Political Terror 1933-1934
Three weeks after the Reichstag fire, the Dachau camp came into being. On March 13, 1933, Himmler, who had been in office as acting police chief of Munich for a week, arranged for the establishment of a political concentration camp near Dachau and announced this to journalists from Bavarian newspapers at a press conference at Munich police headquarters a week later, on March 20, 1933. As early as March 22, about 150 prisoners were transferred from the Landsberg am Lech, Neudeck, and Stadelheim prisons to the grounds of the disused Dachau Royal Powder and Ammunition Factory. The communist Claus Bastian was given prison number one. In the first days they were guarded by the Bavarian state police. From 11 April onwards, the police and the SS shared the guarding of the camp, the SS being deployed as auxiliary police. The next day the first murders were committed, of inmates Rudolf Benario, Ernst Goldmann and Arthur Kahn. Numerous other deaths followed, for example Fritz Dressel, Wilhelm Aron, Sebastian Nefzger.
In May, Hans Beimler (KPD) managed to escape; until his imprisonment he had been a member of the German Reichstag. Abroad, he published the pamphlet Im Mörderlager Dachau shortly afterwards. The first commandant was Hilmar Wäckerle, who wrote the first provisional camp regulations in May on Himmler's instructions. It stated that the commander alone had jurisdiction over the camp. He could even sentence prisoners to death, provided two SS guards appointed by him agreed. At the beginning of June, the SS took over sole guard duty. At the end of June, Theodor Eicke became camp commandant. Eicke aimed to completely seal off the camp from outsiders. Even the fire brigade was not allowed to enter the grounds to check compliance with fire regulations. Karl Wintersberger of the Munich public prosecutor's office investigated the first three prisoner shootings in Dachau during this time. After a few months, all proceedings were dropped. The Dachau concentration camp had become a lawless area.
For example, members of the state parliament such as Alois Hundhammer (BVP) or members of the Reichstag such as Ernst Heilmann (SPD) were imprisoned. The numerous examples of imprisoned politicians or activists had an intimidating effect on the public. Many things had already been accomplished by the NSDAP with the help of political police and the judiciary: the influence of trade unions weakened, parties banned or dissolved, Länder and municipalities brought into line, democratic conditions abolished. Radio and film were controlled. By controlling or taking over all existing associations and restricting freedom of speech, ideological control had been gained over popular communication. It was difficult to form new oppositions. At that time there were more than a hundred mostly small concentration camps in the Reich, where opposition members were held in "protective custody". Hardly anyone kept track of who was imprisoned. It was up to the arbitrariness of ambitious local Nazis to arrest or release anyone. Soon there was friction over questions of jurisdiction and power struggles. SA-Gruppenführer Schmid was at this time Special Commissioner of the Supreme SA Leadership to the Government of Upper Bavaria. He wrote an incendiary letter to the Bavarian Minister President Siebert on July 1, 1933:
"The authority of the state is in danger from the all-round, unwarranted interference of political functionaries in the wheels of normal administration. Every NSBO man, NSBO local group leader, NSBO district leader (...) every political base leader, local group leader, political district leader issues decrees that interfere with the lower powers of command of the ministries, that is, with the powers of command of the district governments, district offices, down to the smallest gendarmerie station. Everyone arrests everyone (...), everyone threatens everyone with Dachau (...) Down to the smallest gendarmerie station, an uncertainty of authority has arisen among the best and most reliable officials, which must necessarily have a devastating and state-destroying effect."
On July 16, 1933, one of the propagandistic reports about the camp appeared in the magazine Münchner Illustrierte Presse. It bore the subtitle Frühappell im Erziehungslager (Early roll call in the education camp) and showed neatly and cleanly dressed inmates as the cover picture (see illustration). From July on, a priest from the Dachau parish appeared regularly and held a church service on Sundays; an average of 20 people attended. The prisoners still wore their own clothes at this time. On weekdays, camp rations consisted of, for example, ersatz coffee, bread, and stew; on Sundays, for example, there was soup and a piece of roast pork with potato salad. The prisoners received up to 30 RM per month from their own money or from money sent to them, from which they could buy bread, butter, sausage or fruit in the canteen at higher prices. In the autumn a camp library was set up; it contained books by Karl May and also Hitler's Mein Kampf, among others. The SS used these initial living conditions to counteract the so-called atrocity propaganda from abroad; the living conditions of the camp also changed within the twelve years.
