Phillips Nuremberg Trials Collection: Trial 9 - Einsatzgruppen Case

The Einsatzgruppen were SS mobile death squads, operating behind the front line in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe. From 1941 to 1943 alone, they murdered more than one million Jews and tens of thousands of "partisans", Roma, disabled persons, political commissars, and others. The 24 defendants in this trial were all officers of these Einsatzgruppen and faced mass murder charges. The tribunal stated in its judgment:

... 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.

Counts: 1) Crimes Against Humanity; 2) War Crimes; and 3) Membership in the SS

Original Indictment

Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team

• More information regarding the Einsatzgruppen including organizational structure

• Indictment
• Opening Statement for the United States of America
• Closing Statement for the United States of America
• Opinion, Judgment and Sentencing

Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10

The 15-volume series, also known as “The Green Series,” focuses on the 12 trials of almost 200 defendants. This publication by the United States Government Printing Office is the official abridged record of the individual indictments and judgments, as well as the administrative materials that were common to all the trials.

• Volume 4, "The Einsatzgruppen Case" & "The RuSHA Case"

1943 - Graduated from Harvard Law School. Joined the Army and assigned to 115th Anti-Aircraft Battalion
June 10, 1944 - lands at Omaha Beach and moves through France
Nov. 1944 - Assigned to the Judge Advocate General (JAG) section of General Patton's Third Army HQ
Dec. 1944 - Arrives in Luxembourg and starts work on setting-up the War Crimes Section. He travels to reported crime scenes, conducting investigations and interrogations to determine responsible parties and to make arrests for later trials. His investigations include the killing of American soldiers and downed plane crews. It was necessary for him to observe the exhumation of bodies for identification purposes. At the time he was a sergeant and classified as a jeep driver but was given the authority to travel anywhere and talk to anyone.
April 11, 1945 - Visits Ohrdruf concentration camp, part of the Buchenwald complex (liberated April 4). When visiting camps he always headed to the office to secure the camp records. These included the death registry, correspondence showing transportation of inmates from labor sites to the camp for elimination when they were no longer fit to work.
April 29, 1945 - Arrives at Flossenburg concentration camp (liberated April 23)
May, 1945 - Early May arrives at Dachau concentration camp (liberated April 29). Dachau was established on March 22, 1933, just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler had been appointed Reich Chancellor, as a concentration camp for political prisoners. Visits Ebensee, part of the Mauthausen complex (liberated May 6) and Hitler's retreat the Kehlsteinhaus (known as the Eagle's Nest). Dachau was the site of a number of trials conducted entirely by American military personnel between November 1945 and August 1948. Their legal authority had been conferred by the JAG Department within the U.S. Third Army. Ferencz considered the approach of the military personal toward these legal proceedings to be undisciplined but knew that many considered the proceedings appropriate given the presence of graves filled with innocent victims.

• Benjamin B. Ferencz, Nurnberg Trial Procedure and the Rights of the Accused, 39 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 144 (1948-1949)
• Additional materials authored by Ferencz

The term genocide first appeared in the indictment against the defendants in the Major War Criminals trial. Lemkin is credited with coining the term to describe the efforts to destroy groups of people solely because of their race, religion, or nationality.

• Key Writings of Raphael Lemkin (Prevent Genocide International)
• Excerpt from Chapter 10 "Genocide", p. 79 - 95

Style of the case: United States of America v. Otto Ohlendorf, et al.

Indictment filed: 30 July 1947

Trial dates: 29 September 1947 - 13 February 1948

Judges:  Michael A. Musmanno (Pennsylvania) (presiding judge), John J. Speight (Alabama), and Richard D. Dixon (North Carolina)

Chief Prosecutor: Benjamin B. Ferencz; Assistants: Arnost Horlick-Hochwald, Peter W. Walton, John E. Glancy, James Heath

Judgment: 8 April 1948

Sentencing: 10 April 1948