not responsible for the atrocities committed by Einsatzgruppe D and in no position to prevent them, and although he knew of the killings, it could not be proved that he directly participated in them.

Note 5: Graf was found guilty only of membership in the SD. He had actually been expelled from the SS for "general indifference to the organization" [2] and later had tried to be relieved from the SD [3]. On counts 1 and 2, he was also found not guilty, because as a noncommissioned officer, he had never held any command post, and in fact even refused one once. (ibid.)

Of the 14 death sentences, only four were carried out; the others were commuted to prison terms of varying lengths in 1951. In 1958, all convicts were released from prison.

Quotes

From the tribunal's judgment:

"[The facts] are so beyond the experience of normal man and the range of man-made phenomena that only the most complete judicial inquiry, and the most exhaustive trial, could verify and confirm them. Although the principle accusation is murder, [...] the charge of purposeful homicide in this case reaches such fantastic proportions and surpasses such credible limits that believability must be bolstered with assurance a hundred times repeated." —[4]

"...a crime of such unprecedented brutality and of such inconceivable savagery that the mind rebels against its own thought image and the imagination staggers in the contemplation of a human degradation beyond the power of language to adequately portray." —[5]

"The number of deaths resulting from the activities with which these defendants have been connected and which the prosecution has set at one million is but an abstract number. One cannot grasp the full cumulative terror of murder one million times repeated.

"It is only when this grotesque total is broken down into units capable of mental assimilation that one can understand the monstrousness of the things we are in this trial contemplating. One must visualize not one million people but only ten persons — men, women, and children, perhaps all of one family — falling before the executioner's guns. If one million is divided by ten, this scene must happen one hundred thousand times, and as one visualizes the repetitious horror, one begins to understand the meaning of the prosecution's words, 'It is with sorrow and with hope that we here disclose the deliberate slaughter of more than a million innocent and defenseless men, women, and children.'" —[6]

See also

• Commissar order, an order stating that Soviet political commissars were to be shot on the battlefield.

References

• Trial proceedings from the Mazal Library.
• Description from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
• Another description.