On October 1, Eicke presented the second camp regulations, which were much stricter than the previous ones. He also introduced compulsory guard duty, which forbade the firing of shots. The Dachau camp became a "state within the state": a place delimited from the outside with its own laws and the threat of the death penalty. On October 20, a release ban was ordered; it lasted for two months. In November 1933 camp inmates were allowed to vote in the Reichstag elections. In a Christmas amnesty, 400 inmates were released on December 9, which was a low number by average standards due to the previous release ban. Another amnesty took place on the anniversary of the National Socialist takeover of Bavaria.
From the beginning, the Dachau camp was planned with a capacity of 5000 people, which illustrated the extent of the planned political persecution; a method that was later transferred and radicalized to other groups. In 1933, 4821 people were imprisoned and about half were released, leaving 2425 imprisoned at the end of the year. The released prisoners reported on the concentration camp. Slowly the camp developed into a term that spread terror among the population and kept many dissenters from public expression. Long before the outbreak of the war, the saying "Dear God, make me mute so that I don't come to Dachau" appeared.
Closure of 48 concentration camps
By January 1934, SS leader Himmler had succeeded in increasing his influence. He was commander of the political police of almost all German states. SA leader Ernst Röhm was considered the second most powerful man in the state at this time. Many of the early concentration camps were controlled by the SA. Goering and Frick in particular wanted to end the power and arbitrary rule of the SA and its subsidiary organization, the SS. "Protective custody" was to be restricted and the "wild" concentration camps were to be dissolved. 34 concentration camps were cleared - partly by armed police action - by October 1933; the prisoners were transferred or released. By May 9, 1934, another 14 "wild" camps had been closed. For the time being, only isolated camps remained in the German Reich; Dachau was one of these few.
disempowerment of the SA
Himmler's SS, which was in competition with the SA, achieved the assassination of Röhm and the disempowerment of the SA by the end of June 1934. In order to be able to present an official cause and not to turn the people against themselves, the rumor of an allegedly imminent putsch by the SA leader Röhm (Röhm putsch) was spread. In the Dachau camp, prisoners could observe preparations for executions as early as June 29: A large part of the SS left the camp, their place being taken by a unit of the Reichswehr. The SS troops returned and executed 17 people in the camp on July 1 and 2: Members of the huge party army SA as well as opponents of the regime who had nothing to do with the SA: Fritz Gerlich, Bernhard Stempfle, Gustav von Kahr, for example, who had put down the Hitler putsch in 1923 as commissar general, also five prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp who had been in the bunker. The camp commandant Eicke, a former SA member, shot Röhm in the nearby Stadelheim prison. Six days later Himmler appointed him Inspector of All Concentration Camps (IKL). His successor as commandant from 10 December was Heinrich Deubel.
After the SA was deprived of its power, Göring later succeeded in becoming the second man in the state by accumulating offices. Himmler got the opportunity to detach his SS from the SA and to build it up as a large organization. Even those early, "wild" concentration camps of the SA were feared by the people. Gradually, the government moved to have "systematically" constructed camps, where order supposedly prevailed and which were presented as "educational camps," among other things. The SS, which initially controlled only the Dachau camp and was still subordinate to the SA, was able to build new concentration camps in the following years, such as Sachsenhausen (1936), Neuengamme (1938), Mauthausen (1938) and Auschwitz (1940).
1935
From about 1935 onwards, the government increasingly delivered persons who had been released from prisons. In addition to these prisoners, isolated Sinti and Roma, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals were imprisoned; they did not arrive in larger numbers until 1936. In September, the Nuremberg Race Laws created a legal basis for the persecution and imprisonment of Jewish citizens.
Transitional period 1936-1938
The years 1936 to 1938 represented a transitional period. The first blow of political terror was slowly ebbing away. The regime had consolidated and was now preparing for war. It had successfully found an "instrument of terror" in the concentration camps. A second phase of imprisonment began in the camps after the start of the Second World War and intensified in 1942 and 1943.
1936
In March 1936, camp inmates were allowed to vote in the Reichstag elections for a second time. Hans Loritz was promoted to camp commander on April 1. While the prisoners' clothing had previously indicated the reason for their imprisonment by means of colored dots and stripes, a new identification system for the prisoner groups was introduced under Loritz, as was the striped prisoners' clothing.
In February, the 1936 Winter Olympics took place not far from Munich, as well as the Summer Games in Berlin in August. The regime presented the Olympic Games as a celebration of the peoples; they became a great propaganda success for the "Third Reich". In 1936 the Bavarian Political Police issued - in connection with the many tourists expected because of the Olympic Games - guidelines for the imposition of "protective custody", concerning "people pests". These were so-called "beggars, vagrants, gypsies, work-shirkers, idlers, prostitutes, habitual drinkers, ruffians, traffic offenders, troublemakers, psychopaths, and the mentally ill". In 1936 Frick issued the circular to combat the "gypsy plague".
In Switzerland, Julius Zerfass published the book Dachau - A Chronicle under the protective pseudonym Walter Hornung.
Munich's local press reported on the concentration camp several times until the beginning of the war, mostly with derisive undertones about political inmates and with warnings about the "dangerous Bolsheviks" (cf. World Bolshevism). At the end of the year, the Illustrierter Beobachter published a propaganda report on the Dachau camp.
1937
At the beginning of the year, construction work began on the larger planned new prisoner compound. New barracks were erected. The new site measured 583 metres × 278 metres and was partly adjacent to the old camp, the former munitions factory. A roll call area, wooden barracks, a bunker with 136 cells for solitary confinement, a utility building with kitchen and other buildings were constructed. The new prisoners' quarters corresponded to the standard of Reich barracks at that time. On the eastern side of the camp, the ground was cultivated to create a medicinal herb plantation (a project of the German Research Institute for Nutrition and Food). The grounds were rebuilt and expanded until 1938. In 1937, 38 people died in the camp.
1938
On April 1, 1938, three weeks after the Anschluss of Austria, the first 151 Austrians arrived at Dachau with the so-called Prominent Transport. They were primarily opponents of various political persuasions who were in the media spotlight. In the same year the Dacha song was written. In June another wave of arrests took place with the action "Arbeitsscheu Reich" (work-shy Reich), which concerned persons with "asocial" behaviour. Foreign journalists and representatives of international humanitarian organizations had already been invited to visit the camp in 1933. On August 19, Guillaume Favre, a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross, wrote in a letter to Himmler: "Therefore, I would just like to emphasize here that everything I got to see and hear, as much with regard to the living conditions, the material and hygienic facilities of the camp, as with regard to the treatment, the food and the work of the detainees, left me with a very favorable impression." In October, the first Sudeten German prisoners arrived. Anti-Semitism had increased sharply, and in the wake of the Reich Pogrom Night 10,911 Jews, 3700 of them from Vienna, were brought to the camp.
In a telex sent during the night of the pogrom, SS-Gruppenführer ReinhardHeydrich instructed the StaPo to "arrest as many Jews - especially wealthy ones - in all districts as can be accommodated in the available detention rooms".
These Jewish prisoners were gradually released until May 1939. By means of threats, pressure was exerted on them and their families to immediately initiate their emigration and to aryanize their assets. In several cases, individual National Socialists succeeded in wresting houses, businesses or assets far below their value from the so-called "Action Jews". At Christmas, several prisoners were publicly flogged on the roll call square next to the Christmas tree.
1939
In the night of January 24, the painter Louis Übrig managed to escape. As a blanket punishment, the SS ordered the entire camp staff to stand in punishment in the freezing cold of the night, which resulted in deaths.
On January 25, 1939, a letter from the Foreign Office in Berlin described the goal of the German "Jewish policy" and pointed out in detail the ways and means of emigration and the whereabouts of the possessions. On the anniversary of the Anschluss of Austria, some Austrian prisoners were granted amnesty. A month later, on Hitler's 50th birthday, a "Jubelamnesty" took place. In the second half of 1939 the Judenblock was punished several times with isolation.
Start of the war September 1939
After the beginning of the Second World War, the SS filled the camp with captured people from the occupied countries. Originally, the concentration camps were places of harassment and deterrence for influential opponents of the regime. Now the armaments industry was increasingly dependent on the cheap labour of prisoners to wage war (see graph on unemployment). Prisoners were used in SS-owned factories, such as the Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke (DEST) or the Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (DAW), as well as in quarries, brickworks, gravel pits, and various other occupations and businesses. They were assigned by the government and used in the enterprise at low cost and profit. Prisoners were also used for the construction of the Reichsautobahn. For local reasons, satellite camps and flexible work detachments became necessary.
Between 27 September 1939 and 18 February 1940, the prisoners were transferred to other camps. In Dachau, meanwhile, 7000 members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände were trained. The prisoners were resettled: 2138 to Buchenwald, 1600 to Mauthausen, 981 to Flossenbürg. Only a work detachment of about 100 prisoners remained in the camp.
1940
On New Year's Day 1940, the DAW took control of the concentration camp's workshops, such as the locksmith's shop, carpentry shop and saddlery. At the end of April and beginning of May, transports with Polish prisoners arrived. The film The Great Dictator, an allusion to the Reich German concentration camps and to Hitler, was released abroad that year. Towards the end of the year, priests and parish priests from all the camps began to be grouped together in the Dachau camp; their housing block there was called the Pfarrerblock. While extermination camps such as Chelmno, Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Majdanek were being built in the occupied territories of Poland, the use of violence also intensified in the Dachau concentration camp.
1941
In January 1941, an improvised chapel was set up for the clergy in Block 26 on Himmler's orders. From 22 January, the clergy were allowed to worship there daily, under the supervision of an SS man. From 11 April, all clergy received better food rations, financed by the Vatican. The privileging of the preferential prisoners led to felonious ill will on the part of other prisoners and SS men; in September it was reversed. That year, under Egon Zill, a prisoners' music group was formed, which had to play music on certain occasions. At the beginning of 1941 an experimental ward was set up in the infirmary, where 114 registered tuberculosis patients were given homeopathic treatment. The leading physician was von Weyherns. He tested biochemical remedies on prisoners in February. As of June 1, a special registry office (Dachau II) was set up to register the deaths. Until then, the number of deaths according to the registry office of the city of Dachau amounted to 3486 persons.
Starting in October 1941, thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were deported to the camp. The SS shot a total of more than 4,000 Soviet prisoners of war in the courtyard of the bunker or later on the SS practice firing range in Hebertshausen.
1942
On January 20, the Wannsee Conference took place, at which mass killings were coordinated. On January 2, the first transport, called "Invalidentransport" in Nazi camouflage language, departed for the Nazi killing facility at Hartheim. There the Dachau prisoners were killed by gas as part of Aktion 14f13. Within a year, the SS took 32 transports of concentration camp inmates who were mentally ill or unfit for work, as well as those they did not like, a total of about 3,000 inmates. These killing operations at Hartheim Castle were an extension of the Nazis' euthanasia programme.
On February 22, the series of experiments on negative pressure began in the concentration camp, involving the aviation physicians Georg Weltz, Siegfried Ruff, Hans-Wolfgang Romberg and the SS-Hauptsturmführer Sigmund Rascher. The doctors were tasked with determining human reactivity and viability at high altitudes, during rapid ascent (at altitudes up to 20 kilometers or more), and during sudden falls from high altitudes. An air force negative pressure chamber was delivered and set up between Block 5 and the adjacent barracks. The series of experiments ended in the second half of May and cost the lives of 70 to 80 of about 200 prisoners.
On 23 February 1942, Claus Schilling began his first experiments to research drugs against the tropical disease malaria. 1100 prisoners were infected and abused as test subjects. Ten deaths were clearly proven to him in the Dachau trials. Schilling conducted these experiments until April 5, 1945. While the medical experiments on the effects of pressure were intended to benefit pilots, this research was aimed at Wehrmacht soldiers deployed in the African campaign.
In the first years of the war, the infirmary consisted of six barracks; the sick bay capo was Josef Heiden. In June, a biochemical research station was set up in Block I. The director was Heinrich Schütz. The director was Heinrich Schütz. A series of experiments on phlegmon (inflammation) was started in Block 1, Room 3, which cost the lives of at least 17 prisoners by the time it was completed in the spring of 1943.
On August 15, hypothermia tests began under the direction of doctors Holzlöhner, Finke and Rascher. They served the purpose of being able to better help pilots in distress at sea. The trials were officially concluded in October 1942, but Rascher extended them on his own initiative until May 1943. The number of test subjects was between 220 and 240, of whom about 65 to 70 prisoners died.
On September 1, Martin Weiß became the new commandant. He had been sharply instructed by Pohl to pay better attention to the preservation of the prisoners' labor force. During his command, the punishment of hanging on stakes was abolished, harassment, beatings and roll call became less frequent, and prisoners were allowed to go to their barracks more often. Above all, the weight and number of food parcels were no longer restricted. More packages arrived, some prisoners were now very well supplied, and a lively barter trade developed. A differentiation developed among the prisoners. Soviet prisoners could have no contact with their homeland and received no parcels. Those who received enough parcels were now able to get prisoner functionaries accepted into a good work detachment.
Following Himmler's order of October 5, 1942, to make the concentration camps in Germany free of Jews, the SS deported all of Dachau's Jewish prisoners to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
At the end of November, abdominal typhus and typhus broke out. Spotted fever, which was transmitted by lice, spread to an epidemic. Posters with the title One Louse - Your Death were hung up in the barracks.
At Christmas, a film screening was held for the first time in Block 4, followed by a total of about eight more. Selected feature films and propagandistic coverage of German war successes were shown. With the war propaganda, the government wanted to counteract the hopes of political opponents and resistance fighters in the camp. The situation in the cauldron of Stalingrad raised suspicions that the war might not be won. A few weeks later, Goebbels publicly called for total war.
1943
On January 1, 1943, a quarantine was ordered for the entire camp because of the typhus epidemic; it remained in effect until March 15. During the quarantine, the prisoners lived in the prisoners' area, SS men did not enter it. The prisoners were allowed to rest, occasionally they were allowed to play music, poems were also written. The camp library had expanded, as books were now arriving in parcels. Cultural activities survived the period of quarantine on a limited scale. On the other side of the absurd camp existence, executions for sabotage were on the increase, with the number ranging from about 800 to 1000 deaths. On August 4, as a deterrent in front of the assembled camp inmates, corporal punishment was carried out on 16 prisoners. In addition, Rascher's and Schilling's experiments were in progress. In October, Eduard Weiter became the new and last commandant of the concentration camp.
1944
In 1944, the first concentration camps in the east were evacuated because of the approaching front. Western camps were visibly filling up with evacuated prisoners. In the courtyard of the crematorium, 31 Soviet officers were shot by the SS on 22 February.
On May 11, a camp brothel was put into operation, six women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp arrived. It was connected with Oswald Pohl's service regulation to reward and thus increase exceptional work performance among prisoners. Towards the end of the year it was dissolved again. On July 6, the death transport from the Compiègne camp arrived in Dachau; 984 of the 2521 prisoners were already dead.
On the same day, the prisoner Sepp Eberl managed to listen to the news about the Allied landings in Normandy on a radio in the SS rooms. In the summer, Wilhelm Beiglböck conducted experiments on the use of seawater as drinking water. His test subjects were 44 imprisoned Sinti. From autumn on, the camps were completely overcrowded: The rooms planned for 52 people now had to be shared by 300 to 500 people. On September 4 and 6, another 92 Soviet officers were shot in the yard of the crematorium. These shootings proceeded without secrecy as an act of prisoner deterrence. In November, a typhus epidemic introduced into the camp by an evacuation transport broke out again. Death rates increased, from 403 in October to 997 in November and 1915 in December. On 17 December, the deacon Karl Leisner was secretly ordained a priest in the camp chapel by the French bishop Gabriel Piguet.
In September 1944, the church musician and composer Father Gregor Schwake composed the Dachau Mass while a prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp.
1945
From the beginning of the year until April, evacuation transports arrived from camps that had already been evacuated. Also in order to be able to continue using their manpower, the prisoners were sent on long and costly transports to the west of the Reich. Camp personnel also arrived, in January 1945, for example, the SS doctor Hans Münch, who was later acquitted. The overcrowding of the camp accelerated the typhus epidemic: the mortality rate was 2903 dead in January and rose over the following months. The crematorium was taken out of operation, and mass burials began in the Leitenberg cemetery on 12 February. A number of doctors and nurses also succumbed to the epidemic. Father Engelmar Unzeitig died of typhus during this period. Towards the end of March hundreds of German clergy were released; 170 remained imprisoned.
On 4 April, Danish and Norwegian prisoners were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as part of the White Bus rescue operation. The prisoners Georg Elser and Charles Delestraint were shot on 9 and 19 April respectively. In early April, the SS began burning writings and documents. In mid-April, the SS suspended Johan Meansarian and Albert Wernicke. It put the two function prisoners, feared by the inmates, in the bunker. On April 14, Himmler had a radio message sent to the commandant's office of Dachau and Flossenbürg. He ordered the total evacuation, which was later reduced to the removal of Germans, Soviet citizens, Poles and Jews. Thus began the evacuation and death marches. On April 17 and 24, some prisoners, among them Niemöller, Piquet, Schuschnigg, were transported in the direction of the Tyrol.
On 23 April, for the first time, the work detachments no longer left the camp. Another evacuation transport went by Reichsbahn via Emmering-Munich-Wolfratshausen-Mittenwald to Seefeld in Tyrol. The 2000 prisoners were liberated on 4 May. Another evacuation transport went by Reichsbahn on April 25 from Emmering via Munich, Wolfratshausen and Kochel to Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg. The 3000 prisoners were liberated on April 30. The evacuation transport of April 26 via Emmering-Munich-Wolfratshausen-Penzberg-Staltach with 1759 Jews could also be liberated on April 30. On the same day the US-Americans stopped a march of 6887 prisoners. It had begun on 26 April and led via Pasing, Wolfratshausen and Bad Tölz to Tegernsee. Many did not live to see the liberation; they died of complete physical exhaustion or were murdered. 1000 more Russian prisoners were saved from the march by the camp committee through sabotage. On April 27, 2000 prisoners were sent on a transport from Emmering by Reichsbahn; from Wolfratshausen the prisoners had to march on foot. At night the railway train arrived with prisoners from Buchenwald, many of whom had starved to death.
A day later, on April 28, German Major General Max Ulich, wanting to avoid unnecessary casualties against U.S. forces, withdrew the 212th Volksgrenadier Division from the camp grounds. On this day, the Dachau Uprising also took place in the town, led by former Dachau prisoners Walter Neff and Georg Scherer.
Liberation 1945
→ Main article: Liberation of Dachau concentration camp
The next day, 29 April 1945, the US army marched in to liberate the main camp. They were completely unprepared for the death train from Buchenwald, which was parked next to the prisoners' camp on the SS grounds, with about 2300 corpses in its wagons. After this shocking impression, spontaneous vigilante justice ensued. The US soldiers executed SS men. The war crime, which was not necessary for the liberation of the camp - the men of the Waffen-SS had hardly offered any resistance - later became known as the Dachau Massacre.
One day later, the troops marched into Munich. Other nearby satellite camps were liberated; among the prisoners was, for example, Viktor Frankl, whose later book ... trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen (Saying Yes to Life in spite of Everything) about his experiences in the Dachau and Auschwitz camps achieved worldwide fame. Prisoner transports still in the vicinity of Munich were also released on April 30.
US administration
Initially, Dachau was quarantined due to a US order. Typhus and typhus fever were rampant on the grounds. The epidemic and also the consequences of malnutrition during concentration camp detention decimated the number of survivors by about 2000 people. In the now liberated Dachau camp, between 100 and 300 dead had to be buried every day in May 1945. The formation of an international prisoners' committee (CID) was planned and announced. In the acute emergency, the camp grounds still served temporarily as accommodation for homeless and sick former prisoners. In July, the US military authorities established the Dachau internment camp on the site.
Shortly after the liberation, Colonel William W. Quinn, then Assistant Chief of Staff of the Military Intelligence G-2 Section of the 7th US Army, arrived at the camp. He decided, in view of the dramatic conditions and the enormity of the crimes, to immediately form a major commission of inquiry composed of personnel from various military intelligence agencies, who prepared comprehensive documentation. After about a week or two, the 72-page report entitled Dachau was published and soon made its way to the press. It is considered one of the first publicly available investigations into the German concentration camp complex.
Towards the end of 1945, the main Dachau trial took place as part of the Dachau Trials; 36 of the 40 defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. In May 1946, 28 of the 36 death sentences were carried out in the Landsberg war crimes prison. In 121 subsequent trials, about 500 defendants had to answer to US military courts in the following years. The defendants were mainly SS members who had previously worked in the main camp and its satellite camps. Until 1948, the Dachau Trials were held on the site, which included Holocaust-related trials. The medical experiments on prison inmates were also tried in the Nuremberg Medical Trials and the Milch Trial.
Barely three and a half years after the liberation, the US military handed over the site to the Bavarian authorities in September 1948. As early as the winter of 1947/48, CSU member of the Bavarian state parliament Hans Hagn introduced a motion in the Bavarian state parliament to establish a labor camp on the grounds of the concentration camp as a "place for the re-education of antisocial elements". The motion was passed unanimously; the Bavarian Trade Union Federation also demanded at the same time that "all asocial elements be sent to a labor camp." The implementation failed, because in a new vote in April 1948, the vote was for a subsequent use of the concentration camp as a refugee camp.
In late post-war investigations, for example the trial of Karl Kapp in 1960, function prisoners were also brought to trial.
